Happy Birthday Trent!

We celebrated Trent's 31st birthday yesterday. The man is no longer just 30, but now in his thirties. He had simple birthday dreams. No big parties or plans, he just wanted to eat steak and watch the season premiere of Rescue Me. Sounds like a great way to celebrate and in fact, it was.

In the grand tradition of being too excited to wait, Trent opened presents in between dinner and cake.

Rush gave him a kit to make a mouse trap powered car. Not only is that the sort of thing that Trent loves, it might just help him come up with his billion dollar idea to create a renewable energy source. I gave him Wits and Wagers, the game he has talked about every day since he first played it a few months ago. If we're going to see you anytime in the near future, you'll probably get a chance to play it. I have a feeling we'll be travelling with it.

Trent's requested birthday cake was an ice cream pie, so intead of cake and ice cream we had Brownie Moose Tracks Ice Cream Pie. Hmm, I just reminded myself that there's three quarters of the pie left in the freezer. Please willpower, kick in and let me ignore it. Be sure to check out Rush holding the pie server in the picture.

Trent, I hope you had a great 31st birthday. Rush and I had a great time celebrating with you. Here's to many more great birthdays.

And We're Back - Almost

Our computer crashed last week and we just got it back today, all clean and working again. We're back to the generic Windows background and are ready to start adding back all our (thankfully saved on our external hard drive) pictures, music, and other various files. I'm not sure what the current life expectancy of a laptop is, but I'm happy we've made it through this memory issue inspired crash. I'll be updating the blog as soon as we can get the basics re-set-up.

Summer, So Far

We have been spending a lot of time at the pool lately. Having a pool in the neighborhood has been a great asset because we get all the benefits of a pool, like getting to swim, but none of the work involved with maintaining it or the liability of owning it. The only trade off is walking 2 blocks in the summer sun, but we can make it. There is a covered baby pool, which is one of the best parts. I lounge in the water while Rush throws toys out of the pool, then tries to climb out to get them. He hasn't totally mastered climbing out on his own yet, but it won't be long.

Of course, we have no pictures from the pool, because I there's not a safe way for me to watch a one year old at a pool by myself and use a camera. We'll try to bring our camera during on of our evening family trips. We really don't have pictures to document any of our recent summer activities: the leisurely Saturday morning when Trent made homemade biscuits, the visit with the Suljkanovics and their neighborhood pool which is actually a water park complete with tube slides and giant spraying water features, the long overdue dinner with the Monclas and Johnsons. Instead, I have a picture from this morning of Rush defeating (not for the first time) the child-safety lock on the outside cabinet and pulling out yet another item that he can't play with and I didn't even realize that we still had. Today it was some rusty, nail-filled horseshoes from our Colorado trip a few years ago.



So summer is in full swing. It may be hot outside and never below 80 degrees in our house, but I don't miss the winter when our heater decided to only heat the upstairs of our house. We're keeping a steady supply of popsicles in the freezer and our palm tree is blooming. I actually had the pleasure of putting on a wet bathing suit the other day, which is something I haven't experienced in years. After years in an office wearing long sleeves in July, a wet bathing suit is a luxury I can appreciate.


One odd recent summer addition to our home is a million spiders. They are everywhere, most of them dead. I think we might have a basilisk.

Sleeping Like It's 1953

These are Rush's new pajama pants. The statement they are making is "My mom sewed these. And it's 1953." I made them today, but they have kind of a 50's look to them. All Rush needs to be a little Jimmy Clyde is a holster and toy guy. Making pajama pants turned out to be ridiculously easy and fast. They do look a tad homemade, but really, they're pajamas. And it's hot here, so it will be nice for him to have something a little lighter to wear to sleep.

The only place to get fabric in Pearland is Hobby Lobby and they haven't updated their supply since we've lived here. Basically I'm really limited on selection unless I plan in advance, which happens occasionally but not this time. Luckily they carry my very favorite fabric ever, shown here, which has all 50 states on it. It's definitely not the first time I've used it.

There were, however, some firsts for me today: first time to make clothes for Rush, first time to make any clothes successfully (I think), first time to iron pajamas. Every time I press a seam while sewing I think of my mom looking at the doll I made Rush for Christmas and saying "Did you press this?" Uh, thanks for sounding so surprised Mom, although I can't blame her. I remember my first and only sewing lesson growing up when I was going to make a dress for myself. I quit very early on because "UGH, I DON'T WANT TO IRON I WANT TO SEW." Poor Mom. I'm not sure how I ever learned to sew...I do remember when Casey and I got our sewing machines for Christmas in college, my mom showed us how to thread the needles and gave us some basic tips, but I think the memories of my one sewing lesson in 6th grade held her back from getting too involved.

Anyway, after trying to catch a glimpse of Trent mowing the lawn, Rush headed off to bed. He's now slumbering away, hopefully enjoying his new pajamas. Depending on what kind of fabric I can find laying around, he might end up with a few new pairs soon.

First One Today

Today marks a year since the death of my grandpa, Ed the Red Svendsen. It's still really hard to believe he's not around; for him dying at 89 seems like a shockingly young age. It seems like he should be at my parents house or the beach, eating chips and rotel and drinking beer. That really doesn't describe him well, since he was a man who worked out at the gym every morning and took on healthy eating with an engineer's precision. I should have celebrated his life today by cooking something Norwegian or painting a watercolor barn, but instead we went to Ikea and ate meatballs and lingonberries. It was a shortcut to cooking something Norwegian, although I know that it's probably not okay that I was associating with the Swedes.

It's sad that Rush won't get to know him personally, but he'll get to know him through other things. I already toast him with "First One Today" and he took his first visit to the Norwegian Christmas Bazaar last November. Aunt Casey is carrying on the tradition of making julekake, Norwegian Christmas bread, and maybe one day I'll use the Scandinavian cookbook that my grandpa gave me to make lefse, a flat potato bread similar (vaguely similar, just for description purposes) to a tortilla, but served with butter and sugar. Hopefully one day we'll have enough family together in one room to divide up his watercolor paintings so that Rush can see the amazing artist that he was.

We miss you Ed. I can just hear his response to me calling him Ed: Hey, watch your language. We miss you Grandpa.

Serious Business

I love the look of a onesie with shoes. It's very similar to when a girl wears a bathing suit with tennis shoes. The clear message is "Look, I've got serious things to do outside and I can't really be bothered with pants."

At some point last week Rush perfected the art of standing up on his own as opposed to pulling up on something (or someone) to start walking and it has changed his life. I'm not sure what classifies running - is it speed or the way a person moves his or her limbs? If it's speed, he's running.

Memorial Day and Beyond

Way back two weekends ago, Trent, Rush, and I headed down to the beach. It was an action packed weekend involving almost my entire family, plus an aunt, an uncle, cousins, and their friends. The water was great, the weather was hot but not unbearable, and the summer officially began.


My mom, Rush, and I spent the entire week at the beach, watching the ebb and flow of people. Memorial Day weekend was crowded and people gradually started to drift home Monday, then Tuesday, until Wednesday the beach consisted of my mom, sister, Rush and me, and the construction workers still rebuilding post-hurricane. Then Thursday night a few early weekenders start coming back and Friday the weekend starts all over again.

Being at the beach for a week with a one year old is a feline existence consisting of eating, napping, and playing. It was the longest amount of time I had ever stayed at the beach, and I gradually became more Bolivar-like, giving up on make-up by Monday night and taking showers at odd hours of the day. My dad commuted down to the beach after work, so we were able to celebrate his birthday. Rush helped him blow out the candles and then hand fed him a piece of cake.

We went to the Texas Crab Festival on Saturday, where Trent, Rush, and I gorged ourselves on frito pie, funnel cake, a pistolette, a steak taco, a snow cone, and ribbon fries. You would have thought we had never eaten carnival food before. There were live bands all day and it was so nice to be outside listening to the music with Rush dancing.

We're home now, trying to catch up after a week away. I'll be doing laundry if you need me.