June 19, 2007

Hello from the middle of total chaos!!

Ok, so this is officially our NINTH move since our marriage. Doesn't seem like it should be as big a deal since it's only about a mile and a half away, but still it is a big job! We were planning on getting things boxed up this week and then doing the big move this next weekend, but Saturday our friend Eddie had a big moving van he was already using and was nice enough to let us use it during the day. So we hired a couple of moving guys and they got almost all the furniture out of the house as well as all the storage boxes and boxes of books out of the garage. I wasn't really planning on this as my weekend was already quite busy, but I think it was a good move (no pun intended), because this way I can hopefully be TOTALLY moved out by the end of this week and that gives me all of next week to get this house cleaned.
The only problem is that I wasn't really ready for the move in that I had a bunch of loads of laundry to do, and the house wasn't as organized as I'd like it to be. The result is that I'll have several boxes of things that are not organized and that makes the unpacking harder. But oh well, it will eventually get done. Right now our rental house is pretty chaotic and our new house is extrmely chaotic!! It makes me sooooooooo stressed out not to have things organized and this move really is not an organized one. But I'm trying not to let the stress get to me. Ben would say not very successfully as it is only Monday and I already called him in tears and he really nicely left his meeting and came home to rescue me at 3:30 in the afternoon. THANK YOU BEN!!

My photoshoot on Saturday went well. The weather cooperated and I had fun, although photoshoots are always exhausting. Why is that? I guess just walking around, carrying my camera bag and in this case a chair and a basket thingy for the 1 year old to sit in, and then having to think on my feet getting everyone posed and making sure I'm not overlooking any weird branches sticking into the frame or strangely posed hands and feet, or other things that cause me a lot of headache in the post-processing stage. The family was the older dad and step-mom, one grown son, one grown daughter and her husband and one year old little girl. We did several posed family shots in various locations, plus some couples shots, dad and kids shots, brother/sister shots, husband/wife shots, mom/baby shots, and some shots of just the baby (she's about to turn 1). I haven't had time to even upload them onto my computer but I'm pretty confident it went well.

The boys are happy to be in our new house. They think this whole thing is a big adventure. I'm glad someone does! Mister and Angel are settling in. We're trying hard to get Mister to only use one corner of the yard for his potty, but he's not a very trainable dog and it's not going too well. But I just REFUSE to let that dog have the WHOLE backyard as his personal potty. It's just not gonna happen. So I'm basically potty training a dog again, but not a cute little puppy, but a dumb old dog. I'm not trying to be mean, Mister is just not well known for his intelligence, and at 8 years old, he is getting "over the hill."

I bit the bullet and told the photographer I was working with that I can't do it anymore, but maybe in the fall if things get less crazy for me. It's really hard for me to say no to things, but it is a relief. Now if I can just get through this move, my trip to Florida, and organizing our new house!

Yesterday was Father's Day and I got Ben a gas grill for our back patio. The one we had since our Denver days was so old and yucky we didn't even move it out here from Florida. So he has a nice stainless steel triple burner grill with a side burner for boiling corn or something like that. It is nice and Ben broke it in last night grilling us some steaks. Yum! I'm so lucky to have such a great guy to be daddy to my boys.

Well, this will most likely be my last update until next week since the cable doesn't get switched over to our new house until next Monday. So if you don't hear from me that is why.

Abe, CONGRATULATIONS on graduating from high school!! (well, by Thursday you will be graduated). I hope your recital goes really great tonight. It is starting right now and I am thinking of you.

Rachel and Naomi I'm so jealous you are home with everyone right now. I wish I was there to hear all about Rachel's adventures biking (cycling?) from Tucson to Provo. Naomi, please have someone take pictures of you in your dress and email them to me, I cant WAIT to see it!!!! Also, I sent in a request to the printers to have the invitations overnighted to you in CA, so I'm hoping, praying, and crossing my fingers that they get there in time for everyone to help you with the addressing, etc. I'm not going to email the final result until I know they have been mailed since I don't want to spoil the surprise. But I think they turned out beautiful.

Happy Anniversary Mama and Daddy (also on Thursday, right?). I hope you have time to do something special to celebrate 34 years together. 34, right?

June 15, 2007

Mosey playing in the kid's room during the big boys' swimming lesson.


Joseph and Brigham are on the far right. Looks like they were paying attention at least!


Hello Everyone,
Has it really been a week since I updated last? That is crazy.
Things are going fine, just really busy with the kids being home all day. We've been going to the pool at our new house quite often, and swimming lessons started this week, and with Tae Kwon Do on Mondays and Wednesdays and swimming lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we are now pretty scheduled up!
Swimming lessons was not such a huge success on the first day (Tuesday). I signed Mosey up for the 3-5 yr old class and it was sort of a disaster. He didn't want to even touch the water, let alone get in and try and blow bubbles! He just tried to hide his face in my shirt for the first 10 minutes so finally I told him I had to go sit down and Audrey (his teacher) was in charge. He tried to run after me a few times but I kept bringing him back to the pool. Eventually Audrey did get him to make eye contact with her, and even got him to put his feet in the water. Amazing. Anyway the head teacher told me at the end that Mosey probably is not ready for lessons on his own yet, so I've switched him to the mommy-and-me class (18-36 months) which we'll start next week. Brigham and Joseph were a little more successful. Brigham did just great, actually. Joseph got really scared and nervous and half way through I could see his face just contort into a grimace and then his little shoulders started shaking and I knew he was crying under his goggles. Poor kid. They weren't doing anything he hasn't done on his own in our pool, but I think just knowing that after bobs he would have to move on to floating and gliding just scared him a lot. Luckily yesterday went much better for him, and I think he'll get the hang of it. I think Brigham will catch on to swimming pretty quick. I hope that won't be a hard thing for Joseph.
We've also been trying to schedule all our moving stuff. I'm flying out to Florida June 30-July 1 to get our stuff put on a truck so we'll finally have real furniture! I'm really looking forward to seeing my Florida friends. Next week will be the big push to get stuff moved out of this house into our new house so I'll have the last week in June to clean this house and get things sort of in order at the new house. This will be my ninth address in 10 years of marriage. Yeah, getting a little sick of it...
I finally finished up the drawings I was doing and got those mailed off yesterday, so another thing to cross off my list. I've also been working with another photographer (in New York), doing some post-processing work for her, and she wants me to team up wih her to do all her PP work, plus storyboards, cards, invitations, etc., and I originally told her I would, but now I'm re-thinking it. I just feel like I'm barely hanging on here by my fingertips with church stuff, moving stuff, wedding stuff, and kid stuff! I've been feeling really anxious and panicky and I hate that, so last night (after I was up till about 1:30 AM doing wedding invitation stuff), I had a long talk with myself and decided I need to try to simplify things a little so I think I'm going to contact the photographer I was working with and tell her that at least until the end of the summer I really don't think I'll have time to do any more work for her. It's hard for me to say no to people.
Tomorrow I have a photo shoot with a family who won the auction for my entry in the boys' elementary school silent auction, so that will be another big project I'll be working on in the next couple of weeks. I'm not going to shoot a ton of pictures, after all I'm not getting paid for this, and besides the forecast calls for thunderstorms in the afternoon. Maybe we'll have to reschedule (I'm actually sort of hoping we will).
So today I need to go back down to the park we're meeting at and scout out some good locations. I tried to go last week but by the time we got down to the park, Mosey had fallen asleep so I couldn't go in.
The boys have been good boys. I think they're getting used to summer time and being with each other all the time. Less fighting and more cooperation which makes things easier for everyone. They're outside in the back right now and I'm just trusting they're not up to anything bad.
Ok, that's it for today. My mind is all foggy and this is a very jumbled and disjointed update, but that's a pretty accurate representation of how I've been feeling the last couple of weeks, so I guess that's ok.

June 9, 2007

Ok, so you've seen a bunch of Naomi's engagement pictures. If you want to see ALL of them (like 60-something I think), you can go to my photosite page.

I've been pretty busy the last few days. Young Women stuff, Naomi's pictures, some drawings I'm working on, and keeping the boys occupied.

Wednesday night I had mutual and the boys were very uncooperative for Ben and didn't go to bed until after I got home (and I went grocery shopping after mutual), so it was about 10:30 before they were in bed. And their normal bedtime is 7:00, so that was pretty darn late. As a result Thursday was... not the best day. Lots of whining and fighting and generally being very uncooperative. And I was up even later Thursday night so I was tired and irritable too which did not improve the situation. Anyway that night I had to go to Enrichment and present on "Loving life and learning" and I was feeling especially non-spiritual and especially not-loving life at the moment. So as I was handing the boys off to Ben I said exasperatedly that the boys had had a *really* bad day. Brigham immediately said, "No, mom, we didn't have a bad day, YOU had a bad day!" I just had to laugh at that, because he was right. But enrichment was nice and Friday was a better day.

Friday we went to the YMCA outdoor pool. It was so nice! It is free to get in, has one of those zero entrances where the water comes right up to the ground level like a shore line. It had 3 different water slides into the deeper end (deepest part is only like 4 feet), and 5 different fountains in the shallow side. The boys had a really good time, and Mosey didn't hang on to me for dear life like he did a year ago, so I have some hope for swimming lessons which start on Tuesday.

Friday was also the first day we could officially take possession of our new house, as the previous owners rented back from us for a couple of weeks. So we went there last night and the boys and Ben went swimming in the backyard. I didn't have my swimsuit with me so I didn't go, and went inside quickly as I was getting bit up by mosquitoes. We will really have to come up with some sort of mosquito solution because they were SO BAD. Man I hate mosquitoes. Today I think we might move our hammock and trampoline to the new house so we can go hang out there in the afternoons before we officially move in. I'm going to be putting in hardwood in the master bedroom, probably going to buy the wood today. I'm going to attempt to do it myself, I don't think it should be too hard, and it is only one room, so we will see. It is $2.50/sq ft to get it installed, so I'd really like to do it myself.

Last night I was reading Mosey his alphabet book and we got to the L is for Lemon part, and I asked him, "What do you do with lemons?" thinking he would say, "Make lemonade." But instead he yelled, "Lemons are for throwing in the pool!!" I totally cracked up at that. For those who don't get the humor, my parents have a rather large lemon tree right by their pool, and whenever we go there it is a continual battle to get the grandkids to stop throwing lemons into the pool. Apparently Mosey was completely oblivious to all our efforts to keep lemons out of the water...

Ok, that's it for today. I'll leave you with the drawings I've been working on. They're not entirely finished, but nearly there.

Naomi's engagement pictures

June 3, 2007

Hello Everyone,
This has been a busy week.
I'll just briefly update you on what has been going on.
Last weekend I went up to D.C. to visit Naomi. We had a really fun time. It was a bit of an adventure getting there (my flight out of Austin was delayed resulting in my nearly missing my connecting flight out of Dallas, the tight schedule made even more nerve-wracking by the fact that no one was at the gate to connect the tunnel-thingy to the plane so we could get out. We sat there on the tarmac for 15 minutes, everyone about jumping out of their skin because our connecting flights were going to be extremely close as it was. Luckily my departing flight out of Dallas also got delayed at the last minute, so I made it).
On Saturday morning we went to brunch at Anne Sorenson's house. Anne, Erin, one of Anne's roommates, Z Johnson, Dave, Naomi, and I were there. It was really fun, we could have stayed all afternoon talking. I had no idea Z was such a talkative, interesting guy.
In the afternoon Naomi and Dave got ready for a marathon engagement-photo-shoot/tour of D.C. I'd only been to D.C. once before, and it was for only a couple of hours, and after dark to boot. So I enjoyed walking around Roosevelt Island, seeing the Lincoln Memorial, Washington monument, FDR memorial, Jefferson memorial, Vietnam memorial, etc. I'm not used to walking so much so I was SORE the next day! For dinner we went to a Thai restaurant not far from Naomi's apartment. Naomi's apartment was really cool-- 12th story with a view of the pentagon.
Late Saturday night we drove down to Charlottesville where Naomi and I stayed at her friends Norah and Mike's house. They were out for the weekend. Church was nice, and VERY quiet (no kids!). Everyone could tell immediately I was Naomi's sister. I saw Nathaniel Peterson there! What a small world. I don't think I've seen him since he was a little boy, but he still looks very much the same. :-)
Naomi and Dave made a yummy Sunday dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce and green salad. Then we took a little driving tour of Charlottesville, and drove up through the incredibly beautiful countryside to a reservoir with an amazing view of the mountains. Charlottesville is so, so, so beautiful.
Back home again, Dave handily beat Naomi and I at Scrabble (well, ok, he handily beat ME at Scrabble, and barely beat Naomi), and I scrounged around and made some brownies from scratch that were not very good.
That night Naomi and I had an adventure with a bat! It must have been up in the attic bedroom sleeping all day, since the windows were all closed. We were about to go to sleep when it started flitting all over the room. It startled Naomi quite a bit, but I'm used to the idea of bats, thanks to Joseph. We finally managed to get it out the window.
Monday Naomi and I went to Montecello and discussed wedding plans. Then we went to a bridal shop and Naomi tried on wedding dresses. Then we met Dave at his lab and I got a tour of the University of Virginia during a thunderstorm. Took more pictures there, and was again so impressed with what a good sport Dave was about taking pictures. I've noticed most men hate and despise getting pictures taken. Dave must really love Naomi. It was really fun being with a couple so in love. :-)
That evening Naomi and I drove back up to D.C., and then early the next morning it was back home for me.

This last week at home was pretty normal, I guess. Ben took the boys to Galveston on Friday and spent the night and most of the day Saturday there. The boys seemed to have a good time, although the consensus was that the coolest part of the trip was the park they stopped at on the way home that had a herd (flock? pack?) of feral cats living there. Mosey, our resident cat-lover was actually able to pet some of them and, more miraculously, was left unscathed.
Once I got home, I tried to keep the boys busy and not killing each other. We went to the Austin Children's Museum on Friday, and then Friday night I was chaperone for the Young Women during their service marathon weekend. They spent all day Friday working on a Habitat for Humanity house, then dinner at one of the girl's houses, then out to the young men's president's lake house for a devotional and then watching Monte Python. I didn't get back until nearly 1 AM, and then spent a couple of peaceful hours cleaning the house! Ben and the boys spent the night on the trampoline where they all got pretty much eaten alive by mosquitoes... Don't think they'll be doing that again this summer! I've had to tell everyone we've come in contact with since then that no, they *don't* have chicken pox or measles or any other deadly disease, it's only mosquito bites. Seriously, then each got bitten just dozens and dozens and dozens of times. Looks pretty horrible, but doesn't seem to be bothering the boys much.

Saturday was the boys' Tae Kwon Do "graduation" to senior white belt. It was a large graduation with students from every level testing and moving up belts. It was pretty cool to see the upper level students sparring and testing on their patterns and breaking boards.

Today was church and fast day, so after church Ben and I took a nap while the boys fended for themselves and made a huge mess. They were making "juice" by squishing grapes and blueberries and then microwaving the result. So picture grape and blueberry juice all over the floor. Oh well, the nap was still worth it. The Scooba Ben got me for Mother's Day is certainly earning its keep.

Ok, a couple of quick stories about the boys.

Last Friday as we were getting ready to get in the car to pick up Ben and take me to the airport, Joseph found a little millipede type bug on the ground. So he was playing with it in the car, and at some point he says to me, "Millipedes have pheremones because I can smell it on my hand." Isn't my 5 year old really smart to know about pheremones? :-)

A couple of days ago Brigham asks me, "Why was my teacher surprised when I said noise is made from sound vibrations? Everybody knows that!" I mean, duh!!

Last night I was putting Mosey to bed, and decided to just to to sleep at the same time. So again I had the privilege of listening to him talk himself to sleep. He has a few lines from various Weird Al songs memorized and he likes to sing them to himself. So he starts out with "Pet my poodle, si vous plait!" And then follows that with "Waka waka doo doo yeah!" Then he starts counting in spanish, but he only knows a few numbers so it goes something like this, "Dos, quatro, cinco, seis, dos, quatro, cinco, seis," etc., ad nauseum. My mullti-lingual son. But then he said, "I think I love my mom. I think mom loves me. Yeah, I think I like mom!" Awwww... so sweet.

I hope the rest of you had a good week!