Whaddaya know… Haven’t posted in quite some time again. I was going to write a couple of weeks ago, but we got snowed in here and I didn’t want it to slip out to the world how very barely I was hanging onto my sanity. ;) Believe me, you were spared…be thankful.
So yes, we have been snowed in here for almost exactly two weeks. All of the holiday parties were canceled for me AND the kiddos, as well as the church services we were going to participate in and my community choir’s final concert and season wrap up party. :( Talk about ruining the holidays. I’m having a very difficult time ridding myself of the “bah…humbugs.” It was definitely the strangest Christmas I’ve ever experienced, mostly because… well, it just didn’t feel like Christmas. No caroling, no church, no midnight mass on Christmas Eve, no shopping, no Christmas cards delivered, etc. And being stuck inside so long and not having our usual routines to count on or friends to share the Christmas spirit with, the days just sort of blurred together, and it was hard to convince myself it was actually Christmas Eve once it finally rolled around.
We ended up having a great time on Christmas Day at Chloe’s though, so that salvaged the strange holiday season in some ways. We feasted, opened presents, and enjoyed some wassail and each other’s company. I have some pics up in the galleries, one of random activities in Nov/Dec, and one of primarily Christmas Day.
Happy Holidays!? 
Wow, I’ve been a really crappy blogger lately haven’t I? I had been consumed in May and early June with preparations for my choir trip to England, mostly preoccupations about dying in the fiery ball of a plane crash and leaving my children scarred for life, but ya know, there was the whole making lists and packing thing too.
Glad to say I made it back alive, but definitely changed somehow. A trip like that is so strange, so compact and whirlwind that it takes you longer to wrap your head around the whole experience once you return, than it did to have the experience in the first place. I saw some amazing places, had some great food, had no responsibilities except to wake up by a certain time to have breakfast each morning, and had the opportunity to get really close to some amazing people; an opportunity I don’t think I ever would have had if I hadn’t gone on tour, and I will be forever grateful to those who helped me to get there and supported my decision to do so. A particular thank you to Barney, for allowing me to run off for over a week; to Dodo, for being a saint and watching the kiddos while I was gone, not the easiest job in the world; to my mom, for providing a lot of the financial backing and motivation that allowed me to pursue my desire to be a part of the tour even when I thought it was a pipe dream; and to my sister, Chloe, who I spend nearly every day with, for putting up with loosing her daytime companion for almost two weeks. Thanks so much to all of you, you’re amazing and I feel blessed to have you in my life.
I will try to sit down and write about some of the places we traveled to and experiences we had once I get all of my pics off the camera and wade through them. Until then, just know that I’m back, I’m safe, I’m happy but a little scattered and trying to remember how to fit back into my space here. Please feel free to write or comment, I’d love to know who’s out there in cyberspace and perhaps it’ll help bring me back down to earth a bit.Â
For now, if you’re jonesing for some pics, I’m uploading some from the past few months that I never took the time to post about, so look for those over in the Gallery sidebar.
Hello world! It’s been a while.
I just posted some pics from our lives over the past couple of months. Why don’t you go look at those, and I’m going to head to bed, and we’ll see where we’re at in the morning, shall we? Enjoy!
Sorry no one has heard from us in so long! We’ve been busy busy. Nanna, Auntie Fay, and Cousin Spencer drove all the way from CA to see us a couple of weeks ago and stayed for a week, and before that, I was swamped with rehearsals for Diva Las Vegas, a benefit show that we put on for our church. Now that that’s over I’m busy with rehearsals for my upcoming choir tour to England this summer. Will the singing never end? Thankfully, no. Even though it keeps me really busy, I love it. In other news, I had yet another birthday, we survived Valentines Day, went through several colds, met some new neighbors, and generally just had a good time. I’ve uploaded pics from the past month. Go check them out!
Hope everyone had an awesome Halloween, and are gradually coming down from the sugar high. We had a blast here. We carved some new pumpkins, made some paper towel ghosts to hang out front, and got all dressed up in costumes. (By the way, everyone loved the handmade buckets that Memere made for the kids, THANKS MEMERE!)
The kiddos were swept away in the excitement of it all, and of course, we adults got to be big kids again through them. Barney took control of handing out candy while Chloe and I took the kiddos around the neighborhood. We were out for a good hour, and of course came back to the house with buckets full of treats. Daddy, ever the authoritarian, only let them have one piece each, which was probably a good idea seeing as it was so close to bedtime, but I was SURE he was going to get our house egged because of his strict rules on who he would give candy to. He truly was quite the “Candy Nazi”. You look too old? No candy. Not a good enough costume? No candy. Your friend, who’s driving his bike and letting you ride on the back, and patiently waiting on the sidewalk in front of the house? No candy for him unless he drops his bike in the middle of the sidewalk to block all pedestrian traffic, and drags his ass up here himself. It was pretty amusing. We ended up still having half of our enormous tub of candy because of how many people he wouldn’t hand it out to!
Go check out some pics of our Halloween adventures.
As a completely unrelated aside…are you not amazed at how everyone already has their Christmas stuff out?! Driving to our house to get ready for trick or treating, we passed a store with an ENORMOUS red and green shiny sign that read “Seasons Greetings!” It completely threw me off because I had Halloween on the brain. It kind of irked me to tell you the truth, and made me not want to shop there because they just seemed so desperate to make money on the next season rather than letting everyone enjoy the one that we were supposed to be taking part in at that moment. I dunno, maybe I just love Christmas so much, I hate to see it rushed and ruined. Although, as another aside (mostly for Barney’s sake), I see absolutely nothing wrong with singing Christmas Carols now, or all year for that matter! Bring on the eggnog!
It’s been a while since we played at the Childrens’ Museum, mostly because our pass expired last year, and we’re cheap. But the library here has a free pass that you can check out, and it was available when we called on Saturday. What luck!
The kids had a blast playing inside on such a rainy day. It definitely beats sitting in the house, I can tell ya that. :) Snapped a few shots while we played. Go check ‘em out.
As any and all avid site readers know, Emery, Lindsay and I went to the Pumpkin Patch with Lindsay’s preschool class earlier in the month. Well, there’s a longstanding tradition of going to Lakeview Farms, another local patch, with friends and family, and then heading over to The Batemans‘ House for a carving party.
Not one to let tradition die, we joined the crew and headed to the patch for some fun getting lost in the corn maze, riding the boat over to the patch, picking out our pumpkins, and riding the train back to our cars. My mom, ever the adventurer, joined us this year for a muddy good time being lead through the maze by none other than her trusty son-in-law Barney.  Just to install that extra bit of confidence in her, he joked about leaving her in the middle of the maze and running away, laughing maniacally. But he would never do such a thing (because the rest of us were there to make sure).   ;) For the most part, our large group stayed together, except for Lindsay and Nick, who took off to conquer the maze hand in hand. Too cute. I only managed to snap a few pics, but I know Carrie got a bunch as well, so after you check out our gallery, head on over to her site to see more of our adventure!
Have you taken a look at the trees lately? They seem to get more spectacular every year. We have some of the most amazingly red leaves around here. When the sun shines through them, from afar, you might imagine they’re on fire….if only it weren’t pouring with rain two seconds later. Yes, the rainy season has arrived here in Oregon, making me wonder if we’re going to make it out to go trick or treating after all. Along with the rain, the illnesses have arrived in full force. The kids (and I, of and on) have been sick since the last weekend in September. Talk about housebound and miserable. Lindsay holds onto colds longer than anyone I’ve ever met, and with us usually having a nice full schedule of preschool and gymnastics and playgroups, let’s just say we’re all getting on each others’ nerves a bit. And of course, being sequestered in a house together, we’re all bound to get sick! Fun fun. The miser in me is also irritated to no end now that we’re paying for all of these various classes and preschool and all that, for them to be missing so many. That’s a lot of wasted money, not to mention the holes in their “education”. Lindsay will forever have a handicap when it comes to the letters “O” and “H” (which she should have been learning about these past couple of weeks).
Now it hasn’t been all misery around here, don’t worry. We have managed to get out a bit to places where they aren’t in such close quarters with people and can’t spread their germs so easily. We went to the Pumpkin Patch with Lindsay’s preschool class, we met Uncle Stuart’s new puppy, Dinsdale, and we participated for a few minutes in the MOMS Club Halloween Party, while I constantly followed the kiddos around with hand sanitizer! 
Go check out the pics! And please, please, do us a favor. Once we’re all better, nobody come visit us if you’re sick, or have been sick the week before! I really don’t want to be stuck in the house all winter, Lindsay would love to get back to preschool on a regular basis, and Emery would like to continue to develop his gymnastics prowess. Hope everyone else is doing better than we are!
I just got the news that one of my cousins was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident. He was only 25, and had two small children. He lived in California, and I hadn’t talked to him for about 10 years, but we had just recently gotten back in touch through MySpace. What’s really sad is that I have been meaning to write back to him again after he wrote a couple weeks ago and asked what was taking so long for me to write back… I kept putting it aside, and seeing it in my inbox, and vowing to do it later. Now I feel horrible because it’s too late.
Well, here’s to Nicholas. I wish I had had the chance to get to know you better as an adult, but I’ll always have my memories of our times together as kids.
Nicholas. Lived Hard, Fast, And For Far Too Short A Time.
