God must have read my post yesterday because the weather was lovely today.  We spent quite a bit of time outside gardening and playing with the dogs.  Hopefully this is the first of many such days.

Peyton picked up a new vocab word while my parents and teenage brother stayed with us a week ago. 

Since they’ve left, the word has come out many times.

“Mom, I’m boring.”

I know you are, sweetheart. 

But quite frankly, this week was pretty boring.  We didn’t do very much of anything.  The weather has been great in the morning, but by afternoon the clouds roll in and we have a few brief showers.  We’ve done a variety of little things, but perhaps a little more structure would give us some ideas.  It doesn’t help that I didn’t feel like doing much of anything, but the past two days I’ve been feeling a lot better thanks to cutting milk/dairy out of my diet.  Yes, I know they’re good for the baby, but if they’re too heavy and don’t stay where they’re supposed to, it doesn’t do any good anyway.  If you want to yell at me about that fine, just call me up the next time you have the flu for two weeks straight (4 more to go!) and I’ll show up to force some heavy dairy products down your throat.

But I digress.

Last summer we had lots of unpacking to do, and Daddy wasn’t working.  The summer before that we had Disneyland passes.  The summer before that we took a few vacations.  Now, I wouldn’t feel like doing ANY of those things even if we could do them, but it doesn’t help that it’s already the end of June and we haven’t had a really nice day all week!  Not to mention my one desire for summer was to keep the house clean but I am not AT ALL interested in doing that, either.

On the other hand, I’ve read two books already – Mrs. Dalloway and Catcher in the Rye.  I think I happened to find copies of each after locker-cleanout day.  I’ve never read a Dickens book, so I started Great Expectations this afternoon.

Next week should be better – my first doctor’s appt. is Tuesday am (hooray – we’ll get to see a heartbeat!) and Peyton gets to play with Jorren and Caden.  Wednesday is the 4th, so just Thursday and Friday are left to fill.  I think we just might make it through the summer!

A great way to save tons of money at the grocery store (at least in the short term) is to get pregnant and shop while you feel like tossing cookies rather than buying them.  I found that as I shopped, suddenly items on the list, though they sounded necessary at home, suddenly were not worth the two minutes it would take to find them.  A lot of foods that might have made it into the cart were quickly passed by in my effort to get done without having to visit the restroom; only the essentials made it home.  The only items I bought on impulse were two containers of Tums antacids   So though I won’t be listing “morning sickness shopping” as a real tip on Shannon’s Works for Me Wednesday site, you can check out other people’s ideas there.

…Your son insists that he is the brother of the baby he carries in his stomache.

Yeah, you read that right.  We’re getting close to those “there comes a time in a man’s life” talks with Peyton, who believes he is pregnant (again).  I’ve heard of sympathetic fathers gaining weight with mommies-to-be, but if my son goes from 40 to 70 in the next seven and a half months, we might need to see a therapist.

Or maybe we could make some money in scientific research projects.

Or at the very least we could get our 15 minutes of fame on Jerry Springer.

God willing, Peyton will finally be a big brother some time near Feb. 8.

My parents, my brother, my cousin, my son and I visited Capilano today.  Capilano is famous for its suspension bridge and other tree-top views.  Daddy was working today, so he warned me many many times that he did not want me to force Peyton across, and I better not let him fall off the side!

Peyton was worried before we even got there.  He does have a fear of heights – at McDonald’s he won’t crawl over the ropes or walk over the suspension bridge because it’s too shaky and too high and he’s sure he’ll fall.  When we go down a small hill on the way out of town, he always says he’s scared.  When we were driving, I said, “Look, Peyton, it’s Canada!” but he replied “I don’t like Canada.”  He was nervous.

When we got there, we parked the stroller.  “Peyton, we’re going on a hike!  We get to be explorers!  Just follow Papa” and off we went.  I held his hand and he just watched Papa’s back until we were half-way across.  Then I told him to look around at the trees and the stream far beneath us, and he was enjoying himself!  The park had a young explorers program that gave him a “map” of the ecosystem, so he loved checking his map and leading us around.

My husband and I are both messy people.  We don’t mind clutter; we often dump things down and rarely pick them up again.  The mail is somewhat opened, then left on a section of the table that we don’t need.  Shoes that we take off when we walk in the door sit in the hallway until their next day of use.  Typically these things don’t bother us, but they’re embarrassing when we have company over.

Which brings me to my WFMW tip: in order to keep the house clean on a regular basis, invite people over!  When we lived in CA no one ever came to our house, so the clutter built and built and we never had to pick it up.  Up here, however, we’ve made it a point to invite my uncle and cousins over every few weeks for dinner, and what a difference it’s made in our house!  We know they’re coming, so we keep most of the major mess cleaned up to avoid embarrassment. 

The best part is that it works both ways - we clean the house because we know people will come over, but because the house is usually clean we’re more likely to invite people over, as well.  Before our mostly-clean house, we never invited anyone over because we knew it would take days to clean up our mess.  Now we know only minor pickup is necessary so we don’t have to hesitate before making plans.

As a teacher, I typically avoid using embarrassment as a motivator, but it is really powerful.  If it keeps my house cleaner, it works for me!  For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, check out Rocks in My Dryer.

Chilihead posted her “Blogging Story” and asked that others do the same.  Here’s my response to the questions:

How did you start blogging?
When we moved up from So Cal to NW WA we knew we’d need something to keep us in touch.  I don’t use the phone very often, and mass emails always have the feel of junk mail (though I love getting updates on you all!), and I love taking pictures and I love writing as well, so I decided to try this thing called blogging.  My husband says I’m addicted, but he’s wrong.  It’s not about me…it’s about…the readers…yeah…

Did you intend to be a blog w/a big following? If so, how did you go about it?

My only hope was that some friends and family would check it for picture updates and to hear about the crazy goings-on up here.  I really thought that the only people who’d come across our blog were those that we already knew in “real life.”  Then I started Works for me Wednesday  and enjoyed record-breaking (it’s not hard to pass 25) visits.  I love knowing that people actually read what I write, especially since it’s my time, and sometimes my soul, poured out only to float around in cyberspace. 
What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those goals?
Well, my first goal was to inform family and friends of the little things that otherwise get forgotten between visits, but since then I’ve enjoyed playing with words.  As an English teacher, blogging has been a way to practice the things I make my students do and to see what I can come out with (which is somehow much better than their “I did this during commercials while also ’studying’ with my boyfriend” or the always frustrating “oh, that was due today?”).   

Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?
I found that those I expected to check our blog weren’t, and those I maybe didn’t expect really appreciated it.  Then there’s the personal satisfaction in chronicaling the events that are happening in our lives.  I probably enjoy writing more than my readers enjoy reading.

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?
How much time it takes and how addicting it is!  I started by just writing my own blog.  Then I started checking up on a few friends from college.  It’s just been downhill from there – now Wednesday evenings are spent watching Lost and checking WFMW tips during commercials.  One post leads to another…but remember!  It’s all reading!  Reading is good for me…and I’m enjoying getting to know other women through their blogs. 

Do you make money with your blog?
Sounds nice, but with all the other things that I have going on, I’m sticking to free hosts like wordpress.  (That’s assuming that you’ve got to design and pay for your blog in order to make money off of the advertisers – I obviously know very little about this.)

Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?
My parents check it regularly, and there are a few friends that I suspect, but other than that I have no idea who reads this!  Whenever I ask people if they check our blog they usually give some excuse – they somehow didn’t know how to google Ogle3 or Ogle4 or other details that would bring us up!  Oh well – if they don’t care about us…

I also (sheepishly) keep a secret blog that I’ve only invited one person to read.  It’s my thoughts, bare and honest, and typically in poetic form (not of the “how do I love thee?  let me count the ways” sort).  As an overly-sensitive English teacher, I’d be devastated if it stunk to everyone but me.  If you’re desperately interested and promise not to rip it to shreds, email me and maybe I’ll send you the address.  I could use some gentle criticism.

What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger?
Just do it and It’s good for your soul. 

Sorry if I’m trailing off, here…I’m exhausted!  Goodnight!

To overexaggerate, I’ve had two near-death experiences in the past week.

First, at the staff end-of-the-year barbeque, I was really enjoying an interesting veggie salad when I tasted something that tasted familiar but in a long ago sort of way.  My mouth tingled way worse than when I eat Kiwi or over-ripe bananas.  I poked through the salad and sure enough, there were a few small chunks of avocado in it.  Woops.  I’ve done so well avoiding avocados for the past 20 years, only to slip up now.  For those of you without history, as a kid I ate (and loved) a whole avocado, but my lips didn’t like the avocado as much as I did – they protested by doubling (tripling?) in size.  Our neighbor the doctor suggested Benadryl and that I avoid avocados for the rest of my life because my throat would probably swell up the next time.  But here I am, a week after eating an bite of avocado, and still alive.  I typically carry around a caplet or two or Benadryl just in case, although when I check my purse after I realized what I’d eaten it was too much of a mess to locate the medicine .  Anyway, I guess now I know that I won’t ever have to go in for Botox injections – just eat a few chunks of avocado to achieve the perfect plumpness.

Second, Peyton and I went to City Park yesterday to have a picnic.  We met Steven there and talked to him for a few minutes until he went to find a teacher who was there.  As Peyton and I were heading toward the picnic area, I heard a woman yell “Lookout!  Your car is rolling!”  I looked up at the top of the hill (the hills that we had gone sledding on during our winter snowstorms) and another woman was desperately trying to catch her car that was rolling towards the bottom of the hill where a few people were walking or playing.  She quickly made the decision to quit trying to stop the car and instead she and a few others close to the car were frantically trying to get everyone out of the way.  People were yelling “look out!  move” and “get out of the way!” and running to make sure everyone was safe.  It was coming fast, and if a child had been in the way, we would have witnessed someone die.  There was a woman sitting on a picnic bench near the creek (right where Peyton had wanted us to sit) and the car was coming right at her.  On the way down the hill, the car first bounced off one tree (Boom), then kept traveling down the hill, but the woman didn’t move.  The car’s owner was desperately trying to get the woman to move before the car crushed her, but before it could it ran into another tree that stopped it (Boom).  The screaming and the two booms brought parents running from the other side of the park - they thought they heard two gunshots and were getting ready to call 911 on their cell phones.  No one was hurt (thank God!), no one was in the car, but the woman who owned the car was sobbing uncontrollably, and I don’t blame her.  If someone had been hurt, she would live an entirely different life than the one she lived when she came to the park to celebrate a little girl’s birthday.  Even though everyone is safe, it’s frightening to think of what could have happened.  It’s a park!  Kids are safe to run around!  But if Peyton had been running around and I sitting on the bench, would he still be alive?  All I can do is pray in the morning that God will protect him and thank God in the evening that I have him for another day, and as for tomorrow, I know that God’s plans for us are good, even though it sometimes means pain along the way.  According to Romans 8:28, “In ALL things God works for the Good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”  God is faithful - He has worked through the many losses that our family has had.  Even though it is so hard to say goodbye to our loved ones, God has always continued to do good work in those who are still stuck on earth.  So I will treasure each day I have with my son, and I will realize that whatever plans God has for us, they are the very best that we could hope for.

The grades are in.  The room is clean.  The desk is organized.  One more year done.

Boy am I glad we made up the snow days months ago.  Local public schools have two to three more weeks to go, but we’re out! 

I feel so…normal?  Last year at this point I was rushing around for graduation AND getting ready to drive three vehicles and a big rig (four adults, two teens and a toddler) one thousand, two hundred sixty miles.  Last year I had to make sure everything was in its proper place because I was leaving permanently.  This year, however…we aren’t even taking our vacation until the end of the summer.  I have two months to take care of the filing nightmare in my desk!  Maybe I could go in for a few minutes every morning and file 30 papers each day.  Then I’ll be done by the end of the summer.

Maybe it’s the weather that has thwarted the “school’s out for summer” spirit.  We had a beautiful April-May with almost-too-hot temperatures on a few of those days, but this week the weather dropped twenty degrees and the rain has been misting again.  Put the shorts back in the drawer for another year – it’s not summer yet!  Really, I’ve been wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt and a sweatshirt since Monday.  What happened to the sun?  It better come out soon – my parents and little brother will be up here a week from tomorrow!

Next goal: get the house clean for the visit.  I’ve got some curtains to sew, a bedroom to clean and organize, and the rest of the house could use some organizational help, too.

Right now, though, I would love to go straight to bed.