news flash-- i sent my revised dissertation draft to my adviser a week and a half ago!! i'm not really a woot woot person, but if ever there was a time for such a phrase, it would be now. so, woot woot!

the best news is that my adviser seems to be supportive of me graduating this semester. my tentative defense date is monday, april 11th. the light at the end of the tunnel is ever brighter. just keeping my fingers crossed that most of her commentary on this draft will be copy-editing, not "change your theoretical framework." the best sign will be that she likes it enough to send onto the rest of my committee. once they get it, it shouldn't be more than another short round or two of revisions before the defense (hopefully). i. can't. wait.

it's been so incredibly nice to actually have guilt-free downtime now. i used downtime before, but i always felt guilty when i was not using said downtime for diss. work. now mike and i can actually co-parent on the weekends instead of tag team parent. we took the boys to monkey joe's the other day, a big indoor inflatable play area. and just played with them. together. not one of us at a time while the other "got stuff done," but we got to hang out as a family. it was incredibly novel. i look forward to many more weekends like that post may graduation.

the house is coming along. mike goes out nearly daily now, and it is turning out to be a good thing. he's caught a lot of mistakes ("um, why is there no light in this room?" and "we paid for all solid core doors, so why do these all echo when i knock on them?"). our builder has been responsive to problems and has been fixing them quickly. luckily he seems intent on getting us into the house in february, albeit the very end of feb. still, i believe closing will occur on march 4th. it will be hard for me to close on the house and move in when things aren't "done" yet. until spring is fully here, with no risk of a re-freeze, they won't paint the house. our front porch cement is not yet poured yet, nor are the front pillars up. the back deck won't be put on till the ground is thawed enough to pour the cement for the back pillars. and of course we will not get any sod or landscaping until much further into spring, so we'll have a muddy mess to deal with in front and back until the water washes away enough to lay sod. so there will be a lot still "undone" when we move in, which is not my strong suit. but i will breathe a lot and remember that it is a ZILLION times better than the apartment.

our friends, the hoffmans, came to play the other day. all the way from their apartment above us down to our apartment below :) it sure would be easier to coordinate play dates if there was a hallway adjoining our places. then we could walk over barefoot. instead, we have to bundle up all kids in shoes and coats just to walk outside through 20 feet of snow, into the next door. anyway, 5 kids on one couch is a lot.


gavin appears to be dealing with the stress of apartment living by taking up sporadic acts of yoga:



jack asked me the other day why he can't wear nail polish. i never said he couldn't. hmm. so that was our saturday morning activity:



it was great fun for mike when jack ran by him, crying, "benji's trying to hit me with a sword while my nails are drying!" we like to keep it interesting here at the case haub casa.

jack has been cracking me up lately. 4 is such a fun age. i really enjoy him these days :) here are some funny things he has said to me lately:

"umm, gavin smells good after a nap. smell him mom, he smells really good."

while jack was playing wii, i was sitting on the couch making baby talk with gav. i called him the cutest baby in the world. without looking away from the t.v. screen jack said,
"but he bites, mom. the cutest baby in the world bites."

this one is deeper. in the van on the way home from preschool, without warning, jack said

"maybe when you die, you go back into your mommy's tummy and then you are born and then you turn 1, then 2, then 3, then 4 (all the way up to 20, which is as high as he counts)....and then it starts all over again?"

wow, my little spiritualist has much to teach on life and death.

dreaming of a time soon to come

today is one of my last (oh please oh please) big dissertation-writing days. to kick it off i'm doing all my internet stuff now so that i'm not tempted later :) putting out a blog post was on my list. so here it is.

i have lots on my mind right now. i'm 9 pgs in on my diss. conclusion, and expect it to be about 15 total. i have 3 days this week to do it, and then plan to send it onto my adviser. i will keep all toes and fingers crossed that she thinks it good enough to send onto the rest of my committee. to graduate in may, i have to have her sign and submit an application for graduation by feb. 25th, so time is of the essence on this draft. here's hoping!! and let me say, when i graduate in may, i plan to have a G I A N T graduation/house-warming party at the new place in early summer. i'm thinking catering. big cake. good food. lots of alcohol. and you are all invited.

i've allowed myself to start thinking lately of all the things i'd like to do once i have the dissertation monkey off my back. contrary to what most people do, which is graduate and start applying for jobs, i plan to keep being a full-time parent for another year, at least. so this means that when i have downtime, i could potentially use it as guilt-free downtime for ME, instead of dissertation time. i have a whole list of things i'd like to do but have been saying i can't take time for until i graduate. i think i need to start a running list, so that i can get to it once i have the "extra" time :)

1) digitize my recipes. i have a huge stack of recipes cards that are rubber-banded, which i use for everything. while there is a certain charm to recipe cards that have been stained and spilled on, and are written in the hand-writing of loved ones who offered them to us, i've always thought it would be more efficient to have them all typed up and categorized for easy searching. mike hates looking for a recipe. i know the color of each card, whose handwriting it is, etc., so i find things easy. but he finds it frustrating. in the new place, we want to have a laptop and get rid of the desktop. the laptop will be in the kitchen at a little hutch we've designed to be our central "desk" space. so it will be right there where i need it for cooking purposes. i can even search allrecipes.com and other sites for recipe variations, and maybe even dowload digital cards right into my existing collection. have any of you ever used or seen a recipe filing software that you like? i was going to use word, but am interested in software designed for this purpose.

2) scan in all the old photos i want to keep and add it to my digital photo collection. this requires purchasing a new scanner since our's broke. or using one at the library.

3) finally get back to a regular work-out schedule at farrell's.

4) READ. i have countless books sitting on my shelf (okay, in boxes) that i really and truly want to read. parenting books, fiction, ideas for new hobbies, self-help...tons of them. but i feel guilty reading anything unrelated to puerto rico or dissertation writing. once this thing is done, i want to read again.

5) start planning a trip for our 10-yr anniversary. i have a huge list of places. california, fiji, hawaii, vermont, back to NYC, ireland... this year we will celebrate our 9th anniversary (hopefully 2 weeks after GRADUATION), so by next year, i think gavin will be old enough for me to feel okay about leaving for a 5-7 day vacation sans kids. california is probably #1 on the list.

6) start planning some getaway trips with the kids. we have shyed away from this since traveling with kids is hard. but we have a lot of friends who have come to us and it's time to return the favor. i'd like to do a weekend trip to minnesota, and see my great aunt and uncle, as well as friends in rochester (who will have their fourth baby in may). i have a good friend in oklahoma who has been urging us to come for a visit to her new home with a pool. and alicia, you know we want to come again to kansas city if you're willing to deal with us carting the kiddos along (maybe asia can come that same week? :) ha!) and there will be lots of little fun trips to iowa city to see uncle adam and all our friends there.

7) buy my first standing mixer and indulge in my love of cooking again.

8) consider working on my black thumb by trying out composting again and planting a garden at the new place. this time i think we'll go with a raised bed, since the crappy west des moines soil at our last house did not allow anything to grow.

9) take a pottery class.

10) get back into volunteering at the animal shelter again; maybe take jack if he's old enough.

11) really, really work on being PRESENT as a family. right now mike and i are constantly tag-teaming, and rarely spending time doing things together with the kids. on weekends, if he isn't working, i am. we take turns with the kids rather than go at it together. once the diss. is done, i'd like to focus more on weekends as time when we both spend time with the kids, as a whole family. i'd like to concentrate less on getting things done and more on learning to just "be."

i think a list of 11 is a good place to start. i'll keep it at 11 in honor of the year 2011. it gives me hope and inspiration to have things to look forward to once the diss is out of the way.

other things i'm looking forward to.... living in a house again! i can't wait to have a garage again, so that i can skip the car-warming and scraping portion of my morning. i can't wait to have an upstairs where i can lay gavin down for naps, and have the relief of knowing the louder brothers won't easily wake him up if they are down a floor or two. i miss having a garbage disposal. i miss being able to host playdates. i visited the house yesterday for the first time in awhile. we took mike's dad over to walk through it for the first time. since our garage doors were special ordered, they put up funny temporary garage doors to keep the heat in while they mud drywall-- they are multi-colored :) i took some photos to document the newest steps:

1-14-2011


hey, drywall! it's actually starting to look like a house!




dude, this guy on stilts blew my mind. i watched him walk up the basement steps while wearing them. my tummy was jumping with vertigo the whole time.




temporary furnace to keep things warm so drywall mudding will dry, and drywall can be painted (the geothermal won't go in till trim is done, since apparently all that sawing and dust is hard on its system). we figured out while standing here that our current apartment fits into this basement, with room to spare. yikes.


this propane heater is warming the garage temporarily. i think we should keep it after we move in--imagine the winter smores!


life at the apartment is still chugging along. we find new ways to keep ourselves busy every day:


jack decided to practice his amateur photography skills (gavin got a haircut recently that is on the WAY too short side of things. he looks like a 6-month-old again, before his hair grew in!):





then benj gave it a try:

the rot has set in

apartment rot, that is. i'm officially DONE with apartment life. too bad it's not over yet. only half way over, from what i can tell. our original move-in date of january 15th is more certainly not to be. it moved to february 18th, although i have my doubts on that, too. i'm guessing march. hopefully early march if nothing else.

apartment life was fine for awhile, but i'm feeling to feel the tightness at this point. an example:



i'm running out of counter space for...well, everything. we're piling things on top of the kitchen cabinets just to find space for them. we fold laundry after the kids are in bed and then have no place to put it except the kitchen counter (since kids will immediately undo everything we've done the moment they wake up if it's left on the floor!) cookbooks, produce, dishes, toys that need fixing, virtually all the information and product samples we have for the house, you name it-- it all sits on the counter. uck.

and now jack is getting into puzzles. woo hoo! love this quiet activity. the downside is that our table does not have a flat surface, so the only place he can do them is on the kitchen floor. so i'm constantly walking on and around puzzle pieces and toys while trying to prepare food. um, annoying. but at least he's doing them now.


oh my, i'm ready to be in a house again. not so ready to do the actual act of moving again...especially in the blistering cold. but if that's what it takes to leave the apartment, well, i'm in.

until then, we're enjoying as much time outside of the apartment as possible. recently we enjoyed new year's dinner at colleen and logan's house. the boys made pizza and maggie and gavin got to know each other:



we also had fun risking our lives on icy roads to get to our buddy peyton's 3rd birthday party (haha, just kidding, Hoffmans) at backyard adventures:




yes, that's my child picking his nose.


you'd think these two are siblings! good thing they like each other since after we all move out of our respective apartments, we'll continue to be neighbors for the next 20ish years :)