It's May.
Oh well, I'm going to give you a quick (not) little (not) overview of what February was for us . . . crazy.
As part of his job, four times a year, Nels will be traveling for about a week. Shooting video at the seasonal photo shoots that Coldwater has in various different locations. I'm not gonna lie, when Nels told me that he was heading to Miami, while I stayed in Idaho . . . in February . . . I was a teensy bit jealous. :) Especially when he'd send me pictures like the one above. {{sigh}} :)
Someday, Rachel. Someday.
Because Sandpoint is an hour and a half from the airport and because he had an early flight, Coldwater Creek put Nels up in a hotel in Spokane the night before he left for Florida. The kids LOVE staying in hotels and so we decided that we'd drive Daddy down and then stay the night with him.
I had grand plans for our day. Nels only worked half a day, so we were going to get the girls early from school and then go to the children's museum and explore downtown Spokane a little bit before we headed over to the hotel to swim for hours and hours before bedtime. I was at least as excited as the kids and couldn't wait to get out of our tiny apartment for two days.
Then right before Nels got home I decided to take ten minutes to myself getting ready in the bathroom with the door closed and Violet found the laundry detergent that I'd left within her reach and decided to pump Melaleuca's fabulously concentrated liquid laundry detergent into about thirty different spots up and down the hallway and all over her bedroom. {{sigh}}
So instead of having fun, we spent about four hours that afternoon cleaning carpet.
I was . . . um . . . mad.
Poor Nels. I bet his arms were extra, extra sore for the next few days afterward. But at least during, he kept a smile. :)
So in case you are ever in a similar predicament, with a similarly mischievous toddler, I'm going to give you a rundown on how to get laundry soap from carpet.
First, I dumped salt into all of the soapy spots, which really helped soak up some of it and keep it from spreading further before we could get to it.
After you vacuum the soapy salt up, then the real fun begins.
You pour hot-as-you-can-stand water into the soap spot, then you vacuum it up as fast as you can.
Then you pour more hot-as-you-can-stand water into the spot, then vacuum it up as fast as you can.
Then you repeat that about ten to twenty times, depending on how big or saturated the spot is.
You just keep sucking and sucking and sucking that spot until your arms fall off and no more soap comes up.
Then you cry a little bit and move on to the next, even bigger, spot.
It. Sucked. For Hours. Literally.
Anywho, we eventually did make it to the hotel that night. At around 7:45. We picked up some pizza on the way and let the kids swim until about 10. Not quite the night that we were hoping for, but we still had fun being together with Daddy before he abandoned us. :) And as angry as I was that Violet did what she did, I said several prayers of gratitude that she did it before Nels left for Miami and not after. :)
Besides, as big of a handful as she is, I think I'll at least keep her till she stops being cute. :)
We all survived the week that Nels was gone, without too many more swearing-at-the-kids moments.
A few days later, Hazel had a really fun folk-dance performance at school that Nels was able to attend with her.
She was really excited! :)
Within a couple of days of Nels getting home, I got an email from the lady processing our short sale at the mortgage company. She was letting me know that they'd come to the conclusion that our home in Idaho Falls needed to be listed as our "primary residence" in order for our short sale to move forward. Period.
I told her, "Great. As of today, it is our primary residence. My girls and I are just 'visiting' my husband here in Sandpoint."
She then got all nutsy on me about how our furniture needed to be there (DONE!) and she would need to send somebody by to inspect our house, "just to make sure" that we were really there.
I was completely annoyed, but just really, really ready to move things forward with selling our house. So I packed up the three younger girls and headed back to Idaho Falls for an indeterminate amount of time.
As much as I hate driving so far, the drive between Sandpoint and Idaho Falls . . . well maybe more like: between Sandpoint and Butte . . . is actually really lovely. Montana at dawn is stunning.
We made it to Idaho Falls, set up house and tried repeatedly to get a hold of someone to schedule a time for this unnamed "representative" to come over and "make sure" we were there. It was maddening.
In the end, after "Angi" had apparently checked the box saying that our I.F. home was our "primary residence", our file immediately got passed on to the next lady in the chain of command. I finally got in contact with this angelic woman a couple of days after driving down (again trying to get the name and number of this "mystical informer" who needed to come over to our house), as we spoke it became clear that the last lady I'd been working with knew absolutely nothing and the mysterious "person" who needed to stop by our house was actually just a third party who would probably just drive past our house (if anything) to make sure that it didn't look "abandoned". Which means that thanks to one person's incompetence, I drove all the way to Idaho Falls with three little children and stayed there for several days for no reason. Nice.
However, we made the most of the situation and were able to visit with a lot of friends and drove down to Utah to see my family - which was fabulous.
My sweet siblings all came up to my parent's house to see me and my girls on Sunday. I love my family. Love them. And miss them incredibly. We had a good time laughing at Genny's incredible dancing doggy. :)
Tuesday my mom went with me and the girls to IKEA and then to Gardener's Village in south Salt Lake, where Elsie and Violet had a grand time trying on a whole wall of scarves. It was a beautiful day and so nice to spend time with my Mommy.
One of my biggest original dilemmas about going to Idaho Falls had been that I wasn't sure I would be back to Sandpoint in time for Valentine's Day or Nels's birthday which is the following day. As it turned out, we didn't make it back for V-Day - which wasn't too big a deal - but Nels made it special for our girls at home by making them special heart pancakes and by "doing their hair really nice". :)
He's such a good dad.
We did make it home for his birthday the next day by driving from Idaho Falls to Bountiful Tuesday night and then packing up at 2:00 in the morning Wednesday and making it home to Sandpoint by about 10:00.
This is a picture of how Elsie "wasn't tired" on the trip back home. :) Violet didn't sleep at all the whole way, but Elsie and Clara slept most of the way home. They were all little troopers.
I'd had plans of making Nels a big yummy dinner and a cake that evening, but after driving all the way home the girls and I were completely pooped and not feeling real hot, so I promised Nels that we'd do it the next night - which he was completely fine with.
However, it seems that while we were in Utah, we'd contracted the plague and I spent the next several days sleeping on the couch or standing outside on our balcony with one or the other or both of our little babies while they tired to just breathe and cool off. Poor Violet and Clara both had raging fevers and congestion and hacking, hacking coughs. Elsie had pink eye and then Nels had pink eye. Then Nels and Hazel got the plague virus as well. It was horrible. In the end, right around the time that everyone else was starting to feel better (more than a week later - it was such a nasty bug!) I started to get sick. Because that's the way life goes.
We eventually DID celebrate Nels's birthday, sometime. I don't really remember when, it was all such a haze of tiredness, but I have pictures to prove that it actually happened. We're so glad he was born!
How could we not love him? He's just so awesome!
Happy Birthday!
TO
ME!!!
He's such a ham. No wonder our kids are weirdos. :) I'm so thankful for Nels. He makes me laugh daily and he's the best friend I could ever ask for.
