making things beautiful

i have a problem when it comes to finishing house projects. i can get very close to the finish line, but my perfectionistic tendencies often trip me up and keep me from completing the final touches on a room, for fear of not picking the most perfect thing. that's a long way of saying that while jack's room was mostly done, i never quite got around to finishing the wall decor. i had some ideas here and there, but nothing was jumping out as the perfect thing.

when we were going through ivf with archie one of the verses that i kept coming back to was lamentations 3:21:

"yet i still dare to hope when i remember this; the faithful love of the Lord never ends! his mercies never cease. great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. i say to myself, 'the Lord is my inheritance; therefore, i will hope in him!'"

i knew i wanted that reminder somewhere and finally had the idea to paint a mural on one of the nursery walls. i enlisted lindsey to help take my inspiration photos and turn them into a design and i loved what it became. 

not long after i finished the mural jack suddenly became quite interested in coloring, which hadn't had much of an appeal up to that point. he often spent part of his rest time happily coloring pages in his coloring book, and typically when rest time was over he would come downstairs on his own. one evening i walked into his room to tuck him at bedtime in and was greeted by a crayon mural all over his door. i was so shocked that my only reaction was to gasp and cover my mouth, at which point jack immediately started sobbing and repeating "i'm sorry! i'm just so sorry!" over and over. after he calmed down a bit he managed to get out that he was so, so sorry, but he was just trying to make his room beautiful. 

when i pointed out a couple marks that were unusually high on the door he confidently explained that he had pulled the snuggling pillow [aka bean bag] over so he could reach up higher. he was so genuine and lovable in that moment i couldn't even be mad.

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the one where we were all in quarantine

these are certainly strange times. our little family was already adjusting to a temporary new normal as we were spending much of our time in st. louis helping my mom through chemo, and then everything changed. for a time the news was shifting significantly hour by hour. schools and universities were closing. professional and collegiate sports cancelled. the number of people permitted to gather in one place started dropping and didn't stop. it all happened so fast. 

we didn't know what we were getting into. no one did. i was especially nervous about my mom contracting covid with her weakened immune system. we didn't eat any outside food for two solid months, not even takeout. we wore masks to the grocery store, where we sometimes had to wait in line to get in. many shelves were empty and the toilet paper aisle was always bare. methodically wiping down each grocery item as it was unpacked was a chore. we went exactly nowhere else.

time had almost no meaning as the days blurred together, but there was still good. there were things that brought joy in the midst of so much uncertainty. these are some of those things:

• daily walks with jack [and in an ideal spot no less]

• lakeland lunch zooms

• lots of jigsaw puzzles

• jack's falling off the chair video

• lakeland's easter benediction

• donald playing with jack over facetime

• the parks & rec special

• mom's birthday parade

• the marco polo app

• colt clark & the quarantine kids

• a family size package of original chips ahoy cookies

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how we summer

it's no secret that i love summer. i love sunshine and swimming and shave ice. i also love the feel of summer...the freedom from school and responsibilities. obviously most adults don't get to enjoy the same level of freedom as the kids, but i still do my best to make summer feel like summer, even as a grown up. we typically take a bit of a break from house projects and try to spend our time enjoying summery things.

after a few too many summers that felt like they were over before i really got to enjoy them, i started making 'the summer list'. it's a fun way to make sure we don't miss out on our favorite activities and really, who doesn't love checking things off a list! the only downside is that most of the items require some level of planning or scheduling, so it wasn't really helping with that carefree summer feeling. so this year i added a mantra...enjoy every day.

it isn't much different than the simple discipline of noticing. i wanted to fully enjoy the moments that felt most like summer, and maybe add a little something extra to make them more fun. so instead of eating that shave ice or qt cone in the car, we found a patch of grass to lounge in. i took the back roads home at night with the windows down and the radio up [i also randomly started playing real mccoy songs, which immediately transported me to the summers of the late 90's and those early morning pom practices]. there were day movies and night movies. walks to the thrift store. honey smacks for breakfast. mugs up root beer floats, just because. sandwiches with lettuce. sitting outside after dark. reading by the pool. and an adventure to find the raytown dragon...and i thoroughly enjoyed it all.

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a glimpse of life

this is our life in 2016. donald is in nursing school at penn valley and works part time at the university of kansas hospital. i work for david christian attorneys; half from home and half at the office. we are part of lakeland community church and we love it. we are s-l-o-w-l-y fixing up our house one room at a time. we spend a lot of time with our family and friends and always look forward to dyer dinner on monday nights. we love playing games and watching fun shows. as much as i hate to admit it, we both really love our smartphones. we think dag is just the cutest [even though he is rather odorous]. i love sleeping and i do it a lot. donald loves his recliner and he sits in it a lot. it is a good life.

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our ordinary time

a long, long time ago i was telling a friend what i liked about donald and i distinctly remember that one of the things i mentioned was that he did his very favorite things almost every day. if i were to dream up the perfect day or the perfect week it would involve a lot of activities that you just can't realistically insert into everyday life. taking a trip. going to the beach. having a big party with all my far flung friends. dancing. camping. some of my ideas are more accessible than others, but overall most of my activities are pretty lofty. donald on the other hand would list more everyday activities in his perfect day. watching his favorite movies. eating pizza. playing cards. fantasy football. these are things he can [and does] do on a fairly regular basis. i've always admired that about him.

while i definitely still have lofty dreams of a 'perfect day' crammed with as many wonderful things as possible, i think i am getting better at enjoying the little things in the everyday. sometimes it's just a matter of remembering that some of the things i love the most actually can be incorporated in to a regular day. like swimming and jigsaw puzzles and dancing around the living room. 

i haven't blogged as much in the past year or so. there seems to be less 'big flashy things' and more boring grown up things...like full time jobs and a new roof. but it's still a whole heap of wonderful. at church on sunday we were reminded and encouraged to simply enjoy life where we are. throughout life we will all have low seasons of grief and high seasons of great joy. these are both good and they are both gifts from the Lord. but most of our time is spent in the in-between. the regular everyday living.

in the church calendar there is a season called ordinary time. in a very basic explanation, the church year starts with advent. a high season of great hope, peace, joy and love. it's a time filled with laughter and cheer. not long after advent ends, the season of lent begins. this is a somber time of remembering. it's the low. and then of course easter morning brings the celebration of the greatest news of all. it's like a roller coaster of emotions over those four to five months. there are ups and downs. but eventually we enter ordinary time. it's a time to rest for our souls. i feel like this season of our life is our ordinary time. we enjoy each other. we enjoy the time we spend with our family and our friends. we love and enjoy our church. and life is good. we are blessed.

"so i concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. and people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God. and i know that whatever God does is final. nothing can be added or taken from it. God's purpose is that people should fear him." [ecclesiastes 3:12-14]

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the dark sides

we all have our quirks and idiosyncrasies. sometimes these peculiar behaviors of ours even start to rub off on the people around us. specifically the people we live with. this happened to us.

donald has this one particular trait that seems to rub off on his roommates without fail. that would be his sleeping pattern. the one similar to that of a bat. to be fair, he has worked the evening shift faithfully for over ten years, so i can't say that i blame him for his tendency to go to bed just before the sun rises. his roommates over the years have had normal people schedules, but that doesn't seem to matter. slowly but surely, he brought them over to the dark side one by one. this usually resulted in everyone who lived with him being sleep deprived, but they also amassed a large collection of movie watching and video game playing memories...so i suppose it evens out.  

now i have never been accused of being a morning person, but before getting married i was typically in bed by eleven and sleeping in usually meant nine. not so much anymore. i won't disclose our wake up times here because it makes us sound lazy and i'm not trying to make anyone jealous. but let's just say, i've stepped over to the dark side as well.

it will come as a surprise to no one that one of my delightful qualities is my inability to spend money quickly. or you could call it my innate ability to hold onto money for as long as possible. that sounds better. either way, cash certainly does not burn a hole in my pocket. 

prior to marriage, donald was a bit of the opposite. he loves trinkets, obscure snack foods, and any random thing at walmart he thinks might get a laugh out of someone someday. he also has a soft spot for electronics, namely televisions and smart phones. so when we got married we put some of our monetary gifts into a special tv fund, just for him.

fast forward almost two years. that's right...two years, and we're still watching the old television.  to be fair, donald had his eye on a couple of options that were slightly out of our current price range, so he used the first year to add a little bit more to the tv fund. but then, nothing. he googled. he browsed. he watched the sales. but he just couldn't pull the trigger. at this point i was actually encouraging him to just spend the money and get the tv already! in a recent television conversation he turned to me and said "i don't know how you did it. i don't know what's wrong with me. how did you turn me into you?" i just smiled. he had arrived on the dark side.

there is a glimmer of hope for him though. after giving myself a pep talk, i tagged along as donald picked out his beloved new tv and now i have a very happy husband.

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once upon a time

once upon a time there was a girl who loved summer, swimming and sunshine.  

she also loved a boy who didn't particularly love those same three things.  

but the boy saw how much the girl loved to be in the water, so the boy...

took the girl...

to one of her favorite places...

and they had the 

best day ever!

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d.w.d.w.w.

donald has been working hard on his prerequisites for nursing school so the end of the semester seemed like the perfect excuse to bring back the d.w.d.w.d., but this time he got a whole "do whatever donald wants week"!

now an ideal week to my husband looks a lot different than an ideal week for me. mine would be full of activities, he likes to take it slow. he loves his recliner and one of his requests was for lots of time to spend there. i lost track of the number of movies he watched, but he was in cinema heaven.

we hit up a few famous raytown landmarks since we knew it was high time we visited the raytown historical society museum and honestly, we were pleasantly surprised. and though we are dedicated patrons of mama china's, we took weatherman brian busby's suggestion and lunched at the blue yuu. sadly, we did not squeeze in a visit to pocket park.

as usual, many of our days involved playing games. lately mexican train has made its way in the rotation quite frequently and the introduction of tripoley to our monday night dyer dinners has been nothing short of hilarious.

food is pretty important to donald too so he picked some special treats for the week. namely a morning donut shop run and ridiculously sized can of the dew.

we also tossed in a free movie premier and an ihop outing with these crazy cats. we like them a lot.

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sealed with a kiss

i love getting the mail. it's one of life's little pleasures. and we've just had a very exciting week in mail getting. the first to arrive was a big blue box with our wedding album in it and i must say...it was worth the wait. i love it. it was exactly want i wanted.

then a brown box came. and this one has a back story.  

we've already had two garage sales since i've moved to 78th street, resulting in a number of unneeded items leaving the premises. this makes me exceedingly happy, but tends to bring donald a twinge of sadness. he loves all of the treasures. which brings us to the fateful saturday last summer where donald, being the loving husband that he is, was gathering a few last minute things he thought he could part with to add to our sale. one such item was a cookie jar. but not just any cookie jar...a cowboy cookie monster cookie jar.  

long story short...he sold it for $1. 

and then he was sad. so very sad.

i've heard a lot of lamenting about the loss of this beloved family heirloom so i decided i would plan a little surprise. enter...the brown box. it took a couple days for him to open it [i was trying to play it casual so i stuck it in a corner of our room until he noticed] but it definitely made his day. and now all is right with the world because this guy is back on 78th street.

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it was a very good year

fair warning...this starts out kind of sappy.

donald had to work new years eve and as he was leaving this afternoon i found myself suddenly emotional as i realized that it would be the last time i saw him this year. one of my favorite years. the year we became husband and wife.

for me [and us] it's been a very, very good year. around me i see a lot of people [family, friends & strangers] giving 2013 a kick in the rear as it heads out the door, and for some that is very fitting. but for me, i'm kind of sad to see it go. could i come up with some negatives from the past year? sure, but are any of them really all that significant? nope.  

i've done a bit less blogging this year, which is kind of a bummer because it's such a fun way to store memories. the vast majority of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the iphone that entered my life this year and a little app i like to call instagram. so for the sake of reflection, and for catching up, here are some things that made 2013 so great:

we got married.  obviously top of the list.

i got to live with both kim & donald in the same calendar year

lots of friends have come to visit [and we're hoping for more!]

we've made lots of memories...with the two of us and with our awesome friends

i got a dog.

we celebrated six months of marriage with a half year honeymoon

i went to mexico with my mom [and a fun friend]

our house started becoming our home

we met some big financial goals...and had treats to celebrate!

we've enjoyed quality time with our real families and our church family

and we played more games of star trek catan and ticket to ride than can be counted

so long 2013...thanks for the memories.

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ten four good buddy

time is a funny thing. sometimes i notice how long it's been since i've written a blog post and wonder why it's taken so long for something 'blog-worthy' to happen. or i look around our house and i'm puzzled (or more accurately...frustrated) at how long it's taking for me to get organized and feel at home. and i've written before about how quickly i seem to forget the good things that happen.

but then i noticed that today is october 4th...exactly one year since the day donald sent me on a scavenger hunt that ended in a proposal. and when i think about it that way, there's a lot to be thankful for.  it has indeed been a 'blog-worthy' year. and though the progress sometimes seems painfully slow, our house is becoming our home. good things are happening here. so happy engagement-iversay to my favorite husband. i'm really glad the wonderful things are happening with you!

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way fun wednesdays

summer is arguably my favorite time of the year. while i love all four seasons almost equally, to me summer is the epitome of fun. as a sort-of-teacher by trade, the summer obviously provides some freedom of time that doesn't happen all year round. and the swimming, staying up late and eating shaved ice certainly doesn't detract from the general feeling of fun.

since kim and i don't have the pleasure of living together this summer we have implemented a little something we like to call 'way fun wednesday'. we made a list of fun things to do and places to go [spoiler: the majority of them involve water] and every wednesday we check something off. it's basically my favorite day of the week.

super splash

noodles & a movie

the bay water park

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must see movies

donald is a movie guy. and if you know him very well, that kind of goes without saying. i like movies too, lots of them...especially the ones full of singing and dancing. surprisingly most of the movies i love are not on his classic, must see movie list [although i'm pretty sure that the ability to quote back to the beach word for word should really count for something].

with that in mind, it's been a big week here at the dyer house. in our full premarital disclosure of how many must see movies i hadn't seen [essentially all of them] there was also an understanding that donald would make it his life long mission to enlighten me. and so it has begun.  

without really intending to, we stumbled into a week long movie debut extravaganza, kicking things off with the illustrious 007. i suppose if there have been twenty three james bond movies released, it really makes sense to have seen at least one of them. and i started with casino royale.

next came the issue of the new star trek movie, which donald wanted to take me to see on the big screen. but seeing as how i'm not a trekkie, nor had i any background in the adventures of the enterprise, it was obviously necessary to watch an introductory movie before heading to the theater. cue star trek and star trek : into darkness.

then, in what can only be described as divine intervention, we found out that the feature film at a weekly movie night we occasionally attend would be none other than a double feature of star wars : the empire strikes back and return of the jedi. while i had actually seen episodes one, two and three while we were dating, i had yet to be introduced to a young harrison ford [and not to be a spoiler, but a lot goes down with that darth vader guy]. so after an appetizer of episode four, we were off to complete my education in the force, much to the dismay of those attending said movie night. i think it's safe to say everyone else was a teensy bit more familiar with the franchise than i was.

and there we have it. six must see movies in one week...which i do believe should win me the wife of the week award. that and the fact that though we cracked this game open a mere two months ago, i've literally lost track of the number of times we've played it together...

live long and prosper my friends, 

and may the force be with you...

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that's true love

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narcos and flexerols and aleves, oh my

i've never been much of a pill taker myself. i was actually well into high school before i managed to swallow one...i had previously gotten by on chewable children's tylenol and that delicious pink stuff i always requested from the pediatrician. i may take an ibuprofen from time to time, but i'd say i only average about four per year. donald finds this moderately ridiculous and always encourages me to take at least two if i'm having a headache or something, but i'm pretty firm on my one pill at a time rule. so when i woke up on a friday morning writhing in pain and asked for 'as many pills as i can take'...he knew there was a problem.

it was exactly one month ago, the day after the first of our two back to back snowstorms, and the day before our kansas city open house. we'd spend a little time shoveling show on thursday and apparently my back was not pleased. the pain was significant, but seeing as how i don't have a doctor, i figured i'd just wait it out. sore muscles typically last only a day or two and i figured it could only get better, not worse. i was wrong. after enduring three days of constant pain, and hobbling through our open house, i gave in. first thing monday morning we went to urgent care and i finally found a bit of relief in the form of narcotics and muscle relaxers. assured that time would heal [a week, two at the most] i gratefully took my pills and headed home. long story short, that didn't happen. another doctor, a round of x-rays, lots of drugs, a massage and three chiropractic visits later...i think it's finally improving. in fact, just yesterday i had a day where my pain, on a scale of zero to ten, was a one. a ONE!  glory hallelujah!!! i'm really hoping it will all be over soon, because i think dear donald is getting tired of my furrowed brow.

it hasn't been all bad. donald and i have played a lot of ticket to ride...and i am proud to say that despite my handicap, i am currently at the top of the leader board. my mom came to visit and helped kick start the 'clean out the basement' campaign [and if you, or someone you know, has ever lived in this house you will understand that this is a monumental task], and of course, dag has been very supportive.

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the one with the invisalign

fourteen months, fifty two trays and countless public restroom visits later...

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oh pinterest

i love pinterest. it's one of my favorite inventions. i like being able to save all the websites and links i want in one place. and i love browsing everyone else's pins and copying their creative ideas. here are few things i've made with the inspiration of pinterest...

donald has been wanting some 'art' for his wall,

so i made this sign out of some old pallet wood

i couldn't go to honduras myself this year, so i sent some 
sponge balls for the kids at project manuelito to play with

i finally finished decorating my mom's bedroom and

made this shelf to hold a few family heirlooms

earlier this year i got a new-to-me laptop and i 
wanted to make it fun so came up with this laptop skin

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like daughter, like mother

i am not known for always having a kitchen full of food. in fact, what i am known for is spending an astronomically small amount of money on groceries each month. it's something i've sort of perfected over the years, without being able to totally explain how i make it work. at some point it stops making sense even to me.  

my kitchen only has two staples...cereal and milk. everything else is optional. this works well for breakfast, but is not especially helpful when it comes to packing my lunch. it was a situation such as this that prompted what would become one of my friend missy's favorite stories. i was at her house for dinner one night (a regularly occurring event that is a contributing factor in the low grocery budget) and i realized that i had enough odds and ends to make a lunch for the next day, if only i could find some bread. not wanting to stop at the store for a whole loaf, i asked if i could have two pieces to go. she found this hilarious. (and i went home with the bread)

that being said, missy was the first person i thought of when my mom told me what happened to her the other day. she was at a friends house having dinner and packing boxes for their upcoming trip to honduras. as she was leaving at the end of the night they offered her one of their home grown tomatoes. she accepted and was anticipating a delicious blt when, alas, she remembered she didn't have any bread. so naturally, she asked if they could throw in a couple of pieces to sweeten the deal...and they did.

as missy said when i told her the story, "it's a good thing there's those of us in the world with bread to spare". a good thing indeed.

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d.w.d.w.d.

even with the lure of free chicken, sitting outside in a parking lot for twenty four straight hours on a 100 degree day probably doesn't sound like an appealing option to most people. it wasn't donald's first choice either, and since he was such a trooper at chick-fil-a, i thought he deserved a little treat. so on friday he got to choose everything we did, all day long. it was the first ever d.w.d.w.d...or 'do whatever donald wants day'.  

since donald's day doesn't really start until about lunchtime, (who am i kidding...when it's summer that's when my day starts too) the first thing we did was order a pizza. because all good days start with pizza. and the olympics. always the olympics.

next up: fantasy time. i was the scribe for some sort of heads up baseball competition versus mark. and then he taught me how to do a mock football draft. he was pretty excited about this part...it was kind of hilarious.

we perused pinterest for some dinner ideas and landed on these. they are little smokies, wrapped in bacon, swimming in a pool of butter and brown sugar. donald's crazy for health food...obviously.

and we wrapped up the night with some movies, more olympics, a shoulder massage and a game of gin. i think it turned out to be a pretty good day.

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july 4th @ the twogoods

ah the fourth. america. freedom. hot dogs. explosions. as the great jim gaffigan once said..."it's what the founding fathers would want". and no one i know does explosions quite like kelly twogood. with lots of food, lots of friends and a table overflowing with fireworks we celebrate america in what i can only describe as uncontrolled chaos. which i suppose is what you get when you put a bunch of dads in the street to set things on fire with an innumerable amount of small children running around vying for the chance to help. the good news is that we all survived. happy birthday america!

kim . shelly . donald

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