Sleepless in Seattle

I Won't Lie, It's Been Hard.

2012-02-14T23:01:00.000-08:00

Well I thought I would post an actual blog about our lives aside from our house project. Yes, we have indeed still been carrying on and living despite the fact that we are all-consumed by flooring, cabinetry, appliances, and more.

It hasn't been easy. Maybe I fake it, but most often I just stay in my house so nobody sees my stress! Haha. My parents do, bless their hearts.

Since Will started his job last July, he started commuting so many hours every day that we hardly ever saw him anymore. I'm not exaggerating when I say he would get up at 4:45 a.m. to leave by 5:30 a.m., catch a bus at 5:45 that dropped him off in downtown Seattle, only to catch a different bus to take him over to the Eastside. Then he would work a 10 - 11 hour day at work, with no lunch break. Then catch a 5pm bus which took him so far, and then connect with another. If he missed any of his connections he would have to either wait an hour for another bus or take the train. He would usually get home between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. each night. The boys would already be in bed and then both of us would stay up until midnight just trying to get things done that niether of us were able to do during the day due to his long working hours/commute, and me being a single parent all day every day.

Those were the easier months.

Then we bought a house that would need a lot of stuff done to it. Starting the day after we finally closed on the house, Will started to spend multiples days down at the house working on it. Then it turned into him staying down there ALL week long, and only coming home on the weekends. Once Christmas was over, he started just basically living down there ALL the time. He really thought of it as our home from now on, and we were the ones living away. I have brought the boys down there at least once a week or once every other week to help paint or go to Home Depot and make decisions on stuff. We have spent many nights "camped out" at the house just to be together.

So I have been a single parent for...well, if you want to count from when he got his job, it's been about 8 months. The last 3 of those have been pretty much 100% single parenthood as in Will doesn't live with us anymore. Not even on weekends.

I won't lie to you, it has been hard. There have been many days where I have felt so overwhelmed that I felt like I couldn't do anything, because everything seemed so overwhelming I just didn't know where to start. I have often felt like a totally bad mom because my kids hadn't had a bath in 3 days, or had pancakes for dinner 2 nights in a row, or the house was a complete pigsty. Just when I would get caught up on one thing, something else had to give and suffer. I have felt lonely quite often, and have lately dropped in on my parents more times than they were probably anticipating just to either have a few moments where someone else was entertaining my kids, or just so that I could have some conversation and be with other people. I have only slept about 3-4 hours every night because I don't sleep well without Will there, and so I stay up late working on projects or watching movies...only to get up early the next morning when the boys would wake up and try to endure another day of single parenthood. That wasn't always simply because I don't sleep well, but because it is my only time of the day to actually get something done for me. I haven't worked on my album since before Christmas. I feel like Facebook is my main social life lately. And the neighbors are probably wondering if we got a divorce.

It's exhausting. I have been trying to be strong for my boys, but there are definitely moments where I am not proud of showing my emotions in front of them. I want them to feel secure and like things are just normal. I know they are too young to realize that their Dad is not there and have it be an issue for them. I mean yes, Preston is always asking where Papa is, but he is not worried. I tell him that he is fixing the new house so that we can live there with him.

Every time Will and I do get to see each other, our hugs are longer, our kisses are more frequent, and we don't take each other for granted. To be touched by someone else, to actually feel loved is amazing. I feel like I am constantly just giving, giving, giving of my energy, love, and physicality to my little boys only to receive reciprocation maybe 5% of the time back from them. Usually I would get that reciprocation from Will on a daily basis, but I haven't for months. It's exhausting to give and give and not feel like anyone is really taking care of me in return. The moments where Preston has, out of no where, said "Thank you Mama" and I say "Thank you for what?" and he says "Thank you for my new shoes." (that we got him weeks ago) means a LOT to me. And it totally make up for all the bad days. Or when one of them randomly comes and gives me a hug, or when Preston cares enough to ask me "You happy, Mama?" because he can see I am upset and doesn't want me to be. Those few scattered incidents here and there mean so much to me and really help to keep me going.

This whole experience has taught me a few things:

1. I can see why families need BOTH a mother and a father. I understand that it's not always possible for everyone to have that, but I just know why it's important. I honestly can say that I can't do both roles as hard as I try. When we went to go visit Will a couple of weeks ago, I during part of that visit, I was able to go spend the evening with a girlfriend and when I got back he had complained about how undisciplined the boys were. He had a hard time with them getting into bed, and said he even gave Taylor his first spanking (light swat on the bum after asking him 20 times to stop doing something and Taylor completely ignored him and kept doing it). I can't say I was too pleased with that, as I still consider Taylor too young for discipline. But Will had made a comment about how they just "do whatever they want and disobey". I know that he's sort of out of practice with being a parent on a daily basis and so perhaps his patience is not as high as it normally is, but it kind of hurt my feelings a little. I am trying my hardest to be everything for the boys - the mother, the father, the chef, the chauffer, the educator, the disciplinarian, the bedtime getting-readier, the bather, the laundry person, the maid, the goopy finger cleaner-upper, the poopy diaper changer, and more. But I know I fall short, because it's so overwhelming to do it all myself and so I find that I have to just pick my battles. No I don't always follow through on every discipline opportunity that I should, but if I got after them for every little thing I feel that is all I would be doing all day long. Will realized later that he knew it was because they needed a father in their lives, and they haven't had that for a long time. We both yearn to have our responsibilities equaled out more. Will wants to be a parent again. I want to not be a parent 24/7 and actually be an adult too. There is a big imbalance in our family right now, and I'm sure that is also a reason why the boys aren't as well behaved as they usually are either. I think we are ALL a bit stressed. (Don't get me wrong, the boys are well behaved, but they do have their moments). And the things that really sucks about stress is when you're BOTH stressed out, it's sometimes hard to remember to make the other person feel appreciated and valued. I often feel stressed about being the single parent and like I'm not appreciated enough for doing that, but in the midst of my own selfish woes there's Will who has been working his hiney off on our house and hardly sleeping at all and working a regular job as well and probably feel extremely under-appreciated.

I can say that after we live under the same roof once again, there will be LOTS OF APPRECIATION going around all over the place!

2. I have learned that I don't really deal super well in stressful situations. I always thought that I did, which is the funny thing. But now having been enduring a lot of stress for months at a time, I know that I don't do that well. I have learned things about myself that I am trying to improve and work on. I know that when Will is present with us, I feel a huge load off my shoulders and the stress level comes down considerably.

3. I have learned that grandparents are very helpful when they live close by. :) My parents are extremely busy people with their own jobs, lives, careers, and hobbies. But when I am in need, they really try hard to be there for me. One day, not too long ago, I called my dad and asked him if he would take the boys to the park for an hour just so that I could have some time to relax because I was on the brink of turning into a crazy woman. He came over and took them for 2 hours and the boys had a blast. I was so grateful.

4. I have a greater appreciation for Will, and all he does for our family. He is definitely missed not being here, and me having to take on all of his husband/father responsibilities makes me miss him even more. I really don't like taking out the diaper pale garbage bag. :) Haha. And I know he is working long hours on our house so that it will get done faster and sooner so we can be together again sooner, instead of dragging this project out for months and months. I also know how much I need and rely on him as my best friend and lover. Not having him here feels like an empty spot in my heart most of the time. And sleeping alone in our bed stinks. I'm always cold.

5. Priesthood blessings are awesome and needed. And I needed one a few weeks ago. My dad gave me one and it really helped. A lot. Maybe not all at once, but as each day went by, I felt better and better. More clarity, more ability to cope and be strong, and control over my weaknesses more.

So anyway. There you go. I don't usually talk about my problems, and this isn't even all, but it's enough. Something to look back and read once I start taking things for granted again someday. ;)

Aside from all the stress, we have still been living our lives. Here are a few things we've been up to...and then hopefully very soon we'll have before/after pics of our house. We're moving THIS Saturday (cue the Hallelujiah Chorus, please).

Last week my friend Donna came to visit from SLC. She was here for a Massage Therapy conference. I gave her a tour of West Seattle and we dined on magnificent seafood from Duke's Chowder House on Alki Beach. It was a much needed break for me and a nice evening out with a friend. And the weather was GORGEOUS - sunny and 60 degrees.

This is actually unedited straight from my smart phone's camera... it really was a perfect sunset, and then the full moon!!

Today, for Valentine's, I wasn't going to do anything but as the day went by I just couldn't not do something with the boys. So we made vday cookies and Preston made Valentine cards for Grandma and Grandpa - then we delivered them. Will and I celebrated last Saturday night while I was down there painting with him. :) We went to a cafe for dinner and had a nice evening in a total construction-zone of a house.

I've been trying to get the house packed up. It's not going as fast as I would like, but it's slowly getting done. Last time we moved, I didn't have two eager helpers who wanted to unpack everything. I just had one, while the other was a tiny little thing that just laid there and went "googoo".

This past Sunday, I invited my friend Erika to be my date to the Grammy party for the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Record Academy. I've always received invitations for these events, but never went. This year I really want to network more and get my face out there, so I decided it would be smart to attend.

Our husbands watched the boys that night and from the pic them sent us on our cellphones, it looks like they had a fun time!

This was Erika and I making goofy faces at the Grammy party....

They had some stylists there doing "party hairdo's" and so I had my hair done....

This is me with Erik Ting.stad. He is a Grammy winner, and actually part of why I started composing. He told me he'd love to do coffee sometime. Or, for me, water or hot cocoa - ha ha.

I never did get to see what the back of my hair looked like at the party, so Erika snapped this of me after we got home....kind of cool.

And then this was me after I removed all hundred bobby pins and before I combed out the teasing and hairspray. I'm pretty sure this is what my hair looked like in 1995.

Anyway. The boys are doing well. They love to play chase and hide-in-seek. Taylor has been teething a lot lately though, and so he's been VERY clingy and whiny. I love the snuggles but WOW I would love for him to get back to his normal self soon. Preston is starting to earn allowance money by helping me clean the house. It's the first time he's actually been obedient and motivated to clean, as before it was always a struggle and fight to get him to clean up his toys. But now that he knows he is earning money for a new toy, he has all sorts of motivation. :)

Taylor's words so far are: Uh-oh, Bapa (Papa), Up, Uck (Milk), No, Mama, annnnnd that's pretty much it. But it's not to say he doesn't talk. He talks ALL THE TIME. He has his own little jabbery language. I'm struggling to get him to each much lately. He is so picky. He usually eats a couple bites and then he's done. And not even plyers could pry his mouth open to even try to get food in there once he decides he's done. Oh well. If surviving on a diet of whole milk is what is going to get him through this phase, then fine. At least he's getting some fat and calories.

As for Will, he's been just working all day at his job, then going to the new house in the evenings and working on fixing it up until the wee hours of the morning only to get up and do it all again the next day. I do know that he survives on one Papa Murphy's pizza that he buys on Tuesdays when they do their specials and he eats it throughout the week. I am looking forward to feeding that man properly when we finally move into the house. He did get accepted into the Wasatch 100, so we'll be making a trip to UT in September.

That's all!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

Only 4 more days until Saturday. Saturday is the day our family gets to be together again and live under the same roof. I'd say Saturday is actually Valentine's Day for us :)

More Home Progression Pics

2012-01-29T18:07:00.000-08:00

(The view from our front porch)

I thought I would just post a few pics I've taken lately on our house progression. It's looking like we're most likely going to be moving in the weekend of February 18th - which is literally the day after they get the carpet installed. Ha.

Anyway...

Music Studio

Since my music studio butts up right next door to the boys' bedroom, Will has done a lot of research on soundproofing walls, and has taken great care to make sure my studio will be sound proof. This will be great - especially since I do a lot of my work late at night after the boys have gone to bed.

The above picture are some of the soundproofing supplies. I personally cannot tell you what they all are, but I do know that there is special insulation, special sheetrock, special rubber padding, and other, uh, special stuff. In the end, several layers worth of materials to soundproof the wall.

We will also be doing a portion of this soundproofing to the downstairs bathroom that is near the kitchen and family room. So if you come to visit us, you won't need to worry about people outside the bathroom hearing you tinkle. You're very welcome.

Kitchen

The kitchen is definitely the biggest place under construction in the house. We've all spent a lot of time this past week finalizing our appliances. We've been trying to get a good deal on our appliances, but also getting good quality. The hard part about all of that is that you'll find a really nice appliance at one store, but then you've got to match it and you don't always find the matching one for a discount.

We did finally luck out though. We found this GE Profile range, normally for $1700 then marked down to $1422 with an additional 30% off on top of that - all because it was a 2011 model that they wanted to get rid of. I really wanted the double oven style and loved this one, and it was a really great range for the price. So we did get this one.

The problem now, was that we bought the very top of the line range from GE, and couldn't find matching microwave or dishwasher (in the "profile" series) for discounted prices. However, with a lot of searching, we found some GE rebates and were able to get the matching M/W and D/W at a discounted price as well. So we will now have all matching appliances.

That is, with the exception of our refrigerator....

We found the above Frigidaire appliance, normally a $2200 fridge that we got for $1,000. It was hard to find a fridge that was this great in the same price range, and so it will be the only non-matching appliance. We are okay with that since the fridge will not be on the same wall as the other appliances so you won't see them side by side to compare.

The photo below is a comparison photo of the kitchen last week, to now.

As you can see, it's kind of a mess right now. The new cabinets are shipping from Ohio on Feb 7th, so will most likely arrive sometime that 2nd week in Feb.

The photo below is yesterday - the guys tore out that back sliding glass door, and installed a single glass door (which I didn't get a picture of, sorry).

These are the coordinating lighting fixtures for the kitchen and family room. The left light is the flushmount for the family room. And then we have 3 of the pendants on the right which will go over the bar in the kitchen.

Stairs

So, the part of the house that I've always really disliked was the staircase. You open the front door (new front door in the pic below, by the way) and basically walk right into a coat closet, and the staircase is all sheet rocked in an very claustrophobic feeling.

So far, Will has removed some of the front coat closet, and within the next two weeks he will have it all torn out and be installing wrought iron balusters like below, only with white posts.

Bedrooms

So this was the boys bedroom before....notice the gross dirty walls, etc...

I spent most of Friday painting their bedroom. I will be continuing with the nautical theme in there. So I painted a half wall of blue (called "Liberty"). On the bottom half will be white waynes coating, a chair rail, and white base boards. The room will also have touches of red in it, and they have white furniture.

I had a heck of a time trying to get the line going along the ceiling perfectly straight. I used an angled brush and still wasn't happy with it. Someone suggested getting an "edger", and so I bought one from Home Depot...and oh my goodness, BEST INVENTION EVER. I'll never draw my lines ever again.

This is how it looked after I used the edger...

I never ended up getting a photo of the actual lighting fixture, because it was too dark by the time he got it installed, but here is Will putting in the fixture in the boys bedroom. It's a sun & moon fixture that glows in the dark after you turn it off. We tried it out last night and they were so excited about it!

And then finally, our bedroom....

I've had a hard time trying to figure out what to do with our bedroom. For the past several years since we've been married, the colors in our master bedroom have been gold-toned, with red accents. Very rich. I'm kind of tired of it, and especially now that our living room is going to be red, I don't want our bedroom with the same colors. And besides, we've had all the same stuff since we got married and it would be nice to switch it up.

I recently came across a theme idea having to do with Paris, anything French, etc. I want to make our room romantic, and a place we can escape to and feel peaceful in. So I chose this sagey green color called "Scotland Road". The above picture doesn't do it justice, as that was taken on my phone. It dried a little darker than that. Then when we add white baseboards, new carpet, curtains, lighting fixture, etc...I think it will look really great. It's an entirely different color scheme than we've had in our bedroom, so it will be different that's for certain. I want to find some painting/photos of Paris, and eventually get a canopy bed with romantic drapery.

Carpet

We should have ordered carpet weeks ago, but being something we needed to pick out together, we just had a hard time getting together in order to do it. Seattle had a crrrrrrazy snow storm last week that shut the city down, with causing a state wide state of emergency. I know, I know, you laugh because Seattle freaks out when it snows. But with good reason. It all iced over and then we had windstorms, which basically wiped out a lot of our lovely trees. It's a sad sight now to drive down I-90 and see all the trees blown over or broken on either side of the freeway. Our home in North Bend lost power for 4 days, and some people had it even worse.

But we finally were able to go carpet shopping. NOT AN EASY TASK. I guess I never really cared about carpet before because I'd never had to shop for it. So I was really unaware when going to the store to pick it out. And Will and I realized that we had completely different tastes in carpet.

For one thing, Will has been in the home/commercial building market for years, and is really up to date on current home trends. He showed me the current carpet trend that they were installing in the John Buchan homes when he was working there, and my reaction was "Ewe." It is that shaggy twisty type of carpet. I really thought it looked like 1970's shag. Not interested. I wanted more traditional carpet, but super soft and lush. And that's the thing about me - put two items in front of me and I will no doubt always inevitably pick out the more expensive one even without seeing the price.

It took an entire week of carpet hunting, and feeling hundreds of different carpets, comparing prices, and yadda yadda before we finally came to a compromise - if you can call it that. I don't know if Will feels it was a compromise since we still ended up spending more than he wanted, but at least we both agreed on the carpet itself. We went with a traditional soft carpet for the living room, and a twisty carpet for the stairs and upstairs.

Anyway, that's all for now. Our new hardwood floor is sitting in boxes out in the garage. As soon as the guys are done texturing the sheet rock and done sawing stuff up and framing stuff, we'll be done with all the messy stuff (oh, except for the stairs) and Will can get started installing the flooring. Then cabinets, then granite, then carpet....somewhere in there new interior doors, baseboard, and staircase. Haha. Lots to do in the next 3 weeks!

Oh, and thank you Elizabeth and James for watching our boys on Friday and Saturday! We were able to get so much done. Normally one of us is having to watch them, while the other gets something done. And it's crazy trying to keep them from the nails and scraps laying around the house. Not to mention all the painting stink, the noise, etc. So it was nice to have them get to play with their cousins and have a slumber party!

Trauma Drama

2012-01-22T18:30:00.000-08:00

So for those who missed my post in December about how I won mother-of-the-year by traumatizing our 3 year old, go here.

For the rest of you, here is part two of the ongoing saga.

It's actually super sad that I am having to write about this again, but at least if Preston should ever wonder why he has a fear of being left alone, he'll have our family blog to go back and read all about it.

So the other night, I was having a rather challenging night as a mom. Not because my kids were being crazies but just because things kept happening, like Taylor rolling himself right off the diaper changing table right as I turned out only to find him face-planted on the ground (followed by a wailing scream from a stunned kiddo).

Well and then later that evening, after I'd gotten them both to bed, I went to my office like I do every night to try and finally get some things done that I can't really get done during the day when they're awake (keep in mind I've basically been a single parent for months now).

It was about 9:30pm, and I heard Preston up out of his bed. He's been doing this thing for the past month where it takes like 10 tries to finally get him in bed and staying there. It usually goes, in this order:

1. "Mommy I have to go potty!" (even though he just went to the bathroom like 5 min earlier).
2. "Mommy I have to go poopy!" (and me, every single night, asking "Why don't you please go poopy before you get into bed instead of after?").
3. "Mommy my water bottle is all empty!"
4. "Mommy stay with me for 5 minutes." (which I do).
5. "Mommy I need you to put my blanket on me".
6. "Mama I have to find my flashlight!"

And the list goes on. And after each of these, I have to get him back into bed. Again. It seriously takes an hour.

But the other night, it was different. I knew he had already been asleep for at least 45 minutes so it was weird that he was up walking around.

So I got up to go to his room, only he wasn't there. Then I hear him downstairs crying. First, I was concerned because why would he be downstairs all by himself? He never goes downstairs alone if I'm upstairs, especially when it's bedtime.

I could tell it was one of his scared cries, so I hurried down the stairs. I found him standing near the bottom of the stairs crying, big huge tears down his cheeks, and hands down his pants (a comfort mechanism he does, which I wish he would use his pockets instead of his underwear. We've been working on that). Anyway as I was hurrying down the stairs I was asking him "Preston, what's the matter? Why are you crying? ...Why are you downstairs?"

I got a hold of him at the bottom of the stairs, and pulled him towards me. He was really scared, like kind of doing a little dance and acting really nervous. Then I heard a little trickle trickle and realized he was peeing his pants. Huge puddle underneath him, all the way through his pajamas, all over me too (because I was holding him close). Preston does not just pee his pants. He has only had an accident one other time in the last 6 months and that was when he climbed to the top of the SUPER high slippery-slide at McDonalds and then looked out and realized how high he was and freaked out. Peed his pants.

I just held him for a minute, and tried to calm him down. I asked him if he had a bad dream, and he just halfway nodded his head while crying. He wouldn't really answer any of my questions. After a minute, I told him that we needed to take his wet PJ's off and get cleaned up. I said it in a really nice voice because I felt so bad for him, I didn't want him to think he was in trouble for peeing his pants. Well, then I decided he just needed to take a bath because it was everywhere and it might also take his mind off of things.

So I filled up our master bathroom tub and put him in it, and sat there asking him questions and trying to make him feel better. He STILL looked stunned. Yeah, I was totally concerned. I kept thinking "What in the world scared him THAT bad??"

After his bath (at 10pm!), I asked him if he wanted to watch Elmo and he did. So I popped a bowl of popcorn and we sat on my bed and watched an episode of Sesame Street. That seemed to do the trick, because he was feeling much better and much more tired too. When it was over, he let me take him straight back to bed and he fell right to sleep.

Afterwards, I went back to my room and started getting ready for bed and still feeling really concerned for Preston, I was trying to think in my head "Did he watch a scary movie? Was there something he saw that made him have a nightmare?"

And THEN, it dawned on me.

Duh.

I realized, he must have woken up, went looking for me but saw the lights on downstairs and went down there. He was probably halfway out of it and realizing that I wasn't down there, he probably thought he was all alone again (just like my previous post I mentioned earlier). I imagine he must have relived his trauma all over again and just started to freak out.

Once I put the connection together, I felt SOOOOOOOOO terrible. Wow. Like ultra terrible. What have I done to my child??

And that wasn't the only other time either. Last week my mom came over to watch the boys while I went to the store. I didn't say bye to Preston because he was too busy being excited that Grandma was there and so I snuck out the front door. When I got home like 45 min later, my mom said Preston was up in his room crying for me. It was so weird, because usually he is so excited when Grandma comes over. And it was then that I realized that he must have thought he got left.

I guess I didn't realize that something like this could traumatize a 3 year old so badly, and for so long. The first incident happened over a month ago and yet he is still deeply affected by it. I do know though, that Preston has a really really good memory. Yesterday we were going to Costco and as we passed Target, he told me that that was the store where we bought his car puzzles....which was over 6 months ago. I was amazed he remembered that!

So anyway. I'm trying to make an effort now to make sure he always knows where I am and where I'm going, and that I'm continually reminding him that I would never leave him alone. He is usually such a tough independent little guy too, and sometimes I forget that he does need his mom more than I think he does, or more than he will admit he does.

That's it.

Snowed In...Sort Of.

2012-01-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

We all know that the phrase "Snow in Seattle" is an oxymoron.

And when it happens, people stay in, stay home, close everything, OR they venture out and become the world's most wreckless freaked out drivers over 2 inches of the white stuff.

We opted to stay in today. Church was not cancelled, but we decided to not brave our icy hill, as we got word that my Dad had actually crashed his car this morning going down their hill. He ran into a guardrail and the whole right front end is all smashed up. :( Having 9 am church when the temps are still really freezing, underneath that skiff of snow is actually a lot of ice.

So instead we went for a walk in it!

It was Taylor's first time walking in snow. He wasn't so sure what to think about it. Nervous at first, but then eventually got brave. Wouldn't cross the street though, or step on any big chunks of snow.

We were really hoping Preston would like the snow this year - as the past 2 years in a row he has been scared of the snow and cried when we tried to get him to play in it.

He did cry, but after a while, he finally warmed up to it and actually went down a sledding hill several times with Will.

Taylor eventually got really tired of it and started fussing, so I went home and got the jogging stroller and put him in it. He felt much more secure there.

This was a photo I took from my phone yesterday - it was such a blustery day. White caps on the water and soooooo cold!

Last night, Will and I had a date night! Yippee!

His work had a holiday/winter party at the EMP in downtown Seattle (Experience Music Project). It's the totally weird, somewhat ugly building that is underneath the Space Needle at the Seattle Center. It's more or less a museum of music pop culture music history.

So I got my bling on and got all dolled up...

And we had a fun date night...

I was rather disappointed that for being the MUSIC history center, they didn't have a single piano to play on in the building. And just when I was craving one...

In other news....more on our house.

Out with the old chandelier, and in with the new....

I will tell you that we got that entry chandelier for a pretty good deal on Overstock.com and free shipping. I had originally bought a chandelier from Lowe's, but it wasn't really what I wanted and I felt like I was settling. So when I found this one online, I ordered it and we returned the other one.

This is the light fixture for my music studio - but not entirely put together. It is going to be pretty sweet though when all hung up. We are waiting until we get the sound buffering sheet rock on the walls installed - as they will be spraying that gross smelly sheet rock stuff all over the place. I don't want to get it on my pretty chandelier. :)

The End. For now.

A Little Update

2012-01-11T20:51:00.000-08:00

Life in Limbo. That is us lately.

To and fro, back and forth. One of these days we will all live under the same roof again. In the meantime, our cars are guzzling gas and Home Depot is making bank off of us.

So here is the update on us and our house (since that is what we've been up to mostly)...

As you can see, I think we've finally got the kitchen figured out.

It was no easy task. We shopped around and number crunched until we were so sick and tired of cabinets. We were trying to decide between:

- Keeping old cabinets, sanding them, and adding to them.

- Getting in-stock pre-made cabinets from Home Depot, and staining them.

- Buying all brand new custom made cabinets

We ended up going with the last option, because, as it may surprise you, it was pretty much the same price. By the time you move things around, spend time sanding, buy supplies, add to cabinets, and whatever else...it only came in slightly under what it would cost to just buy all new cabinets. AND we ended up getting our custom cabinets from Home Depot at an amazing price - as they currently have some great specials. Basically, we are getting the high-end cabinets with all the fancy extras (hardware and crown molding, no-slam doors, etc.) at the same price as the basic cheap cabinets.

It did take a lot of thinking and creativity to get the final kitchen design to work. The kitchen is long and narrow, so it was hard to do anything BUT a peninsula (we tried an island and it didn't work). But as you can see from the photo above, we've created a LOT more working space within the kitchen, there won't be anymore overhanging cabinets so that opens up the space a lot more too. Some other changes we are doing:

- Moving oven to the wall

- Adding microwave above oven (there was no m/w before)

- Replacing old sink with new black composite sink (scratch resistant and basically indestructable)

- Adding hard wood floors

- Putting in all new stainless steel appliances

- Adding granite countertops

- Adding row of cabinets against wall over oven

- Made peninsula 3.5' X 7.5' (huge) for 4 bar stools.

- Taking out sliding glass door and replacing with single glass door and small window.

In other parts of the house, Will has started to de-construct the entry hall closet. :)

It will eventually be gone so that we can actually have an entry way. The stairs will eventually be wrought-iron.

I've been looking for LIGHTING inspiration for my music studio. These all look so wonderful....wow if we only had the space. But my studio is the size of a bedroom, so it definitely won't look like any of these. But I do love the wood work and lighting and colors in these. I have ordered my light for the room, but I don't have a photo of it. I'll post pictures as it progresses.

Other than that, the boys are doing well. Taylor's newest word (he only knows about 4 words) is "snack", and he says it absolutely perfectly enunciated. It's funny. Of all the words a kid his age should be saying, he chooses that one. Incredible. And he knows what it means too.

Preston has been an amazing big brother. Today while I spent about 2 hours in Home Depot with them, Preston pushed Taylor around in a shopping cart in the appliance section, and took care of him. I would just hear them giggling in the distance (so I always knew where they were), and everyone kept commenting on what well-behaved children I had. I was a proud mamma.

I have had my 3rd dental visit in 2 weeks. I think our insurance and us are probably officially funding my dentist's vacations this year. And Advil has been my friend lately. Blah. (3 fillings, 1 crown, and a deep clean).

Anyway, things are good, just busy and stressful. But it's a GOOD stressful. So yep- that's us lately.

House Progression

2012-01-01T22:44:00.000-08:00

We've been spending a lot of time at our new house, getting some things fixed up on it.

Correction: WILL has been spending a lot of time at our new house fixing stuff. He "lives" there now and comes home on Sundays for church. We miss him tons, and it only adds to the motivation to hurry and get this home renovation project sped up so we can be together as a family again soon.

The boys and I have taken two extended weekend trips down to the house to paint and hang out with Will. Our most recent trip was the day after Christmas, and we stayed from Monday through Thursday. Preston got a plastic tool set in his stocking and was excited to get to help Papa "fix" the house.

Several friends have mentioned wanting to see before/after photos, however, to be honest there is not a whole lot to show you yet. Our "fixing it up" financing will finally be going through this week, which means our contractor will finally be starting work this week as well. So everything we've done up to this point has mostly been prep-work.

Will has:

- Pressure washed the roof and removed years worth of moss and gunk, as well as from the gutters.

- Pressure washed the siding of the house - as we won't be able to actually paint until the summer. But at least we'll look clean now.

- Replaced all of the heaters with new units and new thermostats.

- Replaced all of the gross old toilet seats with brand new seats (which means we can all pee in peace now).

- Replaced all of the bathroom fan units.

- Installed our new dining room chandelier.

Fireplace

The most recent fixes we've done, is we got the new fireplace installed. When we bought the house, there was no fireplace. Well, I mean, the space was there, but the actual fireplace unit had been removed. I'm not sure how many of you have had to purchase a new fireplace unit before - but it's not cheap. But we did it, and are very excited to have future cozy fires in it. We got one with a built-in fan in the hopes that it will be able to heat most of the house and save us on our electrical bill.

Here is a before/after photo of the fireplace.

We plan to eventually replace the tile around the fireplace with granite to match the granite in the kitchen. We will also be painting the current mantle white, and adding new white matching pieces that extend up to the ceiling with a arch. The walls will eventually be painted a rustic light green color.

A project that I have tackled is getting some of the painting done. Whoever owned this home before, I can honestly say that they never touched this house with new paint (and probably didn't clean either? Yuck). The walls are all very gross and dingy, and so splatting some new paint on has given the home some new life, not to mention make it feel a lot cleaner.

Living Room/ Dining Room Progress

I have been wanting a red dining room for years, but have never been able to do it since we've been renters. Well now I have finally been able to do that. It took a while to find the right shade of red though. I tried 4 different shades of red, but the one I ended up choosing I had gotten from a neighbor's house who had red walls. I ended up going over and asking her if I could steal her paint color, and she gave me her can of paint so I could color match. It's sort of a "barn red" color.

As you can see from the picture above, I didn't take the red paint all the way up to the ceiling because we will eventually be adding white crown molding around the ceiling. I'm going to have fun decorating this room. I love very traditional styles, and while we are going for more of a "Craftsman" look for the rest of the house, this room in particular will be more chabby-chic/French provincial. Or as I would like to call it, my Versaille (Marie Antoinette's palace in France).

Will installed his first chandelier ever. We were excited when we flipped the switch and it turned on. :) Success. I found that chandelier for an amazing deal at Home Depot - it was going out of stock. It is regularly around $200, and we got it for $49.99. As you can see from the old 1990's chandelier Will is holding in his hand, the new chandelier is quite a huge improvement, not to mention a more updated look. You can click to view it larger.

The funny part, is after we installed the new chandelier, we were finally able to actually have enough light to see in that room better, and I saw all the spots I had missed painting. Next week will be coat #3 of the red paint. Ugh.

We will eventually be adding similar-style wall sconces, and nice white baseboards. I hope to either eventually sew my own curtains for the room, or better yet find some at an amazing deal. Any curtain makers out there have ideas, let me know.

The Kitchen Mess

So, being that the kitchen is going to be the most centralized and well-used area of the house, it will be one of the bigger and more expensive renovations we are doing.

We are COMPLETELY re-doing it.

As you can see, we've got our work cut out for us. Not sure if you can follow my little drawing, but that is the basics of what we're doing. We will have hard wood flooring all through the kitchen to the family room (where the fireplace is).

We're still trying to figure out if we want to order completely new cabinetry, or try sanding these ones down and restain them. We would really like a dark cherry wood floor/kitchen with dark grey granite. That is something Will is still doing some number-crunching on.

What's next...

This week our contractor is starting work on the back exterior. One of the problems with the house is rain had gotten underneath the back siding and started seeping into the wall and going into the downstairs bathroom. There is a mold issue. So is stripping the siding, fixing the issue, and then tear down the sheetrock/mold out of the downstairs bathroom. We will also be adding the additional wall in the kitchen and then putting in the new back glass door.

Getting the water damage issue under control is the first priority, and then after that is done they will start on the kitchen.

Wanna see the rest?

I haven't really posted pics of the rest of the house, because I've been wanting to wait until we had more progress so you could see before/after. However, now that you've already seen how dirty/dingy the home currently is, I guess I don't mind just going ahead and showing you the rest of it. So here is your little tour....make sure to wash your hands afterwards. Ha.

So there you have it. Our "new" home. Haha. It definitely has a lot of fixing up to be done, but hey, we got an amazing steal on the home as it was a foreclosure. We ended up paying only $117,000 for it - which for the eastside in Seattle is really amazing. Once we are finished fixing it up all cute, we hope to have raised the value to between $250K - $300K. We are putting so great sweat equity into it. Literally.

Tomorrow morning I'll say goodbye to Will again for the next 2 weeks, and it's back life as a single parent for me. I won't say it's easy. It's definitely hard, and I'm exhausted from it. We will be so excited to finally be back together as a family. We will be moving at the end of January. Obviously we won't have the house done by then, but we're hoping to at least have the kitchen done, the flooring, and carpets. The rest will happen after we move in (baseboards, etc.). We will also be replacing any and all doors in the house, not sure if we're doing that before or after we move in though.

I have Christmas photos to post, but will have to save that for another day. Until then, enjoy a few sneak peeks from our Christmas below...

Two Christmas Video's

2011-12-26T09:39:00.001-08:00

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So he DOES need parents afterall.

2011-12-23T17:47:00.000-08:00

See this little guy to your left?

He's a pretty independent soul. Always insisting he can get his own breakfast, dress himself, get himself into his carseat, and more.

His catch phrase is always "My do it myself!!"

Will and I are always joking about it, and saying "That kid doesn't need parents. What are we here for?"

I have often wondered, what if I just left him alone for a few hours. Would he even notice I was gone? Or would he just keep playing with his toys, going potty when he needs to, and helping himself to animal crackers as a means of food survival?

That question was answered one day last week.

This is the sad story about a little boy who discovered that he does, indeed, need his parents, and the mother who deserves Mother-of-the-Year for how it happened. That last part was a joke, please know.

Last weekend, we all "camped out" at our new house from Friday until Tuesday. Will worked a lot on the exterior doing some pressure-washing, while I worked inside painting walls (see photo below).

The boys did really well during this, considering we don't really live there yet and there's not much to entertain them. They did sleep in the same room for the first time EVER, and while it did take them over an hour each night (after giggling and yakking) before they finally fell asleep, they had lots of fun. Preston brought a bunch of cars to play with, and he also helped me paint (I let him paint on some of the yucky walls).

On one of the days, I had a hard time entertaining the boys and also getting them to take their naps. I put Preston down on his air mattress and told him that I was going to go do an errand, that I was taking Taylor with me, that Papa was still here but he was outside, and that I would be back back really soon. I made sure that he knew that Dad was still here if he needed him.

I then went outside and found Will and said "I'm going to go to town to get some food. Preston is supposed to be taking a nap. He's laying down on his bed, but you might just want to keep your eyes open in case he comes wandering outside looking for you." He acknowledged me and then Taylor and I left.

About 50 minutes later, we came back from the store. Taylor had fallen asleep in his carseat (first nap of the day), and I took the groceries inside. I thought I heard Preston, but it was so faint, I thought it was just noise coming from the music player. I went out and got Taylor and brought him in, and again heard something. This time, I stopped and listened really carefully. I realized it was Preston crying.

Taylor was still asleep in his carseat, so I just left him downstairs. I went upstairs and noticed that Preston's bedroom door was wide open. I went inside and couldn't find him anywhere. I looked in every room and then finally realized the crying was coming from our master bedroom closet. My first thought was "Oh my gosh he hurt himself!" As I got closer, I could tell that this was his frantic "I'm scared" sort of crying. I got really worried and hurried to get to him faster.

All the lights were out, except for the light in the closet. I opened the door and found him laying down on the floor in the fetal position with a blotchy red face, tears streaming down his cheeks, and really upset. I asked him "Preston what's wrong???" and he just looked at me. I realized that he was really scared, and so I said "Come here and give mommy a hug. Come on, come here and sit on my lap." He still wouldn't get up. So I went and picked him up and he grabbed onto me really tight. We sat there for a moment, and then I said "Were you scared??"

Duh. It took me a entire 3 minutes to finally realize WHY he was scared. He must have never went to sleep, gotten up out of his bed trying to find me. Walked around the entire house and realized nobody was there. He probably completely forgot that Papa was outside, but instead just heard the really loud scary noise of the pressure washer. The only place he could think to go where he would be safe was his parents bedroom, and he locked himself in the closet where he would be okay and just cried all scared.

I can tell you that at that moment, my heart sank when I realized the emotions he went through, honestly thinking that his parents had left him alone in a vacant house. I. Felt. TERRIBLE.

We sat there for a good 15 minutes while I just held him. I kept rubbing his back and telling him that everything was okay, and that Mommy or Daddy would NEVER leave him alone. I told him "Did you remember that Papa was here the whole time? He was just outside so you couldn't see him. I would never leave you here all by yourself." I must have apologized to him at least 20 times telling him how sorry I was that he was scared and thought that I left him.

So yes, I deserve Mother of the Year for that one, let me tell ya. The whole thing haunted me for a good 2 days afterwards with the image of him huddled in the fetal position in a closet crying burned into my memory. Ugh.

One thing I did learn from the whole though, is that Preston DOES need his parents. So in some small, VERY VERY small way, it felt good to know that he does really need me. But I would never put him through that again just to find that out. I can tell you that.

P.S. A couple of funny posts about Preston from my Facebook this week:

Dec 23rd:

This morning, while driving in the car and Preston insisting that I needed to "Go faster! Go faster, Mama! Like Lightning McQueen!!", I told him "I can't go any faster or a policeman will give mommy a ticket." He paused, and then said, "Not if you go faster, you go so fast the policeman won't see you, mama!". Smart boy he is. I got a good laugh out of that one.

Dec 23rd:

Last night, I gathered the boys around the Christmas tree and tried to tell them (the best I could to a 1 and 3 yr old) the story of the Nativity. When I asked Preston if he knew what happened next (at certain key points in the story), he told me that the "mama rode on a horse", that they stayed "in a castle", and that the wisemen gave baby Jesus a "car" for his birthday. Of course!

Does anyone...

2011-12-22T13:05:00.001-08:00

...blog anymore? (or comment?). Just wondering. Just seems like a rather vacant world in bloggerland these past several months.

The Wrap-Up

2011-12-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

The Wrap Up. Otherwise known as what the heck we've been up to for the past who-knows-how-long.

Da Boys

The boys have been busy. And cute, of course.

Taylor's hair has decided it's going to take on another one of my traits and grow some curls. Will keeps insisting he is starting to resemble Bozo the Clown and that I need to give him a serious haircut. But I just can't get myself to snip those locks off quite yet.

Taylor has also recently started walking, and recently been weaned. One accomplishment for him, the other for Mommy. :)

The boys have had fun with the Christmas decorations. Although I keep finding bulbs all over the house with the tops taken off.

I can't believe that Preston is going to be going into Sunbeams next month! I think he is ready though. He is definitely the biggest kid in nursery.

My friend Erika and her boys visited overnight, and we decided to go to the island store together to buy new toothbrushes for the boys (something we both have oddly been needing to do but haven't, so we decided to do it that day). We both were pregnant at the same time and have two boys each almost the same age. Preston and Camden are both 3. And Taylor is 15 months, while Brody is 12 months. At least for another week and then they both go up a month in age.

I was brave and hosted playgroup at my house last week, where I had 9 children making gingerbread houses in my kitchen. It wasn't even as messy as I thought it would be and we all survived.

The House/Will

Since we are now home owners and can officially tackle things on the "new" house, Will has begun some of the prep work before the contractors come in. Here is just one example of what he's done to clean the place up. He discovered a long lost patio in the backyard that we didn't even know was there...

Will has been sleeping/staying at the new house for the past 2 weeks. He works from early morning until evening, and then goes straight over to the house and puts his grubby clothes on and starts working. He has replaced all of the heaters and thermostats in the house with new ones. He has pressure washed the roof, and back patio. He has started pressure washing the siding. He has cleaned out the gutters. I am planning to go down to the house this Saturday and start painting walls.

In the mean time we have really missed having him around. It's weird to not see him 6 days out of the week. But this is kind of the sacrifice we just have to make right now. It would take him far too long to drive all the way back to the island each night. And this way he is able to progress the work on the house much faster - since we basically need to have everything done so that we can move in at the end of January. So if anyone is bored and wants to help Will with some home improvement projects, I'm sure he would gladly feed you pizza and take you up on an offer to help.

I have to say though, having him gone has sure me us appreciate each other more. We got to go and see him at the house last Saturday night, and I had excited butterflies in my stomach - the kind I used to get when we were dating and I drove all the way down to Portland to see him.

Will also ran his first race since July. It was a 25K near Deception Pass on Whidbey Island. We weren't able to go and cheer him on because I had a rehearsal, but here are a few photos from his race. I'm glad he was able to do it - as running is a huge stress reliever for him and he's been long overdue for a good run.

Me

I have been busy with our stake's Nativity Festival that just ended yesterday. I have been serving on the planning committee for this since March of this year. My responsibilities included building the website (http://www.arlingtonnativityfestival.org), as well as being in charge of all the stake sign-ups. It might not seem like a lot, but I have spent countless hours on it.

I have also been involved in the music for the festival, as the stake choir accompanist and also a solo performer at the event and the concert. Here are just a few photos from the festival...

And then here is a video from the closing concert - with me playing the violin on "A Celtic Silent Night"

As well as being involved in the Nativity Festival, I've also been busy working on the "business" aspect to my music, which is a lot of the tedious stuff that is necessary but hate doing because it's all so time consuming. Things like the fact that I'm having my website completely redesigned, and my web designer has been pushing to get it done soon. I have been spending evenings re-writing my bios, all the text for my site, going through all my photos and trying to simplify galleries, etc. There is a LOT of work that goes into a website believe it or not :)

Here is a screenshot of my website as it looks right now - I designed it myself in 2006. I've tried making updates to it as much as I have been able, but I realize it is very out of date with current website styling and tech stuff. Especially with how many people view web content on their phone nowdays instead of a computer.

So I hired a web designer and we've decided to go for what is referred to as a "100% site", meaning, that it takes the full width of your computer screen (verses the one above that is just centered in the middle). This is a screenshot of design he is working on. The media player on the lower left will not be purple like it currently is, but eventually will match the color scheme of the site. All of the menu tabs have drop-down menus which is a lot cleaner (instead of my current site where all of the navigation menus are in plain site which makes it much more cluttered).

In order to do the 100% site, I obviously needed some new updated photos that would work for it. As you can see the photo above that we are using needed to be one where it was landscape cropped and had enough space in the image for web content as well. So my dad and I had two photoshoots at our house, where we put up a special grey backdrop (a paper backdrop made specifically for modelling shoots), and we just shot the photos at my own piano. We used a high powered fan to give my hair a wind-blown effect. In addition to the shot above, these others are a few of the best shots we got from the shoots...

In addition to working on all the business stuff, I've also been working on music as well. I recently got four more mastered tracks back from my audio engineer in Los Angelos. I'm telling you, everytime I know he's mastering my music I feel so excited like a kid on Christmas morning waiting for the email from him telling me that they're ready for a listen-through. The mixing and mastering is the final step in a finished track, and it's exciting for me to hear my music in that state. With these recent four tracks back, that makes 7 officially finished tracks for my new album. There are 17 going on the album, and some of those other 10 are in semi-finished states. But I still have a lot of work cut out for me to get this album done by Spring. Thank goodness I have the help of my parents once a week or so to watch the boys so that I can have several hours to orchestrate. I don't know what I'm going to do without them when we move ;(

That is the update on us. We are all doing well, and keeping busy. We are so grateful for the blessings that have come our way this year. Lots of hard work and sacrifice, but it's all with the knowledge that we're being watched over by Heavenly Father and that it'll be worth it in the end. We're looking forward to spending Christmas together and enjoying the rest of the year. We hope you are all enjoying your Christmas season as well.

Things Will Be Okay

2011-12-05T15:11:00.001-08:00

Our lesson in Relief Society yesterday was centered on the talk that Elder Uchdorf gave in General Conference to the women about the "Forget Me Not" flowers. One of the main points of his talk was to help us women be more patient with ourselves and to love ourselves.

I know that I definitely struggle with measuring up to my own high standards at times, but I have to say that I think I've finally reached a point in my life where I'm a lot more patient and content with myself. Maybe it has something to do with being in the 30-something's, but I'm really enjoying it.

For one thing, I'm not as hard on myself about my body anymore. Yes I am still trying to obtain that pre-pregnancy number on the scale, but I don't hate myself in the interum like I would have in my 20's.

Several years ago, I would compare my life with other peoples lives. I've come to realize that a) We always tend to compare our weaknesses with other peoples' strengths, and they do the same thing as well. So really you have a bunch of people feeling bad about themselves for silly reasons. And b) A lot of times it's comparing apples to oranges. I mean is it really fair to compare your mothering skills and knowledge to someone who has been a mom 10 years longer than you? No, not really.

The biggest thing I have learned is that we are all in different stages of life, and you have to cut yourself some slack. Be gentle to yourself and love yourself. If you are a mom with young kids, don't let your friend's immaculate house make you feel bad about your own cleaning skills. Again, it's apples and oranges. Maybe her kids are older and past the stage of destroying everything in sight. Her struggles are different than yours. The fact remains, is everyone has struggles but they are different and all very tailored for whatever situation of life they are in.

My point to all of this, pertaining to myself, is it's nice to finally be able to look in the mirror and not hate my body for what it is, but love it for how far its come and enjoy the process of obtaining goals to continue to be healthier. It's nice to know that even though we just bought a 1600 square foot home that is a total fixer upper and not as nice as a brand new home that is twice the size, that it is perfect for us and the situation that WE are in right now. And that for us, it is a huge accomplishment that we worked hard towards. It's nice to look at my boys who aren't always the cleanest, who sometimes wear pajamas all day long - but to know they are loved and are being taught good things.

Love yourselves. Be patient with yourselves.

The Mortgage Club

2011-12-02T10:22:00.001-08:00

We are now part of the mortgage club. You know, the one where you get to make payments on a piece of land and property that you now OWN.

Yay us!

I won't say it was easy getting into the club, however. Six weeks of going through a bank trying to get an FHA loan, to finally have it turned down due to some previous flooding issues in the neighborhood was to say, in the very least. ultra frustrating. We had to ask to extend our closing date twice. Maybe three times, I don't remember. We lost many hours of sleep because we were up reading through contracts and signing them to meet deadlines before the next morning. We had at least 3 different contractors do bids and inspections.

But...at the last minute, a miracle happened. We found a private lender. You know, one of those people who lends 100% cash for investments. We were able to close in ONE WEEK baby. And the process was so much more pleasant. We pay the loan back within a month and our interest isn't really all that bad, so we are refinancing this week. Once the refinance goes through, we will also get our money to do all the remodels and fixes on the house.

We are blessed. Here is why:

1. This home is closer to Will's job, which means instead of him commuting 4 to 5 hours every day, he will only be commuting a grand total of 1.5 hours a day (45 min each way, and that is bad traffic time).

2. We got an amazing steal on this home, and by the time we get it all fixed up and looking beautiful, the value will have practically doubled.

3. We will have the home paid off in 7 years, with a lot of equity for the next home we buy.

The only downside right now is Will has been living at the new house so that he can start working on it. I haven't seen him in 5 days now. I hate sleeping by myself. Any noise in the house freaks me out. My sheets are awfully cold without my human heater in bed with me. And being a single parent is no fun. I haven't been kissed in a week. The boys have forgotten they have a father (sorry Will, they are young with short memory spans).

But it's temporary and we'll all soon be together again. We have 2 contractors who will start work on the interior as soon as the refinance goes through. We'll post pics as things get done.

Toodles!

Family Photos

2011-11-29T09:04:00.001-08:00

While we were in Pendleton, Oregon for Thanksgiving, we went over to the park and took a family photo. It isn't often that we get this many of us together. However, we're still missing my two younger brothers (one is in Florida, the other is in Portland).

From left to right is:

Taylor Thomas, Will Thomas, Jenni Thomas, James Southworth, Carolyn Southworth, Preston Thomas, Thelma Lindsay (my grandmother), Alexander Southworth, Elena Southworth, Ron Southworth, Emmy Southworth, and Mike Southworth (my older brother). I should also mention we are missing my Grandpa - who passed away 2 years ago.

And then here's us! Rodulph and all!

We've taken photos by this tree since I was a little girl - only now it's lost some of its branches.

Thanksgiving - A Taylor Post

2011-11-27T20:33:00.001-08:00

(Watch the following video)

(Rollerskating Video here)...

Hollywood Trip

2011-11-21T14:59:00.001-08:00

All right, first, a warning. There are LOTS of photos in this post, so bear with me. Second, even though I just posted a blog about this on my music blog, this one will be a bit more personal with more details (that I didn't want the general public/fans reading). So if I were you, I'd read this one. :)

For the past 4 days, Will and I have been in Hollywood, California. The main reason was for the awards show where I was a nominee (which shall remain nameless to avoid google searches leading to this post), but it was also an excuse for us to finally get a little time alone together. Our two cute little rugrats were special guests of Grandma and Grandpa while we were gone.

So here you go - a behind the scenes tell-all of the red carpet experience.

We flew into the Long Beach Airport Thursday afternoon, just in time to pick up our rental car and head over to our hotel at the Kodak Theater complex in Hollywood.

I have to say, being able to drive around in a convertable with the top down in the middle of November was a very pleasant experience. Especially since we'd heard that Seattle had received a few snowflakes since we'd left.

Here is our view from the Renaissance Hotel which was in the Kodak Theater Complex, otherwise known as The Hollywood & Highlands.

It was a very nice 5 star hotel, which we lived up while we were there - because for the next 3 nights we moved over to the Hollywood Motel 6. Which, was an adventure in itself that I'll tell you about in a minute.

We had a few hours to get ready for the event. We really didn't know what to expect at this thing, so it was actually really nice that we had a direct view of the entrance of the event from our hotel window.

As you can see, we had a stellar view of people lining up and entering. I was particularly concerned about dressing for this thing, and so Will snuck over there and gave me the headsup as to what people were wearing so far. I was pleased to find out from his spy report that there were all sorts.

It wasn't that I was nervous for this event, but I was what I would say overly concerned with my appearance. Being Mormon, I wanted to be sure that what I wore was classy and modest, but I also didn't want to stick out like a frumpy uptight mess either. And in a place like Hollywood where there are perfect bodies at every turn, plastic surgery, and short skirts...honestly I was nervous that my modest curvy self would feel out of place. NOT that that is a bad thing - because we both know that I don't desire to be any of the fore-mentioned things. I guess I'm just trying to say is that I wanted to feel beautiful but not over or under done.

I had the help of a stylist for the past month who helped me choose accessories, shoes, and a clutch. However, two weeks before this event, I decided I didn't like my dress and returned it. I spent two full Saturdays shopping with my mom until we found the two dresses that I had blogged about previously.

(Me taking a self-portrait in the mirror to check myself before embarking out for the evening)

And for those wondering (because a lot have asked me), even though I LOVED the midnight blue dress and it was more my own personal style, I ended up wearing the black dress to the red carpet because it flattered my figure better. It was a really hard decision, but that is what it came down to. And knowing that I was going to be photographed, interviewed, and more from all angles...the last thing I wanted to worry about was my dress.

Here were my cute sparkly shoes that I wore for the evening

The view of the hotel swimming pool, and the Kodak complex in the background

I have to say that I was ready way before Will was, and we didn't end up arriving to the red carpet until about 7pm. It had already been going on for 2 hours, and the red carpet ended at 8pm when the show was to start. This turned out to be a good thing later on, I'll explain...

Here is a photo of me on a balcony with The Highlands behind me, which is where the awards were held.

Across the street, we could see on the rooftop the Jimmy Kimmel show being filmed.

Once we checked in for the event, we got our bracelets and stood in line for the red carpet. If you can imagine all the stars and nominees here for the event have to wait for their turn to walk the red carpet, you will understand waiting in line for a long, long time. Especially because there are those who really like to strut their stuff in front of the cameras.

While in line, I got to meet a few artists waiting as well. The group of gents directly behind us came all the way over from Turkey - as they were nominees in the Instrumental Genre. The guy in front of me was a nominee for Best Music Video (he was a hip hop artist). There was definitely a wide variety of artists - mostly all independent like me.

As you see the sign above says "Red Carpet Only", at that point Will had to leave for the VIP lounge while I went to the red carpet. Only press, presenters, nominees, and celebs were allowed on the red carpet. I was a little anxious about this because I didn't want to do the red carpet by myself. Luckily, Will was able to sneak through a window and get a couple of shots of me.

It did take a really, really long time to finally get to the red carpet though and my feet were starting to kill me. And I was enormously thirsty! I would have paid $50 for a glass of water right then, especially knowing that I was going to have to smile for cameras and do interviews. But thankfully, because we were so late getting on the carpet, they quit doing the TV interviews because the awards were starting. I was really relieved actually. My mouth was parched and I was an anxious wreck.

Once I was on the red carpet, the lights were pretty bright and I couldn't really see much of anything. All I heard were photographers in front of me saying "Jennifer, look this way", or "Jennifer, smile and look here." I just tried to follow the voices and smile in the direction of them.

Here are several more shots of me on the red carpet...

Now the only reason I'm putting the next 2 shots in here are because of an ongoing joke between Will and I during our entire trip: Hooker dresses. They were everywhere. We couldn't get over the trend and how practically every single female in Hollywood seemed to think it flattering to wear these teeny tiny little dresses that just barely covered their butts. And then when you put me next to one of them, I look like I'm wearing a moo-moo.

I was so glad to know that I was classy. I mean, come on ladies. Are you really a hooker? Because you look like one.

Just a few more shots...

This next one was taken from my phone as I was waiting in line for the red carpet, to give you my own perspective...

The awards show itself was....interesting. Totally not what we were really expecting at all.

For one thing, unless you purchased a VIP banquet table seat, there was no where to sit. And so the entire awards show was basically standing room only. There were 3 levels where you could go "hang out" and were a few places to sit there, but if you were out there you couldn't hear or see the awards show. And so it was hard - because our feet were killing us and we wanted to sit down, yet we didn't want to miss them announcing my category and the winner.

And the show itself was pretty disorganized, from the media to the presenters, etc. It just seemed like one big after-party instead of an awards show. Which, I might add, is why we chose to not attend the after-party because really it seemed more like an after-after-party. We'd already been on our feet for like 5 hours and had no desire to party it up on our feet any longer.

Here is me finally finding somewhere to sit down for a second...

They finally announced the winner for the Classical/Orchestral genre, and unfortunately it was not yours truly. And I'm totally fine with that - honestly. Although I have to say I was a little surprised, because I thought my song was really fresh and unique compared to many of the others. That is not to say they weren't talented because they definitely were. Anyway. An opera singer from Sweden won. She was cute and I thought her acceptance speech was witty and funny, as she said "I'd like to thank my husband who let me spend all of our money on my recent album...". Will and I both laughed, because isn't that the truth~! Even though we don't spend our personal money on my music projects, it is true that I burn through all of my own hard earnings to fund all my work. This trip included.

We didn't stay much after that - but finally left and around midnight got some dinner, which was the first time we'd eaten since about 2pm. It was nice to be in comfy clothes and to sit, relax, and eat.

The next day we went and saw "Breaking Dawn", and later that night attended an industry mixer at the hotel for the event. This was us getting ready to head out...

I begged Will to not buy these crazy white shades, but he did it to annoy me. Ha ha.

The industry mixer was, I have to say, much more organized than the awards show the previous night, but still didn't have anything that would have benefited my music career so after an hour or so we left. We went to the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd and watched "In Time".

Would I Do This Again?

To be honest, probably not. Yes the whole thing was a great experience, and I do feel honored that someone out there thought my music was great enough to be nominated for this award. But unless by some miracle my music gets nominated in the future for something with a little more prestige and organization, I probably won't do this again. At least this particular awards show. Again, don't get me wrong, I am glad that I went, but it wasn't all that it seemed to be hyped up to be. The amount of money we invested in the trip didn't really turn the best value for our buck.

A big part of the reason I wanted to go to this was to be able to network, meet other people and artists, etc. And I can honestly say that that did not really happen. Most of the people at this event were in a completely different genre than myself - the kind who are looking to expose themselves for record deals and whatnot. That is not what I am looking for. I don't want to be signed to any record label, and am not looking to "expose" myself, per se. Well, yes I want my music out there, but I suppose this route wasn't what I was really hoping for. What I did hope for though, was a chance to meet other artists in the LA area that I could learn from, perhaps sit in on recording sessions, gain knowledge from their experience and expertise. And I really did not meet anyone like this at this event. It was fun to be able to do the red carpet, attend the event and to be able to say "been there, done that"....but I don't think I would do this particular event again.

But if I DO ever do any sort of red carpet event again, I will say this though: I will have someone else do my hair and makeup. I looked great leaving the hotel room, but it quickly fell apart. My hair totally went flat and my makeup went shiny. LOL

One worthwhile part of the trip though, is I did get to visit my audio engineer (a.k.a. "audio stylist"), Rob Beaton, at his home studio in Los Angeles. We got to talk with him for a couple of hours and listen to some stellar tracks he was mixing of some orchestral/choir works that were recorded at Abbey Road in London. That was definitely a lot more exciting to me than the false Hollywood atmosphere at the awards show. Rob has done the music engineering for movies like The Devil Wears Prada, Batman, and more. And has worked with some of the greatest bands ever like Santana, Journey, etc. The biggest reason why I chose to work with him on my next album (which I feel so lucky about, by the way), is because out of all the sound engineers I have ever worked with or interviewed, Rob has a talent for mixing cinematic, classical elements, orchestral with the "larger than life" sound - which describes what I hope to achieve on my next album. It is a really hard sound to get just right and he does amazing.

Me in my cheap shades I bought on Hollywood Blvd (same time Will bought his white shades)

I'd have to say the best part of the trip was really the time that I got with my husband. Being the parents of two energetic boys who are 3 and under takes a lot of energy. TOTALLY worth it and we love them ever so much (and I missed them tons while we were gone!), but having the time with Will was so worth the entire trip. It's nice to know that despite all the fame, fortune, and success you can have in the world...what REALLY matters is family.

An afternoon on the Santa Monica Pier

The Grove outdoor shopping mall in Hollywood

The Chinese Theater

Me doing a pouty face for the camera the evening I didn't win the award...

Will and I at an amazing Italian Restaurant in Hollywood. They had THE best olive oil/bread ever. Hands down. This was after we skipped out early on the Industry mixer Friday night....

Another pic from the Pier...

We had a great time, but coming home was even sweeter. We missed our boys. I was a little sad that I didn't get to give them hugs when we arrived home, but being that it was 11pm they were already in bed. I went into their rooms and gave them a smooch without waking them.

My parents, the troopers that they were, earned themselves Academy Awards from Hollywood for "Best Grandma" and "Best Grandpa".

And last but not least, here is a little video recap of our trip.

P.S. And of course, for your entertainment, here is a collage of all the hooker dress pictures I tried to snap when I saw them. I'm not joking when I say these dresses were on almost every young lady. It was rediculous.

P.P.S. I totally forgot to tell you about Motel 6. Okay, so the last night we were there, we came home exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep but there was an insanely loud party going on in the courtyard. We're talking SUPER loud Mexican music, and a guy with a microphone yelling and talking. Dancing, drinking, etc. So Will went down to the front desk to complain. The guy asked "Is it Mexican music?" and Will said "Yes". and then the guy happily said "That's us! That's our employee Thanksgiving party!". It is just funny that you go to complain about the noise and it turns out to the be the motel employees. So we endured 3 hours of hard partying and noise before it finally stopped. It was definitely not the Renaissance.

Prestonisms.

2011-11-13T20:51:00.001-08:00

I've been meaning to write about some of the absolutely hilarious things Preston has been saying lately. He cracks me up.

#1 - Watching TV

Preston and I were sitting on the couch watching The Biggest Loser, and one of the contestants was crying because he received a box of letters and photos from his family at home and was overjoyed. Preston, all concerned, asked me "What's he doing, mama?". I said "He's crying." And he thought for a second, and then said "Cuz he exercises so much??".

And that is when I died from laughing so hard.

Preston is used to me watching TBL while I workout on my aerobic steps, and notices that the trainers on the show are always yelling at the contestants while they exercise. It's no wonder he thought that man was crying from working out so much.

#2 - Parenting Grandpa

My Dad (a.k.a. "Grandpa") was over at our house last Wednesday taking photos of me for my website. He had all of his photography equipment spread out all around the living room, and when we were done he was packing them up. Preston had lingered for a while watching Grandpa take photos of me, and would come in every now and then and offer Grandpa a refreshment (grapes). And then as Grandpa was packing up his equipment, Preston said rather sternly while pointing his finger, "Now Grandpa you need to clean up ALL your toys!".

#3 - Church

Today at church, Preston noticed that there were leaves on the floor next to our seats. We must have tracked them in with our shoes from outside. Preston picked up a leaf and looked up at the ceiling and said "Mama, leaves are falling from the church?" and I said "No I think it's from outside." And he said (while still looking up at the ceiling), "How'd the leaves fall in here? Where are the holes?"

#4 - Friends

Last Thursday I hosted a playgroup at our house, and we lucked out with the weather. It was nice enough where all the little guys could go out and play in our backyard.

Preston is almost 3.5 yrs old, and I think he's reached a point where he prefers to play with kids that are either his age or slightly older. He hasn't been doing too well in nursery for the past several weeks (probably because most of the kids are small and they cry a lot). I think he will be really excited to go into Sunbeams in January.

With that said, sometimes he has a hard time with playgroup. He'll either go off and play alone if its mostly little kids. Or if his friend Toby is there, he'll play with him. But for the most part, I would say Preston kind of struggles because he is not only older than most of the other little kids, but he is also really tall for his age. He looks like some of the 5 year olds we know.

Anyway, there is one little boy in our ward named Emery who is 2 years old. He is such a sweet little kid, and for some reason has taken a liking to Preston. Just like how Preston gets along better with older kids, I think Emery gets along with Preston for that reason. Preston was so sweet to Emery at playgroup. He held Emery's hand the entire time and walked around the backyard with him. Whenever Emery would trip and fall, Preston would help him back up. He even went inside and got a cookie for Emery and brought it out for him (albiet shoved it into his mouth). It's so sweet to see my little guy treat others so nicely.

#5 - Stinky Beach

As you know we live on an island and so we are surrounded by ocean. Preston has really been into smells lately, and will often ask me "what is that smell?". He is really smart too. For example, one time we were outside for a walk and one of the neighbors must of had a fire going because the entire neighborhood smelled like chimney smoke. Preston asked me "Mama, what's that smell?". And I wasn't quite sure how to explain it to him, and before I could answer he said, "I know what it is! It's CAMPING!!!". He remembered that smell from the campfire when we went camping. What a smartypants.

Well, to get off the island we have to drive on a road that goes right next to the beach and if it's humid enough or hot enough (which wouldn't be recently), you can smell the ocean in the air. One day, Preston asked me "What's that smell, Mama??" and I said "It's the beach." And he said "It's yucky yucky yucky smell! I don't like the stinky beach!"

This is particularly funny to me because I grew up on this island, and I LOVE the smell of the ocean. However, Will, having grown up on a dairy farm hates the smell of he ocean. He thinks it smells like dead fish (which is ironic that he finds the smell of cow pastures good). Finding out that Preston does not like the smell of the beach was one touche that Will has loved having over me.

#6 - Wake Up Mama

Every night before Preston goes to bed, either Will or I will read him a story (or two or three or ten). Preston and Taylor both get free books every month in the mail through a reading program sponsored by our local library. One of the books has turned into my favorite book, and it's called "My Lucky Day". It's about a pig who knocks on the door of a fox's home, and the fox thinks it's his lucky day as he grabs the pig and tries to make a roast out of him. But the pig manipulates the fox into giving him a bath, feeding him a huge dinner (to fatten him up), and give him a massage (for more tender meat). In the end, the fox passes out from exhaustion and pig runs home with all the extra dinner food and exclaims that it must have been his "lucky day".

Preston knows this is my favorite book, as I can hardly get through it without giggling at the story and its illustrations. The other morning, after I had stayed up quite late working in my studio and was not ready to be woken up by a 3 year old at 7:00 in the morning, Preston crawled into bed with me and read me (from memory) the entire "My Lucky Day" book. He knew it was my favorite, and he even did all the voices that I do when I read the book, including the knock on the door when the pig shows up at the fox's house. It was adorable and I thought it was incredibly thoughtful that Preston thought reading me my favorite book would get me out of bed to play with him.

Recording Session

2011-11-09T07:31:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd share a quick video from our recording session yesterday for my album. Rachelle is a soprano that I found a year ago when she was one of the soloists for our stake's Messiah with full choir and orchestra. As we have gotten to know each other, it turns out we were at BYU-Idaho at the same time studying music and even remembered each other. Small world.

Here is a photo with both of us in it from 1998. Little did we know that 13 years later she would be married with 4 kids, me with 2, and that we'd be working together on a music project. (I circled me in the photo, but I'm not sure where Rachelle is - she is somewhere in the choir).

It's nice to have little details come together for my album slowly but surely. Once the vocals are all edited and sent to me, I will do another final edit on the song and then send the files to my sound engineer in LA who will do the final mix and master. This song will make the 6th song completely finished out of 17 tracks. Many other songs are close to being finished, and then I also have several that I have recorded the piano parts for but have not begun orchestrating. So I still have a lot of work to do.

Trying to Walk

2011-11-05T20:33:00.001-07:00

Taylor has been super interested in walking these past few days. Yesterday he would stand up on his own and then see if he could walk to another object. When I realized this wasn't just a game he was playing, but that he was actually taking his first steps, I grabbed the camera. However, I couldn't catch him doing his best. One time he walked all the way from the couch to the kitchen island.

Excuse my excited voice in the video. I was a proud mama.

First Date

2011-11-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

This day (Nov 4th), in 2003, Will and I had our very first date. The photo above is from that date, on our way to do a picnic at the top of Mt. Erie where I would throw the pickles off my sandwich down the side of the mountain while Will would ask me if I loved to hike and camp and laugh at my dislike for the green pickles.

This first date came after emailing and talking on the phone for about a month, after having met online on an LDS dating website.

I remember our first phone conversation. "Jenni it's for you", said my mom. I came running down the hallway to answer the phone in socks and pjs', when WHOOSH my slippery socked feet slipped out from under me and I splatted to the floor. Not wanting to miss a beat I hopped up and answered the phone, laughing that I had just totally biffed it.

And so it goes that Will's first time hearing my voice was me laughing that I fell. It remains true to this day that I love to laugh, and I am still a clutz.

I remember the first time I met Will in person, when he first knocked on the front door of my parents' home where I was living at the time. I answered the door and we hugged. I remembered thinking "Wow he has a lot of freckles!" which I never noticed in any of his photos that he had sent me. He came inside and met my mom, and he saw my mom's grand piano and played one of his original compositions for me. Yes you did hear that right. Will played ME one of HIS piano compositions, not the other way around.

We made our picnic together - with ingredients that I had specially bought to impress him. Expensive flavored sandwich condiments and Ghiradelli hot chocolate. Little did I know that he was a guy who didn't care about fancy stuff but could survive on PB&J if necessary.

So then we embarked.

9 hours later, we returned, giggling and tired. We hiked, road on a ferry, had a picnic, drove all around Whidbey Island, talked about all the people we'd dated, how many people we'd kissed (no we did not kiss on our first date).

A month later, I went to Portland and was his date for his singles ward Christmas formal.

A month after that, we went skiing on New Years Day and though he tried to hit on me with his cheesy pickup lines such as "If you're cold, I can keep you warm (wink wink)", I found him endearing and charming. And despite the fact that he was a much better skier than me, he encouraged me and made me feel so good about myself.

And that is the day I realized I liked him. A LOT.

A month after that we kissed for the first time.

And then a couple weeks after that, we decided to stop dating other people.

A month later, after I had a really hard day at church conducting a meeting where I made all sorts of mistakes and felt terrible about myself, he told me he loved me.

A month after that, he came up to visit me on his Spring break, and I told him that I loved him too. I had loved him for some time, but he is the first man I had ever said "I love you" to as in "I am IN LOVE with you".

2 months after that I moved to Portland to be closer to him.

A month later, we were in Hawaii and he asked me to marry him.

3 months later, he did an official proposal with a ring.

6 months later we were married in the Portland LDS temple.

In case you aren't following the math, it all equals 1.5 years.

And now here we are 6.5 years later, with 2 little munchkins, on the brink of hopefully closing on our very first home, and absolutely loving our life that we've created together. We love each other more than anything. As we like to say to each other, "Stuck with me...for Eternity!!!"

Dress

2011-11-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

So my two dresses arrived today. I tried them both on and took photos. I posted the pics on my Facebook, asking for a vote. I would say out of the 70 people who have left comments so far, 90% like the black one based on the photos only.

However, to see the dress "in person", I had Will and my Mom make a couple of videos of me walking in the dresses. I think this gives a better idea of what the dress looks like and how it moves.

I personally love the blue one. But it's hard with so many people saying they love the black one. It almost makes me second guess myself, wondering well should I go with the one I love or the one that people say I look better in? But also people are only judging the dresses off of 2 photos is all. And it's not always easy to know what the dress truly looks like from a photo.

Anyway. You be the judge.

Pumpkins are for Halloween and Cinderella

2011-10-30T19:20:00.000-07:00

Pumpkin, pumpkins, pumpkins.

I wonder how many pumpkins are uneaten and wasted every year to the craft of pumpkin carving and Halloween.

Well we are such a family that fully participates in the wasteful slashing of pumpkins. And we love it.

Grandma and I were the ones who did most of the carving - which was probably a good idea so that no children were slashed in the process.

And then Grandpa helped Preston draw a face on his little pumpkin that he picked out from the pumpkin patch.

It was a lot of fun. Afterwards we lit the pumpkins up and let them smile at us all evening long while we sipped on spiced cider and ate pumpkin cookies.

Speaking of pumpkins, I got to feel a little bit like Cinderella this past weekend. But it wasn't all good.

It started off with my stylist asking me to send her a photo of me in my dress that I picked out for the HMMA's with the necklace, shoes, and clutch that she accessorized with it. So I showered and did my hair curly, put makeup on, and then took a picture.

This was it...

To put it mildly, I hated it.

Even though I had tried the dress on several times before, I had never actually seen myself in it through the eyes of a photo. I have been working really hard to lose my pregnancy weight and I've lost almost 50 pounds since Taylor was born. I have been feeling a lot more confident about myself lately. Granted, some of that weight was "baby weight" (Taylor included), and I still have a long ways to go to get to where I would like to be. But I am down to the lowest weight I've been at in 3 years (since Preston was born).

However, seeing myself in that dress made me feel awful. I felt like I looked huge, and I don't really see myself that way. So I sent the photo to one of my closest friends, and she even wrote back (in the nicest most tactful possible...IF that is even possible to do) that the dress sort of hugged me in the wrong spots and probably made me look bigger than I actually was.

So yes I cried a little bit, but I appreciated her honesty. And then decided there was no way I could wear the dress on the red carpet and feel comfortable about myself.

So yesterday, my mom indulged me for the entire day and went shopping with me. We returned the black dress to Nordstrom, and then spent the entire rest of the day perusing every possible dress shop from Nordstrom, Nieman Marcus, JCPenny's, Macy's, and more.

I must have literally tried on at least 50 dresses.

The nice thing was I was able to easily fit into smaller sizes, which was nice. But the not-so-nice thing was I was still way too curvy and big for 90% of the dresses in the stores. Most of which were all pencil-shaped and skin tight. This red one is an example of that....

So finally we ended up at a different Nordstrom's and found an ample variety of dresses that might work. This blue one above was one of our top choices, though I must say it looks awful in that photo. The dress actually did look very nice. My mom said it was actually the best one I had tried on all day. But the angle and lighting in that photo doesn't do it justice at all. And you'll have to forgive my bad Photoshop job to try and cover my cleavage and G's. I would need to get the bustline slightly altered so I'm not showing the world my stuff.

Anyway, eventually, when I do figure out which dress to wear I'll take a better photo in it. I picked out two final ones that are being shipped to my house, and then I'll make a decision and then return the other one.

All in all though, it was a fun day shopping with my mom with no kids and no curfew of when we had to be home. It was very freeing.:) The only thing not freeing was Neiman Marcus. That store was jaw dropping amazing, but expensive. Couture - expensive. But it was fun to go inside and look around.

It was fun to be Cinderella for the day. :) Although I didn't get to ride away in a pumpkin carriage. Instead it was a Kia sedan. AND I came home to find the kitchen completely cleaned and spotless, the jacko-lanterns sitting on the table all lit and staring at me, and the spiced cider on the stovetop all warm and smelling good. Will and also organized our tupperware lid drawer, changed the boys sheets on their beds, and gone through Taylor's clothing in and organized sizes. I was very impressed. What great boys I have :)

We Love Fall!

2011-10-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again when the air turns crispy cold and all you want to do is bake ginger snap cookies, drink hot cocoa, and do all sorts of fun things with your family.

With the exception of Preston's first October (he was 4 months old then), we've taken Preston to a pumpkin patch every year and it's sort of become a tradition. And now for the past two Octobers, Taylor has joined in as well.

I thought it would be fun to reminisce a bit...

This was our first Fall as a family...2008

Here is Preston's first pumpkin patch experience in Oct 2009. He was 16 months old and walking like a champ...

Here was last year's pumpkin patch (2010. Preston was 2 yrs old, and Taylor was just a peanut - 8 wks old.

And then here was today! 2011 Pumpkin patch. This is actually our 2nd patch so far this season, but I forgot to bring my camera to the first one. Whoopsies.

Preston is 3 yrs old, and Taylor is 14 months. Oh and I'm 34. So thinkin' old huh!

In other news...

This is the view I see quite often throughout the day. A little one tugging on my pantleg and doing the "pick me up" dance.

This was last night at our ward Trunk or Treat. Aunt Elizabeth made this cape for Preston last year and we finally are using it for a costume. Everyone referred to Taylor has "Super Scooter", for those who don't know, he doesn't walk yet and though he does crawl, he prefers to scoot mostly.

Preston requested to be a cat. I have no idea why. He has a really great pirate costume I tried to get him to wear, but nope. For a week straight, every time I asked him, it was always "cat". Okay sometimes it was "Train Cat", or "Woody Cat", or "Buzz Cat", or "Pirate Cat". But nevertheless, it was always cat.

Somebody likes chocolate just like their mother.

Preston with Grandpa Southworth, who was nice enough to fill in as parent for the evening (I had a meeting) until Will arrived from work. Those boys sure love their grandpa!

Tomorrow we are carving pumpkins and making pumpkin cookies. Wanna come over?

When Things Just Fall Into Place

2011-10-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

I've been working very hard on music for a new album for the past 3 and 1/2 years. I'm sure it wouldn't take the normal musician that long, except that for me I've had 2 babies within that time frame. Things just take longer.

But I truly believe that things happen within the Lord's time frame, and good things truly do come to the patient and diligent.

I'm so excited for this upcoming album because my hard work on it has truly been some of my best work. Ever. Aside from the music, there is also the artistic side of the project which involves the theme, photographs, artwork for the CD cover and more. My dad is a huge part of this part of the project - as I am using his landscape photography as part of the theme for the album. He will also be taking my portrait shots as well. It has taken him the past 3 years to get shots for the album as well.

For the photos of me, since the title of my album is "Illumination", I have been wanting to do some sort of illuminated back-lit effect for the photos. This has been my inspiration:

It is an ad for some Dior perfume.

There are only a few places that have a beautiful gaudy look to them. Yesterday my dad and I went to downtown Seattle to "venue shop". The first place was the Fairmont Olympic Hotel - one of the oldest and most prestigious hotels in Seattle. Not only did they have several grand pianos scattered throughout the hotel, but 2 beautiful ballrooms, a garden, and an ornate lobby.

However, they wanted $3,000 from us to take photos. Gulp. I can understand paying that sort of money to rent the place out for a wedding reception or something, but for 2 people to come in and shoot photos for a couple of hours - definitely not! So we didn't go there.

We visited a very beautiful home on a lake (courtesy of some friends). It was simply gorgeous and had a grand piano right in front of a window, but it was a bit too contemporary. Don't get me wrong - absolutely beautiful home, but just not what we were wanting for these particular photos.

I started getting a little sad because to be honest the Fairmont was really what I was wanting. However, we still had the Paramount Theater to visit. I wasn't sure if this venue would work, but....as it turns out....it was PERFECT. (the photos below are just some test shots we took and won't look at all what the final ones will because we didn't have proper lenses or lighting but you get the idea of the venue).

We wandered around the theater and I could feel my heart pounding as I got so excited. THIS was the place. It was exactly what I had in mind.

After we looked around took several test shots, I went spoke with the events coordinator. I'd been talking with her for a couple of months over email and so she had a good idea of what I was trying to accomplish. I asked the big question of how much it would cost me to shoot the photos here. I cringed as I waited for her response. Please don't say $3,000....please don't say $3,000 I kept thinking.

She said that they normally charge $3,000 to rent out the lobby of the theater. However...since I was just an independent artist and wouldn't be using it for some big commercial photo shoot....she could either let us use it for next to nothing or even for a service trade. They do several events and I would come and perform at one of them as a service to the theater.

Um, hello? Can we say that I was all over that idea??!! Yes....so very excited. I think I jumped for joy once we got outside the theater. I was ecstatic.

It's just so great when things come together like this. Ahhhhh so excited. So we will be shooting my photos for the album probably late January or early February (I'm trying to get the rest of my pregnancy weight off first).

Perspective

2011-10-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Some days I feel like a SuperMom - where I show my kids tons of love, make them scrumptous meals, have a clean house, everyone takes their naps and goes to bed on time, and we're happy.

Then there are the days when nobody listens to me, Preston is yelling and disobedient, Taylor is nonstop fussy, the house is a pig sty, and no one is very happy.

This last few days have sort of been like the latter example.

Then tonight I read an article by a mom who's son has a disease that will cause him to die before he turns 3 years old. He is 18 months old right now. I saw this photo of them in the New York Times article...

I thought my goodness, that little boy looks so much like our little Taylor.

It really put things into perspective for me today. The article talked about loving our children NOW. Did I love my children today, now? Not so much. I spent a lot of time being upset that Preston wasn't obeying me and that I had to get after him so much.

And then after reading that article, all I wanted to do was go into my boys' bedrooms and pick them up out of their beds and hold them.

So anyway. A little perspective for you.

In other news, Will went to Mt Rainier with my Dad the other day and took this panoramic. Beautiful.

Questions, Question, Questions.

2011-10-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

A while back, when our Preston was probably only 6 months old or so, I remember hearing my friend Grace give a talk in church where she had mentioned her youngest going through a total "question phase". She said that she started to tune a lot of it out and just give random answers.

One day, her son asked her "Mommy, why are there so many bunnies?" and she just answered, "I don't know, just because." At the time, their uncle was visiting and he came over and said, "Well, the reason that there are so many bunnies is because they reproduce very often and they are pretty low on the food chain and therefore they supply themselves as food to a lot of the bigger animals..." and yadda yadda yadda. I remember Grace saying that she felt bad that she didn't stop and take more time to answer and explain in detail all the answers to her little son's questions, and she was grateful to Uncle "Bob" that day who did.

I thought it was such a cute little story, and it always stuck in my head. And I also thought that when Preston was old enough one day to start asking why the sky is blue, why the grass is green, or why there are so many bunnies - I would be sure to take the time to answer him.

Well folks, that day has come.

I can tell you that even though I try really hard to always answer Preston's questions and explain things the best that I can (I don't baby things down for him too much, but just tell him the real answers in a simple way), today I just wanted. Them. To. Stop.

I took the boys on a double-stroller walk this morning. Our route usually takes us a little over an hour, and since today was the first day all week where it wasn't raining, I was really excited to take advantage of it and go for a walk. My clever plan was that Taylor would fall asleep in the stroller and take his morning nap, and Preston would just play with his toys so that I could enjoy the outdoors and have some time to breath some fresh air and clear my head.

However, that did not happen.

Preston talked the entire time. I'm not exaggerating. It went something like this, and this was after he'd already been talking to about 25 minutes....

"Momma, what that sign say?"

"It says left turn ahead"

"Momma, what THAT sign say?"

"Speed limit 25."

"What THAT sign say?"

"Slow down, curve ahead."

Walk a little more, as Preston is jabbering about who knows what.

"Where are the dogs?" (we passed a house where there are usually dogs out, and today they were not).

"I don't know."

"Where those dogs are, Momma?"

"I don't know. Inside their house."

We pass a dirt road.

"What that road is?"

"A dirt road."

"Why it all dirty, Momma?"

"Because it's made of dirt."

Walk another few feet.

"Where the blueberries go momma?" (referring to the wild blackberries)

"They're all gone."

"Who ate them momma?"

"Probably the birds and the animals."

Walk some more. A car passes us.

"What that car is?"

"A red car."

"No it's a STINKY car!"

"Oh okay, a stinky car."

"Where's he going?"

"I don't know."

"What's he doing Momma?"

"Probably going to his house."

At this point, I just want him to stop talking so I can enjoy some peace and quiet for 2 minutes.

"Preston, you sure talk a lot."

"I HAVE to talk!"

"You know, you don't always have to talk. You can be quiet too."

"No, I HAVE to talk!"

We walk some more.

"Momma there's Herbie!!"

"Oh yes, there he is." (referring to a parked blue VW bug)

"What's he doing?"

"He's sleeping."

"He's not sleeping."

"Oh okay then why did you ask me."

"He's sitting in da grass."

We walk some more. We pass an old tractor that looks like "Frank" in the movie Cars.

"Momma, what's Frank doing?"

At this point, I try ignoring him, hoping that he would stop asking questions. But it doesn't work, instead he asked me what Frank was doing 9 more times. I counted.

We pass a house with a big boat parked out front.

"Momma what's that boat doing?!!"

"I don't know. Sitting. Okay guess what - it's time to be quiet because Momma wants to think."

"What you want to think about Momma?"

I laughed out loud. And then I gave up and just accepted that he wasn't going to stop. He talked nonstop for the rest of our walk all the way home, which was 65 minutes long. Hopefully I got all his questions answered.

Life Lately

2011-10-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

Ah, life lately...

It's been grand.

Someone has decided that he just HAS to feed himself.

While cute it is, clean it is not. And I'm learning to be okay with that. I'd rather him eat and be messy, than refuse food and go hungry and clean.

Preston got new shoes. Lightening McQueen shoes. And for those other deal-savvy mommies, you can get said shoes at Payless right now for $9.99 or their BOGO deal which is "buy one get one half off", so we actually got his shoes for $4.99. And they have Toy Story and girl ones too. I can't tell you what the girl ones were though, since I don't have girls, I rarely pay attention to the girl stuff. Preston also still loves cars and trains. You know - the usual. It's been raining a lot here lately though, and so we've been stuck indoors. My poor outdoor-loving boys have been a little cooped up.

Taylor has been going through some sort of phase. Yes teething is part of it, but the rest I don't know. If I leave the room, he cries. If I'm not holding him, he cries. If I'm not within sight or crawling distance, he cries. If I go upstairs for something and leave him downstairs, he sobs and sobs and sobs. I'll think something is wrong so I come running back down, only to find him just sitting on the floor crying. He has been ultra MEGA clingy. I have been exhausted trying to take care of his needs. Oh, and he also won't eat. Unless he feeds himself, but because he's new to it, he really doesn't get a whole lot into his mouth. So he goes hungry. I have figured out that if I can force the first bite into his mouth, he gets a taste of it and then lets me feed him a few bites. Oh Taylor, Taylor, Taylor. At least he's past the teething fevers. Last week for 2 days straight he was between 100 - 103 degrees.

Jenni (me) got a new phone, which is really smart. And I think the smart phone might be outsmarting me because I still haven't quite figured it out yet. But at least I am not using a Razor from 2007 anymore. And for those interested in knowing, I accidentally dropped my Razor in the toilet of an Arby's restroom while trying to talk on it and, well, you know what, at the same time. Will had no idea our phone conversation would be cut short with a sudden splash into the toilet. I was multi-tasking because it was midnight, I was tired and was driving home from Portland with our new car.

Will has been one busy man. I think it would be safe to say that he is officially a Renaissance man. Not only is he husband to me, father to our boys, but he is a project coordinator for a very busy company for about 10 or 12 hours a day, and the other "free" hours he is trying to work with our lender and contractors to get everything done to close on this house we are trying to buy. We hardly see him. In fact, 2 nights ago he never came to bed. He had so much work to do that had to be done before the morning, that he literally worked through the night - thanks to the companionship of reruns of The Office on Netflix and his laptop. I stayed up as late as I could helping him scan documents, but anything further than that I couldn't do. I felt so bad for him. :(

And I promise I'm not trying to complain because I know there are lots of people out there who watch their spouses serve in the military for months at a time, or have spouses who have to take jobs out of state for months at a time, or have to be gone to go to school for months at a time....but having Will gone and so busy has been hard on me. It's just that I love having him around so much, and not having that has been a hard adjustment. And it only gets busier as we will start the actual remodeling projects on the house after it closes. I keep telling myself that it's just temporary and I can get through this. But I do have to hand it to all the single moms out there who do this for year and years - it is one hard job.

We hope to close on the house by Oct. 31st. Our "fixer upper project" will probably take from Nov 1st - Feb 1st, at least to get it move-in ready.

And something new I learned this past week - I had absolutely no idea banks were so incredibly nosy when it comes to loaning you money for a home. Wow. They really do want to know about everything.

The good news to all of this stress, is 6 months from now we will be in a new home for us that we own. We will be a LOT closer to Will's job so he won't have to commute so many hours any more - which will in turn make him a lot happier and us too. I will have an album finished and ready to release. So these are all good things - but just lots and lots of hard work to achieve. Thanks for all the love and support you give our family.

What I Love Most About Babies

2011-10-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

What do I love most about baby bodies?

These cute little miniature chunky wobbly legs!

They are the funnest when the little guy is not quite walking yet, but holding onto things and prancing around.

And I love it when I'm helping him get ready for a bath and look down and see how little his legs and feet are compared to mine, while all the while he's wiggling and prancing. It's adorable. And the chub rolls are so fun and sweet too.

I love me some baby legs!

Just Another Day

2011-10-05T21:16:00.001-07:00

Just another day at the Thomas house...

Taylor got stuck in the dirty laundry basket

And the boys had some crazy fun in the bathtub after completely getting dirty from dinner. Taylor that is. He insisted on feeding himself. Let's just say he had it in his hair, ears, and everywhere else.

The poor little guy is a little pale-faced from having diahrrea all day long. I have no clue why he has it, but he does, and he's not happy about it. Would you be?

New Car

2011-10-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Being a one car family has been fun for the past few weeks, but we are so over it.

Please welcome the newest addition to our family - a 2008 Kia Spectra.

We have been watching Craigslist daily for the past few weeks for a replacement on our old Kia that died. We have looked at so many different cars and wasted oh so much gas money and time doing so. But we finally found one yesterday - albiet I had to drive all the way down to Portland to look at it and buy it.

Since we have a crazy life right now with buying a new house, Will's ultra busy job, and more - the responsibility was mine to go to Portland. Haggling over a car was something I would have normally preferred Will to do, but I had to brave and put my game face on and do this.

My best friend Erika and her 2 boys (who are the same age as our 2 boys) came with us, so that if in the event we did buy the car, I would be able to drive it back.

After many stops for potty breaks, food, crying babies and more, we finally made it to Portland.

Test drove the car, checked out every nook and cranny, talked with seller, let Will talk to him on the phone and haggle price, then I had to haggle some more and we finally got the price we wanted.

The funny thing about all of this is that the seller turned out to be LDS, and Erika found out he was her uncle's brother. Small world.

The boys and I drove the new car home and arrived in the driveway around 1:30 a.m.

We are tired, but we have a new car. Yay!

Concert Weekend Report

2011-10-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

Well hello there and welcome to my concert weekend report~! As you can see from the photo above, I am quite comfy in my PJs, and we are enjoying a very lazy Sunday watching General Conference, eating french toast, and messing up the house.

So Friday night's concert was at our home. I put a private invite out to people in our ward and a few other friends, and we got about 20 people there. It was great because that was really all we had room for.

We were too busy to snap any photos during the concert, so these are actually from after everyone went home. This next one is my view from the piano.

I got flowers from a couple of our guests - so sweet!

I played 3 songs, and then I had my mom come up and play 2 songs from her upcoming Christmas album. She did great, and then I played another 3 songs. I really used the home concert as a practice run-through for Saturday night's concert.

People stayed afterwards and mingled, ate desserts, bought cds, etc. It was a great night. I love hosting parties and stuff, so really it was just an excuse to do that :)

So Saturday was a bit crazy. I honestly don't know how much more we can cram into our lives right now - with being right in the middle of buying a house and trying to get all the paperwork submitted by certain deadlines, also trying to look for a 2nd car (and only able to do so on the weekends when Will is available), and these concerts as well. We had spent the entire day (got up early with the kids even) in Tacoma looking at a vehicle that we were considering buying, and turns out we decided to not get it. We barely got back to the island in time to drop the boys off at Grandma and Grandpa's house before turning around and heading back down to Seattle for my concert that night.

I was quite nervous for the concert on Saturday since it was being broadcast online and they usually get several hundred listeners. But in house, there were only about 25 seats. The other pianist that I was performing with that evening (Brad Jacobsen), and I were sitting in the back chatting about how incredibly nervous we get before performing. We both talked about how we've blanked out, completely forgotten music or even doubted our abilities to play the piano at all, etc.

All that psyching out before performing didn't really relieve the nerves, but I think we both ended up doing a really great job. I did make quite a few mistakes, mostly because a couple of the songs I played last night were very technically difficult. But overall I think it went well. I received a lot of compliments and people seemed to respond to my music quite well. Will told me that each time I would go up to perform, people would sit up in their seats more, lean over to see my hands play and just really intently listen. Will also told me that whereas the other pianists were really nice to listen to, I was also really fun to watch. "You give people a performance" is what he said. Will always gives me the best feedback after my concerts and I love him for that. He is not only my muse, but my eyes and ears. I don't know what I would do without him.

This is my piano student and her mom. I have taught her for a little over 2 years, and over the last 9 months we had been doing lessons over Skype since we had moved so far away. The Skype lessons were getting difficult though for each of us and so we are temporarily postponing lessons until we move into our new house early next year.

On the left is Brad, on the right is Joe - it was his home where the concert was and he does these broadcasts and puts on the concert series.

I am so used to playing on my piano at home, that it took a lot of adjusting to perform on Joe's piano last night. His piano has a heavier action and the upper register took a lot of pounding to get it to stand out more. Probably another reason why I didn't feel I was playing my best, but nevertheless, still a beautiful lovely piano.

I usually watch Joe's other concerts that he broadcasts, and I always wonder who is in the audience. So I took some photos of the audience last night. They thought it was great to be a part of the concert.

Here is me performing.

I had one gentleman ask me if I would teach him piano lessons - after he saw that one of my students was in attendance. I had to explain that I'm not currently taking any new students though. I also had 2 fans drive all the way over from eastern WA for the concert. That was very flattering. And Will mentioned to me that as he looked around the room, he noticed that aside from my student and her mom, most of the people who were there for me were fans. The fact that they weren't family or friends was a big deal! Not that I wouldn't love that too, but 5 years ago I probably only would have filled the seats with family/friends. It's nice to see my music out there and being loved and recognized by more and more people.

Last of all, if you missed last night's concert and would like to watch it, you can do so here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17629101

I don't have any more formal concerts lined up for a while. It was really great to practice and get songs back into my repertoire again. It was a great weekend - but so glad it's overwith!

Live in Concert

2011-09-30T10:52:00.001-07:00

I have 2 concerts this weekend. The first is tonight at our home and I've invited about 22 guests. It's sort of a warm up show to get my nerves out before Saturday night's concert in Seattle.

I just wanted to let anyone know that if you want, you can watch my Saturday night concert LIVE online on uStream at 7pm Pacific.

Here is the link:
http://www.pianohavenlive.com/

Saturday, Oct 1st. 7pm PST

Jewelry Box

2011-09-28T21:31:00.000-07:00

There are many things I love in life, and one of them is jewelry.

Why my husband is only just now catching on to that little fact this year, I don't know. I keep telling him, babe, listen. What do I want for Christmas? Smelly stuff, chocolate, a Fazioli piano, or jewelry. I'm easy like that.

I finally organized my jewelry yesterday. I have too many items to fit into my jewelry box anymore, so I now use the box that our wedding silverware came in. Creative? Yes. Functional? Mostly.

Any kleptomaniacs out there, don't get any brilliant ideas here. You will be sorely disappointed. While I might love jewelry, I never said I was a lover of fine jewelry. Most of these items are bargain shopped. The only high priced item I own is my wedding ring - which is on my finger and I never take it off. Partly because I decided after Taylor was born I was going to get it on my finger gosh darnitt, and it's been there ever since because apparently I still haven't lost enough weight to take it off without buttering up my finger, but also because I don't want to take it off :).

Two sentimental pieces though are my princess earrings from Will - can you spot them? And my pearl necklace that my Grandma gave me when I turned 21 (it was her's) - it is a vintage piece from the 1940's (upper right hand corner).

P.S. I have a stash of jewelry that I'm willing to donate to the first niece that wants them. It is random necklaces, earrings, etc that I no longer want or use. I will package them up all pretty like and mail them. Let me know.

Caterpillar

2011-09-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

There once was a caterpillar named, uh, "Caterpillar"...

He lived in a jar, not very far

from Preston's bed shaped like a car.

Then one day, Preston said "Hey!"

As he looked at his caterpillar gone brown.

I said "He's not dead, he's just sitting down with a big frown, so settle down."

But really, the caterpillar was toast,

too many days in a jar to roast,

with a 3 year old showing him to everyone to boast.

Goodbye caterpillar, it was fun.

While you were in a jar out of the sun,

Kept, admired, and loved by our little Preston.

Little Scooter (video)

2011-09-25T21:05:00.001-07:00

House Full of Blessings

2011-09-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

House that we originally made an offer on 3 weeks ago - buyer walked.

We made a new offer, for $10K less than our first offer.

Waited all week to hear back from the bank.

Yesterday - found out the bank accepted our offer and our terms.

We did a happy dance. YAY!!!!!!!!

Now if you want the nitty gritty...

So let me just start off by saying that my dear husband will probably not approve of me writing this blog so soon, but I am justifying it by the fact that it's mostly our families that read our blog. Obviously, we still have many steps to go to complete the buying of this house - the biggest hurdle being the financing. And so even though we're super excited, it's still not time to break out the sparkling cider and celebrate. Yet.

So remember the post that I wrote last week entitled "House, Car, Job"? And you remember me telling you about a house that we had found and put an offer on, but didn't end up getting it because a few others had made an offer on it as well and someone else ended up being chosen over us?

I was so sad about that whole thing. We looked at more houses after that happened and just weren't finding anything. What we were finding were either super ugly, old, or just plain weird. So we decided to just stop looking until some new foreclosures came on the market. I told Will "I hope the other buyer backs out and we can still get that house." But as Will kept checking the MLS listing, he saw it go from available, to pending inspection, to pending. It seemed quite certain that their deal would go through.

And then last week, as you know, our Kia died. As in totally ka-puts. We've been a one car family now for over a week, and it's been all right. I haven't gone anywhere, but have a huge long list of things I need to do this weekend to make up for it. Meanwhile Will has been driving our Jetta to his bus stop, and then either carpooling or busing it to work from there.

We've been looking online for a used car. We had the discussion about whether or not we should get a nicer newer bigger family car (which would be more money), or just get a temporary dinky cheap commuter car for Will. If we got a nicer newer car, it would use up our down-payment for a possible home (because we want to pay cash for a car). For a moment, we considered it because the home we wanted was gone and there wasn't anything else. But we decided to still keep hope that we would be able to buy a home soon, and so we decided to either get a cheap commuter car, or something slightly nicer (and then the Jetta would become Will's car).

A few days after that, we received an email from the real estate agent on the house that we had originally wanted, saying that the buyer had walked. We talked about it that night and put together a new offer on the home, and waited all week to hear back. We finally got word yesterday afternoon that the bank had accepted our offer.

I know we don't have the house for sure yet, because we still need to get the financing from our bank, but if we do get the home and all goes through - it's amazing to know that Heavenly Father really is mindful of us. Sometimes we think we know what we want, but He knows what is better for us. If we had gotten the house 3 weeks ago, we would have paid between $10 - $15K more for it. We also wouldn't have known that our 2nd car was going to die and needed to budget money for that as well.

Here is a photo of our hopefully future home on the left. As you can see, it needs some love. It is a foreclosure and we will basically be re-doing the entire thing. We would love to do the exterior the same color/style as the home shown on the right - with pale yellow paint, black shutters, and white trim. We also want to put a white picket fence in the yard and do it up cute. And then the inside of course is a whole other story.

So we obviously still have a ways to go on the process, but we are really excited. This will be our very first home! We are trying to do a loan that includes an extension loan for fixes on the house, which makes the process more lengthy. But hopefully all will go smoothly and we'll be able to close on the house at the earliest Oct 21st (but probably be later).

Anyway. That's the good news!

Craft Project: Brag Board

2011-09-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

So I don't normally do crafts.

It's not that I don't enjoy doing them, but a) I have a problem finishing projects that I start, and b) I don't have enough time to pursue all of the projects that I truly would like to do.

Case in point: I would love to sew curtains for our living room and haven't done it. I would love to sew dresses and haven't done it - even have the material sitting there waiting. I would love to reconstruct some of my old dresses into new ones - even bought a sewing bust and haven't used it. I have empty picture frames on our walls that are waiting for photo projects and I just haven't had the time.

But...

I did manage to do one project yesterday. But I need the help of other more experienced craftees to help me fix what I messed up on.

I wanted to make a "Brag Board". Otherwise known as a photo board, or a memory board. It's just a thing that you can post stuff on that you want to keep. Since these days I am mostly all digital, a lot of my paper things tend to get lost without a place to put them. Hence the reason I wanted to make a brag board.

So these are the materials I used:

I used a staple gun to bind it all together on the back side.

The problem though, is the pins are just sort of sitting there. They are supposed to go into the board and fasten the ribbon down so that you can stuff things in between the ribbons. But my pins keep popping back out.

I think for one thing, I put too much batting on it. And the other thing is I just don't know if pins will stick into a foam display board (I didn't want to use wood because it would be too heavy to mount on the wall).

So what do I do? Take it completely apart and remove one layer of batting? Or are there special pins/hooks out there that will actually stay nailed into a foam board?

Fall BBQ

2011-09-21T09:21:00.001-07:00

We enjoyed a fun evening at the annual Fall BBQ Picnic that a member of our stake hosts at his property every year.

Oh my goodness, just have to say I love the new Blogger format. I just increased the size of a photo without having to go in and change the HTML. Amazing.

Standing in line waiting for THE craziest carnival-ride-of a tractor hayride ever.

This was us the last time we went (2009) Preston was about 14 months old - slightly older than Taylor right now.

House, Car, Job.

2011-09-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

I've been terrible at blogging the past couple of weeks. We've had much going on. So I'll give you the quick run-down, and you must also know that I worked super hard on finally finishing Will's 100 mile race video - so scroll down to the next post as well.

So yes - the three things in life that are essential. House. Car. Job. Those all were dancing in the midst of change for us these past few weeks and we weren't sure how things would end up.

I'm happy to say that we now know, though all three possibilities sort of didn't work out for us. But please, no pity.

House

Will and I have been married since 2005 and have yet to ever buy our own home. If you total up the amount of rent we've paid over the past 6 and 1/2 years, it is a lot. Let me emphasize a LOT. Mucho. Mega. Hugenss. Especially since, hello, we live in Seattle. Rent isn't cheap.

However, we have just never been in a place ready to buy a home yet. For one thing, up until now the home market has been outrageously high. Remember just a few years ago when dinky 50 year old 1,000 square foot homes were selling for $500,000? Those same homes are finally back down to the $200,000 or less range - which is right where they should be. Simply put, it's finally a great time to be buying a home.

We are renting a home right now that has been on the market since January. We feel blessed to be living in it because we have a 3/4 acre backyard, fully fenced, a garden, a garage (which we've never had before), 4 bedrooms, upstairs/down, and 2.5 baths. Seriously those are luxuries we'd never had in any other place we've lived in.

However, we can't stay here forever. Will's commute is about 2 hours in the morning, and anywhere between 2-3 hours in the evening. He takes about 3-4 buses to get home, and while on said bus is either on his phone or laptop working. And then when he gets home, he sometimes has to work some more. It goes without saying that Will's job is very busy, and that we hardly see him during the week (thank goodness for weekends!!).

So a couple of months ago, our rental home had a buyer interested and we thought we were going to have to move. So we started looking at rentals closer to Will's job. And then we got discouraged after seeing how high the rental prices were on Seattle's eastside. It got to the point where we were actually back to looking at apartments - which we thought we had graduated from quite a while ago. But seriously it was the only thing in our price range.

So then we started talking about buying a home, since we would actually have a lower mortgage payment than a rental payment every month. But as you know I'm married to a man who has a Masters Degree in Real Estate Development and Finance. What that means is he's not just going to go out and buy a new house. He will want to find the biggest bang for his buck - which means foreclosures.

It might sound crazy, but I've always loved the idea of finding a home that we could re-do and fix up. Buying a new home is too boring. I want to be able to take something that is dirty, old, and ugly and turn it into something new, beautiful, and clean. Yes it's a lot of work, but I would enjoy it.

So we did find a home. Will spent quite a few weeks researching it thoroughly before we decided to put an offer on it. Our VERY first offer on a home, EVER. It was a big deal. It was a foreclosure, but had very high potential to be high in the cuteness factor. We spent a lot of time planning stuff, talking to banks, etc. I even started picking out paint colors and planning things in my head of how we would re-do the inside of the home.

But...

The Monday that we put an offer down on the house, we found out that apparently there were multiple people with the same idea and we were competing against several offers for the home. We actually re-did our offer for more, with better terms too. However, in the end, it was a sad day when we found out the bank chose another offer over ours.

Since then we've been browsing the market but still haven't found anything as cute or as good of a deal. So we're still here for a while. Sorry to confuse anyone who thought we were moving.

Car

In case you never had the pleasure of being aquainted with Will's car - it was a 2000 Kia Sephia. It was the car that he picked me up in for our very first date. It's the car we had when we got married. We've taken several road trips in that car while holding hands across the gear shift.

Well it died. Officially.

The plan was to drive it into the ground, and that day finally came last Thursday. Will was actually taking it in for some routine maintenance, and 5 min from the garage the water pump blew, as well as the belt. The diagnosis was that it would cost us almost $1,000 to fix everything on the car. The car itself couldn't have been worth more than $500 alone. So we decided to not fix it, but donate it to charity.

However, just for kicks and giggles, Will decided to post it on Craigslist to see if anyone would pay $250 for it. Within 12 hours he got over 100 emails. People were saying they would pay upwards of $400 - $500 for it.

So he basically emailed several people back and told them he would be at the garage at 5:30 on Friday, anyone interested, please show up. A few people showed up, with several more on the phone waiting to find out if it had sold. Will ended up selling it to a Hispanic woman with 3 kids. Her brother was going to fix the car up for her. We're so glad that it went to someone who could use it, and not just a random mechanic for parts.

But now we're a one car family. And being that we still want to buy a home, we're not really in a place to be buying a car as well. So if you know of any dependable inexpensive used cars, we're in the market.

Job

Will has been working at his new job since the beginning of July and doing well. I don't think he would really want me to go into details, but he had another job offer last week that had the potential to be in line with his passions more, but in the end the pay and benefits were less appealing. He likes his current job though - although stressful and busy. He is busy, busy, busy. But we are very grateful to be employed. And he couldn't be working for a better company.

So yeah. House, car, and job all within a week. Crazy, right? So that's the update on us. I must now go rescue my crying 1 year old from his crib. See ya.

P.S. Will's 100 mile race video below.

Video Blog: Western States 100

2011-09-19T00:40:00.000-07:00

My husband ran 100 miles in an elite trail running race this summer.

It's only taken me how many months to finally get the video footage together?

Here it is. Please watch and enjoy. Will's actual blog about his experience running the Western States 100 Mile Race is coming. Believe it or not, in between working 10-12 hrs a day, commuting, and taking care of a family - he is actually trying to make some time to complete the race post. So that lengthy recap will be coming soon.

Until then...enjoy the footage!

Who...Me??

2011-09-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

What food on the floor?

Why are you lookin' at me?

Yes, I do sweep the floor at least 3 times a day underneath his highchair.

Taylor is constantly picking up food off of his tray that he doesn't like, hanging his hand over the side, LOOKING at me while doing it, and dropping things to the floor. That look that you see on his face is the "look" he gives me when he knows he is not supposed to be doing something, but does it anyway while watching for my reaction.

One year olds can be cute and so much work at the same time. :)

Sunday Reflections - What is the Point?

2011-09-04T19:55:00.001-07:00

I'm sure all of you parents out there have had at least one occasion where you've gone to church and wondered "What is the point?".

You spend half the time in the hallways with your little one, or if you are a nursing mom half of your time in the mother's lounge (not the case for me anymore thank goodness). And by the time church is over, you look at your spouse and say "So, did you learn anything in church today? Because I sure didn't."

Today was such a day.

I remember going through it with Preston, and now we are officially going through again with Taylor. It's called "I'm-too-wiggly-and-hungry-and-sleep-deprived-to-sit-through-church-anymore" syndrome.

1:00pm church is hard with little kids because it's nap time. But on the other hand, it should give you plenty of time to get ready right?

Unless you're us, of course.

Today we were fashionably late (as usual) to church. Please, don't judge us. If you have little ones at home you know that sometimes it just doesn't matter how early you start getting ready to be somewhere, something always happens and you are typically always running a little behind. Even with the best intentions.

Everything was going all right at church for the first half hour or so. Preston sat on Will's lap and took a nap, while Taylor charmed the people sitting behind us with his smiles and waves, while also being interested in Grandma's lap. And then he started getting fussy. Don't worry - this is normal. In fact he was right on time with all of the other Sundays as far as his fussiness goes.

We tried goldfish crackers, toys, spoons, papers, books, and eventually it got to the point where he would do a big swiping motion so everything would fall to the floor and he would fuss.

Fuss, fuss, fuss.

Noisy, noisy, noisy.

So I scooped him up and out we went. There is one thing I won't tolerate is my kids being noisy during church.

So we went out into the foyer and sat on the couch. He didn't want me to sit, so I put him down and he cried. Not only cried, but threw himself onto the floor and laid down and cried. Ooookay.

So I thought, hey, maybe he would like to go outside and get some fresh air because the church was very hot today. We went outside and he wasn't really diggin' that either because the sun was actually hotter outside than in.

So we took a walk to the ladies room. I set him on the counter while I fixed my shirt that was buckling up. He found his way over to the sink and plopped himself in. Not a big deal, except that today he figured out how to turn the water on.

It was too late before I could grab the knob to turn it off. He had completely soaked his britches. I took a few paper towels and dried him off the best I could and then we left.

We went out to the foyer again and I held him by the back doors so that we could peek in and listen/watch the speakers. I though just for a second that he might fall asleep because he laid his head down on my shoulder for a minute. Nope! The first sign of distraction and he was up looking around and wiggling for me to put him down.

So we went back over to the couch where I had originally left our little baggy of cheerios, water bottle, and baby spoon (that he likes to chew on and hit things with).

We played "Open and close the water bottle" for about 10 minutes, and then I didn't realize that it didn't get closed tight. All of a sudden I feel cold water under my rear, and I look down to see that my water bottle was draining out on the couch right where we were sitting.

Great!

So I hurry and close the water bottle and assess the damage. Most of the couch cushion was soaked, and so was Taylor and myself. Taylor was already wet from the bathroom sink though so I wasn't too worried about him. I fed him a few cheerios, to which he then did a big swipe and dumped them EVERYWHERE.

So during the closing prayer, I was on my knees trying to pick up all these little cheerios before people starting pouring into the foyer after Sacrament meeting. All the while I have one hand on Taylor so that he doesn't fall of the couch because he is wiggling like a worm. All the while people keep passing us and saying "Oh he is so happy today!" or "Look how cute he is!" and I just want to give them a full explanation of how he really is today, and then offer him to them.

Oh, did I mention I had a huge wet spot on the front of my skirt that looked like I wet myself? Yep let's not leave out that tiny detail.

So Sacrament meeting was over, and Will came out with Preston and took him to nursery. Preston was all rosy-cheeked and groggy, but still gave us a passing wave. When Will returned, I promptly handed Taylor to him and said "Your turn."

We decided Sunday School should be manageable since Taylor could just be set on the floor and scoot/crawl around. No more than 3 minutes passed before one of the nursery leaders stuck her head in the door, looked at me, and did a hand signal for me to come.

"Preston is just in tears and not consolable, do you mind going into nursery?" she said.

Last week Preston broke down in nursery because he had an accident and peed in his underwear and was so embarrassed about it. So my first thought was that he may have had another accident. Super.

When I got to nursery, he was on the ground hunched over in a little ball just crying profusely. Two nursery leaders were patting him on the back trying to get him to feel better, and then when he realized I was there he just went hysterical and cried even harder. I picked him up and we went outside to the picnic tables so that he could calm down and tell me what was the matter.

"Why are you crying?" I asked.

"I nunno." He answered (which means "I don't know")

"Can you tell Mommy why you are so sad?"

"No" he said through tears.

"Did you go pee-pee in your pants?"

"No"

"Do you NEED to go potty?"

"No."

"Um, let's see here, did another kid take your toy that you were playing with?"

"No."

"Did you not get the puzzle that you wanted?"

"No."

It's like a game of 20 questions and I'm totally losing.

"Does someone in nursery seem scary to you?"

"Yeah."

"So do you like your nursery teacher? She's really nice and she likes you a lot."

"No." he said.

I started to think he was just saying "no" to everything. So I held him for a while on my lap, and then I told him he could come with mommy to her class but that it would be really boring and he would have to sit still. He still wanted to come.

So Preston sat on my lap for the last 20 minutes of Sunday School, while Will was out in the hallways with a very loud and wiggly Taylor.

Third hour came, and since my mom had to play the piano in Primary today, she agreed to take Preston with her. Preston will be going into Sunbeams in January anyway, so I thought it would be fun for him to go to Primary.

Meanwhile, I went to Relief Society because I was subbing for the pianist today. During the lesson, I would see Will walk by, and then walk back. One time I saw Taylor was passed out in his arms, and then a few minutes later I would see Taylor scootin' down the hallway trying to escape.

Will never did get to go to Priesthood.

Preston never did go back to Nursery.

I dare say, even though I missed Sacrament meeting and most of Sunday School, I at least got to hear the RS lesson.

But as we were leaving the church building to go back to our car, Will looked at me and said, "So honey, did you enjoy church today? Didya learn anything?" he said with a chuckle.

Sigh.

I know, I know. It's a habit. You go, even if you don't learn anything, just so that you simply GO.

We have about 6 more months of these types of Sundays before Taylor is old enough to go to nursery. So I suppose we should just hunker down and just accept the fact that we will be in the hallways more than in class. But still, it doesn't mean that we can't occasionally wonder what the point is? Haha!

I Love These Two.

2011-09-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

Awe, I love these guys.

Preston was holding Taylor's hand and said "Mama, you take a picture of us?"

And he also insisted that they both wear their Thomas the Train shirts that Gwenevere gave them so that they could be twins.

More Red Carpet Dresses

2011-08-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

Just looking at dressesshop.com for more red carpet dress options, and also album photoshoot dresses.

I have to say, I am loving this red/white combo dress. Maybe not for the red carpet, but definitely for photoshoot. It would be great next to a grand piano.

This dress took me a while to decide if I liked it or not, because I can't really tell the shape of the cut with how the model is standing on the boat, plus the wind is really blowing. But I love the flowers on the back with the faux-nude material to cover up the back.

This one has gorgeous sleeves that could be easily lined.

This one is very romantic and whimsical.

And this one is just awesome. It has a white underskirt that shows through the sparkly black top layer.

Date Night: Josh Groban

2011-08-28T21:28:00.000-07:00

We had a date night, and I have to say it was a long time in coming.

I don't know if it's that we've been uber-busy, or that we've expired our babysitters out on using them on music days rather than date nights (thus didn't want to ask again). But the fact remains that we were desparately in need of a date night and so when it came, we were very excited.

I told Will months and months ago that I really wanted to go to the Josh Groban concert when he came to Seattle. He came here a couple of years ago and I so regret not going.

So did my man deliver or did he deliver?

YES we went to the Josh Groban concert!

We first enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Seattle Center food court while people watching all the downtown weirdos, then headed over to the Key Arena for the concert.

It was a great concert. I was especially excited to see Josh perform because I have been a long time fan. I attended his PBS filming in Los Angeles several years ago and actually ended up on his DVD special footage, which you can see below...

So it was great to see him again in concert. It was neat to see how he had really "come into his own" over the years. His music and voice have evolved and he is still one of my favorite musicians.

Here is some video footage that I took of the concert. Enjoy...

While we were enjoying ourselves being crooned to by Joshy, the boys got to stay home with a fun and rare babysitter - Aunt Tessha. She is here visiting for the week, and she had a great time with Preston and Taylor. And I was pretty impressed that she was able to get Taylor down to bed without a fight. That is talent.

A Taylor Post: 1st Birthday!!

2011-08-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

I have food poisoning today and don't feel so hot, but while I have pawned my children off for the day so that I can just be sick and nothing else, I decided I was miraculously up to blogging. Forgive me for not taking the time to enlarge the photos any further. That is for non-sick people to do.

Enjoy Taylor's 1st birthday post!