Sometimes I get selfish and forget to keep the internet in the loop of what’s going on in my life. Um yeah, that’s what happened last week. I sort of forgot to tell you that my folks were coming to Seattle to help celebrate Babboo’s second birthday.

We partied like he was turning twenty one. (Or maybe just three.)

The last four days will forever be known as Babboo’s Birthday Extravaganza Weekend. It started on Thursday night with a Birthday dinner at the local Red Robin. (Hey, I figured that was the only kid-friendly place we could all agree on.) There were about 11 of us and I’ll tell you what, it was loud. And fun. And Babboo got spoiled.

I took Friday off work (Praise the Lord!) and spent the day in the city with my folks. Babboo took this opportunity to sit Grandma down and show her all the things he’s been wishing for in the latest Toys R Us catalog. (Which, at our house, is referred to as “train book”. Even though only 2 of the 20 pages have actual trains on them.)

That night, which was Babboo’s actual birthday, The King and I sent my folks over to my aunt’s house, and just the three of us went shopping for a special gift for Babboo and a little dinner out.

We came home, bellies full of Mongolian food, the proud owners of a huge train set for our little birthday conductor. (Side note #1: the plan was for Babboo to give up his “sucker” on his 2nd birthday. Plans are in motion.) Thanks to Babboo’s relentless study of the “train book” we knew that Toys R Us was having a killer sale on trains. Killer sale. We could not refuse. And now, our tiny apartment doubles as a train station.

Good times.

(Side note #2: Last night, we had to take the train out and put it in the trunk of the car. If we wouldn’t have, our poor kid would have never gone to bed. Or eaten dinner. He’s addicted.)

(Side note #3: What is it with little boys and train sets these days? Seriously. I don’t remember my brothers caring about trains at all.)

Saturday, we dropped Babboo off at a friends house and painted some trim over at the new house. My folks, and even my aunt, came to help. My mom and aunt are great painters. My dad, alas, is not. I spent my time following behind him and fixing his paint drips. But, you know what, I didn’t even care. I was just happy to have them there helping.

And then we went to my cousin’s indoor soccer game. I would have much rather stayed at my aunt’s house and crocheted. But I’m glad I didn’t, since Babboo seemed to really enjoy seeing “kick ball”.

(Side note #4: My aunt is a freakin’ hard worker. I may have to ask her to come help us some more.)

(As per my usual M.O., I spent the entire meet event game taking pictures of myself. I allowed Babboo and my aunt to be in the pictures so I didn’t look like a complete tool taking pictures of just me.)

After the game we hit up Jamba Juice, Dairy Queen, and a local Mexican restaurant. In that order. Hey, I told you it was a Birthday Extravaganza Weekend.

Sunday arrived, and so did more parties with family. More gifts…

…and more dessert.

Pretty much, Babboo’s Birthday Extravaganza Weekend rocked. Not only for my Sweet Babboo, but for me too.

I’m back to work today, the tired mom of a two year old (two!). Crap, where did the time go?

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Remember when I asked you if I should cut bangs? Head over to see what my latest New Thing is! (Hint…it’s bangs.)

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Remember how I love the Old 97’s (Rhett Miller is their lead singer)?! Well, since they have a new album coming out on May 13th (my birthday!), they are scheduled to be on the Tonight Show this Thursday, the 24th to promote it! Now is your chance to give them a watch/listen and see/hear what the hype is all about. So set your Tivo’s/DVR’s for this Thursday. I mean it, you must watch this.

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So you didn’t win my gDiaper give-away? No problem, SeattleMomBlogs is having another give-away in honor of Earth Day. So head over and enter to win!  (SeattleMomBlogs is doing loads of fun give-aways this week, so keep checking back with them!)

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?

Back in January I told you how we planned to move into the new house the last weekend in April. This wasn’t because the house was going to be finished in April, but was because we could no longer financially afford to not move into the new house. You may have also heard mention of a three week trip to Europe this coming September. Discussing dire financial restraints and taking a three week trip to Europe do not go hand in hand.

I feel like an @ss blogging about how financially strapped we are while also blogging about an upcoming three week trip to Europe. And yet, I don’t want this to stop me from being able to blog about both of these exciting things here on my site (the new house, not the financially strapped part).

We travel a little different then most people do. We travel cheap. Very, very cheap!  We’ve stayed in some sh!t holes all over the world. It’s one way we keep our costs down.

Yesterday, after church and after putting Babboo down for his nap, The King and I sat in the front room and tried to plan more of our trip out. With about 15 travel books from the library and a couple of maps, we discussed the pros and cons of different places to visit in Europe.

Oh, and I pulled out my swimming suit stash and took inventory of the suits I’d take with me on our trip (and tried them all on, you know, to see how my latest attempts at Weight Watchers is going). (It’s going, by the way.)

I own a lot of bikinis. And, can you see, that some of them still have their (super clearance) price tags on them? Oh yes, I have so many that I’ve got some ($1.97) bikini’s that I’ve never even worn. I plan on using all of them on our trip.

Oh right, back to this little trip.

The quick-ish history of this particular trip is:
The King lived in Berlin, Germany for a few years in his early twenties. We are very connected to Germany. We have many friends there and good memories of trips past. We’ve been fortunate enough to visit Germany three times since we’ve been married. The last time we went was in the second trimester of my pregnancy with Babboo. Before we decided to have kids together, The King and I discussed how wanted to raise our kids. One of the top five things we wanted for our future off-springs was the opportunity to travel. Something that I was never fortunate enough to have when I was a kid. When I got knocked up, we vowed that this kid was going to love to travel. We were adamant about this.

Two years later and we’ve got to stick to this promise we made. This means we’ve got to actually take Babboo on a trip. I mean, if he’s going to learn to love traveling, he might was well start young.

So now you know a little bit of the back story and why we feel we have to travel at this point in our lives, and why we make it a priority. You also know why we go to Europe all the time instead of trying some place new like Australia, South America, or Asia. (I mean, The King actually speaks the German language. So, of course, it’s a place we like to visit.)

The thing about traveling, that I never realized until I actually traveled, is that it’s not that hard to actually do it. All of us can travel. We don’t need to be rich or afraid. We just need to learn some of the secrets as to how to make it work. In the months prior to our September trip, I’m going to keep you guys in the loop of our travel plans and teach you some of the secrets that The King and have I learned over the years. I’m hoping that you guys will be able to share some of your secrets with me and with the rest of the readers.

Something that the new house has afforded us to do is accrue frequent flyer (FF) miles. Before we started the house project, we switched banks and signed up for the Bank of American Alaska Airlines Visa card (and their debit card too). While Alaska Airlines doesn’t necessarily fly to all the places we went to go, their affiliates do. Which means we can pretty much fly anywhere we want with our Alaska Airlines miles. How we’ve accrued so many FF miles is we’ve paid for everything for the new house on our Alaska Airlines credit card. I know this sounds scary, but don’t worry, we haven’t actually carried the debt on the card.

Here’s the deal; The King will call and order 20K in lumber for the house. We’re using the money we made when we sold the last house to pay for the lumber. But dude, we might as well get FF miles for it. So we use the FF credit card and then two seconds later (literally), The King will pay off the credit card from our construction savings. Which means, we just got 20K in FF miles for free! (You get 1 FF miles for each dollar spent with your card and it takes about 50K FF miles for one free ticket to Europe.)

The King also spent the last year traveling for his job. While having him gone every other week sucked, he was able to accrue tons of FF miles (and hotel points) this way. We’ve also made a couple of trips to Utah and one trip to Washington DC during this time, all of which gained us more FF miles. It took a while, but eventually we had enough miles to cash them in and get The King, Babboo and me all FREE tickets to Europe!

Completely free!

(Well, except for paying the fees/taxes. But dude, nothing like the 1K each they would have been.)

One negative thing about using FF miles is that there are only so many FF mile seats made available. The airlines suggest you reserve your tickets as soon as possible. The earliest you can get them is 365 days in advance. So that’s what we did. We got our tickets last September. Having to get your tickets that far in advance doesn’t give you much time to actually pre-plan your trip. Basically, you just take what you can get.

That’s how we ended up with the tickets we got; we fly into Berlin on September 3rd and fly out of London on the 20th. Where we go in between was still to be determined.

I’ve never been to Europe in the summer time. We’ve always gone in the winter. Going in the winter months allows us to stay in hotels for cheaper, eat for less, and avoid the crowds. The Europe I know and love is freezing cold and pretty much devoid of tourists. Summertime in Europe is going to be a whole new thing for me. (I’m sure I’m going to loathe the crowds.)

We decided to make this trip to Europe less about the snowy Alps, Bavaira, long underwear and coats and more about beaches and swimming suits. (Or better yet, beaches and no swimming suits!) More like the trip we took to Tulum, Mexico when I was first pregnant.

(I just got the film from our waterproof camera developed last week! It’s almost been three years since our trip to Mexico. And dude, I’m glad I waiting since I got a coupon for FREE film developing.)

Now you know a little bit more about how frequent flier miles can work for you. Even if you don’t plan on traveling a ton or paying for a house with your credit card, you really should sign up for a credit card that allows you get earn FF miles. You’re going to use your card anyway, you might as well get something for using it.

In my next vacation-themed post, I’m going to tell you how I make Priceline my bitch by using biddingfortravel to book our hotel rooms. We bought our hotel room for the last three days in London for $70 using biddingfortravel, instead of the $200 other people are paying.

So tell me, what are your secrets to making frequent flier miles work for you?

While at a the Seattle Green Festival Saturday night I looked around and saw all the different types of people that were there, either as exhibitors or attendees. It was noisy and busy in the Convention Center, and yet I found myself quietly waking around. I stopped to look at a booth showcasing recycled rubber shingles and while reading their display I glanced up and made eye contact with the guy manning the booth.

For a brief second I thought it was my first husband.

He smiled at me, and I smiled back. I wasn’t sure what it was that made me think this stranger was a man I was once married to. Was it his blue eyes? (Did my ex even have blue eyes?) Was it his short, blonde hair? (Did my ex have blonde hair?) Was it the clothes he was wearing? (Was my ex now a hippy?) Was it his age? (Way my ex still 24 years old?)

While I don’t look at every strangers face to see if it’s the ex, I do occasionally walk by someone and, for a second, think it might be him. The people that make me take a double take are usually guys in their early 20’s who resemble what I remember my first husband to look like on our wedding day. In my mind, he looks the same.

This weekend I realized that if I were to run into my ex, I’m not sure I would recognize him. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve laid eyes on him. He’s in his 30’s now. He’s, most likely, all grown up. He’s probably a little heavier and maybe balder. He’d probably be surrounded by different people then when I knew him. He’d probably have different tastes and probably wouldn’t be wearing the same Silver Tab jeans I remember him in. He’d also, probably, be with his new wife.

While I realized that I probably wouldn’t recognize my ex-husband, I also realized that he probably wouldn’t recognize me. While visiting my family a few years ago, I walked past my ex-mother-in-law at the grocery store. She walked right past me. She was either snubbing me, or she didn’t even recognize me.

I was 22 years old when I met my first husband. That was a long time ago. Back then I had short hair. More specifically I had short, blonde hair. I also hadn’t had my adult braces yet, and was walking around with my snaggle teeth. Styles were different then and I didn’t go anywhere without my shirt tucked in and a pair of Dr. Martins on my feet.

My the time our marriage was over, I was 23 years old. Pretty young in the grand scheme of things. I was nowhere near finding my own style or being comfortable in my skin. My hair was back to it’s original color and was a more desirable length. “Friends” was all the rage at this time, as was The Rachel hair cut. I had long, fake nails that were always perfectly manicured. And most importantly, I didn’t wear my glasses yet.

(This picture of me and my siblings was taken minutes after I signed my final divorce papers. It was my mom’s Mother’s Day gift that year.)

I’ve heard of ex’s that have remained in each other’s lives after they’ve divorced.  I’ve heard of people that can work through their issues and remain close after they’ve divorced.  I don’t think it’s that unusual for an ex to know and be friends with a former spouses new spouse.   But for me and my ex, we’re pretty much dead to each other.  Our families, while they live within a mile of each other, have no contact with each other.  Our siblings are no longer friends with one another.  I don’t know my ex’s new wife and he and The King have never been within 10 miles of each other.

But, if by some chance we were to run into each other, I  would be happy to smile and say “hello”.  I wouldn’t be against catching up with him for a few minutes.  But after thinking about this that last weekend, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even recognize him.

It’s been just too long.

And, for me, that’s fine.

So tell me, how different do you look now from your 23 old self?
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The winner of my free gDiapers give-away is….

…Marilyn over at Slackermama, who said:

Heck ya! I would love to try these out. I’m currently up to my eyeballs in disposable diapers and am starting to feel a tad guilty about the impact just my family is having on the environment these days. Perhaps this is the answer?

Congratulations to Marilyn (who has a sweet new baby girl), and thanks to the other 100 of you who entered.

Phone call with The King last night, on my walk home from work:

“I think the Dalai Lama must have arrived in Seattle today.”

“What makes you think he’s here already?”

“Well there’s a bunch of cops outside the hotel I just walked past. And I saw a bunch of dudes dressed up as monks.”

(insert pause for me to think about what I just said.) 

“Never mind, they aren’t ‘dressed up as monks’, they are actual monks! My bad.”

When she was a senior in high school, my mom started taking classes at the local community college to become a stylist beautician. As soon as my mom graduated from hair design school beauty school , she left her small town and moved to an even smaller town and set up shop at the local salon beauty parlor. My mom enjoyed doing hair and really loved her new career.

What she didn’t like is that she ended doing “sets” for all the older ladies in town.

My mom quickly moved to a big city and got a job at a nicer parlor. And then she met my dad, got married, got pregnant, quit her job and stayed at home with her kids. While my mom is still a licensed beautician, she hasn’t worked in a salon in over 35 years. But she has continued to do hair.

No family vacation was ever taken without my mom bringing along the little blue velvet bag she made that housed all of her hair supplies. She needed these supplies so she could cut the hair of all my aunts, uncles, cousins, and so she could set my grandma’s hair. (My mom is coming out to visit next week, and I can promise you she’ll bring her scissors with her.)

My mom gave me my first hair cut right after my third birthday. She clipped my hair up with the same clips she uses today. I sat on the kitchen table and tried not to cry as she cut off my long hair. I would wear that same “Dorothy Hamil Wedge” cut until middle school. (And by the looks of this picture, so did my older brother!)

The summer before 5th grade, my mom gave me my first (and only) perm. She only permed my bangs and I loved it. She also gave my older brother a perm, after months of him begging for curls in his hair. I was about twelve year old when my mom first showed me how to henna my hair. My mom’s the one that cut 6 inches off my (way too) long hair, just in time for the Preference Dance my junior year. My best friend Marci stood by her side and offered her support. (Love the bow in your hair, Marci!)

During the summer months my mom would line up my dad, brothers and all my guy friends and cut their hair under our carport. In the winter, this ritual would take place in our kitchen. I don’t think any of the neighborhood boys ever had to pay to get their hair cut, as long as they were friends with me.

I was about 21 when I went to a salon and had my first professional hair cut. By that age I demanded more of a styled cut, which was something my mom wasn’t confident doing. I forked over my $20 for the hair cut and never looked back. From time to time, in a pinch, my mom’s trimmed my hair, or helped me with a color. She still cuts my dad and uncle’s hair, and my grandma loves it when my mom does her set. Over the years my mom’s saved us all a lot of money with her at-home cuts. She’s also given me a lot of fun memories.

It makes me a little sad that my mom wasn’t here last weekend to give Babboo his very first “big boy haircut”. I would have rather seen her arms in this picture then the barber’s hairy arms.

Babboo will have plenty more hair cuts in his lifetime, and more chances for my mom to continue on with the tradition of at-home family hair cuts.

But until then, well, The King and I are still trying to get used to this new little guy with the Owen Wilson inspired do. But we’re the only ones, since Babboo’s loving his new hair cut.

So tell me, do you remember who cut your hair when you were a little kid?

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And if you haven’t yet, you have until FRIDAY to enter to win my gDiaper give-away. Even if you aren’t in the need for flushable diapers, Gdiapers make great gifts. So enter today. And tell your friends to enter!

Did this week’s “Biggest Loser” blow your mind? I know I was shocked. Head over to WeHeartTV to read what I have to say about this week’s episode and next week’s season finale.