Memorial Day Weekend 2011

Paul and I traveled to Lewiston on Friday of Memorial Day.  We stopped at the top of the Lewiston Hill to take a picture since the weather was pretty nice, the view was pretty.  The forecast said it was going to be rainy/dark/thundershowers and it wasn't at all!  We had a delightful day!

The History of the hill... 

Canty's first known adventure to L-town
(technically she was there in Dec 2010..but we didn't know it!)

This is the WINDY switchbacks OLD Lewiston Hill
Paul's dad did the "I made the grade" bike ride in the 80's
We wanted to give him some pics.

a little better view....

More Switchbacks on the old grade,
 but you can see the two rivers that run through the valley!

More "Lewiston Grade" with a beautiful view of Clearwater River

 A great view of the Clearwater RIver and the Lewiston side of the valley

Clearwater River, you may be able to see the Home Depot orange sign!

Now the Action...this is the confluence of the Clearwater East /West running
and the Snake River, North / South running.  The Snake separates Idaho and Washington,.
Yup, that bridge crosses the state line!

We did a couple of things...in this order

#1 checked into the hotel...yeah, it felt weird to stay in a hotel in my hometown, but the pool was nice :)

#2  ShopKo!  Need I say more?  Although they haven't "brought" it that last few trips we've been there.  Paul always says, "it must be a memory childhood thing for you because I totally don't get the appeal...and I can't figure out what to compare it to that we have in Western Wa."

#3  Taco Time-  #1 TT in the nation baby!  I wanted so badly to get all my favorites but one meal is never enough, needless to say I'm craving it again!

#4 Lewiston ROSS-  Yeah, Paul has a thing for it...he says the "hicks in Idaho don't know a good thing"  We usually get totally hooked up on excellent goods when we visit this particular ROSS.  We didn't get a whole lot of goods but a little bit of love for the canty (aka baby girl Schultz).

#4  Hotel for a nap....zzzzzzz

#5  Drive-by ol' 1036 Ripon Avenue.  There was an identical year of daddy's truck sitting in the driveway!  It was just blue instead of green.  They'd only been there a month or so...the lawn had been cut but there was no flowers or yard improvements...like I kept imagining there would be.  I guess the house did sit vacant for over a year.

#6  Rosauers They have the ultimate in frosted shortbread cookies!  Yumm Yumm!  We went to get flowers from our family friend Catherine, but she wasn't working :(  We still bought the flowers.

#7 Met up with Darrin (my brother) and his two youngest Owen and Mallory.  My sister-in-law and their oldest stayed in Spokane because they were going to see Wicked with my sister and her 2 girls. 

#8  Took flowers to mom and dad's graves.  It was great to see how well kept the cemetary is.  We put the flowers up and chatted there for a few minutes.

The back of the headstone says:
"Families are Forever"
Our Children
Kristalyn  ~  Darrin  ~ Rochelle

Canty's first visit to Grammie and Pompa Rich's graves.

#9 HARRIS FIELD-- LCSC WARRIOR BASEBALL!  We got general admission tickets so we were out in left field....literally but we had a really good time.  Philly Cheesesteaks from Happy Day Corp. (owner of the best Taco Time in the world)  Elephant Ears and peanuts and seeds!

The TICKETS!

L-R Darrin, Mallory, Rochelle and Owen

Harris Field LCSC Lewiston, Idaho

 #10 POOL TIME!  We took the little folks to the pool (the big folks had fun too!)  I did realize I should probably invest in a maternity swimsuit about now however...mine is just a tad to "form fitting" if you will.

#11 Drive to Spokane to meet up with the rest of Darrin's family.

We were greeted in Spokane at the Rich home with a banner that said:

"Welcome to Baby World-- Congrats its a girl!"

L to R: Owen, Rochelle, Olivia, Ella, Paul, and Mallory



Ella and Olivia handcrafted the poster with all sorts of glitter and stamps etc.  It was fun.  Then we had our own private baby shower.  Holly (my sis-in-law) is totally a bargain shopper and she scored the baby girl a TON of clothes and some teenie weenie hot pink shoes!

We went to "the roadhouse" in Coeur d'Alene.  The Texas Roadhouse is a fantastically delicious BBQ place with reasonable prices and amazing food!  Unfortunately they have 0 restaurants in Washington.  I branched out and got a pork chop this time.  Yum!  (sorry no picture of the food)

We had church on Sunday and then went to the Centennial Trail to walk with the kids while they road bikes and rollerbladed.  The river was really high--high enough that trees were underwater!

It was a fun adventure!

Sorting and finding..and remembering!

So I am intimidated by my emotions.  It is a rollercoaster of highs and lows and I'm just trying to stay on the ride! 


This weekend as we are trying to meet our Wednesday evening deadline to have the "office" out of the "dining room"  I came across some fantastic memories.

When Paul and I were dating the singles ward went to the Skate Deck in Everett for an evening of fun.  I'm totally a rollerblader and Paul, well, let's just say he doesn't do well with wheels that aren't on bicycles.  (I'm convinced that he is not as bad as he states, but I will just believe him.)

I was excited and since I didn't know about Paul's hatred of said skating I was skating alone or with other friends while he watched on the sidelines.  It was still fun, but I kept insisting that he come and join me and he didn't want to.  No biggie.

Well, the evening went on and all of a sudden the roller-dj said over the loud speaker, "Rochelle R.  you have a special rose for you at the DJ booth, Rochelle R."  Now I was a bit shocked, but when I got up there I realized that Paul had decided to "dedicate" a flashing LED rose to me...how sweet!  How elementary!  Apparently he was reliving a childhood memory of when you would dedicate things to the girl you "liked" at the Skate Deck and they would always announce the first name and last initial.

It was a small gesture, but it will always be remembered.  I wish we had pictures from this evening, but alas we don't.  Here is a picture of the goodies he procurred me while I was busy working up a sweat on the skate floor!

I thought the background of the red wall made the flower look sophisticated! haha!

Yes those are disco finger lights and a flashing rose!

Mamma Bird

Yes, I'm nesting apparently...  Paul is convinced that this is the why I spent the majority of my Friday night and Saturday incessently cleaning the bathroom and kitchen.  I was exhausted...but darn it looked GREAT!

The goal is to keep it up but I haven't been feeling so great and we've been so busy (i know, i know no excuses)--so we don't have to worry about it quite as much.  It is a hard thing to fit 2 and a baby in a little over 1000 sq. ft. with little to no storage...but we are going to make it work.  It wouldn't be sooo bad if we hadn't inherted all the things from mom and dad's Lewiston house as well...but, why would we get rid of it though?  We want it and it will be helpful for us when we have a bigger place (thank you garage for storing things so nicely...sorry you won't get to visit with a car anytime soon!)

So here is the sad part.  I am experiencing some of those lovely pregnancy mood swings, and I feel like I'm totally rational in my thinking while it's happening...and then 5 minutes later I realize my emotions are real...but not necessarily rational.  Luckily Paul is understanding...

So after my super cleaning on Saturday of our entire kitchen (steamed and scrubbed from floor to ceiling) a glass bottle containing a LOAD of Dawn Dish soap fell off the counter and shattered spreading soap and glass EVERYWHERE!  I melted down in less than 10 seconds.  I had been cleaning for over 4 hours in the kitchen alone and honestly, I was so sore, tired and worn out the thought of trying to get probably 28 oz of dawn dish soap sprinkled with shards of glass was not in the cards for my afternoon plans.  I was so close to being done.  I could just rewind those last few seconds and undo the soap ordeal.

I wouldn't pose for a picture because I busted out in tears--uncontrollably probably because I was tired, but maybe because I just couldn't imagine cleaning it all up again (looking back at least it was soap and not bbq sauce, right?)  

It took like 7 or 8 moppings, dry, wet, steam dry wet steam to get all the soap residue up after the initial removal of the blue soap.  We made Kiki our dog the test pilot to determine if the floor was clean--if she acted like she was a new ice skater, skidding left and right, we needed to go back to cleaning again....

Eventually we were successful!  I guess the only good thing is that it is now Wednesday and the kitchen still looks great!

oh how I miss her...

I just ran across a note my mom had written me and tucked into a book she had returned after borrowing it from me several years ago... it just made me realize how much I miss her...everyday, but especially today when I need a hug from the one who has done it best my whole life...my mom.

Grass Spring Kaleidescope Cartwheel Esha Surprise!

So we have 2 samples of wall colors.
Can you guess which one I like better?

I kind of a have a vision---with my friend Jodi's help for the baby room.  I think we will be going with Exhibit A (the one on top) rather than Exhibit B (the pee/highlighter color).

I'm not big with "themes"  I like coordinating colors...but you won't find a character themed room in my house (watch I say that now...)

So I am thinking the color scheme will include Grass green & raspberry as the focal colors with some brown accents here and there.

Here are a couple of the links to fabrics that we like:

Lime Kaleidescope on this site (with various accent colors) comes in first place.
      Note:  we also like the pink gypsy paisley on the same site.

This Brad Spring Pink is nice too.

I'm a fan of swirls so this Cartwheel Spring Green it is nice.  However the Cartwheel Spring Pink is adorable as well.

There are too many to choose from because this Esha Raspberry Pink is delightful too!

So as you can see--we have our work cut out for us!  We bought the crib at Babies R' Us in "Espresso" colored wood, so that will give us a dark accent for sure.  I'm just feeling like this is becoming more and more real!  Yay for baby preparation!  I'm so excited!

Paul's Little Business

I sure am proud of my spouse.  He has been busily clearing out "things" that he recognizes he doesn't need.  He has been listing them on Ebay and making some money here and there...  He's been selling his shoes and comic book statues along with other collectibles.   I did find a contribution in my closet cleaning!  A Tignanello Purse unused with the tags on and everything ( I forgot I had it!)

Both of us have a tendency to be collectors.  We both have a bazillion shoes, extensive CD and music libraries, and we both had movie collections before we were married.  Paul's movie collection far surpassed mine, somewhere in the multiple hundreds.

Since we've been married every several months Paul will go through and whittle down more and more of his movie collection and then I will as well.  Each time we take a trip to Half Price Books and he brings in more money.  I want to post a picture of our newly dwindled down collection of movies.

NOTE:  The faith sign is significant.  It is my representation that I have faith that we can continue our purge.

I also have my daddy's kaleidoscope up there to keep me looking through "rose colored glasses" during our projects.

  We still have a large collection of music and shoes...but we'll get there eventually.  We really realize that we don't NEED to have all these things, but it is so hard to part with things you know aren't really hurting anything, just taking up space.

On my "personal" day this  last week I spent the majority of the day going through my closet.  Yes, I do have a lot of clothes.  I blame it on the fact that my mom and I loved to spend time together all growing up--and a lot of that time was spent shopping!  Anyway--being  "with child" and recognizing I wouldn't be able to wear some of these clothes for at least another year (season specific mind you) I was able to purge and get rid of 3 OVERSIZED garbage sacks FILLED with clothes...and purses...and bags.

So that project of closet cleaning left me with no time in the day to get crackin' on the baby's room.  Reorganizing and recognizing that our "office/ baby's room" will have to be very uniquely arranged since it's the only spare room AND it is a very small room at that.  We'd like to move sometime soon.  Although, we can't expect to sell our condo in this market so we are stuck in our 1000+ sq. ft. home.  That my friends is a story for another post though...