Soaking up the last days of summer....

The Yard clean-up...

It is 90 degrees today... what, I have to admit I like it. I was kind of stoked last week when it was grey and raining... than I had to leave the house and do a bunch of stuff, I realized the rain kind of sucks... and I am not ready to give up my flip flops yet, so I will enjoy this bright sunny weather, leave my skirts and tanks on for a couple more days at least. And than maybe I will be prepared to enjoy the change of seasons. I need rain boots!

We finally broke down and hired someone to come out and clean up the yard. It is an insane yard and we just couldn't get our heads around it. Michael was a crazy gardener, and left the yard in a horrible un-manageable mess! There was way to much stuff crammed into the yard and not enough time in the day to keep it from looking like the set of jumanji....

before.....

after..... (oh my gosh there is a house there)

before....

after....

Our friend Dan came out and did it in one day with his crew, they are amazing! We still have allot of work to do, but at least we are starting from a semi-clean slate, rather than an over-grown weed pit. I have to admit I wanted the yard crashers to come in from HGTV and re-do the whole thing... Dan was a good second best though!

potty talk

My life has had way to much bodily fluids in it lately... here are some little stories all on the topic of potty.

First, Max is potty training. I don't remember it being this difficult with Ollie. Maybe these are things you just block out. Max seems to be taking full advantage of potty training. I swear he squeezes out the smallest amount of potty he can, just to get the sticker, or marshmallow, or jelly bean I have chosen to use as a reward that day. We stopped the reward system for potty, know he only gets a reward for poo. I spend most of the day reminding him to use the potty and begging him to try and poop on the potty. Only one successful poo so far, with a couple of messy undie incidents... gross! Needless to say we are taking a break from potty training this week. We will try again in a couple of weeks.

Second Potty tale.

A couple weeks ago B and I decided to load the boys up and take a stroll through Ikea. We needed a new duvet cover and felt like a late night (8 p.m. ohhhh were such night owls) walk around would do the boys good. We were enjoying pretending all the little living rooms were ours and the boys were running around with paper tape measures... Ikea is always a good time, unless it is a Saturday or Sunday during the day, B and I have an theory that weekends at Ikea could be the cause of many divorces! especially if you are totting around toddlers...

Anyway as we were making our way through the 595 sq ft of fake house, Ollie mentioned he needed to use the potty, I told him we would find a bathroom after we got through this little house. B and I were very busy admiring the storage space above the cool modern looking bed and discussing how we could use that in our room, B turned around and exclaimed, "Ollie, what are you doing."

Smart little Oliver had found a bathroom himself. There he stood with his pants around his ankles and a puddle on the top of a fake toilet.....Max standing right next to him as an innocent bystander.

In the cute little 595 sq ft of a fake house.

Ikea is smart, they screw the lids down so you can't open the toilets, but when you are a kid and you need to go, and get all ready, something like a lid being screwed down can't stop the stream.

How Embarrassing!

I left B and the boys guarding the puddle, what a bad mom I was, no wipes, no napkins, and no diapers in my bag....

I went and snooped through the employee station, they have nothing in there! so I had to run around and flag down an employee... who laughed... I thought she would say something like "oh that happens all the time." but guess what it doesn't. Has never happened while she had been there at least.... so at least I gave the ikea employee a story to pass around the break room.

and the third most disturbing potty tale...

We got tickets to see the Flaming Lips out at Edgefield....AMAZING... is all I can say about that. Becki and Nick were in town from Austin, Jo met up with us and my friend from Cali Laura. It was so fun to feel semi-younger again. Being a grown up is hard and exhausting!

Anyway we had a couple of beers and when the lips took the stage we made our way down to the front. A couple of songs in, crammed up against other people trying to get the best view and wanting to be part of the show.... I feel a warm splatter, stream HITTING MY FOOT (I was wearing flip flops)! It took me a minute to figure out what the heck was going on, I thought maybe someone had spilled a drink, but it was warm, body temp warm. Than I notice the dude in front of me, slightly to my right, zipping his fly up. THE DUDE PEED. In the middle of a concert crammed in between people. It is not like the bathrooms are that far away.... just right up the hill, COME ON.

I had had a couple of beers, and was furious, but what do you do, the dude peed on my foot. Okay and I am not a quiet person. So I knock on his shoulder, I don't know what I wanted, maybe an "OH, I am sorry, I didn't think anyone would notice." Maybe a lie... Like "Oh I just spilled my drink".... Something anything would be better than the guiltily defensive 6 foot dude saying "uhhh No." and than turning around trying to ignore me saying loudly to everyone and anyone... (i did have two beers in me)..."that guy just peed on my foot!" Needless to say he moved away from us... SO DISGUSTING.... His Girlfriend or wife or whatever was right in front of him. She moved away first, giving him one of the looks I give Brian when he does something ridiculous.... but never, never would Brian Pee in the middle of a sea of people, during a concert!

pretty things...

I had a booth at the multnomah days street fair yesterday, oh what fun. I love doing street fairs and hate them at the same time... It is allot of work to get all your stuff out there to sell, and I always wait till the last minute so am usually up all night with only a few hours of sleep before the event....burdy did pretty good though, we've got some cash in our pockets.

Every craft event we do, I always seem to fall in love with an artist and their work, I have a little art collection going of pieces I buy at the fairs I do. I bought this piece and want to buy more of his work... they are so beautiful and bright!

The artist Christopher was so great, his booth was right next to ours so we chatted it up on and off during the day. He is from England, and I have this total romanticised view of European countries, I am always shocked when people chose to live in the states rather than Europe... He had some good reasons though, it made me kind of proud of our little corner of the U.S....

Check out his work... he is awesome! www.iambibby.com

River wandering....

working nine to five...

Actually it was only 8am to 11am, and only for one week. Really not even a whole week, just Monday through Thursday.


I covered the front desk at my old work... Coffee Bean International. I can't believe it has been 2.5 years since I worked there. It was great catching up with everyone, basically all I did was gab most of the time I was there. It was like I never had left. It was nice being there without the stress I had when I actually worked there. One of my old positions just opened up, one of the less stressful ones....the manager came and talked to me about it and I seriously considered it for maybe an hour.


Do you know how nice it was to not have 2 little men following my every move? How nice it was to do paperwork in quiet. To have actual conversations about other peoples lives, that don't have kids, to talk about weddings, and concerts, and yoga classes......to remember that I did have a life before kids.


Even though it was so great to have a little break, and act like I was working (seriously only working for 3 hours a morning can't really be considered working). It was great coming home to the boys, I missed them, I missed waking up with them (I won't lie though, getting up before they were awake, showering and actually getting dressed and having somewhere to be, was really nice). This time I have with them is precious, and will be gone soon... i keep telling myself that.


The Money does not add up right now, I would be paying most of my paycheck to have someone else be with the kids most of the day. Plus I wouldn't have much time for burdyflyaway, which is my job right now. It would be so nice to have someone else just pay me for showing up and picking my nose, rather than me having to stress about getting all the crap done in order to get a paycheck!


It is kind of fun being on temp status at work though, and to have an office that likes me! Every once in a while working for a week here or there is enough to remind me being at home is the best thing for all of us right now! And thank GOD I have Brian and have that choice, there are allot of women that have to work, they don't have the options that I have, so now I will stop complaining and get these freakin wholesale burdy orders done and out the door, can't get paid if the crap is not shipped!

Big camping adventure...

So the end of June we took a camping trip to Harris Beach... We met up with Brian's mom, we figured Harris Beach is about half way...

this was the run down of our first camping attempt...

• camp spot reservations at the beach, 6 hours from home.....$65.00
• food and snacks....$120.00
• hotel room to puke my guts up in and die in privacy...$125.00
• filling the tank with gas to drive home stopping every 2 hours to let your husband puke out the passenger side door......$35.00
• creating memorable family vacations.... priceless!

Last weekend we loaded up and attempted the second camping trip of the summer.

In total our crew had 4 kids under the age of 4. I was worried, I kept telling myself if we make it one night and it sucks, we can come home, the lake was only about 2 hours away...

It was awesome, we had a great time! The kids did really well, and we only had one hair pulling incident on the last day, but other than that they liked each other... and No one puked.

We were so busy swimming, soaking up the sun, getting dirty, and trying to keep the kids occupied we didn't get any pics... the one Kari captured... tooo precious.

..little brown boy and lily white..