lunch break

...momma's favorite new word

(And no, it's not "pants down." Ha).

(He's wearing a band-aid on his forehead because he wanted to be like momma, who has a band-aid on her forehead...more on that to come).

We survived Sandy with a lot of howling wind and a tree down across the driveway. The Little House is safe. And Nora's giveaway is open until Friday night (below).

...braving wind and flood to bring you this giveaway

...and hanging on to every last minute that we actually have power.

Sandy's on her way (just arriving, actually), at the Little House.

But, I have long loved the work of Nora Griffin, and even though she's in a far sunnier state than me right now, when she asked if I would do a giveaway for her 12 Tags for Christmas class, I said of course, because I know it will be awesome. Nora's taste is impeccable.

So leave a comment before midnight (eastern time) on Friday, and I'll pick a winner for her class that starts on November 5.

And with that, the lights just flashed, so I am off.

The bathtubs are filled.

And the hair accessories are chosen.

Bring it, Sandy.

...a hint at what I'm up to

And no, I'm not moving to Utah. But you might find my name here.

...reunited

...I had my fifteen-year high school reunion last weekend. There were 43 people in my high school class, which I think means barring any drastic weight loss, gain, or dramatic plastic surgery, we can see each other every five years and feel like not much has changed.

I got ready in my mom's hospital room (she is home now). Nothing like flourescent hospital lights to bring out the wrinkles that you have no makeup to hide.

It was a wonderful night, concluded with a reading of our senior superlatives from the yearbook (I love the coffee table...beer bottles mixed with a shape sorter? Can you tell we are all in the midst of toddler craziness? It's a new drinking game! Beer and shape sorting! Kinda like quarters?):

It's safe to say that I like the people I went to high school with more today than I did fifteen years ago. I've been thinking about it a lot over the last few days, and in Brad Paisley style, I wrote a letter to 18 year-old me. What can I say? I should have been a country music songwriter.

--

At your fifteen-year reunion, there are lawyers, therapists, and a lot of people who could do your taxes. There’s an emergency room doctor, writers, a producer.

You all dress better than you did fifteen years ago – but that isn’t hard considering you graduated in the era of flannel shirts and overalls and before flat irons.

You will lose touch with almost all of your 43 classmates, but through something you’ll wish you invented called social media, you will reconnect with almost every single one of them.

There are lots of moms, and lots of dads. So many babies, so many born within days of each other one summer fourteen years after you graduated. Your prom date, Joe, had a son seven days before your daughter was born.

You no longer think Phish is all that great, but Dave Matthews is a big part of your iTunes library. Don’t worry, you’ll figure out what iTunes is soon enough. Buy Apple stock.

You will understand very few of the inside jokes on your own yearbook page or messages written to you from your friends fifteen years from now.  You will not remember why you harbored resentment or held a grudge toward one person or another.

You will not marry a Sallies guy, as your senior page predicted, but you’ll marry a good guy. A wonderful guy. You will bring two lives into this world, fast and furiously.

At your reunion, you will laugh until you cry thinking about how stupid, naïve, young you really were.

E-mail is not a flash in the pan.

None of your “dreams” came true, but dreams you didn’t even realize you had have come true.

You will know sadness you can’t imagine right now, but you’ll also feel happiness you didn’t even know existed.

...a walk through charlie's albums

...warning, this is seriously a photo-scrapbooking-heavy post. And if you are not interested in scrapbooking, but came here because you googled, "He still wears a diaper," (yes, that was a real thing someone searched for and somehow landed here)...well, you can just skip this post.

I include a lot in charlie and clara's scrapbooks. Anything that can get laminated and have a hole punched in it goes in there. Anything that doesn't fit that criteria goes into storage bins I got from Container Store.

Charlie's albums start like this. He was five weeks old, gestational-age:

This is his birth story, and includes the little card that was tucked in his bassinet at the hospital:

This is a page of photos from the hospital and the piece of paper was torn from one of our baby-name books with the information about the name, "Charlie." (And yes, I ripped apart my baby name books, assuring that there will be no baby number three. Or at least a baby boy whose name starts with, "C"):

These are his footprints from the hospital, with a page from another baby name book (the page it's covering is Charlie's hospital bracelet page):

More baby pages with a sheet from a doctor's visit, Charlie's first piece of mail, and a note from a friend tucked in between:

This was how I did Charlie's every day pages his first year (with another doctor's visit note slipped in there):

Another every day page, with a little love note from Charlie's girlfriend, Madeline:

Sometimes the pieces slipped in are just smaller-sized photos:

This is how I started doing Charlie's every day pages in his second year (with the tags, like I posted about a few weeks ago). This is the start of one month (with a regular scrapbook page to the left):

And including this because it's a page I still just love:

Still reading? Congrats!

My monthly pictures don't always fill up an entire baseball card sleeve, sometimes just the front, so I slip white pieces of paper (cut the same size as wallet photos) to cover up the photo information printed on the back:

Just a little scribble, here and there. You might recognize the basketball photo from this layout. Turns out I didn't like that layout at all (not sure what I was on when I wrote that description), but I still loved the picture. So I scrapped the left part and put the photo in. I'm all about getting it done, and liking it.

Another image of how scrapbook pages and everyday pictures work together:

Again, it's not always perfect, or pretty, but it's done:

And if you made it this far, I should probably include a picture of YOU in Charlie's album.

...around here

...spent the past week furiously, madly decorating in anticipation of Maria's arrival.

Then I spent the three hours before her arrival not allowing anyone to touch anything or eat anything. NOTHING.

Maria's camera is just a little bit nicer than my iPhone, so better pictures to come.

Working. So, I didn't say what my new jobs are because the truth is that I've been hired as a top-secret government agent. And this is my office:

Me and my honey working remotely tonight.

No, really, my new jobs are: 1) Doing PR/Communications work for a non-profit near here and 2) Working for a web-development company and 3) Top secret government agent. But I have to kill you if you tell anyone.

Today marks one year since we closed on the lot where we built our house.

Sometimes it takes my breath away to think about all that has happened in a year, mostly about my mom. I am constantly thinking about how life has changed. Still mostly stuck on how it isn't fair. How sometimes it seems just so not fair.

Scrapbooking. A lot. Trying to find at least an hour or two a night. Wrapping up the kids day-to-day pages and will dive in to getting caught up on the real scrapbook pages after that.  Will share. Eventually.

I'm here, just quiet.

...my short-lived retirement

...a few months ago, I dusted off the cobwebs and had a good old-fashioned job interview. I wore heels and a dry-clean-only dress. I printed out resumes and updated my portfolio. I told the panel that I hadn't planned on coming out of retirement so soon, but the job was right.

And the truth is, as much as I love Charlie and Clara, they never tell me I'm doing a good job. And sometimes, I miss hearing that I do a good job.

It is part-time. And so is the other job I just accepted. Both add up to about 20 hours a week. Which is good, because I'm going to need the rest of my free time to start promoting Charlie's goalie career:

...first few sentences

...we are starting to hear little sentences come from charlie. It will be so nice when he's older and we can look back on these videos and be sentimental about what those first sentences were.

Three guesses what he was doing in that pantry.

Three guesses what he was doing under that desk.

And yes, I will be showing these at his college graduation party, his wedding rehearsal, and his retirement party.

--

Mom is doing OK, the last few days have been rough after a good day following chemo. We sat and talked and read for about four hours that day (you should have tried to see me telling her that the woman receiving chemo two seats away was reading Fifty Shades of Grey...I didn't quite know how to say that quietly?)

...tomorrow morning

My mom will have her first chemotherapy session. Well, her first this time. Unfair. Yes, unfair.

In the last four weeks since her surgery, things have been bad, gotten worse, gotten better, gotten worse. Sleepless nights. Deep, hard, heavy sleep. Prayers cut off in mid-prayer because I just can't stay awake. 

She's going to fight, so I'll fight too, even when what's happening takes my breath away. Even when I wake up in the middle of one of those deep sleeps thinking of questions I need to ask her, things I need to say, thing we need to do.