New Year's Eve Mustaches

My sister Melissa has started a new tradition in her family of making a Thanksgiving turkey pinata. I thought it would be a fun idea to buy some mustaches to put into said pinata turkey. Sadly, I forgot to bring them to the festivities. No problem, I thought, we'll bring them to our Christmas festivities at my parents. Again, they didn't make it out of my house. Thankfully, we always to NYE at our house so we finally got around to using them. 

This is Matthew and I trying to look as glamorous as possible. At one point in the evening I got asked to help out a friend. I told her I would love to help so long as she was prepared to wear a mustache and be photographed. What a good sport she is.

After New Years, we still had a lot of mustaches left over. The kids ended up wearing them to school that first week back after break and quickly became mini celebrities. I was impressed that they were able to go all day with them on and I was grateful their teachers allowed their tomfoolery for a few days until they got bored of them on their own.

New Desks

When I decided to pick up more regular contracting hours it also came with the desire to have a desk of my own and not just any desk, but matching desks to make the room a little more cohesive. I toyed around with a bunch of options but eventually landed on the idea to take a big piece of wood and give half of it to Matthew. Matthew was using two at the time of this decision, one for his work computer and one for his personal desktop. With the new plan, he would pare down to one and pass on the old ones to the kids.

 I found a beautiful slab of unfinished Redwood out in Monmouth, took my dad out to investigate and ended up buying it. My dad offered to finish my piece of it for me as my Christmas present. I assumed he could do both, but Matthew had other plans. He's been watching a lot of woodworking youtube videos and was excited to do something more interesting with his.

He eventually ended on a river table. He watched more videos, did all the research, sanded the wood until it was absolutely beautiful, and built a frame to contain all the epoxy. His plan was to do all the work in our garage, but then thanks to our leaky pipe and the need to redo Dude's floors, we opted to move the production inside.    

This project, was definitely not without heartache for Matthew, but the results are so beautiful, especially for a first attempt. I am so proud of all the hard work he put into that table.

My desk area

Matthew's desk area

And here's the closest thing I can get to a presentable-enough-to-photograph office space. Thanks Dad for giving me such a beautiful space to start this new adventure!!

What We Looked Like on Christmas

 

It's amazing how, as a child, Christmas on Sunday is the worst, and how, as an adult, Christmas on Sunday is the best way to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ.

I loved waking up and opening presents, eating a yummy, filling breakfast, and then getting cleaned up to go to church, before coming home and enjoying more time as a family. Church seemed the perfect way to bring our Christmas celebrations back to what should be our central focus - the birth of our Savior. We all looked so nice that I wanted to get a shot of us and our tree, even if you can only see the heads of our babes and the barest inkling of our tree.

This is still what we looked like this Christmas day.

Merry Christmas world.

A Leaky Pipe

This was a first for these homeowners. Friday night as I was tucking Dude into bed, I noticed he had a wet spot next to his curtains. I immediately wrote it off to a wayward cup of water. The next day I was at my parent's house to see my sister Megan and her children who were paying their Christmas wishes.

At some point during the visit, I got a call from Matthew asking if I had spilled something in Dude's room, when I told him I hadn't he decided to pull up the carpet to investigate. At that, I rushed home to "help". 

Cutting a hole in our floorboard may not have been our wisest homeowner choice, but when no one knows what they are doing, and there may be the risk of more serious unknown damage, I guess you do crazy things. The top of the floor board was sopping wet but underneath, including the insulation was dry. Matthew, manfully, climbed down into the crawl space under our house, found his way through the maze to Dude's room to further assess the situation and still came up with no plausible causes for the wet spot.

After that we ripped up more carpet and realized that the wet spot was emanating from the corner of Dude's room. At that point we decided that it was most likely a burst pipe from our most recent deep freeze that had thawed out on Friday. Being Christmas Eve, we opted not to turn off the water to our whole house for Christmas, but turned on all the fans we have in our house and prayed that the situation didn't get worse over the weekend.

Monday morning, we called a plumber who quickly came out, confirmed our suspicion and easily fixed our problem. We are a bit poorer financially for the double mistake of not putting insulators on our outdoor faucets and tearing a hole in our carpet/floor-board, but we are so much wiser for our experience. I don't know if Matthew considers it a fair trade, but I am so grateful for home-owner's insurance, I am grateful for a sweet girl who shared her room with her brother over Christmas break and a son who didn't complain for being exiled from his bedroom while his room got fixed. I am grateful we were able to get the pipe and floor fixed and new carpet installed before Dude and Luca went back to school after Christmas break, and I'm grateful that because of our costly mistake we then had a warm space for Matthew to work on his desk. More on that later.

Merry Christmas Eve from the Marlers!!

Gingerbread Houses 2022

Mine, Dude's and Luca's houses

 Every year my sister or a member of her family makes gingerbread houses for us to assemble and decorate during the week before Christmas. It is a beloved tradition for my kids. This year we had to relocate to my mom's house since my sister was sick with a bad cold. Fun was still had by all and Luca was very complimentary of anything I decided to put on my house.

And then of course we all enjoyed eating off our houses for the next week.

Thank you Melissa and family for championing this year after year.

Sibling Love

These kids love each other. I am constantly grateful that if God was only going to give me two children, that they love each other as well as they do. Sure they still get in fights, but more often than not, they play well, and love being together.

Case in point, wrestling in my bed. Not a single good non-blurry picture among them, but I wanted to share them anyway just to share the joy they find in playing together.

Childhood joy documented.

Robotics

 

Ever since Dude was in first grade, I've been dreaming of him getting to 4th grade when he could do Battle of the Books and Robotics. I thought if we could just get him to 4th grade he could find his other nerd people to make school more fun.

Sadly, in 4th grade, the school didn't get around to doing either extra-curricular activity. This year, the librarian worked with me to get Battle of the Books together (though only Luca opted to do it), and the 5th grade teachers started Robotics back up. Dude hasn't been as interested in Robotics as I would like, coding doesn't hold lots of interest for him, but I counseled him that it will be more fun than he thinks it will be and to give it a try.

He missed the initial cutoff day because he didn't have enough notice to turn in his application, but I asked around with the 5th grade teachers and they were happy to let him turn it in late. Part of the application is an essay detailing why you want to do Robotics. Above is Dude's. I'm pretty sure it doesn't meet the letter of the rules, but I don't know how a 5th grade teacher couldn't be entertained by it's spirit.

If you can't read it, it says:

Why I want to join robotics club.

1. All my peers are egging me to join.
2. I love building with legos and always dream of them coming to life.
3. I have a lot of empty time to fill.
4. It sounds like a lot of fun.
5. It might show up on my college resume.
6. I like to fiddle with electrical devices.

Followed by a moving robot saying, "Whirr! Please let me join!"

He got in.

Dude's First Chess Tournament

 Well, not an official chess tournament since they didn't choose a winner, but the closest he's over come to a chess tournament. In the course of a couple of hours he played 6 games against 6 different kids roughly in his skill set. He won 5 and lost 1 though he didn't seem too broken up about the loss.

He mentioned on the drive home that he was glad they ended an hour early since his brain was starting to feel a little mushy and he didn't want to have to think about chess for the rest of the day.

I am really grateful for the organization that put this morning together. Such a great opportunity for my sweet nerdy kid.

Thank You Old Shirt

 

In true childhood fashion, my children have taken to using my t-shirts as their favored PJs. I gave this particular one to Dude years ago and he has LOVED it ever since. It has so many holes, some stitched and restitched several times over. It is beyond soft from so many wears and washings and was just about Dude's favorite thing to wear. It was also banned from every leaving the house. No going outside in it, no taking it to Grandma's house should she invite him and his sister to spend the night. It did. not. leave. the. house.

I surely thought that this shirt, like the mounds of silicon bracelets he is collecting around his ankle, would accompany him into his teenage years. But then my opportunity came and I grabbed on tight. He came to me one evening and asked if I had any other t-shirts he could have for his bedtime attire. "Sure," I told him, "As long as you get rid of the yucky orange one first." I was actually surprised at how readily he agreed. He picked out one from my t-shirt drawer and we took some pictures to commemorate the passing of such a beloved piece of clothing.

Thank you beloved orange t-shirt for your devoted years of service to my child and me.