Among the places that gather clutter in our house, the entry area would be towards the top of the list. Sunday, I decided it was time to change all this, so I gave it thorough cleaning (I think we put away 12 pair of shoes) and prepped it for painting. I was toying with painting it red, to tie in my vintage theater chairs on the opposite wall, but I decided to go with the same green from the dining room. (It occurs to me that I’ve never posted photos. I’m terrible, but someday, I promise.) I decided this because I’m lazy and had a whole gallon of green paint and no red paint.

After the painting was done (so fast!) I added a couple more organizational baskets to the wall and took away the small end table that gathered so much crap. I’m pretty happy with the result and all I wish for you, my dear readers, was that I was not so lazy to walk the block to Tangle to pick up my D50 to take a decent photo.

Monday
Spaghetti

Tuesday
Asian Chicken Salad

Wednesday
Brats and Sauerkraut

Thursday
Jim’s playing at the battle of the bands again (round 3 out of 4), not sure if we’ll get to eat together. If I’m home to eat it’ll be Bulgur Salad

Friday
Grilled Veggie Pizzas

Saturday
date night!

Sunday
Fajitas

Finally, I had the camera and Jim together at one time. I’ve got photos for you!

Here is my too big eyelet cardigan. It’s cute, I’ll still wear it, but I feel like it makes me look fat.

Details are going on ravelry, anyone else get an invite yet?

Also, another kids dress, this time to fit Eden (size 4). I did my modifications from before and also added a folded picot edge. This time I used Cascade Sierra. It’s pretty cute and she’ll be able to wear it for YEARS. A friend of mine who is pretty tiny tried it on and it fit her like a cute top! (Doesn’t Eden look like a little string bean?)

And from quite awhile ago, some knee socks. I knit these from the Socks that Rock that I scored at Stitches West a couple years ago. I did them toe up, two at a time in a k3, p1 rib. I incorporated increases up the back as needed.

And I think that’s all that I’ve knit that I haven’t posted photos of… I think… hmmm.

“Mommy, Eden hit me.”

“Go tell Daddy.”

“No, I don’t wike to tell Daddy when me and Eden hit each other, he just says “good”.

Monday
Veggie Burgers

Tuesday
Tamales (homemade by ME!)

Wednesday
Bringing to the 4th of July picnic:
7-up Salad
Homemade ice cream

Jim is playing the national anthem on his guitar for the city’s fireworks display later that night.

Thursday
grilled tuna

Friday
Chicken Taco Salad

(Written in response to a friend’s blog post)

There have been a multitude of times in my life that I have felt like I was completely alone. Always those times came when I was experiencing a large swell of emotions. But looking back I realize that I wasn’t alone, but pushing away the people who would be there for me. That I didn’t give the people who do love me enough credit to love and care for me for who I was, wether I was something I thought they would be capable of loving or not.

Just a couple days ago, after hearing that a friend of mine had gone through an emotional and difficult evening alone, I realized that most often we go through difficult things alone because we don’t ask for help. This was revolutionary to me. Those times when I was convinced that no one really loved me, that no one was really there, could have been avoided if I would have rolled over and talked to my husband or picked up the phone and called a trusted friend. Maybe I was afraid of being transparent? But I know that a little transparency would have gone a long way in healing my brokenness. I couldn’t believe I never saw this.

Another thing I know: believing I was alone was just what the deceiver wanted me to believe, giving me a small taste of hell – and I was willing to swallow it.

I know that sometimes emotions do not follow reality – actually, USUALLY emotions do not follow reality. Learning to push my emotions away and cling to what is actually real has been a difficult lesson for me to learn, one that I continue to learn over and over. I’m still trying to figure out why God made us such emotional beings…

ME: “You and me, we’ve both really got it together.”

MY WONDERFUL ALL KNOWING PERFECT HUSBAND (as he calls himself): “I’m really not that organized, but compared to most of the people I know, I’m a freakin day planner and they’re just crumpled up stickies on the floor board. I’m a PDA and they are a wall calendar from two years back that never got changed after February.”

So, after our second trip to Whole Foods, we loaded everything up in the van (borrowed from my FIL) and prepared to hit the road. I had my door partially open, rinsing out and filling up water bottles. I noticed that the people parked next to me were walking up to get into their vehicle, so I shut my door and turned to talk to Jim, waiting for them to leave so I could resume. That’s when the woman knocked on my window, pointed to me and then pointed to this big gash in the side of her vehicle. So I got out of the car to talk to her, dumping everything I had in my lap onto the floor of the van.

She started accusing me of making the big scrape on her vehicle, and I told her that I hadn’t even had my door open all the way. At that point Jim joined us on the other side of the van and she continued to accuse. “It’s obvious that you scraped my car with your door.” So I looked at our door, no signs of a scrape. We slowly opened up the door to meet her car, the door hit after the scrape. Jim tells her that it doesn’t line up, “Well it’s obvious to me that you did this.” she says. “My wife would have known if she hit your door that hard.” he tells her. I asked, “Where’s the black paint on my door?” (her car was black). “I don’t know, but it’s obvious that you did this.”

At that point she wasn’t willing to listen to reason. Jim tells her, “I don’t mean to be a jerk, but I disagree that we did this.” And she tells him, “Well if you had a conscience…” Jim leaned over and told me that we were going to leave. So I hopped in the car and he started to make his way back over to his side. She told him that he was being a bad example for his kids and that he had no conscience. That was when Jim got really mad, “Don’t call me a liar just because I don’t agree with you.” And he got in the car and we left.

I looked back at her car as we started to drive away, and I noticed that her daughter was rubbing the scrape. What I had previously thought to have been the white primer showing through underneath, was actually white transfer from whatever had actually caused the damage in the first place. The girl wiped it off. So, um yeah, lady, we were driving a gold van, not only was there no way our door could have caused the scrape because of the placement, but also, there was no way we could have deposited white paint on your car.

Jim drove away seething, I was unaffected. Probably because I was still high on my elation from spending the last 30 minutes in Whole Foods. :)

We got home yesterday from a trip over the mountains to visit Jim’s middle sister. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good visit with her and we really enjoyed ourselves. She recently moved into a cute little town house, with a public pool across the street and a starbucks around the corner. (Let’s just say that the number of trips we made to said starbucks in the span of two days is so embarrassing that I refuse to post it.)

As we all know (probably more than we want to at this point!), I’ve been on my quest to find Sigg water bottles for the whole family (of course not finding the kid sizes here) and that brought us to Whole Foods. I’ve been told of the miracle that is Whole Foods, but being that good shopping refuses to come to this side of Colorado, I’ve never been. Until Monday, that is. Do you think I could just move in? I seriously told Jim that we should consider moving just to get to shop there.

The produce was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, the meat! and the seafood! The rows and rows of Silk Milk for only $1.99! the bulk section! and the deli! I’m pretty sure I was having an orgasm. The trash bins are separated for recycling, the coffee was freshly roasted, they hesitated to hand out plastic bags…. I was trying to figure out how to do all the grocery shopping for the week and get it back home unspoiled.

On our way out of town, we stopped again to stock up on snacks and make our Sigg investments (holy crap those bottles are expensive!). We had yummy eggs and potatoes and breakfast burritos from the deli, and freshly roasted coffee from the coffee bar. Just seeing all those rows and rows of organic food made me giddy. I’m going to start preparing my plea to Whole Foods to come to our town…. right now I think.

(We’ll talk about what happened in the parking lot next time…)

(Honor, while we were driving by Best Buy.)

“A couple months ago, this used to be the toy store with real toys. But now it’s daddy’s toy store and it’s called Best Buy.”

“Did you just say ‘a couple months ago’?”