Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Easter at the beach...


What a great way to celebrate Easter. We got to sneak away from the city for a relaxing long weekend. The weather was Oregon weather, and we were totally cool with that. We met up with the Bartel's, and the boys had a blast playing with their cousins. We played, we ate, we drank, we walked on the beach alot, and even did a little puddle jumping. We couldn't have asked for a better break.






Friday, April 10, 2009

Mirah.. and wine...

Last week, B told me he had saturday night plans for us, even set Jo up to babysit before saying anything to me. um, i love that man.


We went to dinner at Gino's in Sellwood, drank wine (a little too much), and ate really good food. Than headed over to the Aladdin theatre to see Mirah play... kind of embarrassing but funny, i stumbled upon mirah after watching last summers season of "so you think you can dance" and her music was used for one of my favorite performances..


yes I am kind of a dork... turns out Mirah lives in portland and her music is awesome... hmmm. I guess something good does come out of watching weird, kind of trashy, reality competition shows.

anyway, B thought he was sooo funny getting me tickets, opening was a band he wanted to see, Norfolk and Western, so it worked out.
I love that the boys are getting older and easier to pawn off on people.

sun, oh sun, please come back...

We found a new walking path, it is a 2 mile stretch that ends at a play area, loops back for a nice 4 mile walk. The boys were so stoked scootering in the beginning, but puckered out about a half mile in (note to self this is a stroller kind of walk). the half mile mark is a sweet little daffodil patch, great photo op. There were plenty of bugs to keep the boys occupied.








Thursday, April 2, 2009

little man post...

I have been distracted over the last couple of weeks. I am busy, I am stressed, my families life has been turned upside down with a move, and a funeral on top of that. We are still getting settled, we are still living with boxes all over the place... slowly but surely we are finding a place for everything.. slowly is killing me.
I have'nt posted much, and I know it must be killing at least one person out there.. so for you Nana Barb, here are some photo's of our precious little men.
I don't think that is how you wear your jammies... silly boys.


Pretending to be hermit crabs.

Max and jack the cat, jack is a huge cat.



Ollie getting his hearing checked at his 4 year check-up... cute little man is doing great... healthy as a horse. He had to have 4 shots though.. ouch!

my heart... kind of hurts...




On march 26th my Grandma Meier (dad's mom) passed away. It was weird for my family. My dad passed away 5 years ago, and we never really had a relationship with his side of the family. They have always been foreign and weird and always a sore subject for my mom and dad. My mom didn't get along with my dad's family, and my dad was always kind of the black sheep. I know in the beginning my mom tried, like every young bride does, but it just never worked. The year my dad was admitted to an inpatient treatment facility for depression was the end of my mothers relationship with his family. I was in 6th grade. My dad's parents had called my mom, and protested that she let them take him out of the facility, they would take care of him since she could not. They had a priest lined up, that was going to cure him.... the catholic faith.


When my parents married, my mom was not catholic, she converted, cause she had to. The morning of their wedding my grandma told my dad he didn't have to marry her, he could just not show up. All these things of course he told my mom, which really didn't help much. My Mom was not what my grandma wanted for my dad. She was young, she was not catholic, she was not right.





We all as young wives and mothers now how much that would suck. How awkward it is becoming a part of a new family and how insecure we are. My mother never got over it, and the relationship never got better.



My dad was a twin. When he and peter were born, my dad was small. He stayed in the hospital a month longer than his twin brother. My Grandma had three kids under the age of four and a newborn twin at home, my mom says my dad never got the bonding that is so precious at the beginning of life. It kind of continued through out his life, he never really fit in. His twin brother Peter became a Catholic Priest, he is an Ass. My grandpa was in the seminary before he went into the navy and met my grandmother, he talked often about missing his calling, I don't think anything could have made them prouder than having a son become a priest. Peter was kicked out of three seminaries in the U.S. He became a priest by default in Guatemala, they had a shortage, so poof, he became a priest.
He didn't come to my dad's funeral, his own twin brother, because of a fight they had gotten into years before. He participated as a priest in his own mothers funeral, and gave a horrible, mean, disgusting sermon. At his MOTHERS Funeral. People actually got up and walked out. I guess the family had had some problems with him, and he was not allowed to visit his parents. His brothers and sisters had to make the horrible decision to ban him from her hospital room. How horrible. The family had told the Priest of the church they did not want him speaking at the funeral. The priest said he could control him and he would just do one of the readings. He didn't, after he was done speaking the head priest said, "now lets re-focus on the love and life of Helen Joan Meier." What an ass. He did not attend the burial or the luncheon following the burial. I wanted to spit on him.

I always want to see the good in people, I felt my view of my uncle and my dad's family was skewed by stories told by my mom, I thought she was exaggerating. I feel sorry for my dad, to have lived a life overshadowed by a man that is seriously messed up. No wonder my dad had issues.

My uncles were apologizing to people at the funeral, my uncle Tom whispered quietly to my older sister, "I am sorry you had to hear that." My sister said "it's okay, I couldn't really understand him, he was talking so loud." "I am wearing dad's rosary and covered it up while Peter was speaking, I figured he didn't need to hear it either." It made my uncle Tom laugh, and cry.

My aunts are the sweetest, most precious woman, they took the brunt of insults from Peter, My mom had always said he had issues with woman. I didn't believe her till now.

I have good things to say about my dad's family, I have many more pictures, right now I just needed to get that out. I haven't slept very well the last couple of nights and keep having horrible dreams. Maybe writing some of this out will help purge it from my head. I have been praying alot, and can't seem to get the voice of the catholic priests out of my head... it sucks....


Can you tell which little man is my dad?

Monkey wrench...


Since Kari is waiting so patiently, I'll start the slur of updates with pics of the coolest jumpsuit ever. Kari had bought a set of these for both her little ones, lucky for me, Claire and Ev grew to quickly. So we got to snag them until Everett can fill this one out... it is awesome! You can get one here... Max calls it his monkey wrench suit... hee he..
I am going to start sending him to work with B.