february catch up

so february is almost complete and I have not been good at uploading pictures or doing blog posts this month. my camera is mostly put away since our counters are bare, which means I have not been snapping as many pictures as I should be either. but there are some pictures I wanted to get up on the blog and a few stories to share.

my favorite story was from the grocery story yesterday afternoon. I took the kids after nap time and I need to remember that going to the grocery store is HORRIBLE with the kids. it used to be that charlie wanted to go to this “stay and play” area where he would play and I would shop with just the girls – that is easy peasy friends. now, charlie wants to push those little green carts and help me – UGH!!! but I am trying to have a good attitude about it and let him help me. I used to make him sit in the big part of the cart, but one time while we were doing that he saw another little boy obeying his mom and pointed it out to me and said “mom – can you just trust me?” (which I am sure he has heard from me before) and it was too sweet to not just trust him and let him follow me and the girls with the little green cart. well let me tell you – it is not easy. my heart is pounding the entire time. I am constantly directing him from ramming his cart full speed into other shoppers or slowing down as he turns otherwise those stupid little carts tip over. anyway –that is just a little background for the best part of the story.

we were going past all of the easter candy and charlie asked what it was and I said it is easter candy. then I said – charlie, what do we celebrate at easter? he said – JESUS! and I was so proud that even with all the candy surrounding him his first answer was Jesus. it also probably helps that I don’t go crazy with the easter baskets, etc.

here is a picture of me and my honey badgers who are almost 2!!! ellie is on the left.

this is classic ellie. when she gets excited she makes this weird face. bill was imitating her.

becca came over for a bit with baby no no and the kids were going crazy over trying to “hold baby no no!”.

I love that Nolan is looking at ellie here.

charlie has been very active lately and came flying in.

baby no no had had enough activity.

claire was concerned and asking to “hoowd hoowd hoowd”.

 

the 2 best babysitters in the world are ready! as a side note – you may remember these shirts from last year. yes  - they are 9 month shirts and still work great! they also still wear 12 month onesies with no problem.

ellie’s turn.

 

charlie was ready to hang with Nolan. he loves him so much.

when Nolan wanted to be held by his mom – the kids attacked his car seat and cat toy.

after bath time is almost my most favorite time of the day – the kids are clean, jammies on, girls are allowed to have bapoos (which decreases the noise), kids usually play happily and probably most key – I know bedtime is ALMOST here.

one night we pulled out the blocks after baths and had a good time. 

ellie sat here and happily built her tall tower alone. I turned around and saw a pretty tall tower and encouraged her – she was so proud. I was proud of her patience, when she would knock it over she would just start again. something charlie has not mastered yet.

 

 

claire was doing little towers on the ground and knocking charlie’s towers over – made for unhappy times.

  

focused kid.

almost 4 year old!

house selling = not for babies

anyone who reads that titles is probably thinking – duh! but really when you are in the thick of selling your house with 3 kids (Tasmanian devils really) it is cray.

what is crazy about it is the unpredictability of it. the only real time I know I will be in my house is from 1-4 on weekdays, which I have blocked off for naptimes. but what often happens is I get a phone call around 7pm the night before a showing for the next morning or I get one at 2-3 pm for an evening showing and then my whole world gets flipped on its head.

my house is clean – normally. but if I have a showing in the morning – say around 9:30 or 11:30 – I still need to leave the house with the kids by about 8:30. my system is this – I have the entire basement clean every night before bed. I also have snacks, cups, anything I would need ready on the counter before they are up.  then in the morning I get the girls up and dress them and make their room presentable (put blankets in right spots, fan in the closet, etc) and put them RIGHT into their highchairs. then they get their breakfasts. I get charlie and dress him, make his bed, walk him upstairs and have him sit at the counter to eat. while they are eating I am cleaning out the kitchen sink, etc. then the kids go right from their breakfast chairs into the car where they are strapped in and a DVD is playing (I don’t even have the car on  - just electrically on). then I go into go mode and quickly wrap up the kitchen, wipe counters, wipe floors under high chairs, remove highchairs (we usually need them if we are eating a meal out of the house), etc. then I vacuum (lab hair is wild), and leave. I can do all of that in about 15-20 – moving at mach speed.

if we have a showing in the afternoon – this same cycle repeats itself at 4 pm. the hard/exhausting part is when you think you are in the clear and will have a easy night at home only to find out you have a showing and you have to haul the kids out again.

thankfully, I have THE BEST friends in rochester. they have me over for dinners, play dates, bath times, etc. a few of my friends will now be listing their houses in the near future so they will get checked off the list of “who to call when you want to cry”. we also have the RAC which has been great to go to, but it is a lot of chasing for me and sometimes I just want to sit on a friends couch.

all that to say – we have had a lot of showings 15-20 maybe - in less than 4 weeks. maybe that is not a lot, but it feels like 8 million for the number of times I have had to clean. we have a couple of people who are close to making offers but no one has done it yet (they say the house is #1 on their list, or a couple second showings). our house will sell in time. I am trusting in God’s timing – not my own. but if I had a say – I would love for it to be sooner than later. ha!

scottsdale trip

bill and I took off to Scottsdale AZ on tuesday night. bill was scheduled to teach at a Mayo Clinic Anesthesia conference so we decided to take another trip away on Mayo’s bill (or at least most of it). here’s our trip via our iphone pictures. I forgot our camera as I was quickly packing and cleaning (we brought the kids up to Bubba & Pappy’s house for party time) before leaving.

at the airport – chilling.

bill was scheduled to give a breakout session at the conference on wednesday midday. he went to scope out the scene on wednesday morning and started to get stressed about his wardrobe choices. He hadn’t consulted me about his choice of clothing and didn’t bring a suit coat (Mayo’s usual dress code is always business professional). So he decided it was time to take matters into his own hands. we drove straight to a shopping center and found a nordstrom rack. he found a jacket, shirt and tie that would work and I found a pair of sunnies (b/c I had forgotten mine at home) and we were back at the resort in 30 minutes. Here bill is driving back to our resort with his jacket on. big pimpin.

Bill had a total of 3 hours of commitments so I ran my 8 miles (I am semi training for a half this spring and leading a running Bible study where we are following a training plan) and then went to lay by the pool to wait for bill to finish.

it was perfect.

bill was finished by 3 and we cruised around for awhile. then we headed for dinner at an incredible Japanese restaurant called ShinBay. I did a 3 course chef’s tasting meal and bill did a 4 course (but we split his extra course). Bill did so much research about the restaurants we were going to eat at and he nailed this one (even though I was a bit doubtful at first of this choice).

our first course. the tuna tartare was incredible. the middle was a clam thing and the other one was a shrimp thing. bill liked them all, but I was a bit turned off from the shrimp one.

I did not choose to eat the head and eyeballs.

bill, however, devoured everything on his plate. including popping the little lime. I was laughing so hard watching him recover from eating that lime.

our second course was bill’s extra course and was manila clams with a million different mushrooms in a butter and garlic sauce. it was AH.MAZING.

 

our third course was a special beef from oregon and we grilled it on these little mini grill things. this might have been my favorite. you would get a perfect bite of beef each time and they had a great sauce that went with it.

bill showing how you grill it.

  

our fourth course was a nigiri spread. bill ordered some saki to go with it. again – these were not your typical nigiri. no ahi tuna, salmon, etc. it was crazy fish that we had never tasted before, but were smooth like butter and delicious. our favorite was the silver shrimp.

 

after an easy thursday morning we headed to Camelback Mountain to hike. There is construction so you can’t access certain parts of the trail, but we did hike a pretty hard trail called the Cholla Trail.

 

from this point on it was actually pretty challenging. You hike along the spine of this mountain for awhile.

at the summit.

on the way down I almost squished a lizard with my hand and was too stressed about almost hurting it to take a picture. then we saw another one and I snapped a picture for charlie.

it was pretty steep going down. you can’t really see it here, but a lot of it we had to use our hands. there was this crazy fitness dude that was literally sprinting up and down this mountain. I have never seen someone run that fast on something so steep and uneven. Bill and I both would have liked to watch him run more on the trail – it was crazy to watch.

Matt’s Big Breakfast is where we headed after the hike. Bill had read up on it and it again did not disappoint. I loved that it had EAT on the side of the restaurant because when I was little my family always went to this diner with EAT on the side of the building.

don’t be jealous, but this was part of my lunch. I was in heaven with those hash browns.

and this griddle pancake. that butter was real and delish.

the conference was held at this huge Fairmount resort. we decided to cancel our reservations there after 2 nights to try something smaller and less expensive. Mayo gives us a set amount of money and we were using tons on the cost of the room  at the Fairmount and weren’t really staying on the resort during the day. We found this super kitschy smaller hotel called Clarendon Hotel and it is great. This is the pool and hot tub with the crazy mosaic tile.

after chowing down we checked in and headed to the pool.

poor bill didn’t have sunglasses.

walking around old scottsdale. the ceilings were so low I was feeling oppressed.

getting some icecream. then eating it in front of this cute little eatery. bill wanted to snap this picture for becca & mikel who will be moving to scottsdale in july.

we headed to the room to chill for a bit before heading out for dinner. bill was then awarded the salted nut roll award for being the most annoying on the trip (a schmitt family tradition). he basically had it in the bag the first day when he had to go buy a new jacket, shirt and tie.

our valentines dinner was spent at the restaurant in the lobby of the hotel. it is really a separate deal from the hotel and bill had actually researched eating there before we decided to stay in the hotel. the chips were awesome.

we enjoyed the margaritas.

friday morning we headed to mill ave and walked around. we were hoping to find a big pedestrian walking area, but mill ave wasn’t exactly it. it felt just like state street in madison – very college town with chains and bars. we ate at this little hippy place and it was quite delicious. then after some health food I had to get my sugar fix. I love picking out salt water taffy!

after cruising around we drove to south mountain and did a small hike. the south mountain hikes were a little easier, but the sun was hot! so we hiked for awhile and then headed back to the hotel to lay by the pool until we went to dinner.

I didn’t know bill was framing the picture that way – otherwise I would have turned the other way.

chillin at the pool.

then we made a quick trip to lulu. I tried on this entirely reflective jacket. it was a bit too costly for me, but pretty cool looking.

the next restaurant bill had researched was a ‘farm to table’ restaurant called quiessence. it is in the middle of phoenix and is an organic farm where they serve what they grow (with some additions). they had a set menu from valentines so we had to have that. the food was incredible. we both thought that the servers were too busy and so didn’t spend time explaining much about the food – which for us is half of the experience.

 

 

saturday, we headed over to a cool coffee shop while bill had a conference call. then we headed to a neighborhood local mexican joint called Rito’s. it felt like we in mexico. everyone in line said the green burrito was the best thing so bill and I both ordered it. the bummer was it was packed and it took kind of a long time to get our food.

here is bill chowing down so we could haul it to the airport to get home.

what a great vaca with my dewd! so fun to just hang out and do whatever we wanted. traveling without kids is so EASY!

we took off an hour late and arrived at the airport to our car full of kiddos. it was great to just walk out and have our kids there. a HUGE thanks to tom, laura, margit, pete, mary & elliot and more family and friends who helped out while we had a great vaca. while driving back I heard “MOM!!!” yelled by claire or ellie many times. Charlie broke from the DVD to whisper “mom, dad – I missed you”. I also looked back at one point and ellie and claire were holding hands. love these kids! happy to be back with these kids.