We Can Do It!

I read Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" at the beginning of the week. A pretty intense story of a black woman living in the South in the early to mid 1900's who spends most of her life just trying to survive all the hard blows (sometimes literally) life deals her.
I can understand why it's on the banned books list, though I'm very glad I read it. It helped me to finally really get a clue about what life as a woman was like before all the women's rights stuff happened. It made me really grateful for the freedom, dignity and confidence I enjoy as a woman of this generation. I can only imagine how many women's shoulders I am standing on, who, over the last few generations have fought, prayed, and persevered to give their daughters a better world. I always thought the "We can do it!" poster was a little over the top, but now, I find myself cheering on that steel worker chick and saying, "Yeah! We CAN do it! We can do whatever we put our minds to!"

Totally AWESOME Saturday

So, I was already totally stoked for Saturday to come all last week 'cause we planned on spending the day in Salt Lake City as a family, but the day brought even cooler awesomeness than expected!
During Rudy's morning nap, as we were getting everything ready to head out for the day, Jason posted our '98 Neon on Craigslist...AGAIN. We'd been trying to sell that monster for over a year...but all it did was keep slowly sucking more and more money to make it 'sellable'. Oi. Needless to say, I did not have very high hopes for this latest posting to bring any better results than the last cagillian had.
When someone called Jason 45 minutes later all excited to buy the beast, I couldn't believe it. "Call him back and make sure he knows the safety and emissions is expired," I told Jason, not wanting another dead end checking out of the car to get in the way of our fun day I'd been anticipating all week long. Well, a hour later, we were signing paper work and accepting cold, hard cash.
HOO-Ray! What a blessing! It's like the entire universe aligned, and then all the cosmos smiled down right on us. Or we have a loving Heavenly Father who knows his children could really use a break right about now. The guy who bought the car was in town from Colorado to pick up a different car, which fell through. Not wanting to waste a trip, he hopped onto Craigslist at the local library to see if he could find anything else worth buying. Deeming our car a good deal, he called us, just as we were literally walking out the door. We NEVER pick up the phone, but for some reason, Jason grabbed it. The dude didn't care about safety and emissions because he'd have to re-register it in Colorado anyway, plus he's just planning on putting a little work into it and then reselling it for a profit there. More power to him. I'm just glad to finally have that money sucking monster off our hands and some money in the bank.
After that, we cruised off to Salt Lake to go to our future sister in law's bridal shower, visit my grandparents, and go on a date to Jason's favorite restaurant, The Blue Plate Diner. The Blue Plate visit was to celebrate Jason's birthday, which was in JULY. What can I say, Salt Lake is kind of out of the way and time and money have been tight lately. Jason wanted to hold out for the Blue Plate, though, so hold out we did.
At my grandparents' house, I introduced Rudy to the fisher price castle we played with as children. It was so cool to rediscover all the hidden doors, etc., and to see Rudy's eyes go big with delight at the toy. Anyway, the day was a great one. One of those days you can just bask in the goodness of as you fall asleep that night.

Adios, Neon. Best of luck in Colorado.

A Tribute to Kindness

Jason, Rudy, and I braved the crowds and searched the racks of our local thrift store, Savers, today. (Most thrift stores have 50% off their entire stock on holidays.) We found some cool stuff, but the best prize was basking in the glow of a simple, yet profoundly kind act.
Rudy discovered the coolness of balloons yesterday at the grocery store. He'd practically jump out of the cart while shouting at the top of his lungs, " GAAAAA!" and pointing at every balloon on display, as if to make sure I was seeing the amazingness he was seeing. It was really fun.
Well, today at a Savers, they had balloon arches over their check out lanes to celebrate the sale (and Veteran's Day, I suppose). Rudy was beside himself with excitement. I swear, just one more drop of excitement and he'd have shot to the moon. The woman ringing us up noticed Rudy's infatuation with the balloons and called to a co-worker, "Can we get this young man a balloon?" Her co-worker left her mounding task of trying to keep the thrift store somewhat neat or at least maneuverable in the face of hoards of shoppers swarming every isle to fill a special balloon for Rudy. She did so cheerily and chatted warmly with/at him as she did.
Rudy was ecstatic. He proudly displayed his magical red orb to anyone who happened to be within shouting range. "GAA! GAAA! GA GA GA GA GAAAAA!" For the rest of the afternoon, he played with that balloon as much as I would let him. (I only let him have it when I could have both eyes glued to him and be within grabbing range at all times...I didn't want him to choke on his prize.) When he wasn't playing with it, he would point at it and remind me that he would like to be playing with it. (Yes, it got to be a bit of a nuisance by the end of the day, but it was fun, too.) Anyway, the point is, two woman in the middle of what could have been a miserable day for them chose to take interest in the people they were serving and really SERVE us. They made this little guy's day with a minute and a half of effort on their part. It's times like these that remind me that humanity is beautiful, lovely, divine. I hope I can maintain the attitude these women held, and consistantly see and act on little opportunities for bringing light into someone's life.

Goodbye Fall, Hello Winter

After what seems like an eternal summer, fall flew past. Seems like we had about a week of true fall weather, and now we're into consistently bundling to go outside. Sigh. Gone are the days of quick jaunts outside. Now its more like preparing for an expedition. Oh well, I guess we'll get the drill down pat sooner than later. Here's a few pictures to document our tiny fall experience and the beginning of what already feels like a looong winter.

Oh by the way, Rudy can walk

Rudy's been walking with our fingers for so long, going hands free hasn't been such a big deal for us. Don't get me wrong, its super cute and fun to see him toddling around, but you know, not AMAZING. So I forgot to post a triumphant milestone blog when it happened...a week and a half ago. He's been walking pretty steadily since 10/28/08. For the record, ('cause I know he'll ask me this question at some point in his life) Rudy was 10 1/2 months old when he started walking. Yea! Apologies in advance if he manages to escape our pew and goes careening down the chapel isle in the middle of a particularly reverent moment. :)

The advanced walker...he's feeling pretty confident by now, I think. Oh, and he doesn't always go around with a sequenced vest on...I was trying on a costume I bought at the after Halloween sale at our local thrift shop. (Everything was a dollar). The vest has a monkey tail attached to the back. I thought it'd make good fodder for a future dress up box. :)

Rudy in his early independence... still really concentrating on staying vertical.

Dry Another Day

Last Tuesday found our family in high spirits. Rudy and I pranced around Jason while singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". (Ok, I pranced around and sang as I held Rudy...but Rudy DID add a few yawps of joy to the performance). And what, you may ask, could cause such a euphoric state in a home void of mind altering drugs? I'm glad you asked! Jason, our mighty, noble, insanely awesome leader of the pack fixed our dryer! HOORAY! Yipee! WaHOOO! Our eleven year old dryer stopped drying on Halloween. This is an exceptionally bad thing to happen in our home, since we cloth diaper, and only have enough diapers for 2 days of diapering before the cycle of cloth diapering life must play itself out again. A key component of that cycle is drying all the newly washed diapers. PLUS, our unit is a combined washer/dryer unit, so working on the dryer made the washer unavailable as well. Add to this the fact that we are presently swimming against a very strong financial current, and maybe you can begin to imagine the level of crisis we felt at no longer having a functioning dryer. Thankfully, we were scheduled to spend the weekend at my parents' house for Halloween, so we did plenty of laundry there, and then, Lauren, my wonderful neighbor and friend allowed me to use her washer and dryer on Monday to keep our cloth diapering world afloat. (Actually, she practically provided a laundering service...I dropped them off in the morning and by afternoon she was knocking on my door with my pristine diapers neatly folded in her arms. Thank you, thank you, thank you!) Jason, the great stud that he is, worked diligently at educating himself about all things dryer and tinkered with the old beast for hours on end until at last, it was revived! He did all this while going to school and work full time, and spent a mere $12.00 on the replacement part he installed. AMAZING, yes? He saved our family at least $100.00 by being the fix it man himself. Yea! That is why, Tuesday, the day that Jason restored the dryer to function, found our family in such high spirits. The End

This is actually a picture of Jason after working on our car. He was more linty than dirty while tinkering with the dryer, but I didn't get any pics of that. Too bad...he was like a grungy little lamb. he he. This picture gets the fix it man message across, though. :)

Halloween Festivities!

Holidays are so much more fun with kids...except for the whole maneuvering around nap times and bedtimes, but the pros far outweigh the cons. Rudy's first Halloween engagement was a cousins' party with Jason's side of the family. Uncle Don's daughter and her family were going to be in town so we had a party for the cousins to meet and have fun together. I had a blast, and Rudy seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself, too. I think he actually clued into the idea that something special was going on. Maybe all the costumes tipped him off. :)

Here's Rudy with Uncle Don.

The babies of the family playing together...or at least next to each other.

Next, we had our ward play group Halloween Party. It was great to see all the kids in their Halloween duds. A few moms dressed up too. Heather read a halloween book to the kids and we sang Halloweeny songs. Then the older kids decorated cupcakes and did other such coolness while the younger kids mouthed each other's toys.
Jason happened to be available during the party, so he came along. He enjoyed being able to watch Rudy play with the other kids etc., but I think he was a bit overwhelmed at the quantity of conversations going on in one room, all while over 15 kids scrambled around. Hey, why go to playgroup if not to get your weekly fix of adult conversation?

Lastly, came Halloween day. I fed Rudy puried peas for lunch and told him it was "Monster Mash", not that he could understand why that's cool, but it was fun for me. After his nap, we headed out with my downstairs neighbor and her son, who's just about 6 months older than Rudy for some middle of the day food driving. We collected canned food from our neighbors, trick or treat style. It was a fun way to show off Rudy's costume and collect food for our local food bank. When Jason got home, we packed up and went to my parents' house to spend the night and enjoy a family halloween party. We did our food drive up in their neighborhood too, just a bit, so Jason and my parents could join in the trick or treating fun. I was really impressed at how generous everyone was--most people came back to the door with thier arms full of food after being asked for just a can or box of food for our food drive. Here's a few pictures from Halloween evening.

Rudy and Jason prepping for Trick or Treating on Halloween Day.

The family in Halloween mode.

Rudy checking out his Uncle Jake's Wolf costume. I was worried it'd scare him, but all I had to do was say, "Dog!" and he and Rudy were friends.

My family, minus Vati, who's behind the camera.

My parents posing with their first grandchild before heading out to Trick or Treat. I'm dressed as Dumbo's feather, a fitting metaphor for Rudy's small but growing confidence that perhaps he can walk all by himself, without my finger to hold on to.

Rudy, Jason and me with the wagon we used to collect food for the local food bank.