The Most Randomnest Post Ever.

I almost forgot what it is like to be a consistent blogger.  I can see why friends fall off into the abyss of never-updating-their-blog-for-a-year...it's like going to the gym.  If it's a habit - it's easy. But if you slack off, it's hard to get back on!

I do want to keep up our blog for prosperity though - and so even though I haven't been as consistent as I would like as lately - I'm still here.  Better late than never.

I have tons of photos to share - which are all completely random - but it is our life in a nutshell for the past few weeks.  So they may skip around from one event to another - but that's kind of been reality as well.

So here we go....

This was today actually - we went to the stake fun run and Preston ran the 5k with Will (while I walked and pushed Taylor in the jogging stroller). I was proud of Preston - as the boys and I have been fighting chest colds and I'm impressed he actually ran.

This was all of us after the 5k - which took us 45 minutes to complete. :)  

Today was all about family, spending time together...and giving Will a break.  He has been SO incredibly supportive of me these past few months, and I know it hasn't been easy on him.

Most nights he would come home from work, and we'd do a switch where he'd take the boys and I would go work in my studio until midnight.  He did the dinner, diapers, bedtime routine, stories, teeth-brushing you name it.  I realize that I do that all day long every day too - but you have to consider Will also works full time and so he hasn't really gotten to do the things he loves for a while because he's been playing Mr. Mom every night.

We knew it would be this way after we moved into our new house.  Prior to that, I was basically a single parent for a few months (hardest thing I've EVER done, hands down), and our agreement was if I could handle being a single parent while Will finished the work on the house - then as soon as we moved in, he would be more than willing to give me the "music time" to finish my album.

I definitely took him up on that.  I don't think he was expecting that me finishing my album would be as full-time as it was though. It has taken me four long years to complete this album, and when you consider I did more work in the past 3 months than I have done in the last year - then you know the strain it was on my family.

To get a little more personal here - there are reasons why I needed to push to get this finished though.  Putting out an album is a LOT of hard work. It takes a lot of time, a lot of mental output, creative output, resources, physical demand and more.  You don't really think about all of that when you listen to a CD, but it's true.  And we would eventually like to have a 3rd baby as well (sometime in 2013) - and the longer I dragged my CD out, the longer it puts off our family.  So I pushed HARD to get this finished already.

I value Will's opinion so much on my music.  He is kind of my muse. :)  I actually didn't start composing music until I met him, did you know that?  He inspires me a lot.  And I often ask him to listen to my music and tell me what he thinks - because I know he will always give me an honest answer.  Well, one day last week I had just gotten a newly mastered track back from my engineer and was very excited about it - and asked Will if he would come listen to it.  And he told me normally he'd love to but he was so burnt out on my music that day.

It was the first time it hit me how this was effecting him. I mean, he's been so supportive, but I've been so wrapped up in this that I didn't realize that even though I might be really excited about something - maybe he's not so much.

Along with that whole insight......see following photo....

That is me in the ER  yesterday morning.  I had been pushing myself so heavily to get everything done - I was way overly stressed, I hadn't drunk enough water, I hadn't slept more than a few hours a night for the past 8 days, I had SO much on my plate, i had a deadline I needed to meet and more.....and I had these terrible sharp stomach pains that would not go away.  I thought maybe it was a re-occurance of Pancreatitis (which I had 2 years ago), or an ulcer or something.

I felt like we could not get to the ER fast enough.  It hurt so bad. Constant sharp pain.  

After they got an IV in me (I was so dehydrated) and gave me fluids and a nice shot of morphine, as well as some things for my stomach....I felt so much better. I was there for 2 hours and eventually the pain went away.  Nothing showed up in my blood tests and so the weird thing is they couldn't figure out what it was.

Will is convinced I overdosed on music.  I'm convinced I overtaxed my body to the point of it throwing fits at me. Sometimes I think I am indestructible and don't need sleep and can muddle through. Guess I was wrong.

I did meet my deadline though.  Friday I finished up the artwork for the album and got it all submitted to my manufacturer. Here is a sneak peak of the 6-panel digipak design (the cover is upper right).  There is also a 16 page booklet that comes inside the CD which is a whole other image file I won't show here.

And then once I got that all submitted, I felt a huge weight lift off of me. 

Today I told Will to go for a nice LONG run and enjoy himself.  He didn't have to do any honey-do's today, or have much kid responsibility.  He went for a nice 3 hour run and had fun, and then this evening we went on a date to a symphony concert....

So yeah.  Lots of stress for me, but hopefully from here on out it will get better.

Also...more random photos....

Last Saturday I attended the Recording Academy's Pacific NW Chapter MusicTech Summit with my friend, Erika.  It was a good networking thing I suppose. I was sick that day so wasn't enjoying it as much as I'd hoped, but it was good.

Here is our new bedding....which is the first I've purchased for us since being married. We've been using hand-me-down bedspreads from my parents (thanks mom and dad!), and so I was excited to pick something out we wanted.  Still working on the rest of the room.....

My three sweet boys.... 

All right, and then here are all the photos from my album photo shoot at the Paramount Theater and San Juan Island. Not the actual photos for my album, but the candid shots from our little camera... 

After the Paramount, we took a ferry to San Juan Island....this was on the ferry...

Oops..one from the Paramount again...pre-makeup

Here's me on, like, 4 hours total sleep in 2 days. I was so tired.

Few more from the paramount....

So anyway, I will eventually share the actual professional pics too - just haven't had a chance to downsize them and prepare them.  They are all in huge TIF files right now which are like between 30 and 80 MB each.  A project for next week I think....

Next week Preston turns 4 years old!  He is very excited about his birthday.  We aren't doing a party for him since we did a big birthday party last year, but we are letting him have a "do whatever he wants" day. He will get to pick out his breakfast, do anything he wants, go to a theater and pick out a movie, go to the store and pick out a new toy. Then Grandma and Grandpa are coming too. He wants a Thomas the Train cake, so Monday I'll go get the stuff to make that.  Wish me luck! Haha! 

I have to say though, after having been SOOOOO busy with music this past month, it feels really really good to just do normal wife/mom stuff again.  I baked cookies with the boys on Friday and it made me remember how much I love doing stuff like that.