lunch break

...finally

...I finally finished something. Sort of. I should say I kind of finished something. Sort of.

After months of starting and stopping this project, I finally got the tags done for the kids monthly pages from the last year. I'll post the complete project once I have all the pages done. (Soon. Maybe by January).

I have nothing cool to call this, like Project Life. Maybe I will call it Project Procrastination. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Clara's:

Why, yes, that's mist and masks you see. I'm like a whole new Laura. Laura 2.0. Except I used old-school Heidi Swapp month stamps, which I think takes me back to Laura 1.0

Charlie's:

Some details:

...starbucks in rural america

...I do not miss much about city life. But I miss a Starbucks every half mile. I need a 12-step program.

I make it work. When I find a Starbucks, I order the largest chai possible (sometimes even getting two) and I reheat them. If one of the presidential candidates would promise a Starbucks every half mile in America, I'd vote for him. It's an issue I'm passionate about.

...making me look better than I am. Or my house, at least.

...a few weeks ago, the Persnickety Prints blog did a feature on my thoughts on memory keeping.

(I have to do a little side note here and say that I now use Persnickety Prints to print all my photos after my much beloved scrapbookpictures.com shut down earlier this year. And no, they aren't paying me to say that, but I was such a supporter of scrapbookpictures that I feel like I need to tell you that I am extremely happy with what I've gotten from PP so far. Even if I can never remember how to spell Persnickety. In fact, I have an order of 234 photos arriving today. And I also ordered 18 extra hours in the day to scrapbook).

Anyway, Aud asked me about how I display photos/art in our house, so I sent her some pictures. She put together this collage that makes the house look much more together than it actually is. Magic.

PS - Can you find the TV? It's so camouflaged, right?

...that's a wrap

...I haven't had much time to scrapbook, but there are always presents to wrap.

(This one is almost an exact copy of a baby gift I got from my friend Brooke Starnes. When I get gifts from fellow scrapbookers, I'm almost as excited about seeing the card as I am the gift).

...hello 2012, I missed you

...do you remember this?

My family has been on the internet since Al Gore invented it. My first AOL screename was "FriendL" (and I probably could have gotten, "Friend," or "Laura," if I wanted it, we were that early in the game).

For the last five months, I have been living in the internet of the early 1990s. We live in the middle of the woods and not a whole lot of providers come back here. That video you sent me of your kid laughing as the kitten licked her face? Yeah, I never watched it. Sorry.

But last week? The internet gods arrived and I am back to 2012. Monday, when Charlie was at school and Clara was napping, I sat out on the porch and browsed and opened 4,793 windows at the same time, listened to Pandora, downloaded from iTunes, and sent multiple 40mb files. It's good to be back.

--

Speaking of back, my mom is home. Thank you for your thoughts...But please keep them coming as this is just the beginning.

...charlie's first day

...amidst the madness and the sadness and everything in between, life goes on.

Charlie had his first day of preschool last week. He's going to an independent school near us that specializes in kids with average or above average intelligence who have some type of learning disability (or "difference" as they are now calling it). His class is a mix of kids who have a learning disability and kids who don't.

(We realized when we got out to the car after this picture that Clara had an awful wedgie, which might explain the look on her face).

It is a wonderful, amazing place. And he loves it.

My little three year-old Justin Bieber.

...heavy heart

...I think I really understand the meaning of this expression now. I drove home last night with one. Mom's surgery, in the words of her oncologist, went well. The mass was larger than we expected. This, of course, brings its own set of worries, but also hope that the pain she's been in for the last few months was caused by that and now, at the very least, the pain will be gone.

I forgot how hard recovery is. How hard it is to watch someone who has been the strong one, for you, for so long, not be the strong one. Role reversal is never an easy thing.

...Another expression I now understand the true meaning of is, "Cool as a cucumber." That would be my mom's surgeon. We got a call in the waiting room around when her surgery was supposed to start that they were running about 30 minutes late. We came to find out later that it was because the surgeon had been driving to the hospital when a tree fell 150 feet in front of his car. A big tree, which he hit. He called his wife, who met him at the accident, then he took her car, and came to the hospital to perform mom's surgery.

If that shows up on Grey's Anatomy, they stole the plot from me (I know the producers read my blog). Yes, there's a reason he's a surgeon. And there's a reason his wife is a surgeon's wife.

...like mother, like daughter

...tomorrow is my mom's surgery. Tonight, we pack. And like my mother, I will be going to the hospital with four books. Because you just never know when you'll need another book. I swore on everything holy that I had no interest in the Hunger Games trilogy, and here I am, sucked in just like every other pre-teen out there. What's next, vampires?

Thank you for understanding my quietness over the last few weeks as I figure my way through this and try to find my voice. Thank you for your e-mails, quietly poking, just to make sure everything is OK. Thank you for your thoughts and your friendships.