The King worked like a mad man the week before my family arrived and was able to get our guest bathroom DONE.  This was a lot of work but he was able to get all the tile laid so that they wouldn’t have to shower in the boy’s bathroom.  (And now I have four showers I have to keep clean.  Kill me now.)  We had a pretty good time with my family.  I love weddings, especially ones where someone I love, love, love is getting married.  And I love, love, love this particular cousin.  (And no, she doesn’t read this blog so I’m not just saying that for her benefit.)

The day after my parents left town The King and I frantically washed the sheets on the guest bed and cleaned the guest bathroom so that May, my best friend that deserted me and moved to Reno, and her family could come and stay with us!!

This is the first time in two years that the entire family has been able to come visit.  And whether or not they’ll admit it, I think our husbands were the happiest to see each other. 

Boys aren’t too good about keeping in touch but The King and Mr. May picked up exactly where they left off when they moved away four years ago.

We took the kids to visit the neighborhood where we all used to live.  The kids played in the park that is right across the street from our old house.   I don’t think Babboo will ever forgive me for moving away. 

The park is pretty awesome. 

Eventually May and family had to head home to Reno.  We drove as far as Portland with them and then we all stayed the night in The City of Roses.

We stayed in Portland a little longer to enjoy the beautiful sun.  (Seriously Portland, thank you for the gorgeous 4th of July weather.)

While we’ve been having a blast I admit I’m a little sad that we won’t be here to enjoy August, which is the best part of summer here in Seattle.  We’re taking both kids and heading to Europe.  It’s been a few years since our last trip and our frequent flier miles and hotel points were starting to burn a whole in our pockets so we decided to pack up the family and go!

We leave in a few weeks. 

Thankfully, as of this morning, our last hotel is booked.  It’s official…we’re actually taking our two kids (one that will turn one while in Paris) to Europe.  I’m pretty sure that classifies us as The Stupidest Parents in the World. 

(Actually, I’m pretty excited about the whole thing.  I’m sure the kids will be great.  Repeat with me…THE KIDS WILL BE GREAT!)

The reality was that we didn’t really need the calendar to tell us what our daily chore was since it followed the same pattern.  My older brother and I each had a set of dishes to wash.  Either breakfast or dinner dishes (lunch dishes were put into rotation during the summer months).  Along with dishes we had another chore.  Wednesdays we each had a bathroom to clean.  Tuesdays and Thursday rotated between vacuuming the front room/hall or the kitchen.  Friday was changing your sheets and dusting.  (We loved Friday.  So easy.)

Saturday morning we’d wake up to a list on the kitchen counter with our name on it.  On this list would be all of the chores we did earlier in the week.  Basically we had to do all of the vacuuming and bathroom cleaning again before we could do anything else that day.  Be assured there was never a Saturday, not one single one, where we didn’t have our “Saturday Chores”.

I’d been doing chores since I was pretty little so this arrangement didn’t seem odd to me.  My mom worked a full time job from the time I was in middle school.  I wouldn’t have thought it was fair for her to do all the cleaning.  There were four of us kids messing up the house, there might as well be four of us cleaning up too.

Pretty much the day I turned eighteen (two weeks before I graduated from high school) I was no longer required to do chores.  It wasn’t discussed it was just understood.  I moved away to college, got married, divorced, and moved back in with my parents.  A chore calendar with my name on it was never again hung inside the pantry door.  I cleaned my own room and did my own laundry, but that was it.  I’m pretty sure I never did any dishes or vacuuming.  And I know I didn’t clean a bathroom.  Maybe my mom felt bad for me since I was 23 and divorced, living with my parents.  Whatever her reason, NO MORE CHORES!

The King never had a chore chart growing up.  His mom didn’t work outside the home and there were only two kids.  While we’ve never discussed it I’m pretty sure he never had to clean bathrooms or vacuum.  And I know he didn’t do any dishes.

What I’m saying is that The King and I were raised very differently in regards to working.

The first few years of our marriage The King and I lived in a studio apartment and slept in a twin size bed.  There wasn’t much to clean.  We didn’t have a chore chart.  We just did our part to keep our little place running.

We knew we had to move out of our tiny studio eventually, and so The King decided to build us a house.  With his own two hands.  We didn’t have any kids at this point so he expected me to help out.  It became clear, quite quickly, that I didn’t know how to build a house.  It was more then that, it became clear that I really didn’t know how to work.  At least not like The King.  Boy oh boy, that man knew how to work.  And he didn’t hate it.  Or complain about it.  Or try to come up with excuses to get out of working.  Nope, he just went and worked on the house every single day after working his full time job.  On Saturdays he woke up at the crack of dawn and started working on the house and didn’t stop until it was too dark to work.

And really, he never complained.

Be assured I complained enough for the both of us.  I didn’t want to go to the house after work.  I definitely didn’t want to go on Saturdays.  Work…blah.

I hated the work.  HATED it.  And I’ll admit that I held it against The King.  I was tired all the time and just didn’t have the energy to do even half the amount of work The King would have liked me to.  He wasn’t asking too much of me.  But it sure felt like he was.

By the time we started to build our second home Babboo was around, so I was given a free pass on working on that house.  I think I only worked on the house one day before we lived there.  Phew.

Even after we moved into the house there is stuff to work on.  Mostly it’s been things outside.  The King continues to wake up every Saturday morning and head outside to dig dirt, or lift rocks, or cut wood.  He also works most evenings around the house.

Thankfully I’ve recently shed The Tired that used to rule my life and have felt good about joining in and working with The King.  We’ve been working our butts off to get the majority of our yard done before Rerun is born.  It’s exciting to see the progress.

I was out with some girlfriends a few weeks ago and, as it does, the conversation turned to them complaining about their husbands.  One woman said she feels like all she does is nag her husband to get stuff done around the house.  She said it never gets done.  Another woman said that the knob on her front door had been broken for two months before she finally just figured out how to fix it herself.

I started to think about my husband and how The King would never let a door knob stay broken for two months.  And I’ve never had to nag him to get something done around the house.  Heck, I don’t think I’ve ever even had to ask him to do something.  He just does it.

I sat there in silence while the other women joined in. They weren’t being malicious towards their husbands or anything.  They just didn’t like how they never got things done.

I had nothing to say.  There wasn’t one single thing I could add to the conversation.  My husband was the exact opposite of all of their husbands.

I realized right then how lucky I was to have such a hard worker for a husband.

I had never really thought before about how much other husbands worked.  I guess I just assumed that most husbands woke up on Saturday and instantly went out in the garage to get the tools they’d need for the day, or made the first trip of the day to Home Depot.

I remembered that while visiting my family in Utah last month The King spent one of the four days we were there installing a new kitchen floor in my sister’s house.  He completed the entire kitchen, happily, in a few short hours.

Last summer he spent most of our vacation out there building my parents a new pergola in their back yard.

It might have taken me a while, but I appreciate what a hard worker The King is.  A damn fine one at that.

And he does it all because he loves me.  He loves our family.  Every nail he bangs into the wall, every shovel full of dirt he lifts, and every push of the lawn mover he does because he loves me.

Happy tenth anniversary baby.

Here’s to an eternity of working together.

Basically, they cost too much money and they are too heavy.

But still, it’s fun to have something to remind you of a trip.

On one of our first trips to Mexico we stayed in a house that belonged to some friends. The house was decorated with the local wares. I fell in love with the artwork in the house and decided I wanted to try to find something similar and bring it back to the states. We had just moved into the first house we built and we needed a little something-something for the powder room walls.

Enter the cutest little hand painted works of art.

It wasn’t expensive. It was small enough to fit into my backpack. And it would forever remind me of our time in Mexico.

The following year we headed to Berlin for the first time together. We decided to buy another piece of street art there to add to our collection. Again, we wanted something inexpensive, lightweight and that would remind us of Berlin.

A painting of Brandenburg Gate. Perfect!

We returned to Europe a few months later. By this time our quest for local street art was official. We searched high and low for the “perfect” piece in Paris.

Luckily we found two we loved.

(We actually bought three street paintings in Paris. We gave the one of the Moulin Rouge to my sister in law for Christmas that year. It’s hanging in their house and looks fabulous!)

The next summer we returned to Mexico. Since we already had some art from Mexico, we opted instead to fork over mucho deniro for an official picture of The King and I at the Xel-Ha resort.

We figured we could frame it up nicely and hang it up with our other official street art.

Multiple trips to Sunny California facilitated some pieces specifically proposed for our brand new baby’s nursery. I envisioned them being housed in lovely white frames to make the white furniture in his room really pop.

The pieces would also match his bedding and the color of his walls. I loved all three pieces.

While I picked out the three for our baby’s room, The King picked out three that he liked.

(Our tastes are a little different, no?)

This summer we spent almost a month traveling around Europe. For the first time ever we visited Spain. We took the opportunity to buy a piece of street art in Formentera, Spain depicting the local windmills on the island.

We’ve been living in our new house for about ten months. None of our official street art has been hung. Dude, none of it’s even been framed. It’s all sitting in a nice pile in my book shelf. Just waiting to be seen and appreciated.

As of right this second we have one painting hanging in our bedroom. While we didn’t exactly buy this piece in Germany, it is a painting of Berlin and will forever and ever remind us of the place we love so much.

But yeah, it’s not one of our “official” pieces from a trip. It bums me out that nothing is hanging up.

We still have our framed map of the Berlin subway that I gave The King for Christmas a few years back. But it’s not hanging up. It’s sitting on the floor in our office next to the other paintings we own.

Last night I got out our artwork and The King took some measurements. The plan is to finally, finally get them all framed and hung up.

Maybe seeing the artwork on our walls will remind us to keep saving money for our next vacation. And remind us that we need more art. Specifically something from Canada.

So tell me, is there something special you like to pick up when on vacation?

(Um, sorry that I suck at taking pictures of artwork. Dude, it’s harder then it looks! I put a penny in the picture to show scale.)

We’ve been using this huge diamond as our tree topper since we got it.  It sparkles with the lights.

The next year is the year we began work on the first house we built together.  I wanted to get an ornament that would represent all that work.  Of course I couldn’t find the perfect ornament, so I had to improvise.  I went to the Home Depot and bought a tiny screwdriver and attached a hook to it and called it an ornament.

(Silly Isabel thinking that 2001 would be the only year we worked on a house.  HAA!)

By Christmas 2002 we were finally living in our (first) new house.  My parents sent us this house ornament and we decided it would become our official ornament for that year.  (They even had our names engraved on it.)

(Silly Isabel thinking we’d live in that house forever.)

So in 2003 we were living in our new house and The King was working at a new office that was super close to said house.  The King decided he was going to ride his bike to work every single day.  Rain or shine.  And so he did.  (He even rode in the snow.  He’s intense.)  Of course the ornament for that year had to represent The King’s biking devotion, and so I got a bike helmet ornament.

In 2004 we went to Europe.  While The King had been there a million times, it was my first time.  We went in March, but I knew I wanted to get our Christmas ornament.  We found a little Christmas shop in a little German town and I happily bought this little nativity ornament.

Silly Isabel thinking it would be my only trip to Europe for a while.  We went again that December.

We went to Europe again that next year.  While I was pregnant.  This made it hard to decide what to document with an ornament that year.  I mean, I wanted another one that gave a shout out to Europe, so we got this one in Berlin…

But we couldn’t not document the fact that we were having a baby.  So, for 2005 we have two official ornaments.

My mom sent us this prego lady.  She said it looked liked me.  Yeah, if I was pregnant in 1982 and wearing maternity shirts like this.  (This ornament also reminds me of Mrs. Brady.  Hum…what is my mom trying to tell me?)

My Sweet Babboo was born in 2006.  Pretty much he was the defining moment for that year.  And so our 2006 Christmas ornament totally documents our love for him.

My super duper friend May (who deserted me and moved to Reno) made this mini-Santa-Babboo ornament for us and I love it so very much.

Babboo is represented again in our 2007 ornament.  Pretty much he’s the coolest thing ever and our tree must represent that.  I found this ornament online and happily paid way too much money for it.

I mean, seriously, how cute is this little guy?

2008 was the year that The King and Babboo both got their own guitars.  (Okay, to The King’s is really a ukulele and Babboo’s isn’t really very fancy, but you get the idea.)  So this year’s ornament is a little shout out for our current love of stringed instruments.

Sure, we have other ornaments on our tree, but these are the ones that are the most special to us.  They are the ones that remind me of good times and of our history together.  I wonder how our ornament collection will grow?  I wonder how many other “house” ornaments and “baby” ornaments we’ll have?

Today is Friday.  Which means it’s another give-away of Kate’s awesome fused glass jewels.  To enter to win all you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me about one of your favorite ornaments (or Holiday decorations).  You have until Monday the 22nd at midnight (PST) to enter to win.  And since I have quite a few left to give-away, I’ll be choosing quite a few random winners.

I often tease The King about the time he confessed that he was “making a commitment to the environment”. He made it sound like The Environment and he had kneeled at an alter, hands entwined, family and friends witnessing, and made a commitment to each other. They would now do everything they could to help each other become better.

The King + The Environment = True Love

While I like to make it sound like a joke, The King truly is committed to the environment. And he’s getting greener by the second. He has yet to switch over to an all hemp wardrobe, but he does wear eco friends shoes. (we found two pairs at Ross for $15.00. I kid you not!) It’s only a matter of time until he starts to grow dreads. So The King may not be the greenest person I know (would that be Kermit?), but he’s pretty darn green.

When we decided to build another house, we knew we wanted to take the green practices we used on the first house and take it up a notch with the new house. Plus, and I’ll be honest here, building a more green house would make it worth more money when we decide to sell it. Especially here in Seattle.

Our new house will be Certified Built Green, something The King is very proud of.

We used in-floor radiant heating in the first house we built. The King and I installed it, working together in the crawlspace to install the piping. While we have no complaints about in-floor radiant heat, we were anxious to try something new with the new house. Plus, with the years The King spent living in Europe, he feel in love with the European use of radiators for heating. He fondly remembers being able to put his clothes out on the radiator, on a cold winter morning, and have the radiator heat them up to a cozy temperature.

And so, we’re using radiators as our heat source. There are a lot of different styles of radiators out there, and we were able to find some that will fit with our modern house. We were also able to buy radiators for the bathrooms that also double as towel racks. This way, our towels will always be warm when we get out of the shower.

Another product that we learned about, thanks to the Europeans, was the dual flush toilet. A dual flush toilet is exactly what it sounds like-there are two different types of flushes. One button for #1 and another button for #2. This enables you to use less water to get rid of your toilet waste. These types of toilets are common practice around the world. But, for whatever reason, they aren’t very common in America. (Thanks to Jihan for hooking us up with all of our fixtures for the new house.)

Since this new house is being built where a previous (non-renovateable) house was demolished, we’re making sure to reuse as many building materials from the demolished house as possible. We’re using the old wood flooring as trim in the new house. The old paint and nail holes were planed down, and the wood is gorgeous. We’re excited to be using it as a way to reuse, and to save us money.

We’re using low energy light bulbs, we’re planning on utilizing as much natural light as possible (in Seattle?). We installed super efficient windows and doors. Our appliances are all EnergyStar approved and we rarely use the dryer for our clothing. We plan on planting more trees and appropriate plants. We are using the demolished house’s foundation as part of our landscaping walls. Our faucets will have low flow constrictors. We’re using recycled carpeting (and recycled carpet pads), where applicable.

We are recycling at the construction site and plan to continue recycling once we move in. The basement flooring is concrete foundation slab. No vinyl flooring or siding for us. We’re using cement siding and metal on the outside of the house. The roof is also metal. We’ll be using recycled plastic for our decking. All of our counter tops are concrete, made by The King. And we used extra installation.

While we aren’t doing as much as we could or should be doing, we are doing our part. The King and I feel that this earth was gifted to us to use. Part of showing our appreciation for this beautiful world is showing our respect and love towards it. And to help ensure it will be here for our kids and our kid’s kids to also use.

And if this means using flusable diapers and dual flush toilets, then sign me up.

So tell me, what are you doing to be more green?