Boston and Back - the wonders of being a grandparent

Last Sunday I caught a midnight flight to Boston to meet our new grandbaby Sadie. Martin didn't think he would make it, but fortunately he was able to come out and spend a few days, too. I had such a great time playing with Andrew and rocking Sadie. It was also very special for me to be able to "help" a little bit in the house, cooking and tidying up for Nick and Jamie. I found myself reminiscing about those early years of motherhood when I'd cook and clean with a baby on my hip, one at my feet, and others playing somewhere. Always trying to juggle the various sleeping and eating schedules, not to mention the diaper changing. It all passed in a blur! It was so exhausting, but sweet nonetheless. I enjoyed reliving those memories.

It's hard to express exactly what makes being a "Nana" so special - Martin says it's about having all of the fun and none of the responsibilities. I suppose that is part of it, but not really. You don't have the day to day worries and stresses of being a parent, but you still have responsibilities and a role to play. But maybe part of it is that since you've been through it and come out the other side, you don't worry about quite so many things anymore. You recognize that after all you can do, it's still about what Life and the Lord have in store for that child. You know enough now to just enjoy the journey.

One of the things I really enjoy is watching Nick as a father. Of course he had a tremendous role model, so it doesn't surprise me that he is such a wonderful dad. I remember when I first became a mother and suddenly really comprehending how much my own parents must love me. It's a love you can't really understand until you experience it yourself. Watching Nick I can see that he is also growing in his appreciation of his own father. From a gospel perspective, becoming a parent really helps you appreciate the depth of Heavenly Father's love for us. The love a parent has for a child is total, unconditional, and eternal. Grandchildren are somehow an embodiment of that love returned to you, like a gift from your own child, to bring you joy and complete that circle of love.

Thank you Nick and Jamie for that gift and for allowing us to be there to share these early days with you. And thank you especially to our Heavenly Father for these rich blessings of family.

Introducing . . .

Sadie Hart Onken
Born April 13, 2010
8 pounds, 8 ounces
19 1/2 inches long

A working kitchen!

The kitchen is finished with just a few exceptions: still need the under cabinet lighting installed; there's a switch complex that needs a plate (but first needs to be tweaked a bit to get the plate to fit); and all the decorator panels that Kraftmaid and Home Depot are paying for to fix our end panel issues are not yet here/installed. But as of this afternoon, all the boxes are unpacked (I am giving three large boxes of "stuff" away and two large boxes are going into the trash) and I am moved into my new kitchen. I love the way it looks, and I will just have to adjust to some of the weird size issues and storage issues that I've discovered, (including things like I can't really put my pots and pans away with the dishwasher door OPEN and I have to lay my big stock pot on it's SIDE because no single place is big enough, and my drawers are too shallow for the baggie box to sit upright . . . well you get the idea.)

Sneak Peak

Well I can't report things are going SMOOTHLY - we've run into a few snags. Mainly the fact that all the end panels are unsatisfactory. While the cabinet fronts are gorgeous, the side/end panels, including the refrigerator panels and the back of the peninsula, are veneers that have virtually no grain and are slightly off from the color of the cabinet faces. Fortunately, the Home Depot designer has a solution for us (they will order new veneers), but it means adding some time to our project . I had my melt-down last night and this morning, but I'm feeling a little calmer today. Here's a sneak peak of the work so far (look closely and you can see the problem I described):

Plumbing

I neglected to post photos of the sink and faucet I selected. (I bought a garbage disposal, too, but I won't bore you with that.) The sink is Franke and the faucet is Grohe (mine will be in brushed nickel, not the chrome you see here.)

Today Martin is putting all the baffles on the new light cans, and I've been cleaning up dust and dirt as I am hopeful that the dirtiest of the work is finished and that whatever mess the cabinet installers make, they will clean up as well. My zen is slipping a bit. Tarrik Daou found a taker for my gas range (it's a really good Kitchenaid Superba) so I won't feel quite so much like white trash with a range sitting on my front porch. Still need to find a home for the dishwasher sitting out on the back patio. I think I have a trip to DI in my future.

Now that I'm cleaned up, I need to get started on my RS lesson for tomorrow. And do laundry!

Kitchen update

Just a quick photo update of the progress. And actually I guess I'm lucky that it is in fact progressing. Installation of the cabinets takes place on Monday and Tuesday. Still not certain when granite and tile work will begin - but hopefully not too long after the cabinets are put in. Stay tuned while I stay zen . . .

My life in a comic strip . . .

Finally, someone has described my doctoral program perfectly: (click on it to see the full strip, couldn't figure out how to make it smaller)

Work in progress

So we started the demolition of the kitchen a couple of weeks ago. Martin took all the wall cabinetry off and starting tearing out the soffit (that's the overhead dropped ceiling thingy). Things are getting kind of yucky with our office turned into an impromptu "kitchen" with our fridge and microwave and paper products there; the "dining room" filled with boxes; a gas range sitting on the front porch; and the rest of the house covered in a thin layer of dust. When we demolished the soffit we discovered a mare's nest of wires and weirdly placed pipes! Uh oh! But here is the good part of the story:

Monday night I went with two friends from work to have dinner at Wood Ranch in Northridge - really outside of my usual area. Suddenly, my nephew TJ shows up at the table! He tells me that his girlfriend Lisa recognized me from my photo in Facebook and told TJ "I think your aunt is here." As I am chatting with him and enjoying this rare treat, it strikes me: TJ does construction management!! Ah ha! Maybe he can advise us on the weird pipes and wires and what we need to do. I am so used to TJ living in Northern California that I completely forgot he was living and working nearby and knew about all things construction! He came by on Tuesday and before we knew it, he had agreed to help us. What a relief to have someone we know and trust on the job. So this weekend TJ spent the entire weekend working on the aforementioned wires and pipes and putting in light cans and, miracle of miracles, a light in my pantry (that I've needed for 20 years!) Meanwhile on Saturday Natalie and I finished demolishing tile counter tops and together with Martin we got the base cabinets out. She and I loaded cabinetry, sink, and plumbing "stuff" and hauled it to Oxnard to donate to ReStore, which is the building supply thrift store operated by Habitat for Humanity. It took two trips, but it saved us $80 worth of dump fees and it all goes to a good cause. The cabinets were worn but still very serviceable. Then we filled up the truck again with drywall and lumber and tile and general yucky stuff and I went on my first visit to the Calabasas landfill. Chelsea came over and helped Martin make space in the garage for the new cabinets which will be delivered this coming Tuesday the 9th. It was full day.

To chronicle this dust-filled adventure, I am trying to remember to take photos. Here are some before and "during" shots. I'll post more as time goes on.





I'm trying to stay very "Zen" about the whole thing and remember that it will all be worth it in the end.

When I should be doing homework . . .

We got notification that our cabinets will be delivered about March 9th, so suddenly we're in high gear to pick out our granite and to get started packing up the kitchen so we can do the demolition work. We're going to do it ourselves because the quote was astronomical; we will also be hiring our own drywall/sheetrock guy and our own electrician. We have a lot of work ahead of us (and a lot of mess). So Saturday we spent most of the day driving around looking at granite. I thought I knew what I wanted, but it's much harder when you are actually looking at stuff. I fell in love with this, called Greenpeace:

It was a lot more green than what I thought I wanted, but it was gorgeous. Until I found out it is $27 a square foot and the most expensive piece of granite in the place. Oh yeah, leave it to me.

After visits to a few other places I came back with these samples:



Okay, this is a lousy photo so it's hard to see the colors, but I will proceed. First, I found the really dark one, which is an extremely dark green called Ubatuba. I was pretty sure that was what I wanted. But Martin pointed out how dark the kitchen would be especially given how small it is. Good point.

Then I found the other two - the lightest one is a nice sage-y green called Typhoon, very pretty, but maybe too gray for me. I tend to like warmer colors. Then I found that medium green. It's a "golder" green, a nice medium tone, neither too light, nor too dark, called Katana Pearl. We thought we'd take them home and see how we felt about it. We'd been spending our time also thinking about the backsplash - tile? granite? if tile, then what kind? No clear picture. The salesmen showed us travertine, nice, but nothing really speaking to me. On our way out the door at the last place, I saw this display of slate:



It was perfect. I pulled out the sample of Katana Pearl, the middle toned green and knew these were my choices. I wish these photos did justice to the colors, but you'll just have to take my word for it - it's beautiful!

In other news: it was a long and stressful work week and I am behind in my school work. Last night we double-dated with Chelsea and Trenton for dinner and a movie. Sundays are busy days for Martin with his High Council calling and so I have little excuse for not getting my reading and writing done.

The weather has been gorgeous this past week, the hills are absolutely vivid in limes, emeralds, and hunter greens, and the sky is clear and blue. It is a great reminder of how breathtakingly beautiful this area of God's world is and I'm grateful to live here.

Time Flies

I realize it's been awhile since I've posted and now it seems pointless to try and play catch-up. But this much I will say: Christmas was terrific! We were fortunate that last minute changes allowed Skyler and Sarah to join us, and that meant a full house for the holidays. We had our usual big Christmas Eve dinner and the more intimate Christmas morning and when it was all done, we were tired but happy. New Year's Eve was a quiet evening with dinner and a movie and the first day of 2010 was spent taking Christmas down and just enjoying the day.

All too soon school started up again for me with a vengeance. I wish I could claim that the semesters are getting easier, but I find they are just more stress provoking. This semester should result in me producing my formal proposal for the capstone project which will consume the next year of my life. I have to take some type of elective over the summer, but the Fall and following Spring should be entirely devoted to the project. I try to remind myself there is light at the end of the tunnel. I would explain my proposed project to you, but it would probably bore any readers silly, so I won't. At least not at this post.

Martin and I decided that our Christmas gift to ourselves this year was to do a long wished for kitchen remodel. It's exciting but also anxiety producing, especially as the costs involved keep going up. It's always scary to do something like this without knowing for sure if you can trust the contractors, too. We've put money down on a new set of appliances - the GE Cafe line:



And the cabinets have been selected and kitchen designed by the Home Depot designer. We're keeping the same footprint of the kitchen since our floors were redone only about 4 years ago and since there really aren't a lot of options in our small kitchen anyway. The cabinets are from Kraft Maid. The wood is a rustic birch, color praline, and door design "Dillon":



Now that obviously isn't my kitchen, but it's a great photo of the cabinets. We won't be getting the five piece drawer faces though so my drawer style is a bit different that shown. I haven't picked out granite yet, but I'm thinking black with a lot of green in it or very, very dark green. Depends on what I can find. The backsplashes will be tiled and we will be adding under cabinet lights. I haven't quite pictured in my mind what kind of tile I want. I'm a "know it when I see it" kind of person anyway. The nice thing will be that the fridge we bought is cabinet depth and we will have end panels added to our kitchen so that the fridge will appear built in. We are also removing the soffit from the ceiling which will open up the room to make it feel a bit larger and allow for taller cabinets and some nice molding up around the top of the cabinets. Most of all, we are adding pull out shelves and things to help make the blind corner cabinets more accessible. I'm getting too old to keep having to get down on my knees and fish around in the cabinets to find things. Of course all of this is getting much pricier than we initially anticipated, especially when we saw the ridiculous estimate from the cabinet guys for some of the work. We're hoping to find someone who can do some of this work at a better rate.

Today I'm home from work babysitting for Andrew, which is such a pleasure. This will be the last trip out for Jamie and Andrew until the new baby is here. But they will be back out in May to spend the summer with us! Yeah! I hear Andrew stirring from his nap . . .

Andrew was sharing his cheese with Scooter: one for you and one for me, one for you and one for me:

Twas the week before Christmas . . .

And I have about 3/4ths of everything done and not sure when I'll get the rest . . .

The great news? Skyler and Sarah WILL be coming to spend Christmas with us, hooray! Sarah's parents and one of her brothers will also be with us. Invites are out to Piersons and Doolans for Christmas Eve but I don't have responses yet so I don't know how big (or small) our Christmas Eve dinner will be.

We are expecting S&S to show up either tomorrow or Monday at the latest. Then Nick should be flying in very late on Tuesday. I'm hoping we won't have to wait until Thursday to see him.

Today Martin and I had the great pleasure of babysitting Andrew. We took him to the mall today and had such a great time with him - he loved the little play area and the gelato we shared. I can never really get enough of him. I taught him "eskimo kisses" which he thought were highly amusing!

I'm trying to prepare my lesson for RS for tomorrow; it's hard to think about that when my mind is making lists of all the things I still need to do before Thursday. As much as I love my job and love working, I miss being a stay-at-home when this season rolls around. I miss hanging out in the house, baking, listening to carols, enjoying the tree. I think next year I will plan a few extra days off just to enjoy the season a bit more.

December already

How does it happen? December is upon us already, ho ho humbug.

Good news? I finished the last of my school work and while the official end of school isn't for another week, I personally am done, done, done. Group project turned in, class evaluations done - I'm on to bigger and better things until January.

Chelsea, Trenton, Natalie and one of her friends came over on Sunday and we got the tree up and the house decorated. I haven't even thought about Christmas shopping, or the Christmas letter. I guess it's time to get it started. I'm still very sad that Skyler and Sarah won't be here for Christmas. This is officially "our" year, and I'm concerned that we will never get Sarah on track with the rest of the family. I think there's a learning curve . . .

At least I can look forward to Jamie and Andrew getting out here next week and then Nick the week after that. And of course I can always count on Chelsea and Trenton for cheering me up :)

News: Martin has been called onto the High Council, and best of all, his responsibility is over the Young Single Adults' Ward which means both of us will get to visit our favorite ward on a regular basis!

Well, that's about all I have to say at the moment. I'm trying to change gears from school work to home-work. I have a quilt top I should work on and all that Christmas shopping to do. If I could, I would do all my shopping on line!

Black Friday

I tried to get Martin to blog, but no such luck. So I will have to tell this story.

On Thanksgiving day Martin announces that he is very interested in this "Black Friday" thing and wants to go see for himself what it is all about. He spends much of Thursday combing through the newspaper ads, drawing up shopping lists and noting stores and their opening times. I think he's kidding. He's not.

Friday morning he is out of bed and kissing me goodbye and all I know is it's dark outside. I have only one eye open. He's nuts. Before I know it, it's daylight and he's climbing back into bed and I think "oh, he decided not to go." I couldn't have been more wrong. Here's what he did and some video to prove it.

3:00 AM gets up, gets dressed and is out of the house by 3:30. First stop J.C. Penney's. He has a list: pots and pans sets for the business, on sale for $19.95, down from $59.95; a projector for the computer $60, down from $179; digital photo frames $9.99, down from something he doesn't remember. The projector appears to be sold out. He encounters a crazed female shopper who comes up where he is standing looking for the projector. He tells her they are sold out. She says that can't be and calls a manager to go look in the back. She also says that since she was first in the store, she has dibs on the first one the manager finds in the back. But she acknowledges that he was in line first for the projector, so if there is more than one, he gets second (interesting rationale, that!) Fortunately, the manager shows up with the last two projectors. Martin goes back to the pots and pans and witnesses a woman finding a ladder, climbing the ladder up to the top and reaching to dangerous heights in order to retrieve a $12.99 crockpot. What idiot left that ladder where crazed shoppers could get it? Martin says he thinks she would have climbed those shelves ladder or not. He only gets two of the kitchen sets because he simply can't carry any more.

Second stop: Walmart. It's 10 minutes until 5 in the morning and still dark out. Driving down Fallbrook Ave., he sees the giant glow in the distance - MECCA! What he finds there is incredible. You'll have to see the videos below. In the end, he doesn't even bother to go in. Especially since it turns out they are only letting people in 10 at a time with several minutes in between groups. It could take all day to get in!

Third stop: Best Buy. The crowds in the store are so thick, that like cattle in a herd, you simple must go whichever way the crowd is moving or risk being trampled. It's a mob scene. He gets a Wii and tries to get into line to pay. The line snakes to the back of the store. A security person takes pity on him and just puts him in line.

By 6:30 he's back home with a trunk full of stuff. He didn't make it to Kohl's because that wasn't opening until 9 AM.

In the end he reports that the anxiety is thick in the air and very contagious. I don't know if he'll be trying it again next year. As for me, I have never stepped into a store on the biggest shopping day of the year and never intend to.

Friday night we went with the Hansons and others from the old ward to see Cirque Du Soleil's Kooza! It was loads of fun. A good ending to Black Friday.

Cruising the High CEs

Kaiser decided to organize a cruise for one of the Nurse Practitioner Educational Symposia. I signed up for it along with a few of my friends of work. It was a cruise to Cabo San Lucas and it was for 5 days. Never having been on a cruise before, I was not at all sure what to expect. We left San Diego on Thursday, the 12th of November on Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas. Friday was a "sail" day and thus a day spent in classes, Saturday was spent at port in Mexico, then Sunday we sailed back, docking in San Diego Monday morning.



Our Stateroom - very small for 4 grown women, one bed came down out of the ceiling, and another (the one I slept on) was a fold out arm chair.



This display welcomed us in the Windjammer, where we had our lunch.



San Diego skyline as we set sail.





First dinner on board: Me, Velda, Li-Chym and Judy



Formal Night



Velda and I only "partook" of some of the entertainment one night - it was wild, and very funny, but I won't even try and explain it. A photo is worth a thousand words (and yes, those are passengers):



Rounding "Land's End" as we sail around the point into the Bay. Note our escort.



After a bit of shopping, Velda and I spent most of the day relaxing on the beach and being pestered by vendors.












Our attendant was a whiz at "towel folding" One night he left a swan, and one night, a towel monkey:



In the end I would say that the food was just okay - not bad, not memorable - and there was (unfortunately) too much of it. If you like hanging around a fancy hotel or hanging out in Vegas, this is your kind of vacation. I've had more luxury without being constantly nickle and dimed for stuff (paid $27 for "unlimited" soda pop, still cheaper than $2.25 plus tip per drink). Still I might consider a cruise again if it was to Alaska. And I did enjoy feeling the sway of the ship, and sitting in the solarium watching the ocean, seeing flying fish and a whale blow (from a distance.) And I enjoyed my massage in the spa! Mostly I enjoyed spending time with my friends. The CE classes were just okay, but it's hard to complain about CEs you earn while practically on vacation!