A Better Day

Saturday greeted me with a bad cough and a bloated tummy. All I really wanted to do was to curl up in bed and bathe in a quiet misery. But then, its blueberry season over here and I needed to go pick some. When I got home, there was laundry that needed to be done and garage that needed to be cleaned. The place needed to be picked up and vacuumed. Dishes needed to be washed, dinner had to be cooked and so one. The list had no end to it. After spending the last six weeks attending classes and working on my paper, I tried spending the time away from all of that with my children. This meant that everything else that had to do with beautifying our home was put to the side.

As I was deciding what to begin doing first, my husband called to say that his good friend is in town for the weekend is coming to stay with us. Just then my sister mentioned that her and her husband are going crayfish catching. So, I did what any good homemaker would do with she has a long to do list: I said, "Can we come along?"

She took the kids to her house and I set out on a speedy cleaning spree. I packed up whatever food we had and took some clothes for change as well. We ended up having a blast.

This place is about one hour away from Portland. I had no idea it existed so close to home. When I think of crayfish, I think of Louisiana, not Oregon. However, we were able to catch plenty in a short amount of time we were there.

We had one net

and many rackets and no bait.


Above is our friend. I promised to sent his wife this picture of him without any explanation just him, in the middle of a shallow river with a badminton racket. No doubt she would have thought him to have gone insane! Actually, these rackets proved to work really well. We must have caught a hundred crayfish or so.


We had to cross the river with all of our stuff and hang out on a small rocky area. Kids were fine with it. Baby sat on various things and observed.

And occasionally took pictures

Here is Peter making fire on our rocky island.

Our friends going in with whole bunch of other goodies such as dill, bayleaf, parsley and LOTS of salt.



Almost ready...

Nice, bright red color.


Ready for consumption. If you are grossed out, but otherwise love seafood, don't be. These are mini lobsters and they taste delicious.




We had a great time. Our meal was followed by yummy fire baked corn and some more good time.

Cough and bloated tummy was no more. Far away from heat, nice breezy atmosphere around friends and family. Children exited from catching their own, parents yummy dinner satisfied. No amount of clean dishes and washed clothes would have made up for this expererience.

Monday, July 12, 2010

What I would Do If...

...we had less bills to pay?
I would........

• Get a facial once a month
• Get a professional massage once a week
• Move to a different country for the summer (with my family, of coarse!)
• Eat organic or close to it
• Have someone else clean my house. Often.
• Teach English to adults. Immigrant adult students rock.
• Enroll my kids in private schools
• Experiment with many gormet recipes
• Go on many weekend trips
• Stock my cabinet with essential oils to use for banya or parfume
• Eat out often
• Give generously
• Have my husband home before dinner.

Ahhhh.....sweet, sweet dreams of mine. I hope some of these will actually come true when we sell our house and pay off another smaller, less expensive house. But not before. Definetely not before.

Hey, how about you, my faithful readers? What would you add to my (or your) list?

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Whose Child Is This?

Last Saturday, my parents took my oldest two fishing to a little wild lake and they brought back this:

To show you why we first thought they picked up someone else's child, this is how my handsome boy usually looks-
We are guessing that the poor thing got bitten by something while at the lake. On the first day after his forehead was swollen, and on day 2 his eyes were puffed up.

One feels both pity and desire to giggle when he/she looks at him. Its been said by his loved ones that he looks like 1) alien 2) this person's offspring:

3) is a reject from the planet Pandora


Though we have loved him unconditionally, we will not be sad when our child will look normal again. Because sometimes normal is really what is preferred.

Friday, July 2, 2010

What Have I Been Doing Lately?

It is still hard to believe that summer is here. The weather has been perfect these past few days but not very summerish. Today is an exception, however; it is rainy and cold here again. We are trying to be outside as much as possible on nice days. I also don't feel summer psychologically. Though I am finished with my practicum (90 instruction hours!), I am taking another class and thus my brain is occupied with a 30 page research paper I have to produce in (oh my!) three weeks! But it is still sooooooooo nice to be home. I have decided not to plan on doing any projects this summer only because I don't want to be disappointed in myself come September. So what have we been doing instead?

~having slow mornings with lots of cuddling and coffee drinking
~swimming and gymnastics lessons
~pretending that we are camping and "sleeping" in sleeping bags
~going to the library, OMSI, new to us gymnastics place and the zoo
~potty training (Lord, help me. I am not even using God's name in vain here.)
~patiently awaiting our daddy to come home from looooong days of work he's had
~weeding
~garage sale shopping
~washing our gorgeous ride
~befriending ourselves with our big neighbour
~relaxing at the cabin
~ignoring emails from MINT that tell us we went over our budget
~thinking of selling our house...

Sounds very productive, doesn't it? Depends how one looks at it. My goal this summer is to spend as much time as I can with my kids. I owe this to them. So if nothing noticable gets done around here, so be it.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)