Change is... well... change.

I can hardly believe that so much time has passed without feeling like I had the time to update this blog. Well, although that has been the starting premise of so many posts, things are about to change. In fact, they already have.

One short week ago my employer of nearly 13 years announced to me at the start of my work day that my position no longer existed. In fact, "go home now, process the information and come back in the morning to clean out your desk." No warning whatsoever. No plan to sustain my duties for the company (which garnered them over $100,000 per year) and NO IDEA how or what to do to maintain it in my absence. I ran the recording studio (Dead Aunt Thelma's Studio) and uploaded and maintained the iTunes salable content for Oregon Catholic Press. Did you catch the CATHOLIC part of that name. Yeah, I guess they didn't either.

I'm going to use this change as a jumping off point for many things. I have no idea what any of them are right now but I'm sure that will develop in time. In the meantime there's always time.

Winter Photo Fest!

Just going to throw a bunch of photos up now and put captions to them later...

We just can't stop!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Light show in the middle of the forest.

This is what we did in the winter cold last night!

Snow Day Fun!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The Big Girl Bed

Audrey has become the tallest 2 2/3 year old we know and has definitely outgrown her crib. This, at least, had been transformed with the front face off and a toddler rail on to contain our little thrasher! At 40 inches tall, however, it was time to make a change.

Audrey has had some "issues," shall we say, going to sleep lately. For the last two months we have had an almost nightly battle over the actual act of going to sleep. No resistance to starting the bedtime routine - it's just finishing it that is the rub. We're not talking a half hour or even an hour. We're talking lights out at 8 pm and sometimes she's still going at 11 or 11:30 when we're so bleary eyed we can't even keep up. Every night I cross my fingers that her new-found ability to keep herself awake will be taken over by sheer exhaustion, but to no avail. This is a MAJOR change for our formerly 12 hour straight sleeper who dropped off flawlessly at 7:45 every night for the last 2 years. I know, I know, I shouldn't reveal how good our utopia was before we lost it but it just makes it all the harder to swallow this sleep depriving pill.

We've tried everything. Scolding, praising, "silent return to bed" (damn that Supernanny), the newly instated "sleep chart" where we focus on all the tasks she does well instead of this one GIANT thing for which she has gone berzerk. Nothing seems to be cracking the blood pressure raising habit of staying awake for hours after going to bed. We've gated the doorway of her room so that at least if we really wanted to just let her go we could, but this goes against all that I've read when it comes to sleep. I'm not wanting to start the "mom and dad let me play as long as I want" habit so I decided that it was time to try getting a big girl bed that was fun enough to make her want to stay in it.

In storage is a beautiful solid maple twin frame that is an heirloom from Bill's family. I very much want to refinish this to show off the gorgeous wood and purchase a good mattress and box spring to last through the teen years. Since this is not in the cards right now we opted to find a good buy on an interim solution. Yesterday we braved IKEA with G-ma Pat to make the purchase. Oh, IKEA.... It was Pat's first visit into the labyrinth so it's always fun to watch first-timer's eyes start to slowly glaze over the longer you walk. (And seriously, you probably walk a couple of miles easily before you're done.) Audrey had a fantastic time getting to see G-ma and we were happy to share this with her.

The end result once we got home was a 2 hour furniture assembly/room rearranging session. Audrey is in heaven! She loves the bed, of course, but on our first forray into how it would change the night-time routine we discovered that the massive change of the room alone was enough to entertain any kid for 2 1/2 hours. She finally caved at 10:30 pm.

Let's hope the novelty wears off and the desire for more stickers takes over so that we can fill up that pesky little "stay in bed" column on our sleep chart.

Halloweenie

Since we went to the pumpkin patch early we got excited and carved our pumpkins early too. Also to try to catch not only the weather but to do it during Grammy's visit. Gram took all these pictures...



Funny as it sounds, the new iPhone came in very handy for this project. (did I mention I got an iPhone...) There was an application that helped you make Jack-O-Lantern faces by letting you switch out the different eyes, noses and mouths! Two of our 4 pumpkins were dolled up this way.

Audrey loved every minute of the process even though touching the "goo" was totally out of the question! Bill and Audrey carved the biggest pumpkin. This was, of course, the one Audrey picked out. I wonder how many more years she'll be able to pick out a pumpkin that weighs more than she does!

We had quite a cast of characters this year! We had a pig, a pirate, a goofball and one totally classic model.

Audrey's new daycare (which we love) had a really great harvest (Halloween) party the week before. This was great because it spread the fun out a little and gave the kids a chance to dress up more than once. Audrey dressed as "Winnie the Pooh" and immediately turned into ferocious Pooh bear when she got one of her newest favorite acquisitions from the "find the toys in the haystack" game! The kids were all so excited - could it be the sugar?

They had really great games for the kids including pumpkin painting - which Audrey went nuts for. The kids also did everything they could to break open the pumpkin pinata. It takes a lot longer with 2-4 year olds!! We really had a good time.

Halloween night was a busy one for the whole family. I had a show that night with "The Floydian Slips" (more about that later) so G-ma Pat and Papa Doug graciously hosted us. It was a mad dash to make it from the eternally long sound check for the show to Audrey's daycare, and then up to Pat and Doug's. We made great time and beat the worst of the traffic. The house smelled of dinner and we were hungry. The best news was that Bill got off work early and met us there just a few minutes after our arrival. (On a side note, Bill will no longer be working nights as his shift has changed to 5 days a week getting off at 5. This is the beginning of a whole new era for our family!! I have to admit that Bill's four 10 hour shifts made me feel a little like a single parent 4 nights a week. So we're excited about the change and look forward to being together in the evenings.)

At the last minute Audrey decided she didn't want to be Winnie anymore and she wanted to stay in her pumpkin sweatshirt. Done and done, no argument here! After dinner I had to dash off again to get down to the show in time to get into costume and make-up. Bill and G-ma masterminded the trick-or-treat session. I started giving Audrey an occasional piece of candy over the month or so before Halloween just to be sure she wouldn't go into some sort of sugar crisis. Up to this point we could probably count on one had the pieces of candy that she has had in her life. Last year's trick or treating was to the houses of a completely controlled toddler group with things like Play-doh and recorder flutes. This year, it was the real deal. Audrey and the crew only went around the block, but her pumpkin bucket still came back more than half full! G-ma knows everyone in the neighborhood, and Bill grew up there too so between the two of them they had plenty of folks to show Audrey off to.

Oh, how I remember the longing for the bucket that I knew was full of glorious candy but was stowed away somewhere in it's secret hiding place by my ogre parents. Audrey has hers on top of the refrigerator and I think it will be a while before it's empty!


Tomorrow starts Bill's new work schedule. The change in daylight savings is working in our favor as now the whole gang has to get up an hour earlier. We are working hard to remind ourselves that nothing is changing - we're all getting up at the same time. Hopefully this will stave off the bulk of the painful groans at getting up before 6 am. This does not lend itself well to any sort of rock-n-roll life style at all and I now have to start prepping for almost a week to be able to be awake and alert past midnight. Then there's always the drive home post-show to muster. I think living in the country would be a whole lot easier if I had a "diva-copter." I'm sure that just having more family time on a daily basis will make it all worth while!

Time to get the Christmas tree picked out!

The Pumpkin Patch

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and so are the weeks that precede it. This year we had Grammy Carmen with us to go to the pumpkin patch so we picked an early weekend that had the most fantastic weather and chose a patch that is like the small Disney Land of punkin' patches. The whole trip was great fun and after over 4 hours of adventure we all poured ourselves back into the car exhausted and ready to go home. The whole trip was great.

Audrey Has talked non-stop about all the things we did ever since we got home. "And we rided the hay wagon train ride thing over and over and I found the coolest pumpkins and gourds and I rode in the wheelbarrow, and then I played in a corn bin and took corn kernels home in my pockets, and we went through the hay maze and got lost because we went in backwards, and then when we found the right way we went down the slide a whole bunch of times, and then we ate hot dogs and kettle corn and Grammy bought some fresh apples that they grow right there and apple cider that they make from the apples, and we got some pumpin apple bread and ate the whole loaf that day because it was still warm when we bought it and dad shot an apple cannon and mom used the apple sling shot, and I got to sit in a race car and then I swang in this really big swing and daddy helped me and then I went down the slide over and over and over and over and..."

Here's a funny video that Bill took.

Rockstars make good builders!

I have no idea where these sunglasses jumped into our lives but Audrey absolutely loves them and refers to them as her "Rockstar Glasses." She has asked on at least one occasion if I would like to wear them play one of my shows. I'm certain that if I had taken her up on the offer I would be a multi-platinum artist by now.


The bulk of our summer this year has been all about the "sheds." We (not me) have two paid storage units that are a big ol' ball and chain and building some storage sheds to get us out of paying for this service has been high on the list of priorities. Time has been at a premium for what seems like an eternity, however, so this project is something that has sort of built itself up into epic proportions. Bill has been pretty clever in his masterminding of the space and money used and has opted for 5 smaller sheds rather than one big building in order to be able to better compartmentalize the contents as well as being able to build them himself versus hiring an expensive crew to handle a big building. Audrey LOVES to be able to go "help dad with the sheds." She likes to dress up special for it too!

When I can tear Audrey away from the shed project we have a long list of parks that we like to peruse. One of our favorite outings is to the park that is right next to the library. This one even has a fountain that Audrey has a love/hate relationship with so it makes it even more attractive in hot weather.
Having the library to spend more time in on rainy days helps too. Audrey is so hooked on books that it makes every single minute of our daily 30-60 minute reading time worth the investment. She truly has the vocabulary and speech skills of a child twice her age. It's likely her smarty little pants that have her so enamored with the possibility of being able to read rather than our indulgence in this ritual but we so enjoy sharing this time with her. It even makes her constant correction of our mistakes in her favorite books adorable.

It's was a really busy and fun summer all tolled. The days are getting shorter and the blankets thicker. The rocks are still mostly just where we stacked them around the new parking area - but I'm certain that any second now I'm just going to burst at the seams to get them done. In the meantime we're enjoying the new play-structure I built instead. Maybe we'll have the energy to take the air conditioners out of the upstairs windows soon...