...And More Birthdays!

With three birthdays back to back and Halloween in the middle, October and November are one big sugar rush.  What are we to do?

Morgen's birthday comes first.  She turned seven, which is a pretty big milestone.  You are all grown up at seven, you know.  I, for one, am pretty excited to push her out of the nest a little so to speak, let her spread her wings and see what she can do.  She is fully embracing friendships (especially the Sleepover) and practically worships her first grade teacher, always gifting her with little found treasures.  She's apparently an artistic genius (which I desperately need to foster more) and has a great imagination.  And something I take for granted most of the time: this girl puts herself together every morning, and has for years.  Her outfits are awesome, even when they are colorfully layered creations, and complete --socks and shoes and jacket-- and she'll brush her hair and even put it in a perfect ponytail.  I'm sad she doesn't need or want me to do her hair, so sometimes she obliges me and lets me brush and braid.  Morgen is a unique member of our family in that she is so capable and practical and easy-going.  Her biggest complaint is that we don't scratch her back enough.  Or feed her box mac 'n cheese every meal.  But mostly she's very low-maintenance and a totally amazing little girl.  I often wonder what she'll be when she grows up, because when you're content and capable, isn't the world your oyster?  (I read a blog that pointed out that oysters are nasty, shouldn't it be "isn't the world your pancake breakfast" or something NOT a slimy oyster?  So true!)

And by the way, that's what we had for Morgen's birthday breakfast: pancakes with whipped cream and fruit toppings and bacon (emphasis on bacon)...

 Taylor always makes very meaningful cards that he works for two days on.  He reads it to Morgen: "You are my favorite little sister.  You play with me a lot and you are so fun to play with.  I picked to do this [a magazine picture collage] because I know you like it.  Love, Taylor"

 Then we proceeded to have the funnest birthday day!  We started off at Michael's doing Halloween crafts. The girls were partners and the boys were partners.

 Love this.  Totally sisters.

 Heh. Google-eyed goofball.

 This is very serious.  It was sweet to see them work together.

 "OooOOOoooh!"  Noble is so much fun to discover with!

 Then we went to the toy store because Morgen and Micah had this epic plan to buy Barbies.  They've been saving up for about a year.  We go to the toy store like...NEVER so this was a blast for all of us.

 Then we had lunch at our favorite sandwich shop.  I'm so thankful for big brothers and sisters who help with our little handful Noble.  That kid just never stops moving and it's great to have extra hands helping, extra silly faces to entertain him.

Then we went to the mall so Morgen could get her ears pierced!  SeewhatImean?  All growed up! 

 This is what boys have to do in the girly accessories store.

 Her big sister, her cheerleader, her ear-care coach, her...bunny ears?

Morgen took the opportunity to snuggle with the teddy bear, who got her off the hook for wearing the Birthday Crown.

 SO brave...no trepidation at all.  Some watery eyes, but that's it!

"Now can we get ice cream?"

 And then, of course, the free sundae at the 50's diner.  These kids love a free sundae.  It's what they've got comin' to them, right?  It's your DAY, shouldn't everything be free??  People everywhere should just be handing you gifts as you walk through the mall!

 The whole lot of us!

 What a sparkly, pretty girl!

Then we blinked twice and Noble turned TWO!  Noble is a riot.  Like I said, he doesn't sit still...unless he's eating.  But even then, he doesn't have time to finish his last few bites before standing up and mumbling "all done!"  He's got things to do!  He's a total baller...he's been dribbling a ball since he could walk.  And I mean dribbling.  He practices like 10 minutes a day and he's getting pretty good.  He can run and kick, catch, throw across the room, and toss a frisbee too.  It's insane.  He wants to be right there in the middle of everything, and tries wholeheartedly to ride the dog, holding on as long as possible while Blue carefully gets up and walks away.  He has been overcome with the show-and-tell stage of life and is constantly demanding we observe his mad skillz.  Usually it's jumping: off the stool, off the couch, on one foot (that one's funny).  Even though he can say "Dada" he relentlessly addresses both of his parents as "MAMA!  MAMA!  MAMA!"  He fiercely protects his exclusive right to his parent's laps.  He knows he has to yell above the rest to be heard and has perfected the use of "MY BALL!"  He has no idea that we can't understand what he says and tells us all about everything.  Dang, this kid is a precious little ham.

We started him off right with his special gluten-free pancake breakfast.  Fancy pancakes:

  Rainbowy GF cupcakes, yum!
(So Port-landish!)

  The best gift for Noble: the big kids blew up a bunch of balloons and dumped them all on him and he was so excited!  Fun for DAYS, I tell you!  What more does this little guy need?  Nothing!

Micah's birthday was full of fun adventures too, but wouldn't you know it, the camera ran out of batteries and I didn't get to immortalize it at all!  But in a way, that's ok...sometimes it's good to just put the camera down and enjoy the moments!  I did manage to get these photos of his birthday celebration in his kindergarten class:

 His teacher tells a beautiful story about how Micah was waiting in heaven and we were waiting on Earth and how he was chosen to come to us at just the right time.  I blinked back tears as "his guardian angel came to Micah's parents and whispered 'Micah' and that was what he was called."  If there's anything that makes your heart swell with love for your child, it's the story of how they were chosen for you, and you for them.  And her Brazilian accent just makes it all the more magical!

Then I got to tell one thing about Micah for every year he's been alive, and he blew out the candle for this year.  He got a little book with picture from each of his classmates, and Micah shared a special snack with them.  He truly is a wonderful little boy with a contagious, happy joy!

In the evening, we all ran up to McMenamins to see Despicable Me (hilarious!) and then took our gifts over to "Red Robins" for Micah's traditional birthday sundae!  I think he's the only one who has a "tradition" like that, it's just worked out that way.  Again, Taylor's card, replete with tic-tac-toe game boards and a little pocket holding a candy (SO exciting!), was as sweet as can be: "Dear Micah, I love you and I like how you wresle with me and you play with me.  You are very kind to me and everybody.  I also think you are funny.  Love, Taylor"

Be still my heart; I am a lucky mama indeed.

We Have Birthdays...

This one and the next one are for the grandmas and aunties out there who wish I would post more timely pictures of our birthday celebrations...

You'd think we would be having birthday parties all the time, right?  But really, they're kind of all at once...or twice.  Three in April/May.  Three in October/November.  Dave gets spoiled with the August birthday that doesn't compete with anyone else's, and it's usually a good excuse for a last hurrah before school starts.

Waaaay back in May, Korah turned eleven.  I keep expecting to feel shocked or nostalgic about her getting older, but I mostly love it so much it's hard to be sad.  She was an awesome baby and toddler, but she's so cool now, too. She's growing into a beautiful young lady (and now I sound like my grandma) and I don't know how it's happening.  It has nothing to do with me, that's for sure.

We started the day with a scavenger hunt for presents, a clue on each one that led to the next one.  See, this is how she is: a little frustrated that she had to water all the plants before opening her presents, but swallowing her complaints, obliging nonetheless.

Look!  There's something else up there!

Birthdays are never without a captive audience here.

"Noble wants you to read to him!"

There's even one in the fridge!

...the shower...?

She loves it!

Later, we had a fun little skate meet-up ("we'll be there, you should come too!  And by the way, it's my birthday and that's why I'm going skating!"  That is what you say when you can't pull off a huge birthday party.  You get all the friends and fun without any of the pointy party hats.  Those things can poke an eye out!).  It was so much fun; Korah and her friends decided they had to dress oldies 80's:

She is funny and creative and loyal and smart...

...and I love her!!!  We all do!  The kids looked great and we had so much fun!  I always seem to forget how much I love-love-LOVE the roller rink.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KORAH!

Sixty-four wheels = a ton of FUN!

Flaxen Waxen I Am Not

I got tired of hearing my own voice say over and over again:

"I HATE MY HAIR!"

So I cut it all off.

  

I really don't have time for hair.

And when I look in the mirror, I don't see the back anyway.

What I don't know won't hurt me.

Right?

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who chimed in on the Etsy shop name so far!  I love all your suggestions.  I'm also realizing (and maybe it's just from my vantage point) that I'm not really liking the sound of "Vonder" in relation to what I do (watercolor).  It just sounds heavy and harsh compared to the light, watery medium.  I'm also thinking that if this is a business, I might want it to be totally autonomous from my family life, my kids, my name.  Hmm... considering more about what I love in association with watercolor, I came up with this:

BrushAndHue
BrushAndChroma
BrushAndPen

Whaddya think?  Any combo of those catch your eye?  Anything similar come to mind?  I'm thinking I'm at least narrowing down what my eventual tattoo will be :)

For now I will leave you with this disturbing image which --literally-- gave me nightmares last night.  Maybe you had to be there... but oh, the weirdness that is the Vonderhizzles...

Making a scene in the grocery store on our way to a Pumpkin Carving Party.

And Your Name Is...?

Hello friends and interwebs!

Due in part to your generous words of affirmation, and in part to the need for cash to burn I have decided to finally get the Etsy ball rolling!

So I will paint.  Somehow, somewhere, in an epic battle for space and time, I will find a way to paint.

 

Then I realized the really hard part: deciding on a shop name!  I wasn't expecting to do that right away....doesn't that take months of deep contemplation and market research or something?  I can't wait that long!  Not that I'm impatient or anything... but c'mon, this is just the first step!  I wanna get this ball rolling, people...before I lose my nerve!

 

I need your help!  I need your insight and your brilliant ideas and your creativity... if ever there was a time to be loquacious in the comments, it is now!

Here are the specs:

• I will be selling hand-painted, watercolor and ink greeting cards
• I like nostalgia, the ocean, and shapes that have movement
• I liken zee Deutsch.  Our name is German.  I like to brand things with Vonder---, like Vonderhizzle!  (How does Von Sieben Haus sound??  A little too German?  It means House of Seven, 'cause that's what we are.  How about Aquarellfarbe?  It means Watercolor...)
• I'm kinda silly and I have a bunch of silly children.

Let's make it a contest!

If I choose your suggestion or I'm inspired the most by your idea, you will be the first recipient of a set of 5 hand-painted cards!  Hooray!

So put your thinking caps on and... shoot, my thinking cap just got blown off as the aforementioned battle for space and time rages on around me... gotta go!

Thanks for your help!!

Bluebeard the Pirate

At the very beginning of summer, we heard of a litter of puppies that was being given away to anyone who walked by...

So we walked by.

One look at this little face and how could we resist?

Seriously.  He was still drinking milk.  We had to feed him from a bottle, and we carried him everywhere in our pockets!

They said he was part Lab, part Blue Heeler.  So we called him Blue.

Then we noticed his eye-patch and he had to be Bluebeard the Pirate.  Arrrrr!

Now (a mere three months later), lord help us, this dog has tripled in size!

Reindeer

Micah: "Dada, I only want you to get me Reindeer!"

Daddy: "Reindeer?"

Micah: "Uh-huh!"

Daddy: "How many Reindeer?"

Micah: "Just REINDEER!"

Daddy: "Why do you need Reindeer?"

Micah: "Because every time it's raining and I go outside, Ms. Mello says I need REINDEER!"

Perspectives From the Esplanade

Now before I tell you this and you think I'm some kind of wonderful, I have to tell you that every single day someone says to me, "I don't know how you do it with five kids!"  And I think to myself, "it depends on what you mean by 'doing it'," as I have shameful flashbacks of knee-jerk parenting moments.  You and I, we are both 'doing it', with our happy times and our hard times and our lives stuffed full, and we ebb and flow.  If I blogged more and wasn't so newly birthed out of crisis and survival, this blog would probably be a little more well-rounded.  Sheesh-- I don't know how bloggers do it!  Anyway...

Today, I don't know what came over me, maybe the lovely weather, maybe knowing David wouldn't be home until late...but I felt like after school we needed to go down to the Eastbank Esplanade and paint together instead of rushing home to do chores.  Korah still chose to do homework, and Noble was parked in the stroller with an apple, but the rest of us got a little rectangle of paper and "15 minutes" (it was more) to make some art.

Morgen painted a bug she had seen and showed me on the walk out, Noble's apple core, and (of course) a rainbow.  Micah painted some beautiful colors before he accidentally dropped his painting over the railing and it floated down onto the bank of the Willamette.  I told him some guy will probably pick it up and use it to make his home beautiful, so without even meaning to, he's probably going to make someone really happy!

Taylor took his card and went a ways off to draw, then came back to use the watercolors.  It turns out he and I painted the same thing:

Steamboat, by Taylor

Str. Portland, by Mommy

 He, of course, thinks mine is better.  I, of course, disagree entirely.  I love his color saturation.  I love how he did the whole thing without hesitation.  He works with confidence, sees what he sees and lays it down.  I love that we did this together.

On the way back, Micah pointed out the water reflecting wavy on the concrete wall under the bridge.  He said, "the sun and the water make that!"  I stopped to look, and it was beautiful!  A thing architects might try to imitate.  And I thought about how glad I was to be taking this time to intentionally see the world through my kids' eyes.  I came home and found this quote, and I couldn't agree more...

"Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist."  

--Ned Rorem, American Composer

Year Thirteen: Making Lemonade

Once, a long, long time ago, I told you I was going to go back in time and tell the stories I haven't had time to tell.  Well, all I needed was a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 jigawatts of electricity and...well...thanks to some generous Libyans handing over their plutonium, I can finally tell you about March 1, 2010.

Our wedding anniversary is without a doubt the most significant date in our family calendar.  Not because it was the best day of our lives or because we are just that in love, but because it was the first day...the day we left our childhood lives behind and boarded the plane on a journey we would never return from (further up and further in!).  And every year on March 1st, we can look back and through the context of our marriage we  read blessings, adventure, brokenness, heartache, growth, change, healing, moments of deep love and of deep pain, and inexplicable miracles that have taken place.  We say with astonishment and sentiment, "look...look what has happened to us!"

Which is why we almost always make a point to do something to take pause and remember.  This, the thirteenth year, was hard, hard work.  The year began with a culmination of heartache and disappointment so great there was nothing left to celebrate.  We were done.  Done with each other, done with ourselves, done with this stupid marriage.  Year Twelve was the only year that didn't have a March 1st as far as we were concerned.  But apparently we are resilient buggers, and although we both came into marriage with some very heavy baggage...we have spent the last year in particular, cautiously--ferociously-- fighting for our selves and fighting like hell for our marriage.

And so far we are growing up, changing, and becoming better people.  This year, Year Thirteen, there was something to celebrate, albeit a little more serious and somber.  Thanks to the many friends that it takes to farm out all our kids and get us somewhere "away", we were able to pause, get away from the grind, and reflect.  Of course, we had to have a nursing, little tag-along with us, in the very squirmy and exploratory stage of life no less.  But it was fun to pretend we only had one kid (at 35+) and imagining what it would be like if this were our norm.  We'd probably have less gray hairs, less sleep-deprived eyes and better careers... ha!

This trip to Seattle was in part a gift from our beautiful and talented friend Anna, who let us stay at her apartment near the Seattle Center.  After a very refreshing visit with Anna she left us to have our time together, and the first thing we did was hit up a Thai place in Upper Queen Anne.  We love Thai, but the kids?  Not so much.  So any chance we get to eat without them, this is what we have.

 

Noble was a constant blur of activity.  He's just discovered that standing up gives him a whole different perspective, and he must touch and feel and taste any part of the world he can get his little dimpled hands on!  I'll be honest...it's exhausting!

This "next-day" picture was taken to represent our spontaneous after-dinner adventure!  We were walking around the Seattle Center and decided to see a movie.  The closest theater was quite a few blocks away, and lo and behold, the Monorail led right to it!  We'd never ridden the Seattle Monorail before (we've done Disneyland, of course) so this was very exciting.  (We don't get out much, okay?)  Blue-ish fluorescent lights flickered with every rattling bump and waggle of the train, and lonely characters in the corners-- their faces briefly illuminated by the strobing lights-- stared at us with stony expressions.  We, the effervescent vacationers with the baby, may have been on the set of a horror movie...these things can happen!

After the movie (which we loved and intensely identified with), we had to hail a cab to get back to the apartment and neither of us had ever done such a thing.  We weren't really sure what to do when I saw one coming!  Before I knew what was happening, I thought, "well, in the movies, they do this..." and I stuck out my hand and yelled, "TAXI!"  And you know what happened?  The taxi pulled right over!  Neither of us could believe it!  We weren't sure what to do with the baby...would he take us and a baby with no car seat?  I mean, it's a car, not the bus!  But he said, "yeah!  Get in!  Get in!" and as soon as we shut the door, he sped off.  So we held on tight to Noble and giggled out, "this is our first time in a taxi!"  Which the driver ignored, then he rolled down his window and spoke Taxi to the car next to him.  It would've been totally deflating if we weren't laughing at ourselves for how ridiculously excited we were of being out of our element.

The next day necessitated some tourism, so we walked all around to see the sights.  It was very cool for us just to hang out and be friends, talking uninterrupted (mostly).  Then we met up with Anna and a friend of hers who worked at the Space Needle and was gracious enough to take us all up on his day off.  What a blessing, and it was a perfectly clear day!

Here we are, the happy family...hopefully you can't tell that I didn't get ANY sleep because Noble, out of his element, was up all night and I was paranoid about bothering the neighbors.

What a silly, happy baby.  You could tell he was bored with us and missing his sibling playmates.

And this is everyone in the reflection of the windows, 520 feet up.

Next we headed South to do some more tourism-ing on our way home.  But really we had only one objective: Daily Dozen Doughnuts.  Even though Noble and I are gluten-free now doesn't mean we can't watch David enjoy these heavenly bites.  So off to Market we go...

 

We parked miles away and took a strange detour, which led us to this ghastly and beautiful sight (Noble, as you can see, is in disbelief):

You don't get this close to the Gum Wall without finding out that it...it smells really good!

  

I love that someone thought it was necessary to sprinkle glitter all over this fruity kaleidoscope of gum.  It was very colorful.

Behold: the Gum Wall.  German tourist take turns photographing each other in front of this American Wonder!

  

We are interested in another Wonder.  Of hot, doughy goodness.  Of cinnamon.  Of powdered sugar.  Of this guy:

Raise your hand if you know this guy.  He is so cool.  I mean, he is just doing his job, and like anyone else he'd rather not be at work, but he'll talk to you as if you are his next-door neighbor, not some once-in-a-lifetime tourist, come from afar for his deliciously greasy confections and fanfare.  He likes to snap the bags open, startling children and nervous nellies, and throw the doughnuts into the air, catching them one by one in your bag of powdered sugar.  Shake-shake, an exchange of money and it's yours!  Wonderful!

 

Sorry Noble, you and me get rice cakes (booo).

One last temptation before we hit the road.

We actually found this lemon as we were walking along, perfectly undamaged, like it just fell out of someone's grocery bag.  We picked it up (why not?) and had to laugh at the irony: the significance of the day, looking back on our marriage and realizing that we have been taking the lemons life gave us, and with pressing and twisting and squeezing, with a massive amount of sugar supplied by the kind of grace that only God can afford....we are, in fact, creating a pretty darned good lemonade.

May we continue to balance our lemons with the Water and Sugar, and year after year may we be only more refreshed by our marriage.  Amen!