Saturday, February 8, 2014

Winter Olympics: Eugene

Event Number One: Maintaining a blog while working full time, retaining sanity, and raising three children. Clearly I am not winning the gold for this one.

Event Two: Remembering that the beach is only 1.5 hours from our door and escaping the Willamette Valley fog when it threatens our mental health. I can handle the endless rain. But a week of fog? Now that's taking things too far in my book, Mother Nature. You lose this round.






Up next: Latte Art. We bought ourselves an espresso machine for Christmas this year, which is actually probably more of an investment because I am pretty sure Brent has been singlehandedly financing the growth of Dutch Bros. Time to sell your stocks, people. Brent wins at the latte art, for sure. (I think he secretly doesn't want me touching the machine, since he is always desperately offering to make me drinks. Or maybe he just wants to be nice? Hard to tell. For now, he's handing me lattes so I have no complaints.)


And of course there's been lots and lots of basketball, thanks to the new hoop. And when you lower it to 8 feet, everyone is a winner!





Brent has the infuriating habit of making things look easy. He's super coordinated and has really good balance and so you'd expect him to be a natural at yoga. I've been keeping at it, and not to get all zen on you or anything, but I am pretty sure that yoga has changed my life. I will probably never be a swan, but I am definitely starting to become a flamingo, so that's progress. Only now that my Groupon has expired, I might need to take out a second mortgage on my house in order to afford the classes. So that means I've been practicing quite a bit at home and Brent has joined me from time to time.

It turns out that the one thing Brent can't do is yoga. He is totally a penguin. Gold medal for me!

Event Number Six: Dog Sled Racing. Um, wtf Mother Nature? Just 'cause we beat you at the week of fog doesn't mean you need to get vengeful. 

Disclaimer: this event is probably not safe for kids. Or dogs.








I'm not sure this next "event" should be considered for our Eugene Olympics, but what the hell. I'm gonna go ahead and call Dressing Clementine an Olympic sport. She has this strange habit of dragging clothes around and insisting that you layer her outfit with sweaters, mismatched shoes, pajamas, etc. I think she looks like a homeless person and I suggested that we buy her a toy shopping cart for Christmas, but the toy stroller was cheaper so I guess she's not a future bag lady after all.

 Brent: "Are you getting pictures of this? Are you blogging this?"


Now this should NOT be considered a sport, but when you have three kids, Find the Baby is a pretty high stakes game. These days Clementine can be found brushing her teeth on the stool in the bathroom. Brent had the brilliant idea of giving her a toothbrush and it's yielded hours of entertainment. Why we ever buy toys for our kids is beyond me.


And finally, the event that strikes fear into the hearts of all parents of Lego owning kids. I like to call it "Mom, can you find this piece for me?" or, in other words, FML. Ef-Em-El!

This event requires hours of time spent on your knees pawing through Rubbermaid tubs of Legos, countless episodes of optimism, "Here it is! I found it!" followed by eye rolls and wailing such as, "That's grey, Mom. I need chaaaaarcoal!"

I think I take the bronze here. I'll let Brent have the gold.

Team Ross. We do pretty well. Now, where can we get some of those lovely USA sweaters?

5 comments:

  1. Sweet post, Cassadie! What I found most strange about the dog sled photo is not that you did it (it's there to be done!), but that your dog was so enthusiastic about it!!! Any dogs we ever had as kids would have just turned around, and come back to lick us, wanting to be part of the family! Thanks for the comment on my blog -always much appreciated! Have a good winter week! Ali

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  2. Ohhh my goodness, SUCH cuties! I have no idea how you are able to get any blogging done while raising children (I can hardly do it, and I have no kids and no full-time job), so kudos to you for doing it at all. Also, such beautiful photos! I love the mix of snow and ocean.

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  3. I'd give you a Gold for blogging and working full-time, definitely :) Love the lattes too and as for Clementine that outfit is adorable and reminds me of trying to dress my eldest when she was a toddler - she had some fairly random and very stubborn ideas about what went together and later at school she once went in sparkly gold leg warmers! Helen

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  4. I'll give you a gold for that blogging and working gig too. I'm much worse at it :-)
    As of last Christmas, I can also relate to this LEGO induced fear (did I ever mention that I live in the country that invented the stuff?) In our house, though, conversation still goes like this: Kid: "Mama, can you build this for me?" Me: (muttering quietly) "so that you can destroy it again? You bet." And then the hunt begins (usually twin 2 discovers that I am trying to build his brother's ambulance and therefore claims his to be rebuilt as well.) I've hidden the two LEGO boxes that we own. Remind me to first find them again, when they can build and find stuff by themselves.
    All the best, E.

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  5. Dear Cassadie, Thank you so much for the comment on my blog overnight. I've never been called bad ass before, and I couldn't be happier than to start the day with that in mind!! And yes, for sure if we ever get the chance, we're definitely meeting for a long laughing coffee/dog sled/beach walk/ hike whatever wherever :-). Wishing you all good things, Ali

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