the Lenzes

Little did I know when I titled my last entry that I was predicting our future!  Most of you have probably seen the news about our crazy weather up here (if you haven’t been experiencing it yourselves!).  We were doing ok till about the 5th(?) day of rain.  We had just gotten back from having our pictures taken (while my mom was visiting) and we just so happened to come in through the garage because it was raining.  Our garage is attached to our basement and someone (I think Nathan) just so happened to walk into the our nice newly and freely carpeted basement office to find our basement window starting to spring leaks!  It looked like a fish tank full of water!  The window sits just above our books shelf where 80% of our books and paperwork are stored.  I’m so glad mom was there because it gave us an extra couple hands to start moving EVERYthing out of there as fast as we could (including our computer).  Upon moving out our stuff, we recognized that the carpet in the far corner was full of water.  When you walked on it, it was like squeezing out a full sponge.  And the rain kept coming!  Nathan decided to go dig a trench to relieve the water sitting against our house and, well…the rest we’ll show you in pictures…

Here’s the trench all the way out to the hill in our front yard (yes, we do live on a hill and we were still flooded).

Here’s the back of the trench.  Nathan hadn’t finish digging yet when this shot was taken, so imagine it a couple more feet long.

Here’s Nathan cleaning out the gutters in the front (wet t-shirt contest - woohoo! ).  We thought the gutters were broken but found out they were really just clogged with those darned little Birch tree seed pod caterpillar thingys.  Anyhow, that’s how the carpet in the basement got wet, because there was so much water sitting in that corner of the house where the gutter was just overflowing.  It started seeping through the foundation. (But we did get the carpet dried and all is good now).

Here I am after bailing out water from the window wells.

And finally, in the midst of the monsoon, after things were settled and drying out, I decided to harvest our rhubarb and here’s the biggest leaf from the plant!  It’s huge - almost tropical looking with hydrangea bush blossoms sprinkled on top.  (Oh yea, and another nice look at our all original 60’s-70’s floor! How could  you miss it!)

All in all, things are settled down after the rains - thanks to my mom being there to help us and also thanks to us having a shop-vac!  I really think that saved our carpet.  We would just go down and vacuum every couple of hours to keep pulling as much water out as we could.  Since then, Nathan has re-dug and replaced the window wells.  We do still have a trench in our yard that will be repaired when we bring in dirt to re-grade so that the yard slopes away from our house.  Before that can happen, we have to fix the gutter in the back yard which is really broken and not just clogged.  Nathan is working on that with the help of his dad who is coming to visit on Sunday.  Also in process, re-furbishing the windows.  Re-furbishing is probably an exaggeration.  We can’t pour the money into the windows that we’d like, but Nathan is scrapping them, and re-priming, painting and re-glazing the outside and re-staining and polyurethaneing the inside.  The southern windows in particular have really been damaged.  The original stain and poly. has mostly flaked off and there’s some dry rot.  We’re doing what we can but don’t find it wise to pour $1,000’s into a house when the market is not so hot right now.  If it looks like we’ll be here more long term, we could reconsider some more intense repair to the windows.  For now, we’re just trying to keep them from gaining more damage.

  This little phrase explains the numerous pictures that I’m about to post, after several posts without photos.  It also explains our last night at the Farm this Memorial Weekend.  Our area got hit with several severe storms bumper-to-bumper and the 3 of us (with other refugees) landed on the floor in the Farm house dining room to sleep.  We were persuaded to move there because just before dark we had noticed 3 large dead trees that all leaned in the direction of our tent.  Any strong winds could have easy knocked those over.  We’ll have to take those out before we camp out there again next year.

Over all, Eli’s first camping experience went well.  He didn’t get all the sleep he needed, but really, does anyone get enough sleep when they are camping?

Without further adieu…(in chronological order)

Here, Eli is preparing for his first night of camping.  He’s wearing a snow hat, gloves, socks, a fleece sleeper and the snow bunting.  I was afraid he’d be a little warm but when I went to bed later that night, I was glad I’d put all of that on him.  It was chilly.

Here’s all the Lenzes in our tie-dye shirts - to celebrate the 10th annual and last (for several years?) Pig Roast.  The previous generation is handing down the responsibilities to our generation so we haven’t decided how often we’ll host the Pig Roast from here on out.  It’s a lot of work.  We will, however, continue to meet and camp and play over the Memorial holiday.

Here are 4 generations: Eli, Nathan, Eli’s Grandpa Al & Eli’s GREAT!-grandma Lois.  Can you tell they’re related?

Cousin Jeff and Eli - chillin’.

Eli with his 2nd tree.  This one is a Maple and we planted it in the yard near the barn several yards away from another mature Maple tree.  This one the only remaining of 2 (maybe there were more before I was around) large and shady Maple trees that called that space home.  It seemed fitting to start up another Maple tree for everyone to enjoy in that area.  Also, last years tree was too far away from the water faucet and our friend Barb was so-so kind to haul buckets of water out to it all summer last year!  We are so grateful and in no way wanted to cause so much trouble again with this years tree.  We are learning as we go and probably next year will get a smaller tree that won’t need so much water.

Aerial shot, through the leaves.  Can you tell how tired Eli is? (Also, just realizing that we have a smudge on our camera lens).

Dad planting the tree with help from Preston.

Eli, watching on with Sue.  mid-yawn.  Sue and Preston are family friends that we always enjoy seeing over the Memorial Weekend.  Sue says she is now ready for grandchildren.

Family shot with the tree.  We are all pretty exhausted.  None of us had showers and Nathan was still wearing the clothes he had on from the previous day and the ones he slept in all night on the dining room floor.

Last but not least, these are two really great shots of Eli hanging out with Gramma Vickie!  They both look like they’re having a great time!

Thanks to aunt Gay for providing half of these photos!  We’ll probably receive more in the next week and post them here.

By the way, we really missed The French People this weekend. :)  Hope you both are doing well and want you to know that you were missed.  Having you at the Pig Roast has become a tradition for us. :)  We send our love.

I’ve seen a couple in our basement laundry room this spring.  Just minutes ago, I found one in the laundry hamper as I was sorting the clothes.  It was as big as my pinky!  I shrieked like a girl…several times, actually…desperately wishing Nathan were here, as I watched it crawl further into the rest of the clothes in the hamper.  Ick!  It got away after I dramatically dumped the whole hamper over and all the clothes into the floor.  But I won’t rest knowing it got away and it’s still lurking in my basement.  I was too freaked to get close enough to even try to kill it.

I’m not usually this girly when it comes to bugs.  I don’t like them crawling on me, but when I see an ant in our kitchen (happening too frequently this spring) I don’t scream and do the pee-pee dance like I do with centipedes.  I wondered why I’m so disgusted by them.  Then it occurred to me…in essence, they are spider-snakes.  It’s hard to get much worse than that.  Maybe a dinasour-spider-snake would be worse or maybe a shark-spider-snake.  I’m just assuming those have never been discovered and glad that God didn’t have a bad day when he was creating the animals to think of such things.  (Back to centipedes) Now granted, I would much-much rather find a centipede in my laundry basket than a snake!  Shudder.  I can’t even mentally go there with out almost panicking.  No offense Leigh Ann.  I hate snakes….and I think there is some healthy fear there since a lot of snakes will bite and kill you.  But, I would also much rather find a spider in my laundry basket than a centipede (although I still make Nathan kill those too when he’s home).  Most the time spiders stay put but centipedes are pretty quick with their hundred tiny little creepy legs.  They could be half-way up my arm before I would even realize it!  Aaaggh-got the creepy-crawlies again!

Have a happy Memorial Weekend everyone!  Hope none of you have to share it with any spider-snakes!

  It helped that I called for an appointment at exactly 8 am sharp and had the sicky-poo voice compounding the morning frog voice.  We got in!  The nurse said, “where do you live?”.  “Just a few blocks away.” I responded.  She said, “can you come now?”…”Yes!  We’re coming!”

You know, Eli didn’t have a fever last night when he went down…but had one at 3 am.  But of course this morning at the doc’s office - the ear scanner found no temp.  Plus, his mucus-y eye matting was super minimal and not as shocking this morning.  So, probably, he’s getting better on his own and we just payed for a maybe unnecessary doctor visit.  Oh well.  That’s what the $ in the Health Savings Account is for and we can’t use it for anything else.  Plus, I feel better just having seen someone who’s a professional.  I’ve only had a year of parenting experience and I just can’t make a good judgment call on my baby’s health.   As it’s Friday, I really just wanted to be prepared for the weekend and $ seems well spent for peace of mind.

Our doctor is in the Complimentary medicine clinic.  He does Homeopathic medicine as well as regular medicine.  He gave us OTC prescriptions for homeopathic stuff for Eli as well as anti-biotic prescription for him.  Nathan and I don’t necessarily “believe in” homeopathic medicine.  It sounds just like sugar-placebo pills.  Of course, placebo psych. won’t work on Eli.  But if we can try it and we don’t have to give him anti-biotics - especially with his allergy discoveries as of late, it’s great to have another option to try.  We’ll see.

Nathan and I got an inhaler b/c the doc thinks Nathan’s 4 week cough sounds allergy-ish.  We’re both trying it out just to see.  Also, he gave us herbal OTC prescriptions and anti-biotics.    Having the anti-biotic prescriptions just in case is a huge relief.  We’re on the mend…just in time for what seems will be another rainy weekend.

Happy Mother’s Day!

We ARE sick.  Eli’s had a fever before and a runny nose, etc.  But this beats it!  Nathan’s faired the best of us 3 and I’m afraid Eli’s gotten the brunt.  E and I came down with fevers on Sunday afternoon on our way home from the farm.  I knew something was definitely not right when he actually fell asleep in the car - twice!  Once home we found he had an almost 103 degree fever!  We also valiantly searched for a Tylenol that did not contain Red #40 in it.  We ended up with Grape flavor that contains Blue something and Red #33.  I was still a little un-easy and was relieved that upon Nathan’s second or third run to Walgreens, he was able to locate the Dye-free Tylenol.  No Dye for us, thank you very much!

We’re faring well.  My fevers gone - has been for a couple days.  (Thank goodness cause I can take care of Eli much better!)  But E’s still got a low grade.    In the mornings, we all seem to have some eye-matted-ness but Eli really looks bad in the morning.  :(  Poor kid.  He’s hoarse today - though not coughing as much as he was.  He’s also got some energy spurts.  He’s been sleeping for 3-3.5 hrs. for his morning naps and I’m glad that he’s able to rest.  I’m about 99% sure this is a sinus infection, but just learned yesterday that sinus infections can be viruses and aren’t just bacterial.  So, from a doctor’s mouth, anti-biotics won’t necessarily help it.  It was a huge relief to find that out.  I’m not so anxious in waiting this out a bit.  I don’t want to give Eli anti-biotics unless it’s really necessary.

So, in the meantime, we’ve got the humidifiers on full blast and lots of NyQuil for the parents.   Despite our coughs, we have successfully been able to sleep in the same bed for the last 2 nights in a row.  A feat we’d not been able to accomplish for at least a week prior.  There is some light at the end of the tunnel.   All you healthy people out there, enjoy some of that sunshine for us sickly ones!

(P.S.  This illness occurred just after Eli had a moderate allergic reaction to eggs on the previous Friday evening.  He looked like a bull dog - all swollen and puffy. :(  Anyhow, we learned that most folks grow out of their egg allergy by age 5.  So, good news!  About 3 doses later, we also realized the Baby Benadryl we were giving him had, you guessed it!, Red #40!  Alright already, people!  Enough with the red stuff!  FYI, there is Dye-Free Baby Benadryl, Bubble Gum flavor for those who were wondering.)

to my basement and to the rest of the neighborhood.  I’m in the process of transplanting my starts into slightly larger pots.  Still a few weeks before they can go into the ground.

This was the greeting I received when our friends Eric and Rebekah arrived for the party. That was the only “Earth Day” greeting we’d received all day! I’m so glad that Eli was born on Earth day since it’s always been one of my favorite holidays. We still plan to continue the tree planting tradition that we started for Eli’s birthday last year. However, we haven’t picked out a tree yet and we will probably plant the tree at the farm again during Memorial weekend. Eli should be able to help us a little more this time. We look forward to it.

As for usual birthday traditions, we had all of those yesterday. I stayed up till Midnight the night before making cupcakes for playgroup yesterday morning. After remembering to bring my camera and battery, I arrived and found out I forgot my memory card. So, I do have pictures but they are on my friend Deb’s camera. I’ll be sure to post those later (since the cupcakes took up about 5 hrs. of my life that I can never get back - they will be exhibited!). Unsolicited advice: Cupcakes are quite trendy right now. They look all cute and small and harmless. But be warned! It’s the unending project! You bake the cupcakes and once those are done a couple hrs. into the process, you still have to make the frosting and food color it and put it in the decorating bag and draw on the cupcakes, etc., etc.! It’s no small task. Cake decorating, I’m reminded everytime I embark on it, is not my creative outlet of choice.

At playgroup, we found out that Eli is allergic to the food coloring or more specifically, the dye that is in the food coloring. I’m glad that I was at playgroup when he decided to become allergic to something. I wouldn’t have even known what to think had caused the hives. The other more experienced mom’s knew thank goodness! He only attacked a few cupcakes, not ingesting any of it. But then scratched his head - a lot! It started turning red with little tiny bumps on it. We put hydrocortisone cream on it and gave him Benadryl and it cleared up before we even left playgroup. Whew.

After playgroup, Eli and I took some birthday celebration naps in order to be functioning for the big event later that evening. So here’s the run-down of that big event.

1 st time to use our front deck as a dining area/gathering place

1st time that Eli ever had pizza. He loved it! (just like his momma)

1st time that Eli ever had cake and icecream. He also loved that! (just like his momma). And we used the Birthday plate that Auntie Miracle made for him - AND we didn’t break it! woohoo!

1st time to play with is new water table. Though, he’d already played with a different water table on our trip to Berkeley. He did love his own water table just as well.

1st time opening birthday presents. (From grandma Vickie and grandpa Al - the Little Tikes Water Table, from grandma Kate and grandpa Chuck, the Parent’s Ready, Set, Go cars, from Rebekah and Eric, a free babysitting gift certificated redeemable till 2025!, from mom and dad the Little Tikes Toddler Swing and an infant pool and a sketch pad with crayons).

So, here are the pictures you’ve all been waiting for. We do have a 45 minute video (maybe longer?) that we have been trying to download to the computer. It crashed over night last night so we’ll try again tonight. The video technology has been a blessing and a curse. Easy to record but hard to transfer to computer to share with everyone.

Enjoy the photos! Wish you all could have been here to enjoy this milestone with us!

Eli’s Birthday PJ’s, read: “10,000 lbs [big elephant] 200 lbs. [baby elephant] Elephants are very big! (even the small ones!)” These PJ’s were one of the many consignment shop deals I picked up in Berkeley!

Eli in his “Birthday no. 1″ onesie. A handmade Momma Original, complete with asterisk’s on the bum. To make I used rubber stamps, a sponge brush and acrylic craft paint. I’ll let you know if it stays put after a machine wash.

The Birthday Tree

First things, first

…this is serious business!

We took a spin on the swing this morning. We were only out there for 5 minutes and Eli almost fell asleep. All of us are tuckered out from so much celebrating!

Today, we are resting.

Lots of projects to start and finish, cupcakes to make, presents to wrap, last minute errands to run - all in anticipation of Eli’s BIG #1 birthday (tomorrow)!  It’s true, I’m afraid that I am the most excited of the 3 of us.  Eli just doesn’t know what is about to hit him! :)  We’re not planning anything big but the first taste of icecream/cake alone should win him over.

We are so proud of him!  In the last couple weeks, he’s gone from baby to toddler.  He’s not walking yet but he’s pulling up on everything and anything that’s taller than himself.  He’s finally taken a couple crawls on all fours (hands and knees, off of his belly).  I’m fading out the pumping (whoohooo! 1 yr. of pumping is done!) and he’s working on a sippy cup and taking some formula and cows milk.  No allergies that we have seen.  He’s feeding himself cheerios and peas and giggling a lot.  There just aren’t many “baby-like” things about him anymore.  It’s sad but we are excited for each new day that brings new adventures and more opportunities to get to know the personality that is growing inside our little guy.

Stay tuned for birthday party exclusive footage!

playing peek-a-boo!

a warm day, some water and some dirt = lots of muddy fun!

Eli and I did our best to bring the California sun back to the mid-west and as far as we can tell, we succeeded (you’re welcome)!  We had a bunch of daffodils blooming in our side yard to welcome us home on Sunday and the weather has been fabulously sunny and 60’s.  Tomorrow, I heard 70!  Can it be true?!!  We’ve been on a walk today and yesterday!  It’s been great!

Here are some of my favorite Berkeley photos that I promised.  We got some great ones!  If you want access to view the whole album, email me and I’ll send it to you.

  Here’s the view from the back seat.

Enjoying the water table…gotta get ones of these.  Eli loved this toy and is completely soaking wet if you can’t tell from the photo. 

All 4 of us here at Dillon Beach - exploring tide pools and hoping the tide doesn’t come in too soon!

Starfish huddle and a “goo-ball”. 

“goo-ball” turned to sea anemone.  (This is what they look like under water).

Beach pals!

Ok, please recognize that I paired down the photo selection by A LOT!  So, gramma’s and others, there are a lot more pictures of Eli (and starfish!) in the album so email me if you wanna see ‘em.

The draft inducer arrived yesterday and now my furnace is creating and distributing heat for me.  I now appreciate the ability flip a switch and turn a little knob to warm myself.   The alternative would be to cut wood, then chop it, then let it dry for a few years.  Then carry it into the house and start a fire in a wood stove (that I don’t have).  Then figure out a way to distribute the heat. It sounds romantic, but when a modern furnace is functioning, it just works and you don’t even have to think about it.  That is good technology in my opinion.