so, malaysia. and a quick catch-up from the summer

well, so here i am.  took me about 5 minutes to remember to how post a new post.  not a particularly good sign.

since i just downloaded 707 pictures, (all from june, july, and august), which is more than i'd taken in the last, like, 2 years, i am trying to decide where to start.

we had a truly GREAT summer.  i am such a summer mom.  just let it be summer all year long, okay?  i love having all the kids home with me.  and the lack of schedules, except for MY schedule.  my rules, my way.........(maybe i shouldn't admit that?)

anyway, the day after school got out (and after sadly, sadly, sadly) saying good bye to friends (and not sadly) the weather, we drove to utah for a two-week visit.  much fun was had---we kicked off the summer by going swimming almost every day at amy's pool, going to 7-peaks, and celebrating the 4th of july (early--since we were actually on the plane to malaysia on the 4th.  actually, we missed the 4th of july day entirely--we left utah on the 3rd, and landed in malaysia on the 5th.  it was weird.)

so, malaysia.  it's great. and different.  and mostly good.  mixed in with frustrating bits and pieces.  like not getting our air shipment for 7 weeks (instead of two), and then having 9 of the boxes be missing.  stuff like that.  and getting lost on a regular basis while driving.  we just plan in an extra 30 minutes for getting lost.  but here's a list of the things i like:

1) meeting all sorts of new people from every country possible---in our apt complex, there are australians, austrians, russians, iranians, norweigans, chinese, phillipinos, indians, brazilians, belgians.......when we moved in, there was only one other american person in the whole complex (and she is married to a french man, so it only half-way counts).  now there are three other american families.     i put on my outgoing (usually hidden) personality and talk to them all.

2) most people speak english.  hallelujah!!!!!!!!!  no, seriously, it's life-saving.

3) the motorcycle riders wearing their jackets backwards.  it makes me smile.  i like seeing funny things.

4)  walking to the grocery store.  even though it's a pain.  it feels industrious.

5) SWIMMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i should have put this first.  and second.  and third.  i love the pool.  love.  love.  love.  i have been doing little swim lessons with wells since the other kids started school.  it is the highlight of my day.  and i get to do a swim workout every morning.  heaven.

6) driving on the wrong side of the road. it's a rush.  and scary.  driving is just always a gamble here.  but any time i make it somewhere safely, i feel like i accomplished something great.  it's not, just like, "oh, i went to ikea today."  it's like "WHOA,  I DROVE TO IKEA TODAY AND I ONLY GOT LOST ONCE, AND I DIDN'T CRASH, AND I UNDERSTOOD THE CRAZY SIGNS TELLING ME WHERE TO PARK!!!!!!!"  see how much more fun that is?

7)  the bum washers.  but NOT the squat toilets.  those are a mystery to be avoided.  but the bum washers come in handy for all sorts of things.  you can hose down the whole bathroom and your toddler all at once!  (when wells has a dirty diaper at the pool, which he does seem to sort of plan on, he says "better go spray my bottom off").  anyway, they are fun.

8) doing laundry and yoga outside on a balcony.

9) the view from my windows.  trees, the pool, and downtown kuala lumpur.  we have huge windows/sliding glass doors in every room.

okay, that is enough for now.  i will try to add some pictures on now......it ended up being totally random pictures.  707 is too many to go through, it seems.  i will do some smaller, less general posts next.

                                            (at my mom's house in the backyard)

                                           (at amy's pool.  i made them tread water forever, trying to get a good picture, until we realized there was a bench right behind them.....see below.  ha!)

                                           (my grandma and grandpa........jody-ray, as my kids call them)

                                           (this is how i walk to church if i want to wear heels once i'm actually there.  the sidewalks and streets are far too hazardous for anything but sandals.)

                                           (at klcc by the petronas towers.  and the splash park)

(we left back-to-school pictures until it was a little too late.......this is the kids getting into the elevator to go down to the bus--there are 2 elevators and 2 apartments on each floor in our building)

gretchy

 8 ('cause she's 8) facts about gretchen:

1.  she loves to be fancy.  she would for sure ditch me and go live with fancy nancy's family if that was an option.  she is always looking for ways to add some fanciness to her life.  she even added ribbon bows along the sides of her bunkbed to fancy things up a bit.

2.  she is a great friend to pace.  he pretty much waits all day for her to get home from school and then attacks her with his enthusiasm the second she walks in the door.  she is usually a good sport about it.

3.  she is a super good helper with wells.  i am so lucky!

4.  she LOVES reading and is really, really fast and good at it.  she has read all the harry potter books, the percy jackson books, fable haven, etc........

5.  she likes to play with her american girl dolls and gets them all fancy (of course) and set up.  she makes "beds" and "rooms" for them out of cardboard boxes.

6.  she bears her testimony at church almost every month.  she is way braver than i am!

7.  she likes to wear her hair in pigtails.

8.  she made (all by herself and with no prompting from me) a poster about being vegan and took it to school to show her class.  this was not an assignment.  she is very enthusiastic about sharing what she thinks with other people!

love you, gretchy!

me

(with a bit of loren and the kids thrown in for good measure).  so, here's a rundown of my life since moving to washington:  six children.  whooee!!! doesn't that look like a lot of kids? i'm still waiting to feel grown up enough to have them.  (and, total side note, washington state redeemed itself a bit weather/beauty wise by providing us with this great backdrop for family pictures this weekend--this was taken just outside my backyard.)

between and around and in amongst taking care of children, i had lots of fun setting up our house here. i think i would rearrange my house every two years even if i didn't move.  i just really, really enjoy finding places for everything and making things work in new ways.  and since most of my family and friends have never seen my house, and this is pretty much where i spend all my time and energy (besides in the car and at costco), i'm going to grace you all with some house pictures so you can picture where i be! (it's 'am', i know--it just sounded fun to say 'be').

this is a picture of liesel-and-gwyneth's (yes, they are one word) room.  we started redoing it in florida and then finished it up here.  

 for christmas i got them a chandelier for their walk-in closet and made them a little hang-out spot in there.

 my main push in this house has been to become super organized.  (i've maybe discovered it's a secret passion of mine.)  i actually think i want to become (in a far-off scarcely imagined time years from now) a professional organizer.  it's just too fun to label and sort and throw things away, i tell you!  here's our craft/sewing/piano practice room (the piano's on the other side of the room, not pictured, obviously).  i just got to teach a mini relief society thing about organization and i had way too much fun.

 and here's the "extra food storage" cupboards, which are actually in our laundry room, which is just off the kitchen.  you can't really tell here, but everything's sort of labeled and in its own spot.  liesel and gwyneth gave me a labeler for valentine's day, and nothing in my house is safe now.

this is our front room--view from the door


view from the kitchen  (that balcony up there goes to l-and-g's room)

 this is from the upstairs hall--the front room is open to the 2nd story all the way across

 this is my room--mostly this picture is to show that i finally hung the curtains behind my bed (something i've been talking about doing since we moved here)

so there's pretty much the house.  when it's not raining (ha!) i will go outside and take a picture of the outside and show you that, too.

other than housey/organizing stuff, i've been doing a lot of yoga again.  a studio opened up less than 5 minutes from my house, which has been super fun for me.  i also go running sometimes--mostly in a walk-up-the-hills-run-down-them fashion.  i have not gotten on my bike since my bike crash last year (except once when loren made me and i rode so slowly i was worthless, and even got off the bike to walk down some of the hills).  i am a big chicken now!!!  i FINALLY got my tooth that was knocked loose fixed last week, so maybe now i will start to regain some of my biking skills?  i really want to do another triathlon, but we'll see how it goes........
i also got to go to virginia a couple of weeks ago for the annual cabin retreat with my virginia friends.  it was SO much fun.  i love being with people who've known me for a long time (and still say i can come visit them!).  i fully took advantage of the sun there and came home a bit fried, but i say it was totally worth it!!!! rain, rain, go away.

and here's a bit about loren:  he likes his job here a lot better than he did in florida, so that's super nice.  he (and i) love the commute--it's the shortest commute we've ever had.  he's much better than me at actually running up hills, so he's been doing some races and having fun with that.  saturday he did a mud run and had a lot of fun.  and as always, he's the best husband i could hope for!

so, i guess that's it!  life as i know it.

my little super hero

i guess the pictures are insisting on coming before the post, even though that's not what i said i wanted. also, it took me five tries to type 'insisting'.  i should have just picked a new word.  anyway, this post is about my pace boy.  

 this is pace dressed up as joseph for our family christmas nativity.  most of the pictures of joseph/pace show him doing ninja moves.  in fact, mary (gretchen) and baby jesus (wells) had to stay far away from joseph during most of the nativity.

 pace loved the snow days.  he loved them so much that i tried hard to (tolerate) love them,  too.  this picture is of him during a snow ball fight with loren.

 pace loves to wink, which i happen to think is super cute and funny.

 one of the other moms at preschool took this picture of pace winking as he handed out cookies to everyone.

 pace and gretchen make their own superhero gear quite often.

 pace is 5!!!! holy cow, where did the years go?  and, it was actually sunny (sunny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) on his birthday, so he got to play with his new iron man and captain america guys outside.

other things about him:

so, pace is totally convinced that he's a super hero.  (he's also fully believes that wells has super powers, also--if something strange happens in our house, he says that wells used his super powers to make it happen.  i could ask why he isn't using his powers to make himself walk.....) but anyway, back to pace's super hero-ness.  he's not just one super hero, either--he can harness whichever power he might need at the moment:  if he's putting away the silverware, he's wolverine, with knives between each finger; when he wants to ride his bike outside alone, and i say "no", he says "but mom, i will just use my ninja powers and knock the bad guys down"; the other day we were outside working in the yard and the handle of a shovel slid down the wall and tapped him lightly on his chest, and he looked up in amazement and said "whoa, my chest totally blocked that hit".  i LOVE how he is so impressed with the things he does that he is convinced he has super powers.

it's just so much fun having this boy around.  so totally different from my girls, and i love it all!

 

well, hello

has it really been since december that i posted?!  what the heck-of-a-doodle.  (to quote pace).  so, i've decided there is going to be no back-blogging here.  just a clean fresh start.  i will leave you all wondering  what in the world we were up to from december through may.  and you (and i) will just have to deal with it.

my friend in virginia (hi--you know who you are) had a great idea to play catch-up on the blog without technically back-blogging.  i am going to copy her idea and write a post about each of the kids (and possibly myself, too and loren(?) if i ever make it that far).  so, today we will start with the bub of all bubs.

 

he decided to turn out rather high maintenance (sort of/maybe/probably the reason for the lack of posts lately) and is needing physical and occupational therapy for a whole host of issues (low muscle tone, poor muscle memory, poor motor planning, speech delays, and eating problems).  the GOOD news, though, is that he improves pretty much every week, learning something new or strengthening a skill he already had.  he can finally crawl, cruise around on furniture, and has recently started being able to walk behind a push toy.  his therapists are hopeful that he will be walking by the time he turns two.  he is also learning some WORDS (hooray, hooray, hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and has actually held onto about 6 words for two weeks now: up, bye, orange, shoe, school, night-night, knock-knock.........it's kind of a random list, i know.  oh, he can also say banana when he wants to.

he is a super cute baby, though, and i love him to death in spite of himself.  here's a little more info on the bubness:  he has just decided he likes being sung to, and singing to him in the car and while i'm changing his diaper is the only thing that keeps him happy.  he also LOVES to go outside (it REALLY makes me miss florida, i just gotta say.)  when it does stop raining he is so happy to go out on the swing or sit on the trampoline.  he also really, really likes oranges.  and he turns my kitchen into a total sticky disaster when he eats them.  he likes swimming, too (we go once a week to an indoor pool).  he's so funny in his swim tube--he can mostly keep himself upright, but when he does start to fall forward and he knows his face is going under, he just closes his eyes and blows bubbles and waits for me to rescue him.  which reminds me, sometimes he can say "bubbles" also.  bath time is also a favorite of his.  so is getting into mischief of all kinds.  at least now he shakes his head when he knows he's getting into trouble.........too bad knowing he's not supposed to do it doesn't make him not do it.


so, there you have it.  one post down, 7 more to go.  easy-peasy, right?

all in a day's work

pace has been asking me for a while when i'm going to get around to hanging stuff up in his room.

today he decided to take decorating matters into his own hands. he was busy upstairs for a long time. when he came back down, he was super excited and wanted me to come see how he'd decorated his room. he kept saying "it's just so awesome, mom. you're gonna love it. you'll be so surprised!"

this is the first item of decor: a pen taped to the wall, with a blank paper taped next to it. "so i can write my calendar and draw stuff if i need to."

next, a blue ornament (gifted by gretchy, who got it from school), hanging next to a blanket artfully draped in the door crack of the closet.
another artfully draped blanket, arranged under a jewelry box stolen from madeline.

and, tadaaaaa! "mom, look, bet you didn't even know it............a necklace!" hidden under the blanket and attached to the dresser with a climbing hook.

one more blanket on display. draped over the fan.

and this has nothing to do with decorating, but it does have to do with how things are different around here since we've had a boy. this is now considered to be an appropriate way to say family prayers.

and we have the traveling nativity.

can i do this in 15 minutes?

so, i have 15 minutes before i have to race out the door to get pace at preschool. we'll see how far i get. mostly it will just be a list of everything i hope to post in-depth about at a future (soonish?) time.

1. we are now in seattle (well, really, issaquah)

2. it's raining

3. we stayed for 3 weeks in a hotel (3 different hotels, actually) before we moved in

4. it is hard to keep 6 children quiet in a hotel room for 3 weeks

5. some of the children may or may not have gotten locked out of or into adjoining hotel rooms in the middle of the night

6. we got a trampoline

7. pace promptly broke his leg jumping on the trampoline

8. we are on week 10 of having either a cast (named "blue leg") or a brace (named "iron man leg") on pace

9. wells started therapy for developmental delays and also for food-eating issues

10. wells turned one year old (we are lying to everyone and saying he's still 8 months, though)

11. we love our new ward

12. we miss our pool. we are trying to be good sports, but i'm afraid we got a bit spoiled.

13. we still like issaquah, even though it is pool-less and sun-less

14. the kids mostly like it because i finally bought them some boots they've been wanting for 2 years now

15. 7 minutes left--i will try to post some pictures

16. one more thing--i really like organizing a new house. i hate moving, but i think i'd really get jittery if i didn't get to start from scratch every 2 years. i have tried a new approach in this house--i label everything--everything has a spot and that spot is labeled and so THERE SHOULD BE NO CONFUSION AS TO WHERE THINGS SHOULD GO! right, children? liesel and gwyneth say i'm going through a post-nesting phase. whatever it's called, i'm having fun!

iron man leg
"blue leg and good leg are friends"--pace specifically requested this picture of them together
some moves with blue leg