guess who's taking the blogging plunge...

Go here to find out! All I can I say is it's about dang time :).

greetings and salutations...

from the land of busy, busy, hot, miserably hot, people. Logan and I are attending his Reconciliation and First Communion prep classes all this week and next. We have Lynn's mom and dad in town lending us a hand with Molly and Caleb and the house this week and next week my parents will be in town to the same. The kids are really enjoying the idea of Grandparentpalooza 2008 and Lynn and I are enjoying all the extra hands around to help.

It has been approximately 4000 degrees every day this week. The utility bill came this morning...only $130 more this month than last! Our A/C units are working overtime with the temps holding in the nineties past 10pm. I feel sorry for them. We're watering everything constantly in an effort to keep things alive or at least marginally alive. Right now November can't get here any quicker.

In yay-for-me news: I've finally convinced Lynn we NEED, and I mean really, really, really need elfa in our lives. We are doing the kitchen pantry immediately...as in he's picking it all up tomorrow and we're installing it over the weekend. I C A N N O T W A I T ! ! ! When the 30% off sale rolls around in December we will tackle the closet under the stairs and the closet at the top of the stairs too. The pantry could not wait for the sale...I mean my sanity couldn't wait for the sale. I have never been more excited about organizational products in my life as I am right this very minute. I am positively giddy.

I'm hoping to get some sewing and enamelling done over the weekend in between the elfa installation and Logan's first Reconciliation. Also I'm getting the ATC swap itch again...must think of something good for a theme...like ice and snow and blue northerns. Be back in a few days!

i need...

these. Why? Well, it's not because you're going to find me slaving away in my garden any time soon. But in November, when it's not three degrees from boiling I will SO be sporting these to plant something. Or at least while I pretend to plant something. Yeah.

how to...

send a normally pretty laid back four, almost five, year old into hysterics: tell him there's a hole in his head. Allow me to explain...

This evening Caleb sidled up next to Molly and me in order to dole out "bed nite" hugs and kisses. As he was snuggled up with us I was scratching his head and noticed a bit of his hair at his cowlick was clumped together dreadlock style. Caleb yelped a little when I felt around the clump. I thought to myself, "fantastic. Where did he find gum?" I was fully prepared to start yelling at Logan for putting gum in his brother's hair when upon further inspection, Caleb had a bit of a hole in his head...a bloody, pencil eraser sized hole in his head. And instead of keeping my internal monologue internal, I blurted out, "Caleb! You have a hole in your head." Queue the hysterics. There was shrieking, attempted probing of the affected area, sobbing, just general freaking out about the newly discovered hole in his head.

At first he couldn't remember doing anything to cause a hole in his head. This lead to more hysterics...it must be aliens or monsters! In the meantime Molly is flitting about, chirping and chattering, trying to stack shit up in order to climb up onto the bathroom counter with her brother. Logan is looming outside the bathroom with a bit of that morbid curiosity seven year olds are known to have. All the while I'm trying to jog the patient's memory in an effort to figure out how this injury occurred. I assumed Logan hit his brother with something, but Logan claimed innocence without twitching and Caleb assured me that Logan hadn't bonked him on the head today. As I was scrubbing out the hole in Caleb's head the child finally remembered what he done to earn his cranial crater: as he tells it, he tripped over some of Molly's toys and hit his head on the kitchen wall. In my estimation he was probably monkeying around on furniture and hit his head on the kitchen wall molding at a mitre joint. It isn't a very deep wound, in fact I think he sort of scalped himself. I'll have to look at it again in the day light, but I don't think stitches will be in order. At least I HOPE stitches won't be needed. The drama!

* * * * *
In other news, the gremlin residing in the kids bathroom has reared his ugly head again.

After all the hole-in-the-head drama I stepped in to take care of some personal business only to notice a splooshy wet towel on the floor. I wrapped up business, flushed the toilet and large quantities of water started falling out of the bottom of the tank onto the floor. I went to turn off the water at the wall and the water would NOT turn off...almost off, but not completely off. SHIT!!! I took a look inside the tank and it appears the rubber gasket things have disintegrated, which is odd considering I replaced them a while back. For grins I checked the other two toilets whose rubber gasket things are surely as old as this house and neither appear to have any disintegration issues. Freaking toilet gremlin. Of all the things we as homeowners have to deal with, plumbing is my LEAST favorite. Plumbing, I hate you. Except when you work and I can flush what needs to be flushed and take a shower when I want to. But right now? Right now you are on my list.

yum...

Do you like letters, fonts, typography in general? Me too. So does this person and they have meeleeyons and meeleeyons of tasty typography related links. I could spend an entire day wandering the links from this site.

oh mah gah...

How freaking adorable is this? You should bookmark this artist's pages because her Halloween stuff is pretty danged sweet and should be coming up in the very near future and then after that she'll have Christmas stuff to knock your socks off too. Just do it. You'll thank me later, after you're done cursing me for finding something so easy to spend your money on :).

* * * * *

Jeebus, I just found this little man...you see? I told you. Wonderful!

no sewing just yet...

But we had a very busy day today here at the Lyons' Den nevertheless.



The boys wrapped up swimming lessons.



I planted our first two letter boxes! If you're curious to hear the tale of the precocious Ella and her lovely beau, Sam, then head on over here and have a look. I tucked the little doodads above into the boxes as first and second finders prizes. Apparently you can do that when you plant boxes.

whoa...

Last Thursday while Lynn headed to Houston for business the littles and I meandered our way down to New Braunfels for the weekend. Lynn met up with us on Friday and took Schlitterbahn duty. Momma doesn't do waterparks if she can help it...

We did a bit of letterboxing along the way, stopping in Hillsboro and Jonah before finally hitting New Braunfels.

We took Aunt Jana out for her first round of letterboxing on Friday before Lynn made it to town. Of the four boxes we went looking for we only found one. Two had clearly gone missing (when box owners were contacted they both mentioned they'd forgotten to mark listings as missing or retired...gee, thanks.) and the third had a fire ant infestation that we opted to avoid. We also went swimming a couple times down at the River House.



On the way home we stopped in Round Rock and Hillsboro again for a little more letterboxing. I have to say the letterboxing side trips make for a much nicer travel break than truck stops do...entirely less expensive too.



Now that we're back home again and the laundry is almost under control I have a stack of sewing projects to complete, a whole mess of enameling work to experiment with AND a couple home improvement projects I need to get estimates on too. I should be back in a couple days with a report on things other than letterboxing, I promise!

holiday weekend...

I hope everyone's July 4th weekend was a blast. We had a nice long weekend visiting with friends and, I'm sure this will come as no surprise, letterboxing. The letterboxing? It's like crack, I tell you. And here's proof: this morning at the breakfast table Logan wanted to know what we were doing today to which we replied, "nothing." In return Logan suggested we do something fun, something that doesn't "rot his brain like television or Wii," something outdoors, like maybe some letterboxing? [insert seven year old blonde kid with a giant wishful grin here]. You see? C R A C K.



We went out Friday morning and hunted for this series and found all six stamps. They were some seriously cool stamps too. After we found our letterboxes we had another picnic lunch. The boys are all about picnic lunches these days...I think it's part of the allure of letterboxing for them. Anyway, on the way home from our outing the boys and I got to talking about hitchhikers and planting our own boxes again. They were ready to draw pictures for me to carve right that minute. But we had plans with our neighbor friends for swimming and cooking out and fireworks so no carving was done on Friday.

Cut to Saturday morning when I woke up for no apparent reason at 6am. The night before Lynn had a wild hair and folded about four loads of laundry AND straightened the kitchen, so much to my surprise and delight, there was no busy work to be done. Everyone was sound asleep leaving me no excuse but to get out my carving stuff and get to playing. I started sketching little (one inch-ish) drawings to carve for a hitchhiker and ended up deciding on a fat little fairy who quickly turned into a tomato fairy named Ella and by the time I was finished with her her story was too involved and her book was too fancy to be JUST a hitchhiker...she was destined to become a full-blown traditional letterbox. We bought some containers and camouflage duct tape today and later this week we'll find a good spot to plant her. Plus, I hear she has a boyfriend named Sam...details to come.



Caleb woke up as I was sewing signatures together for Ella's logbook. I showed him Ella and told him to draw a small picture for me to carve for him and he did a great job. When Logan woke up, he did the same.





On Saturday we had plans to attend a BBQ hosted by one of Lynn's vendors down in Burleson. We made the most of the trek down there by stopping in for lunch at Joe T. Garcia's and hunting for two more letterboxes in the Oakwood Cemetery in Fort Worth. We found the letterboxes we were looking for and planted Caleb's hitchhiker too.

Our plans for vegging today worked out for the most part, although we did hit one letterbox on the way to find boxes and camouflage duct tape before church this evening. We are addicted. I admit it.

my preciouses...

Momma needed a pair of letterboxing shoes.

more letterboxing...

It's official, the kids and I are slightly obsessed. We went out again yesterday and found three more letterboxes. We're taking a break today so I can catch up on laundry and housekeeping. Plus, momma's lily white arms got sunburned so they need a break from the heat...the upside of the sunburn is my farmers tan will be evened out.



These are the boxes we hunted:

Camelot: Heraldry and the Enchanter Merlin

Queen of Grapes



All of yesterday's boxes were really well done. Directions were challenging for the kids, but very clear. The boxes were all either covered in camo duct tape (gotta get me some of that stuff for when we do a box) or spray painted camo style. All of the boxes were buried under good sized rocks. Two of the boxes even had leather hand bound log books. The boys were very impressed with those books..."we'll do ours like this, won't we mom." Of course we will.



Molly was very intrigued by the bark of this oak tree. She was also intrigued by every rock and beer cap she came across. She has turned into quite the little magpie in the last few days...if it's shiny and covered in dirt, she's going to pick it up and then she's going to stuff it into a bag or ask somebody to put it in her pocket.



They all played in the dirt during the "boring" parts. In case you're wondering, the boring parts are when I'm stamping the log book, putting everything back into their respective baggies or re-planting the letterbox.

Friends, I'm here to tell you, this is fun stuff. Even when it's miserably hot while we're doing it.

weekend honey-dos and some letterboxing...

We spent this past weekend checking things off our honey-do list.



I removed the old ceiling fan and installed this one all by myself. Lynn did take everything out of the box and left it scattered about on the carpet. He then promptly decided to take his nap. Molly saw her opportunity and leapt at it...trying to snatch little baggies of screws and such. This is the only reason I did the freaking installation myself...figuring I'd better just get the effer in the ceiling before Molly lost, ate or flushed all the bits I would need later.

We acid stained the patio. The color is nothing like the color the bottle purported to contain. Plus when the guys put the acid stain down they failed to wet the surface first so the finish is kind of streaky right now. We'll wet the surface and put down a darker color in a couple weeks to try to correct what we've got right now, which is this:



It isn't terrible, it's just not what I anticipated.

We also replaced the shower head in the master bathroom. I didn't take any pictures of it because the shiny new shower head is putting my soap scum water spotted shower stall to shame.



Yesterday the kids and I went out letterboxing again. This time we went hunting in Corinth, looking for this series. I don't know what the protocol is for divulging what the stamps look like so I haven't posted any public pics yet. If I find that it is okay to do I'll start posting the stamps as we find them. We were able to find the first of the three boxes without issue. There was even a hitchhiker stamp tucked inside that box. We took the hitchhiker and placed it in the next box we found. We did not find the second or third boxes in this series...I found the directions to be too vague given the area the boxes are supposed to be planted. By the time we were finished hunting in Corinth the kids were ready for a break and I had to run to the post office. After our Sonic break and errands we decided we should look for one more letterbox before we called it a day.



We found this letterbox and the stamp tucked inside it was a real winner with the boys. When we found this box it was sitting in plain sight and was not sealed properly. I don't know why people can't just leave things as they find them...be curious, but be respectful too. Luckily the placer had everything double bagged so only the box interior and bags were wet. We cleaned it up as best we could and then hid it under some leaves and branches.

Today the kids and I are going to have a picnic lunch and then we're going to hunt for a couple more letterboxes. I have to admit I am really digging this letterboxing business. The boys enjoy it, it costs next to nothing to do and we're outdoors in the fresh air. Plus, a lot of the time the drop spots are places we would never have thought to visit. For instance, I found directions to a letterbox located in Ponder last night with information on a restaurant we had never heard of before. It's twenty minutes from our house and world renowned and we had never heard of it! Needless to say, we're going this weekend and I'm wondering if we should make reservations for a baked potato...if you have to make reservations for it it has to be GOOD right? We'll see.