A Soccer Game

Well, Mom's perfect day plan got aborted halfway through - but at least I got that first half in, including my yummy lunch, and a bit of knitting.  Daycare called, and my sweet little girl was not being so sweet.  Actually, she was screaming her head off whenever she was put down.  So, just before my yoga class started, I went and picked her up.  It seems like she's probably teething.  As long as she has me nearby, she is pretty content.  

Here she is, shortly after I arrived, (and she stopped screaming), playing with her little friends for the last time.  So sad.  I will probably visit once or twice, and show off her new tricks to the nice ladies there who've been so great to my little girl.  

 

So, what to do with the rest of my afternoon?  Well, we visited Nan at Village Hair Care, where she works on Thursdays, and then we visited my dad's friend Rick at his optics store which is in the same shopping center.  Then we went and had a nice nap at Nan and Grandpa's, followed by a nice dinner.  

After that we went to Westminster to cheer on my 13 year old cousin Steph and her teammates as the whomped their opponents in an indoor soccer match!  It was very exciting!  

Here's Sweetpea with Lara giving high fives to McKenzie in the stands.  

I think about 10% of this crew is actually from my family.  My aunt and uncle, Steve and Duayna attended too - they may be regretting it now though as they got roped into babysitting on Saturday night!!  (Partee!)

Check out this baby's-eye view of a portion of the game.  You may notice the scoreboard which reads 0-8.  Don't worry, the opposing team did eventually get a point.  The final score was 1-10.  And Steph's team even had a sub goalie that day!  But it was pretty entertaining.  Those girls are so fast!! 

Last Day of Daycare (A.K.A. My Perfect Day)

No pictures in this post... sorry about that!!

Today I put my little one into daycare for the last time. Well, maybe one day she'll go back to a regular daycare, but for now it'll just be Mommy Daycare, and the occasional rec-center day care (I'll be sure to post pictures of that happy chaos sometime soon!!)

So what am I going to do with my last day of baby freedom? Well, I'm at the Boulder public library right now, and when I'm done writing this blog entry, I'll head over to browse their knitting books and yoga videos!

Then I'm off to get a bento box and a pot of green tea at Japango on Pearl Street, (I'll take you there when you come to visit!) They have great lunch specials. I've taken the little monster there before with me, and it was a bit more trouble than it was worth doing it alone... she might be better now that she's into the solid foods though, so I might have to give it a try - she does enjoy her miso soup!!

After lunch I'll head over to Om Time for a great, two hour yoga class they hold on Thursdays! I need to think of some new material for two classes I'm subbing this weekend at the rec center!!

Then I'll pick up the kid, and head over to my grandparents for our usual Thursday evening dinner over there.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Having the baby around for most of this day would not make it worse, but she would put a cramp in the yoga class... Maybe I can work something out though for future days. How do you feel about babysitting?

Learning Fast

As you all know, our little one is very entertained by my kitchen cupboards.  I have one specially organized so all the things in her reach are pretty much child friendly (no glass or spillable stuff).

Well, I'm going to have to reorganize... she used to only play here when I put her in front of the open cupboard.  Now that she can crawl, she races over to browse the pantry whenever the fancy strikes.  And that top shelf that used to be out of reach - not any more.  Oh well.  

Here are two clips of a longer video I took... The couple minutes you're missing in the middle just show the little monster proceeding to remove most of the dry goods from the shelves.  

Visits with Grandparents

We've had some really lovely weather here the last couple days... yesterday we were going to go with my dad on a walk with his dogs, but it turned out the battery in his car broke, (literally), so we had to pick him up and go get him a new one... we hung out with him at his house and played with the dogs for a while.   Sweetpea also explored some sticks and gravel in Grandpa's driveway.  

Check out this video of Sweetpea getting her crawl on!!  nothing is safe from her now!!  

Tonight we went to my grandparents house for our usual Thursday dinner over there!  (Gotta love starting traditions where other people cook for us!!)  Anyway, GG (as we think we'll be calling her Great Grandpa) was unloading the dishwasher and our little Sweetpea wanted to help.  (by the way - check out that standing action... she does that by herself now, just about everywhere she can - she's even able to get back down by herself now!!)  

  

Then GG decided she needed to go for a little ride.  

She seemed to think this was really funny... hopefully she won't remember it next time, because she won't be small enough to enjoy this privilege for much longer!! 

Home "Improvements" Update

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post an update to our sewer pipe issue!  I had no idea how many people read this blog!  And I'm grateful to have so many concerned friends out there!!  

So here's the lowdown:  Our pipes are fixed.  There was a very crushed piece of pipe about 2 feet from the foundation.  It took a backhoe, a tractor, and a dumptruck, and about 4 days to complete.  Plus a few thousand dollars!!  But thankfully, the good people at Statefarm are footing the bill for the "renovations" and for all the household goods damaged in the water.  We also have a nice new cleanout pipe on the outside of our house.  And a lovely new mud wrestling pit in our front yard.  

And it looks like, miraculously, our little maple tree might actually make it through this ordeal!!  

Our front porch still needs a bit of work... the main beams are in, and the planking just needs to be laid down, and we can have a front door again.  Until then, we'll keep the caution tape up.  I'm kind of getting attached to it!!  

So thank you all again for checking in on us!!  We've had quite an adventure this week, and will look forward to having everything cleaned up and back to normal again!!  

Big Pile Of.... Well, You Know

This is our front door.... oh yeah, and the big pile of dirt and, well, other stuff that came out of the 8 foot deep hole they dug yesterday.


Today, a front loader is coming to take away the clay that came out of the hole, and replace it with good dirt. Apparently, the consensus is that if they put that dirt back in the hole where it came from, the pipe will most likely collapse again.

This is a shot taken practically our our front door. Sweet, huh? I think maybe we should just leave it like this to deter Kirby vacuum cleaner salesmen! Those guys are really hard to get rid of once they come it. I know. But then we wouldn't get our girl scout cookies either, so maybe not.

This should all be fixed today. Cross your fingers. And the deck will go back together on Sunday. At least our plumbi+ng works now!! That's a huge improvement!

Anyone wanna place their bet on whether that little maple tree in front is going to make it?!

Hoe Hoe Hoe, Merry Pinkslip

Do I sound bitter? Well... maybe I am... just a little bit.

Today was not a great day. First of all, it was the second day in a row that we did not get our mainline drainage problem corrected. And second, it was my "Official Layoff Date". Last week was just the head's up.

Here's a snap as Sweetpea watches while I saw the half inch drip line so the backhoe doesn't tear up the whole darn thing. (I can't believe I've gone three posts without a baby picture!!)

At least someone's having fun.

Here it is backed up for a bit of perspective. My DH had to tear out a bunch of the front deck to give the backhoe access to the pipe, which is just over 7 feet underground. How do you like our new entryway?! Welcoming, isn't it?

And after all of this prep work, the three plumber/diggers sat around waiting because the city hadn't come to mark the utility lines in time. So they ended up abandoning the job for the day.

But they left their backhoe. On our grass.



Looks nice, huh? Don't you wish you had one?

To put a big ol' cherry right on top of this great day, the Homeowners Insurance company is trying to back out of the claim now, when before they were saying "no problem" and making us feel all secure. Now it's starting to look like they aren't going to cover anything but a few sewage soaked belongings in the basement.

Okay, enough of my little pity party. You don't want to hear it and I don't blame you!

The day really wasn't all bad... I had my favorite Indian buffet for lunch, and stuffed myself with way more sushi (on DH's company no less!!) than one girl should eat for dinner. Occasional binge eating for comfort never hurt anyone, right?

It Just Gets Better

Sooooooo....

Yeah.

We thought the cell phone made it safely through the toilet, because everything seemed to be working just fine.

But, (there's always a "but", isn't' there??) there was water in our basement this morning when we went down to put away the Christmas decorations, (hey, it's not like we waited till the fourth of July!) Could the cell phone have backed up our whole sewage line out of the house? It was such a tiny, sleek little thing! It didn't seem likely.

The plumber came to the rescue and snaked the line out of the house, and seemed to clear the blockage. but just to make sure, he ran a scope through. We did locate my phone. It had made it almost all the way to the street! but long before we got to the street, we found the source of the problem: at our foundation, the pipe out joins with another pipe, and that pipe is pretty much crushed. It still connects slightly with the house, but it is shifted, so that much of our exiting waste water is actually pushed into the ground around the pipe near our foundation. We don't know when or how this could have happened. It might have been like that since construction, gradually getting worse, or maybe the ground shifted and caused it more recently.

So now we know why we have an overactive sump pump - the waste pipe is about 4 feet away from the sump well. Pretty gross, huh? We've been pumping this slightly filtered waste water through our sump pump into the garden under the front walkway. My mom said "no wonder your flowers always look so nice!"

So, you might ask, what would it take to fix such a little problem? Well... the pipe exits the foundation under the basement floor. That's about 8 feet below ground. There will need to be adequate access to the area. That will require a backhoe. Tomorrow. Fun, huh? We might lose some trees and will definitely lose some of my beautiful red twig dogwoods. My husband said, "don't cry - we don't need any more water in the house!"

And to icing the cake - until this is finished we can't use our bathrooms, and should limit the water we run down the drains.

So tomorrow we'll be showering at the rec center. Good thing it's close!

How's your Sunday going?!

Down the Crapper

You know, every once in a while you just have one of those days.

Don't get me wrong... this is actually pretty frickin hilarious. If it doesn't end up costing us a fortune.

I just flushed my cell phone down the toilet. Seriously. I didn't mean to. It was an accident.

I had just gotten home from (my last day of) work. I went to the bathroom, (no. 1 in case you were wondering), stood up and flushed, and my phone fell out of my pocket and into the bowl. I glanced down at the splash in time to witness it's sleek black profile disappearing into the depths.

My very dear husband is even now trying to get it out so the toilet will flush properly again. If anyone has any suggestions, we might need to hear them!!

And if I had your number before, you might need to send it to me again since I don't think that phone will ever be the same again.

Time On My Hands!!

Hello to all the readers of my blog out there, (Mom, I'm talking to you!)

It looks like starting next Monday, I'm going to have a lot more free time!! I got my layoff notice today. My 5, almost 6 years at Ball Aerospace are coming to an end. The company's been having a rough year, so I can't hold it against them. Maybe one day I'll go back.

In the meantime, I've got 6 weeks paid to try to figure out what I want to do with myself. I really enjoy staying home with my little Munchkin, and she's just getting more and more interesting. But financially, that may not be an option.

So for the first time in about 7 years, the future is uncertain.

So, stay tuned! I will probably be updating my blog a lot more often, (for better or worse!)

The Best Toys

Isn't it funny... that trick of human nature that makes you want whatever the other guy's got?! Well our little Sweetpea has that gene, just like the rest of us. She has more toys than any kid I've ever met!! She's got them in every room of our house. Even the bathrooms. But what does she want to play with? Well, whatever Mom and Dad are playing with, of course! We talk on the phone, or cell phone, and she wants that. We work on the computer, and she wants to play with the keyboard and mouse too!!

We are clearly not the first people to encounter this iwantwhatyouhaveist baby persuasion. They make baby cell phones (we have one), car keys (got those too), and you name it! And they are good.... we like them. But they're not the same.

So when we got a new cell phone, Sweetpea got the old one. And when we talk on the cordless, she chews on our old one of those too, (complete with base!) Even as I type now, at my feet, our budding writer is (literally) pounding on the keys of her own keyboard!

Busy Busy Baby New Year

I hope you all had a terrific New Year's Eve. I can't believe it's already 2009! Happy New Year!

And as time goes by, our little explorer is getting more and more independent by the minute! You saw the video where she pulls herself after the cat? (After the cat bit her on the face a few weeks ago, the two are now kept separate when the baby is on the move) Well anyway, now she can crawl... sometimes! She knows it's more comfortable than the dragging that she's gotten used to, but she's still unsure about her footing (so to speak), and pretty unstable. When she decides she really wants to get something, she'll drop right back to her belly.

Here's a video of her trying to get the water we set out for the cat, (that's now in the basement.)

And here's a few minutes later when she gave up on the water and started for her other favorite target, the camera!

Next Stop, Walking!