I am sure that it comes as no surprise that the whole blog idea was Matt’s idea. He started one back when we were building the house and updated it with pics of the construction progress and such. Then, after Nora was born he started this one with our own domain name as a way to share pics and details of the comings and goings of the Sekols, as well as a way of documenting various milestones for the kids. (Some people do that in a baby book, and some day I hope to go back and do that too – maybe I’ll have them filled in before the kids graduate!) Somewhere along the line, the task of writing the blog posts was passed on to me. I have since learned how to post the messages myself, but not the pictures so I send them to Matt to post. I assumed, mistakingly, that he would read these posts as I sent them to him, but have recently learned that is not the case! His point is that he is living it, so why would he need to read them. My point is that if I took the time to write it, then he should want to read it! Or, at the very least, proof read it before it is posted! *SIGH* (Yes Matthew, that is me sighing at you!)
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The young woman drove her red compact sedan as she had done for nearly every weekday for the past five years. The car zipped along wooded backroads in the morning hours and passed through various small towns. Coffee steam rose quietly through a small hole in her steel mug and quickly vanished in the breeze from her open sunroof.
She suddenly realized that she didn’t remember her trip so far or how she got here, as tends to happen when performing such a repetitive task. She shook her head briefly and flipped on the radio to hear Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees. The rolling hills of Pennsylvania undulated under the asphalt as her car lifted and sank.
The town approached and she saw typical construction, which narrowed her path to one lane. Her phone vibrated as she slowed down near the construction worker who waved for her to STOP. She watched as he wiped his nose with one hand. He seemed to have been sick every day this week. She lifted up the phone, saw it was her boss and threw the phone back in her purse in disgust. It’s only 7:30AM for God’s sake!
She re-checked her surroundings and found that the worker was now waving her through and the driver behind her was just about to be impatient. She looked to the SLOW warning sign, flipped on her left turn signal and went to pick up a coffee. As she drove on, the whole of reality began to fade.
The septic mound has been a giant source of frustration even before it was put it. (You can refer back to our house building posts if you have forgotten the drama of our lot only perking in one location causing us to have to build our house closer to the curb than the other houses in the development.) Once the septic mound was put in it continued to be an issue, because they left six PVC pipes sticking out of the ground on the top of the mound, which either had to be mowed around and then gone over with the push mower, or you could take your chances going over them with the riding mower and hope that they didn’t catch on the bottom of the mower and break off. (which requires digging out the pipe, sawing it off, and replacing the pipe – and usually requires a trip to the hardware as well for parts) This year I have taken on the task of mowing the lawn since Matt is allergic to all things outside and I am finally not pregnant for the first summer in four years. After telling Matthew that it is a waste of time to have to mow around those things and he should just cut them all off and put them down lower, only to have him agree with me but not get motivated to do so – I decided to take my chances and mow right over them. Fortunately for me, they didn’t get caught! That is… until today. Matt got the mower out of the shed and put the mower setting lower than usual. I had concerns when I started mowing cause I figured since the grass was so high, cutting it on this lower setting was going to make piles of grass which I would then have to go out and rake, and it did. So, when it came to the mowing the septic mound, I should have raised the mower to the setting that I knew would go over the PVC pipes… but I didn’t cause I was in a hurry to get the grass cut knowing that I’d have to go out and rake afterwards, and sure enough one of the pipes broke off. I walked to the house dreading having to tell my dear husband (knowing that he had told me not to mow over the septic mound, there wasn’t too much I could say other than, oops!) I’d like to say he handled the news well, but not so much. He calmed down quickly though (afterall, he has done it at least twice himself!) and when I was done mowing he went out to do a temporary fix, until he could get to the hardware store the next day. After talking to our neighbor about it, he found out that there really is no reason to have them exposed at all, so he is finally going to redo them all (again) and bury them, so this will no longer be an issue. One more thing for the chore list…
I am very blessed, I am very blesssed, I am very blessed – today I had to remind myself of that, repeatedly! Most days I LOVE being a stay at home mom and feel very fortunate that I have that option. Today was not one of those days! Today I would have jumped at the chance to be the one that got to get up and take a shower in peace, have a quiet drive to work, and then spend the day with other adults that can feed themselves, bathe themselves, dress themselves, etc. Instead, I spent the day with three very whiny and ornery children that had multiple tantrums throughout the day over the most ridiculous things. (and no, I am not exaggerating here – one of the tantrums was over Nora yelling at Anna when she was pretending to be an elephant, because she wasn’t making the elephant noises correctly. I’m not sure when Nora was assigned the task of official animal noise patrol, but she took this role very seriously.) Ah, bedtime couldn’t come soon enough! But alas, tomorrow is a new day… thankfully!
Matt’s friend Rhett recently cleaned out his dryer vent and very generously offered to help Matt clean out ours. Since this is not something that you think of all that often, actually not at all during the past five years that we’ve lived here, we decided to take him up on the offer. This morning Matt went out to locate our dryer vent before Rhett got here… and discovered that we don’t have one! What we had instead was a large pile of lint building up in our attic. Nice. My thought was, some people pay to have insulation blown into their attic and we’re getting this blown in for free! I was kidding of course, and Matt and Rhett were quick to point out that unfortunately dryer lint is very flammable so not something that you really want piling up in your attic. Ugh. So, Matt called Joe and Joe came to the rescue! After analyzing the situation the two of them made a trip to Lowes and a few hours later we now have a dryer vent. (Thanks Joe!)
Matt’s cousin, Jenna got married today in Maryland. They thoughtfully included the kiddos in the invitation, however after much thought and discussion we decided that it was just too much to either drive down the night before and stay in a hotel with the kids or get up super early in the morning and drive down with them before the wedding and then to expect them to sit through the wedding and reception. So, Matt drove down with his sister this morning while I stayed home with the kids. I was sad to have to miss it, but had to be realistic about how much we can expect from a 3 year old, 2 year old, and 1 year old. We wish you a lifetime of love and happiness Jenna and Matt!
While Matt was away today, the kids and I went to a picnic/birthday party. The kids had a great time playing in the trampoline, in the sprinklers, and even in the dreaded sand – it took two shampooings to get that green and purple sand out of their hair but they sure did have fun!
Matt bought me a laptop for my birthday this year. As much as I didn’t think I would really like a laptop, I now cannot imagine going back to a regular computer that you have to sit at a desk to use. I have a nice comfy spot on the end of the couch where I sit and check my e-mail, check facebook, look stuff up on the internet, etc. However, I also have a very nosey one year old that likes to come up in front of me and grab my laptop screen which sometimes bends it further back than it was meant to go… Until today it did not seem to do any real damage though. This afternoon while the kiddos were playing, I decided to check my e-mail and was chatting with Matt though g-mail. Then Anna needed me, so I went to close the laptop screen and set it down for a minute and when I closed it, I heard a crunch! Crunching is not a sound you ever want to hear from your laptop, or pretty much any electronic equipment for that matter. I opened it back up and told Matt I had to go because something very bad just happened with my laptop! He then called me to find out what was going on and I told him I had no idea what happened but my laptop made a crunching sound and it looked very bad, very, very bad. So, I unplugged it, shut it down, and waited for Matt to get home and acess the damage. Fortunately within a pretty short amount of time, Matt had my laptop miraculously fixed (determining that a screw probably popped out and then when I went to close it, it popped the screen out from the hinge causing the mysterious crunching sound) and he handled the entire situation rather calmly. After the laptop fiasco was resolved we had dinner and then my dear husband, who typically is not a spontaneous kinda guy asks who wants to go get ice cream! What kid is gonna pass up that kinda offer? So, off we went to the Ice Cream Lab, our local, very yummy ice cream shop.
For those of you that were once upon a time, regular followers of our blog… you may have noticed that it has been quite some time since the last update, about a year actually. Hmmm, what happened in the Sekol household about a year ago??? Oh yeah, we welcomed our third child into the world! Then the joys and trials of having a newborn again as well as two busy toddlers set in, and unfortunately the blog fell by the wayside. Our little bundle of joy is now a year old however and perhaps, maybe, possibly (although making no promises!) we’ll find time to keep our blog up to date once again. So, check back often and send us an e-mail if you notice us slacking again – we might need some motivation to fit this in during our limited free time. In the mean time, I’m going to attempt to fill in some of the blanks from the many adventures that the Sekol Family has had over the past year – I kept notes and took lots of pictures, just didn’t get them posted in blog form so we’ll see how that goes. On another somewhat interesting note… we recently combined our old blog that was hosted elsewhere with this site. It was kinda neat to go back and revisit the pics of when we were building house, feels like a lifetime ago. Happy Reading!
Matt has been trying to convince me that Liam needs to get a hair cut for a while now, and I kept putting it off because I knew that my baby would no longer look like a baby anymore. After that first hair cut they always look so much more like a kid and I just wasn’t ready for that! But, Liam definitely thinks he is a big kid now so I gave in and we took him for his first hair cut this evening. He sat there on daddy’s lap and didn’t fuss a bit and just as I had feared, he now looks like a little boy.
One year ago today, our family became complete. Liam Joseph Sekol was born into the world and into our family. He is the son I never knew I wanted (I was convinced that I was more of a “girl mom” than a “boy mom”) and now I could not imagine our lives without him. He truly is such a joy and such a happy little boy. We love you Liam, happy birthday!
