Random Stuff on New Years Eve

I love my daughter, she says the funniest things.

Skadi: "Is it today mom?"

Me: "Yes."

Skadi: "YAY! I am so glad it is today!"

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I am drinking my last pumpkin spice latte of 2010.

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I bought that remote control helicopter mostly for Leif. I am just so thrilled I bought it for LEIF. I am getting very tired of being chased by it by my husband!

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53 weeks remaining of my 30's.

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One year ago today was the last day my kids saw my mom.

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We made lefse today. It is delicious. The last time I made lefse I made a huge batch and mailed half to my mom since it was about the only thing she was enjoying eating.

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I am looking forward to friends coming over for a game night tonight.

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I used to love downhill skiing. I didn't love it yesterday. It is awfully hard wrangling two young children on the ski slopes.

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But those little bitty things sailing down the slopes with ease are so freaking cute.

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My legs hurt. It is probably good that I didn't ski more than a few runs.

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Pumpkin spice lattes are very, very yummy and it is very, very cruel that they are only available for a few months a year.

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My jeans are feeling a bit tight after all the food over the past few weeks. Maybe it is good pumpkin spice lattes are only available three months a year.

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There's that stupid RC helicopter again.

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I wonder how it would fly if a rotor were missing?

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Lemon meringue pies are a serious pain in the rear to make.

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I don't think I will ever master meringue. Like ever.

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Chain restaurants that sell meringue coated pies have some serious molecular gastronomy thing going on.

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Must remove rotor.

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Speaking of molecular gastronomy, was Top Chef not on this week?

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It's like a hummingbird. And I despise hummingbirds.

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They scare me.

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When I was a kid my grandpa sent me outside to stand next to a hummingbird, I willingly went. I was wearing a sundress. I was attacked. I was never the same.

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Oh, THERE are the sleeves I bought for cds and dvds!

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Must set up my new digital frame tomorrow. I am so excited to get one for my office!

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Wonder how the twins are doing?

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I need to boil down all those chicken and turkey carcasses for pot pies. Tomorrow. I will do it tomorrow.

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The last two weeks have gone way too fast.

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I remember when I was 13 and stayed up till midnight at my best friend's house in Casper. Right after midnight I called my mom to wish her a happy new years! She was sound asleep and so not happy with me.

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I can totally understand my mom right now.

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Wow, I must be really old to need a latte at 6pm to stay awake past 10:30pm.

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I have no idea what to get AB for his birthday. Does the 3 night vacation skiing at Silver Mountain that weekend count?

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Yep, I think I am going to put both kids in ski school when we go to Silver in 2 weeks and go back to the condo and read. The.entire.time.

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How am I EVER going to put down The Girl Who Played With Fire and read The Alchemist for book club next Friday. (Sorry RAB.)

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Love the fact that the RC helicopter has a short battery life. Silence. No hummingbird hovering over my head. (No husband standing around the corner laughing.)

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Wow, that pumpkin spice latte went fast.

If only I had the time...

One aspect of being a SAHM that I seriously covet is having the ability and time to devote to one's creative side. I don't kid myself into thinking that SAHMs have a whole lot more extra time on their hands than I do... but they are usually more often in an environment that allows for creativity, even if it is in little spurts. Me? When I am at work, I am working far away from my sewing machine.

What really has impressed me in the recent years is seeing creative moms out there, some that I know, take their art to the next level and are not only CEOs of their homes, but CEOs for their own small businesses. And very often... doing the things they love.

Many of the women I know who made the decision to stay home, didn't envision starting their own small businesses - or at least I don't remember this as their goals. Many just happened into it with their niche and have found an audience in the internet. And then there are the ones who just flat out amaze me... the moms who actually have a day job, even a part time day job, and still find time to run a business on the side.

My niche... if I had time would be sewing cute kids clothes. I would buy the cutest fabric and sew adorable clothing and sell it online for a small fortune. My time, after all, is immensely valuable. Something kind of like what my online friend's daughter did here... I covet the clothes she makes, though our dual income still isn't in that bracket that affords me to do my shopping there. I just window shop.

My mom (my partner in sewing crime) is coming out in a few weeks and I have presented her with a challenge. To help me make Skadi the cutest Summer outfit *ever* out of this adorable lemon fabric I bought last summer (and intended on making the cutest outfit ever out of). See I needed her... she is a great seamstress, having made most of my sister's and my clothes from kindergarten through about 3rd grade. But I needed her to do the dirty job of going to the fabric store and picking out a pattern.

Thus insuring I don't drain our savings buying cute patterns and fabric for things I will never sew.

Another small business owner I am jealous of is my sister-in-law. This is my sister-in-laws business in Colorado. Photography... oh yes, I could be a photographer too. Oh wait, no I probably couldn't since my photos never turn out as cute as Angie's. I get one in 50 on a good day. And one in 50 doesn't make a successful photo shoot. But Angie rocks. (My nieces and nephews are in there... aren't they cute? She IS photographing my kids next time we are in Colorado.)

Then there is my friend Kacey. Kacey is married to AB's best friend, JB. Kacey is amazingly talented with her jewelry making as can be seen on her website, Subsixstudios. I just bought some earrings from there and I love them. Not only with jewelry, but I think Kacey has a great style and I am looking forward to her Oddments additions. Oh and she sells Barefoot Books too! On top of working part time, making jewelry, selling books and raising two boys, she is one busy girl!

And related to my addiction with shoes and clothes for my daughter... well she has to have bows for her hair! Enter AK... who fulfills all my needs to have cute bows for my daughter's hair.



I looked at the Children's Place website today and noted that they had bobbledy hair clips too, for $2 a pair. But you know what? I would rather buy handmade and support a mom in her craft. So my daughter sports Hip Clips... when she doesn't yank them out of her hair and stuff them in her mouth...

Yes, I do have my blogging... both here and with the newspaper. And I love that gig. (And once I get the mess of domain hosting and my site designed how I want, I will take that to the next level and maybe be the next Pioneer Woman... ha ha ha.)

So in between my dreams of being a writer / seamstress / landscape architect / chef / photographer / counted cross stitcher, I will toil away in my office being a scientist. My childhood dream. Not many people are lucky enough to get to say they are doing what they dreamed they would do as a kid. Of course it is just a touch different then I dreamt it would be as a kid (Curious George's Professor Wiseman meets Jamie and Adam from Mythbusters).

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A really cool career!

If I just had a little free time... oh yeah, I am going to fill the upcoming half hour of free time with the gym in a couple months. A little more free time beyond that... which would I choose?

AB keeps telling me we just have to win the lottery... which in order to win, I suppose we would have to play.

My only regret in life is going to be not had enough time to try everything I want to do.

Finding permanency

One of the hardest things about the past few weeks and finding this house we liked was hearing that nagging thought in the back of my head.

"We are here for the long haul. We are not moving to Anchorage or Colorado. Or for that matter Seattle or Portland."

Since moving here nearly six years ago I don't think we saw ourselves as permanent here. On the flip side I don't think we saw ourselves as not potentially permanent here either. It was just kind of out there floating - what if? What other options do we have? At the time, not many.

Sometimes it was annoying in that I wanted permanency. I wanted stability. Other times it was reassuring to think we could pack up and move anywhere we wanted on a whim.

I don't have many whims. Neither does AB. But the ability was still there. You know the same reason you keep your passports ready handy... just in case you decide to go skiing in the Swiss Alps on a whim. (Ignoring the fact your kids don't have passports and that you aren't going anywhere without them...)

This seems to have been brought about mostly by the fact that my husband, for the first time since moving here, has a permanent, good paying job he likes with a great company. As of last October, our talk of moving someplace "better", closer to family, etc., seems to have fallen off.

Then that house came along.

And that nagging feeling of, if we do this, we are cementing ourselves.

Cement can be broken of course. It is hard, and sometimes painful to pull your feet out. But it can be done.

It all basically culminated in a discussion Sunday night while we were fixing dinner.

"What do you want to do about a house," AB asked me in the same breath as asking me if we were going to go to church on Easter Sunday given how Palm Sunday had gone with our children not so interested in the service.

And in typical NM style I flipped the question back to him. (Skipping over the Easter question.)

He hmmm's.

"It's obvious that we need to do something and make a decision," I told him. "We need to forge a path forward, we want to forge a path forward. So the question becomes do you want to build, or buy used?"

"I want to build," he said.

And there, it was done.

Nearly.

But I had one more question.

"And you are fine with being here long term?" I asked him.

"Well I am not looking for jobs, are you?" he asked with a hint of sarcasm.

"Nope," I said.

"Then let's get things moving," he said.

A decision was made in record time.

That's not to say I am not sitting here wondering if it is the best decision. If we aren't going to look back someday and wish we had bailed when we had the less invested, before the kids were in school. What kills me in making this decision is that it isn't about "places", the place we live in or the place we don't live, but instead it is about our families.

Frankly, it sucks not to have family nearby. We have friends and we are becoming rooted in the community that we are both growing to enjoy. But nothing replaces your real family.

One of the single best things I ever did was to leave Colorado. I grew up a lot in many ways. AB and I learned to rely on each other and we cemented our relationship (more talk about cement...). The sibling rivalry we both grew up with faded and we were really able to become happy as individuals and a couple with few external factors.

I grew out of my high school days of "who said what about who" and there was no longer the need to look over my shoulder wondering who I was going to run into while wandering Olde Town Fort Collins. Something happens when you leave your old stomping ground.

Before having kids, we were happy to live away from our families. However, seeing our kids grow up having to be reintroduced to grandma and grandpa with every visit is hard. Not having built in babysitters for special occasions or weekend getaways is a bummer. And I wish my kids knew their cousins.

But webcams help with getting to know grandma and grandpa. (Leif told grandma when she left the other day she needed to buy a computer - truth be told she just needs to hook up the webcam she has had for over a year now.) I can pay for a babysitter who does exactly what I tell them to and would never bribe my kids with candy. And how often would we really go on weekend getaways by ourselves? AB and I both grew up with very few cousins and only seeing them on a rare occasion most of the time.

Our obstacles are not insurmountable and we are enjoying a new phase of vacationing with grandma and grandpa. A luxury afforded to us by having good jobs with time in for lots of vacation days.

I won't deny that a fear of the unknown and knowing the grass isn't always greener on the other side doesn't play a little into our remaining here. AB and I are at a place in our lives where we can't afford to take large risks. Financial security and job security are priorities with our young family.