Why don't we just sloooowww down?

This blog is a mix between Calderwood family updates for friends/family and written rants when things get too frustrating and I have to vent somewhere (ie-Rod Stewart).

Today's rant is a dilemma that I go through more often that I would like...and that is frustration with how busy and encumbered I let my life get. With so many things vying for our time and so many of them seeming "important" we tend to overfill it and let the important things like spending quality time with the kids slip down the to-do list. Maybe it is my type-A personality and OCD that I developed in college and dental school trying to survive and compete.

Maybe this situation is like changing your oil in the car every 3000 miles. I just need to re-balance every couple of months and take away things that have built up. The following is a 2 minute story that explains this situation very well. I received it from my cousin a few years ago and think of it often...

Mexican Fisherman

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Done!...well almost.

When we moved into our home two years ago this week we had tons of projects. We have done most of them, but we have one problem. We have a tendency to get one mostly done, to the point of usability, then move on to the next. Most have eventually been completed, but a few remain (don't even ask about the floor in our master bath). Well, after a hard day Friday, Saturday and most of today we finished the play set and the gazebo with its floor with no time to spare before our BBQ started. It turned out great to have the kids spend most of the time outside with us parents hanging out in the kitchen. Here are some pix of the yard. The gazebo looks kind of crappy in this picture for some reason, I guess you'll have to drop by and see it in person!

Finally done with this beast. We thought that the gazebo and play set would eat up some of our precious yard and play area, but it didn't and our yard actually feels bigger. We have a cement porch off of the glass doors. The play set is on one side and the gazebo on the other. The main play area was the rest of the yard since the porch separated the two sides and made them out of bounds for our games. So all the area we previously did most of the playing is still left, but we have a nice shaded area and a playground for the kids.
We've posted this before, but it is the view of Rainier we have looking over the side of our house. If it blows, we'll have a front row seat!



Marisa's cousin Kevin is in dental school at Maryland where we went. He dropped by with his wife and son for a couple hours on Friday. It was fun to spend some time with them and let the boys play.

Pee can be exciting too!

After the cruise it has been hard to see things around the house as quite the same level of fun, excitement or general interest and therefore merit a blog post, but yesterday something exciting happened...Beckham has wanted to go potty like a big boy for a few weeks now. He just turned two a couple of months ago so we aren't getting our hopes up too high. When he asks to go on the potty we let him, but he usually just sits there, makes a "pssssss" noise a couple of times, gets a big grin on his face, jumps down and says something like, "I go peepee, I big boy" and claps or jumps. As you can imagine, after a few weeks of this we sigh and do it again to keep the positive attitude he has going.

Last night after making his pssssss noise he didn't get off. He was determined to make this more than just auditory. He kept waiting until he had something tangible, it started w/ a couple drops, then lots of excitement filled the small bathroom, Trevor came running to add his congratulations, Bex became more determined, kept trying, a few more drops, then BAM! Bex had his first real big boy, peeing on the potty experience. He was so proud and basked in all the praise that he was getting. We knew we had something to rival our vacation.

Cruise

We just got back from our cruise on Sunday morning around 11am. We left Friday morning w/ 14 of our friends and had a great time. It was hard to come back to reality after feeling like young, childless college students again. I now understand why some people love cruises so much, especially "freestyle" cruise like we did. We could do whatever, whenever. There were things like magic show, comedy show, rock climbing wall, bowling, dance room, lots of restaurants, etc, etc... We made the mistake of taking our big nice camera and not our smaller portable camera. Because of that we left the picture taking up to our friends and only pulled out our camera at the rock climbing wall. I will have to post more later.

We had great weather out on the ocean. We rented two minivans and drove up to Vancouver, Canada. From there we boarded and sailed N some to then come back to Seattle.



I think Marisa enjoyed a little too much getting help from the Dominican Republic guy w/ a small mowhawk as he put her harness on.


We are still trying to catch up on sleep. With the cruise being only two nights long we tried to fit in as much fun as we could. I guess we are getting too old to stay up dancing to techno until 3am and not suffer for a few days.

Reward is worth the sacrifice

Although to most of our friends, our situation is pretty normal. We got married in college, had our first child before graduate school, had another couple kids all before most people in the world even consider settling down to get married, let alone have any kids. We definitely didn't do it because we thought it would be the funnest way to spend our 20's. When people ask me why, its hard to explain it all in a minute or two. The best answer that I can quickly give is that there is a greater sacrifice, but the reward is worth it. On my drive home yesterday I heard a short 2 minute story about a father in grad school w/ his daughter. It explains perfectly in 2 minutes the how and why of families. Click here (or cut and past the link below) to go to the NPR page and listen.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10098234

Anniversary Time

Two anniversaries:

1-Marisa and I will have been married 8 years on the 29th this month. We made it through the seven year itch w/o a scratch. To celebrate we are going on a cruise this weekend with some friends. We are very excited, but as usual we have put too much on our plates and are now stressing trying to get it all done. Our neighbor and us decided on the same playset to buy for our back yards. It was a great bargain at Sam's Club. The problem is that it has taken a LONG time to put together. The instructions say 2 people for 36 hours. Needless to say, one person doing it takes longer. Marisa has been working on it when I am at work so we are getting close. We really want to finish it before we go so that the kids will be a little easier for Marisa's mother who will be taking care of the kids.

This is a pic of the playset when done, not its current condition. We still need to put the roof on the upper level, all of the swing/tunnel side. We changed it up a little. We put the ladder where the slide is in this picture and put the slide coming out of the left side of that front second level. The kids love it already. It will be nice to have them play outside more instead of messing up the house.

2-next month this blog will be 2 years old. I can't believe I have been doing it for that long. I guess I started it right after moving into our house. These past two years have gone by about 10x faster than any two years in dental school did. Sorry Cody, I don't want to rub it in, but I'm glad those years of full time dental student w/ kids and a part time work study job are behind me.

The end is near!

After a painstakingly difficult year and a half I finally got word that the landlord is going to start construction on my building!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The city has done everything possible to delay new construction. I got so tired of being asked every couple of days by someone, "when is your office going to open" that it was all I could do not to snap out of frustration from being asked so many times without being able to give an answer. I have been chomping at the bit waiting to start my practice. I have everything decided that I can to this point and am just waiting for the construction to start so that I can go on to the next phase. If everything were to go perfect, and it never does, I would be able to open my office in about 6-7 months. In reality there are always a few problems so it will probably happen 2-3 months after that, either way, I am excited to finally be moving on.

Computer Geek

I came out of the closet a couple of years ago...no, not that closet, but the computer geek closet. My favorite two companies are Google and Yahoo because they offer so many things for free that many people pay for. I used Google desktop before similar items ever existed in Mac OS10 or Vista. I love the my.yahoo.com page to customize what I see every time I get on the web. Anyway, I learned a new thing today that I thought I would pass on.

You can use google for a lot more than just a search engine. You can use it as a dictionary. If you want to know what the word cathartic meant you type the following "define: cathartic" and get a lits of definitions. The new function I learned about is using google as a unit measurement converter. For example, if you want to know how many kilograms are in 3 pounds you type the following, "3 pounds, in kilograms" and you get an answer. I use that a lot for weight converting w/ perscriptions. Go here for more freebies.

One Week

Things have been pretty crazy around our house. I turned into a true Red Neck this weekend. I spent all day Friday moving about 4 yards of top soil into our back yard. Then on Saturday I spend most of the day moving 49 yards of beauty bark with the scouts for the service project. I spent way too much time with my back to the sun even at this low altitude. That made my shirt and tie a lot of fun on Sunday.

Now that we have all the plants in, flowerbeds redesigned and top soil placed we are going to get a playset and gazeebo for the back yard. This is the gazeebo:We are excited to be finishing this up before summer sets in. We plan on playing alot in our yard this summer. Winters in Seattle can be dark and dreary, but summers and all the greenery make up for it easily. So break out the tiki lamps and come on over for a BBQ.