The End and the Beginning

Okay, so it's not officially the end, but I took my final this morning, which marked the end of my first year of nursing school. WOOOHOO! I can't believe only one year to go until I'm an RN!

This also marks the beginning of Summer, and I am a girl who loooooooves Summer. (I know this does not make me unique.) I have so many fond memories of playing night games with the neighborhood kids (kick-the-can, sardines, mother may I, etc.), spinning the Big Wheels upside down on the front lawn while all the neighbors chatted, swimming at Crestwood Pool, riding bikes, camping, boating, Bear Lake,the cabin, trips up the canyons to escape the heat, stacks of books from the library, catching pollywogs in the pond in the child molester field, later playing on the dirt piles or making mud baths in the yard while mom and dad were building the house. Even picking raspberries and pulling weeds in the garden. Aaaah. I love it all. If I close my eyes I can smell each and every one of those memories.

Kolby and I were just discussing that we are now creating those memories for our own kids. Last weekend they played night games with the neighbor kids until it was too dark to see. With the sun finally emerging in the last few days, we spent hours at the pool with all of their friends. Dive team begins tonight for Madeline. Amelia's first swim meet is tomorrow. The girls ride their bikes and scooters for hours with the neighbor kids. They catch snails under the Japanese Maple and have a secret club. A couple more days left of school for the girls and then we'll get in some beach time and hiking and gardening and berry picking and kayaking and camping. And cousins!!! Lots and lots of cousins this summer! My list of things I'm excited to do is so long I don't know where to start.

So I think I'll start with a pineapple popsicle and a trashy magazine.

The mighty hunter

A few weeks ago our male kitty, Willow, caught a bird and brought it in the house to show all of us. He strutted around, purring like a motor boat, with the feathers and feet hanging out of his mouth, making sure that we all got a good look before he devoured it.

For some reason we were all incredibly proud of him. But only the first time.

Since then he's brought in two more birds, but he's decided he's not a big fan of eating them...he just likes killing for sport. Luckily, he leaves a trail of feathers so I am at least alerted to the fact that there is a dead thing in my house needing attention.

But last night Willow stepped up his game. Baby birds are easy. They don't put up much of a fight. But mice? Now that is something worth catching.

That was just the beginning. It was like watching a torture scene in an episode of "24."

Recap

Since neither of our moms are on Facebook, where all of my photos end up now thanks to my fancy new Kin phone Mr. Blackham scored for me, and since I have nothing interesting to say, I thought I'd post a few photos of recent happenings that my mom and Pammy may have missed.

The girls are wrapping up the school year right now, which means evenings of music concerts, foreign language festivals, field trips, etc. This photo was taken the evening of their music concert. They are both looking so grown up to me.

Amelia started swim team about two weeks ago. This is where she and Maddie are complete opposites. The biggest reason Madeline had for not wanting to do swim team this year was that it is every day, and she just cannot handle having to do something every day. Amelia just eats it up. She had Friday off this week--no swim team, no rockclimbing, no softball, and she was so disappointed. "Oh no! What am I supposed to do then?"

This is what swim practices have looked like for most of the last few weeks. WET! Hopefully our weather will improve before swim meets begin. (For all you Utahns who are used to bailing out of the pool at the first sign of rain, we don't get many thunder storms here, so the pools stay open when it rains. Otherwise they'd never be open. Ha.).

The kids are unphased by the rain though. They begged Kolby to take them swimming today, despite the rain, since our neighborhood pool opened last week and we haven't been yet (other than for swim practice). They swam until their teeth hurt from chattering, and even then they wanted "Ju-u-u-s-t a f-e-e-w m-o-r-e m-i-i-n-u-t-t-e-s."

And I have just one more week to go to finish my first year of nursing school. This quarter has been pretty mild, but I'm still ready for Summer. I have a million house and yard projects nagging my brain, and I'm ready to devote some energy to them.

Last week we practiced starting IVs in the lab. This is Mr. Smith. He and I are intimately acquainted after nine months of me performing painful procedures on him. I've stopped being offended by that look on his face. Whoever designed the mannequins for nursing schools must have thought they were pretty funny for making the mannequins look like they are perpetually screaming in agony.

Counting down the days until SUMMER!

Seriously?!

So if by chance you are dead inside and weren't wooed by Josh Ritter in my previous post, this post will surely win you over. The man is brilliant lyricist. I can't tell you how many times I have had to stop what I am doing to just listen to the stories he weaves with his songs. Case in point: The Curse. I know nobody else who could/would write a love song about a mummy and his archeologist.

I can't embed it, so if you love me, you will go here and watch it. Right now. And then report back.

If you don't love him, you have no taste.

Sound of Music

I grew up in a home filled with music. I remember having musical debates on the way home from Primary back when Primary was on Wednesdays. And if any of you went to Primary (Mormon sunday school) during the week, you know how very long ago that was. I must have been about five years old, defending the merits of The Oakridge Boys and Alabama against my brother's attacks. At the mature age of 7 he was moving beyond my parents' influence and exploring some Neil Diamond and Queen ("Another one rides the bus bites the dust"). All this as we walked unsupervised through the field on our way home (the fields where attempted kidnappings and actual murders had occurred.)

There were lots of grasshoppers in that field. And pollywogs. Maybe the benefits of grasshoppers and pollywogs outweighed the threats of kidnapping and murder.

Anyway, there was always music playing in my house. Before school, after school, my mom had music playing on the radio or 8-track/cassette tape/CD player, and it was always on in the car. My earliest recognition that this was not the case in every home was when I was about seven and I noticed how quiet my friends' houses were (other than the deluge of children's voices).

And so it is at our house now. I love music. In my next life I will be a singer or a dancer or a musician or maybe if I'm really good, all of the above, so I can do more than just listen to it.

This month has been absolute heaven for me, with the arrival of three fantastic new albums.

First I discovered this band, who I am LOVING:


Then two of my top five bands released new albums I've been anxiously waiting for, which makes me just want to shut myself in my bedroom so I can turn the music up loud, and lay on my bed marinating in the sound like I did when I was thirteen years old.

And also, one of my best friends is in the finals for the Lilith Fair local talent competition in Portland, and I am beyond thrilled for her. You can listen to her song and vote for her here.

You say pee-oh-nee, I say pee-uh-nee...

One of the things I love about living in an older house is uncovering its history. The previous owner of our home was the original owner--she and her husband bought the house when it was newly built in 1965 and raised their three children here. She was a nurse. She was from Utah. She loved gardening. Her daughters still hold a swimming record for the neighborhood swim team. She really loved her house, and let her children know that she wanted a family with children to buy it when she died.

For the first few weeks in the house I felt like I was getting to know Sally and her family. I apologized as I peeled off her wallpaper and took down her valances. I filed her organized stack of owner's manuals that had the purchase date and location written neatly on each one. I laughed when we liberated the pocket door that was accidently or intentionally nailed shut with the installation of shelves on the adjoining wall years ago. I wonder how many times she grumbled about her husband nailing that thing shut? And I heard stories from every neighbor about Sally and her peonies.

The peonies I inherited with our first house in Portland were my some of my favorite flowers in the garden. And this yard has TONS of them. According to the neighbors, Sally would divide them in the Fall and bring the divisions to various neighbors with the same instructions: "Just bury them in the ground with their tits sticking out."

For the last week or so I've had a steady supply of pale yellow peonies with pink ruffled edges on my table and counter. The white ones in the front yard will probably start opening tomorrow. When we bought the house Sally's son called me to tell me how happy his mom would be that we were moving into her home. And he had one request from his sisters: that I send them a start to their mom's peonies in the fall when I divide them. I will. And will absolutely tell them to bury them with their tits sticking out.

Mother's Day

I felt like we had a long Mother's Day weekend, instead of just a day. Kolby took Friday off so he and I could hang out since work has calmed down a bit. We spent a few hours in the morning hiking up to Rattlesnake Ridge, which had a fantastic view and terrifying drop-offs from the top.

Saturday night we had some old friends, Nancy and Alex, over for dinner. It was a gorgeous day, so we sat out on the deck and soaked up the nice weather for as long as possible. The kids had a birthday party for our cats who are now a year old! Our little babies all grows up!

And Sunday I woke up to beautiful artwork from the girls, my newspaper, a delicious cup of coffee, and Kolby's company while he made breakfast for me. I wish I'd taken a photo. It was gorgeous. Eggs benedict and homemade hashbrowns with onions and peppers. Mmm. I think I just gained another 5 pounds just writing about it.

Usually I buy all of my flowers and plant them in my flower pots on Mother's Day. I decided since the farmer's markets opened this weekend, I'd rather get my veggie garden started. So we headed over to Seattle to the farmer's market on Capitol Hill and bought all the veggie plants, then stopped at Lowe's on the way home to pick up all the supplies to build the bed, and then one more stop at the "feed store" to pick up compost, etc. By 6:00, we were good to go.

I'm trying out square foot gardening this year. If you are experienced with vegetable gardening, tell me now if I've put things in the wrong place! I still have a few empty squares--I'm thinking I'll plant some stinky marigolds to scare off pests.

If you care, I think what I have planted:

• Back row: peas, tomatoes (big beef and yellow pear), lemon cucumber, regular cucumber, 2 bush beans and 2 pole beans, Ace red pepper, and more peas. I need to get a trellis up this weekend for all of this stuff to climb.
• Middle: red oak lettuce, empty square, arugala, sweet basil, purple basil, rosemary
• Front: walla walla onions, green leaf lettuce, empty square, a couple more types of lettuce I've forgotten, green onions, and cilantro and parsley.

This weekend, in addition to building the trellis, I'm going to ammend the soil in an existing bed and plant some zucchini and artichokes. I also need to get some copper tape to go around the edge to keep the slugs out, and figure out some kind of barrier to keep the bunnies, kitties, squirrels, and dogs out of the bed. Any ideas?