Swimming lessons: Take 2

After a not so successful swimming lesson class last summer, Emily just completed a set of four private swimming lessons at the W.  I think the one-on-one attention coupled with a significant change in attitude and maturity level that has been evident at preschool made for a much more positive experience this time around.  That and the enticement of the promised mermaid doll that has been sitting in the packaging in clear view in the coat closet since June. ;o)

 
Emily fully cooperated with her teacher, Keeley.  She blew bubbles, put her face in the water (with nose plugged) and got her hair wet.  While she still hasn't dunked completely under, it was significant progress.  Sometimes Emily is concentrating so hard on not breathing in through her nose that she forgets to close her mouth. :o)  She is also still trying to get used to the funny feeling of water in her ears when doing a back float.  However, she received a passing grade, and we'll do group lessons again in the summer.

Lincoln was along for three of the four lessons and desperately wanted to go swimming, too.  He would strip himself down to just his pants and dig through the bag for his swim trunks.  On the last day I did bring all our suits and the three of us went swimming for 45 min. after Emily's lesson.

Valentine's Day

52 OHC: Week 5

I have traded margaritas for hot chocolate with a shot of raspberry and a swimsuit for hooded sweatshirts and Ugg slippers, but I'm more motivated than ever to continue the 52 Week Home Organization Challenge and general purging of the house! 

The week we were gone was on Trash and Recycling.  It was good timing since I'm pretty happy with the system we already have set up.  It was a good excuse to spruce things up a bit, though.  I gave the kitchen trash and recycling cans a much needed scrub down with a Magic Eraser.  (The recycling tubs in the garage will have to wait until spring.)  I also posted some lists of what is and is not accepted by the Waverly Recycling Center.  This is the recycling collection center in the pantry.  Most recycling items are collected in the large white basket and sorted in the garage about twice/week. (This will eventually be the kids' job.) As mentioned in an earlier post, certain types of plastic bags are collected for Terracycle to raise money for the W-SR school district.  There are also specific collection spots in the kitchen for milk lids, Box Tops for Education, Labels for Education and pop cans.

Waverly has free curbside recycling pick-up for selected items, but they have to be pre-sorted.  We use these cheap green plastic tubs that hang on hooks on a pegboard in the garage.  The recycling is picked up twice per month, and our tubs are usually full or overflowing.  We usually recycle as much or more volume than we throw in the trash.  We are highly motivated to do this since our garbage fees are charged by the can and recycling is free and unlimited.

Some items are not picked up curbside and have to be brought to the Recycling Center every so often.  These include the Terracycle bags, corrugated cardboard, cardboard egg cartons and white paper.  I have a large collection box by the desk for paper to be shredded/recycled.  They have a large industrial shredder at the Recycling Center.

While I don't consider myself a "greenie," I'm happy to be doing my part. :o)

Playa del Carmen

Austin & I took an amazing 5-day vacation to Playa del Carmen, Mexico (located south of Cancun and across from Cozumel on the Yucatan Peninsula).  It was our first big vacation since having kids, and the first time I had been on an airplane in six years.  My sister, Abbie, found us a fabulous resort on Expedia called The Royal Haciendas.  It wasn't an all-inclusive, but they had great restaurants and very nice grocery/convenience store on-site with everything charged to your room bill so you never had to carry or exchange any money.

For three days our view was usually one of the following three pictures:

From the terrace of our villa

Beach on the Caribbean

One of five pools

We both tried a little kayaking, although the rolling waves soon made me feel seasick.

I also got a massage in a cabana on the beach and a seaweed wrap in the spa.  We took the shuttle into the town of Playa del Carmen one night and walked the entire length of the 5th Avenue shopping district.  After selecting small souvenirs for the kids, we ate at a restaurant called Los Tulipanes and enjoyed great live music.

















Another highlight of the trip (at least for me) was a complimentary upgrade to first class on the flight segments between Houston and Cancun.  Flying first class has always been on my lifetime bucket list, and it was everything I hoped it would be.  Austin has a high enough mileage status on United we got lots of little perks, but as Austin said, we both earned it with as much as he has to travel to get that status.

And what about the kids?  My mom came to stay for the five days and they were perfect for her. :o)

Here are some things I learned on vacation:

• It pays to travel light.  This was the least amount of stuff I had ever packed on any kind of a trip, and it was plenty.
• Airports and traveling in general can bring out the best and worst in people--especially if they are traveling with kids.
• It is relatively cheap to eat at nice restaurants in Mexico.  We had great seafood at very nice places for not a whole lot.
• It's easy to be an American in the touristy areas because pretty much everyone speaks decent English.  Driving down the road and seeing all the signs and billboards made me want to brush up on my limited Spanish skills.
• Life can be unhurried.  Within hours of arriving at the resort, I noticed that no one ever hurried anywhere.  Even the resort staff strolled wherever they went.  And it was so relaxing.  The only exception was the high-strung manager on duty at one of the resort restaurants because there happened to be a large party that night that included one or more partners of the group who had built the chain of Royal resorts.  One of the partners introduced himself to us at our table and asked about our stay.
• I can be semi-unplugged.  Before leaving I had debated whether or not to go totally unplugged as far as technology goes.  It's a good thing I thought about it, because my phone apparently didn't like Mexico.  It started acting strange and turning itself on and off, so I just left it in the room safe and didn't turn it on again until we landed back in the U.S.  I did answer a text from my mom on Austin's phone and peeked at the iPad (which Austin used the whole time), but didn't really do anything else.  In a way it was very relaxing to not be a slave to an electronic device.  However, I missed having access to information at my fingertips.  I didn't realize how often I look up stuff.  Like, what is the current temperature and humidity level?  How many U.S. dollars is 160 pesos?  Is there such thing as a special fish knife? What does "cenote" mean?  How far is it to walk the full length of 5th Avenue?
• My eating habits are tied to the clock.  At home I'm used to eating three solid meals plus two snacks every day.  This is partially due to having young kids, but more about my ingrained habits based on what time it is.  At home my tummy says I'm hungry for a snack if I look at the clock and it's past 10:00am and then again at 11:15am when it's time to get out lunch.  On vacation I rarely wore a watch.  After a simple breakfast, I could sit on the beach until 12:30pm before my tummy told me I was really hungry.  The same thing was true of afternoon snack and dinner.  I eat less often and later when I don't know what time it is.
• I can never be perfectly prepared.  Call me crazy, but I left a 2 1/2 page sheet of typed out instructions/information for my mom.  Most of this was meal possibilities and notes about the idiosyncrasies of our house.  However, I did forget a few important details--like where to find a house key.
• Austin has more "sit" than I do on vacation.  I think we were gone the perfect amount of time.  Any more than three days of sitting around on the beach or by the pool and I would need to start looking for some kind of major excursion--like snorkeling, underground rivers, swimming with dolphins, Mayan ruins, etc.  I also think it was the perfect length of time to be away from the kids.  I was ready to see them again but didn't overwhelmingly miss them.
• If you don't want to get sunburned, stay out of the sun.  I think we both did a pretty good job of not getting too burned.  We put really strong sunscreen on really thick and tried to stay out of the direct sunlight as much as possible except for two long walks along the beach that were not during the most intense sun of the day.  We saw a LOT of retired, brown, wrinkled (and mostly overweight) Americans at the resort.  I really don't ever want to look like that.
• I am still a fiction reader at heart.  I brought a whole stack of books that I had been saving for an occasion such as this.  During the five days I made it through two magazines and two books.  It took me less time to finish the 500-page Twilight book than it did a 200-page parenting book.  I also did a lot of people-watching. :o)
• This was a nearly perfect vacation.  My only regrets are forgetting to bring back some famous Mexican vanilla and not taking more videos/pictures of the beach for the kids to see.  We'll just have to do that next time!

I'll  end this post with some more pictures from the resort. 

Moving in

Austin & I have been getting ready to go on a long-anticipated vacation.  Emily knew Grandma Boote was coming to stay and was bouncing off the walls.  While I was trying to finish up some bookwork I told her to go find something to do.  For some reason she thought that Grandma would be sleeping in her bed and she would be moving into our room...

Not only was she mistaken, she was also a day too early.  I informed her that everything would need to be moved back to her room before supper or Daddy & I would have to move it into the attic for her.  Based on past experience, she knew I wasn't kidding, so the slow process began.  There was much moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth about being "soooo tired" and "toooooo slow," and we ended up starting supper without her as she trudged the last couple loads up the stairs, but nothing had to be put in the attic. :o)

Organizing article

I recently did an interview with a reporter from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier about my organizing projects.  It was a lot of fun talking to her.  We figured out we lived a few doors apart in Campbell Hall at UNI for 2 years and recognized each other right away.  


A full color, half page story ran in today's paper. You can read the article online here.  Of course, Lincoln managed to schmooze his way into a picture or two. ;o)  There are several pictures online that don't appear in the print version.

P.S. The recipe picture is totally posed. I haven't even started that project yet. :o)

Super Bowl Picnic

We haven't gone to any kind of Super Bowl party since we had kids.  It's just easier to watch at home--especially when you can pause it for baths and bedtime. :o)  We did do a little something special by having a pizza picnic in the living room.

52 OHC: Week 4

I'm a little behind in the weekly check-off.  I blame it on a) year-end bookwork/taxes and b) weather too nice not to go outside.  I have been working on things in chunks, though.  The Week 4 challenge was refrigerators and freezers.  I actually cleaned out the fridge--including scrubbing down all the walls and shelves--right after Christmas when the fridge was emptier than it had been or would be for a long time.  I purged a few expired items, but should probably do some more.  I cringe when I read the food storage guidelines.  I have some pretty old jars of pickles in the back, too. ;o)  This is a picture of the finished fridge.  Note: I really hope this is the last time I ever have to do a deep cleaning of this fridge considering the fact that all the door shelves are being held together or on by packing and/or duct tape. :op

The freezers needed a lot more help as far as organization.  We have a freezer above the fridge upstairs and a small chest freezer downstairs.  Both are usually pretty full.  Between baked goods and repackaged meats that I buy in bulk, they sometimes become the land of Ziploc bags.  I knew there was some pretty old stuff in the bottom/back, too.  I've been trying to eat out of the freezer a lot in the last couple weeks to make the sorting process easier.  Here's how the upstairs freezer looked before I started.

One of my goals for this freezer was to get it organized enough to be able to use the ice maker (i.e. have room for a container to catch the ice.  I also bought a few more freezer baskets to help in the organizing since the one I already had for vegetables was working pretty well.  Unfortunately, in order for the freezer baskets to fit I had to raise the shelf, which didn't leave room for the original ice container (which I found in the cupboards a couple weeks ago).  I modified by using a Ziploc container instead.

Since I had new freezer baskets, I wanted to make some fun labels for them.  I came up with this idea after being inspired by Pinterest and some organizing blogs.  I made labels on the computer on an address label sheet and stuck them on cut up pieces of scrapbook paper.  Then I laminated them with clear contact paper that I found in the attic upstairs and punched holes in the top.  They can either be taped on to containers or I can use a white twist-tie to attach them to a wire freezer basket.  I made a few extras as well as some blank ones if I decided to do things differently at any time.

Here's the newly organized upstairs freezer and door.

The chest freezer in the basement needed even more help.  Not only did it need to be defrosted, but there were some long-lost things in the bottom.  I ended throwing out two grocery bags of old stuff, including some loaves of quick breads and some stuffed pork chops that were over two years old. :op

These are the before pictures:

I got some more freezer baskets to try and do a better job of stacking things up.  I used the labels here, too.  These were all the containers before stacking them in the freezer.

Everything stacked up in the freezer (including several freezer meals in pans and the frozen pizzas).

I started using this white board to track inventory the last time I cleaned out the freezer.  I kept up pretty well for 6-9 months.  After sorting everything I started over with a new list.  This time I did it according to the different baskets as a "map" from bottom to top.  This was one of the suggestions from the organizing challenge.  I learned I have a LOT of chicken, peas and mozzarella cheese. :o)

These were my helpers.  Lincoln actually didn't help one bit, but he couldn't pass up a photo op.

Emily helped sort and find all the labels.

Dr. Emily

#1000

This is officially the 1,000th post on this blog.  It took just over 4 years to reach this point.  Thanks for coming along on the journey from this..............................................................to this!