Taking a bite out of the Big Apple

I meant to post this last week when we got home. But you know, it's Christmastime... and there were a few other things on my to-do list.

Rachel and I had fun exploring the BIG Apple. Did I mention that it was BIG? Everything seemed really BIG. And also, just plain BIG. So we were a little dazed and overwhelmed when we arrived. Not to mention that just getting there was quite an adventure!

We arrived at the airport to find that our flight had just been cancelled due to technical problems in Salt Lake City. They re-routed us thru Atlanta... which meant a 5 hour wait at the airport. Then we found out we had an "illegal" connection to NYC... we had less than 20 minutes to get to our next flight once we landed in Atlanta. No problem - we'll just ask the flight attendants to help us get off the plane first and we'll be fine.

Hmm. Except that apparently "it's not their policy to ask First Class passengers to stay seated." Elitist pigs! (would I trade places and sit in First Class? In a heartbeat!)

Wouldn't have mattered whether or not the piggies in First Class stayed seated... because the jetway was malfunctioning. Frantically watching the minutes tick by and kissing our hopes of seeing Matt Lauer slip away... the pilot decides to do a play-by-play of the jetway mechanic's progress. "Xxxxppp... he's climbing the ladder. He's opening the control panel. He inserted a small screwdriver into the panel. He's pressing the button... oh, that didn't work. He's radioing for a supervisor. We should have some additional assistance in just a few minutes, folks. On behalf of our cabin crew, we thank you for choosing Delta."

Right. Thanks for NOTHING! It gets worse.

We missed our connection. And as we're standing there looking for some clue as to where passengers with crushed Matt Lauer dreams should go next, we ask a large woman in a long blue cardigan who has overheard all of our confusion, "Do you work for Delta?" She grunts and peels back one side of her sweater, revealing her large "Delta Cares" button pinned to her shirt, "What do you think?" Apparently Atlanta has no knowledge of the reputation the South carries for hospitality. She waves her hand abruptly and sends us to A4. We check at that gate, the next flight is overbooked and checked in as full... but we can still try standby. Sure. That sounds like a good plan.

We finally find someone with a brain and an ounce of compassion - and of course, she's from Washington originally and grew up in the town where we live. It's a small world after all. This lovely person puts us on a plane to DC and books us with a legal connection to LaGuardia. *phew* We lost 7 hours of our reign of chaos in New York City... but at least we got there in one piece... found our luggage (which took completely different planes and probably has its own story to tell) and we were on our way to Manhattan!

We found this AMAZING ribbon store in Manhattan called M&J Trimming and the nicest girl wrote down idiot-proof directions to take the subway to SoHo and find Kate's Paperie. We were restored in mind, body, and spirit after spending a few hours back in our creative zone.

I'm just hitting the highlights... Wicked was awesome! We loved Serendipity 3... loved the huge Macy's - even if I did lose Rachel for about an hour and she got panicked... loved Times Square and the throngs of people... and loved going to Little Italy with Bob & Heather!

Start Spreading the News...

I'm leaving today... I want to be a part of it, New York, New York...

I'm going to wake up in the city that never sleeps...

and so on, and so forth.

Next blog post: Pictures of NYC!!

United Colours of Belize...

I am working on a slideshow of children around the world... and Joel, a missionary from Belize sent me this awesome photograph. I just had to post it today!

There's No Business Like Snow Business....

To quote Billy Joel, "I'm in a New York state of mind..." and hence the title of my post. Trying to merge all these random topics and subjects into one... because, snow has indeed come to blanket the NW in an icy traffic nightmare. You have to love Seattle drivers in the snow!

The girls are loving it though... Riley was rolling down our back lawn earlier... she never does anything half-way. Taryn is busy collecting ice from anywhere they can find it - I think they may be building a skating rink next door? Better check on that!

The Cowgirl and The Butterfly

Surely some kind of urban legend in the making... or an ancient Chinese proverb. Never squash a butterfly when you're on the open range. hmmm... better work on my ancient Chinese translations.

I never got around to posting these from Halloween... so here they are.

A Very Blustery Day

There are many things I love about where we live. One of the few things that I do NOT love is how windy it can get sometimes. Today is one of those house-rattling, gate-banging, door-slamming days... last year during one of our windstorms, our barbecue was actually picked up by the wind and unceremoniously dumped on its side on the lawn - 10 feet away.

Toto-we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore-kind-of-windy.

On the plus side... Riley now has a favorite Beatle. Ringo. I'm sure it's more to do with the name being funny than any astute percussive evaluation. But, I'll take it. They actually ASK to listen to the Beatles in the car now. I'm SO proud. If they inherit nothing else of my exceptional qualities... at the very least they seem to have inherited some old fashioned common sense when it comes to admiring the greatest musical talents of our time.

Next week, we'll work on ix-naying Barney and The Wiggles from their vocabulary. :-)

Happy Winds-Day...

Paper Moon Press is in *da house*!

Rachel successfully made it through her first 2 trade shows last week. I would have been with her, of course, if it hadn't been the same dates as the Creating Keepsakes convention... with Karen, one of my favorite people on the planet.

It was a roaring success... well, roaring like when MGM substitutes a kitten for the lion on a movie intro... we didn't strike it rich, but we did succeed in:

• purchasing a few really cute accessories for our booth and/or office
• making contacts with several important and influential people
• getting at least 4 different invitation orders
• putting ourselves on the map due to Rachel's uber-cute purse and iPod cards

The next show we will be at is the Seattle Tennis Club Bazaar... should be a hot one! *tzzzzz*

Contact Paper Moon Press for more information on our custom cards and invitations! info@papermoonpress.com

Reach the Beach...

while that is an old 80's album title by The Fixx... that has absolutely nothing to do with my blog post today.

Recently, we rented a beach house in the sleepy little town of Manzanita on the Oregon Coast. It was completely furnished with wall-to-wall kids, legos, and marble tower components. Well, okay... the kids we furnished ourselves. Did I mention that there were 4 families sharing the beach house? Hence, the wall-to-wall kiddedness. Certainly our 2 small angels wouldn't provide a wall-to-wall capacital feeling. Unless they were hopped up on fruit snacks.

This was the 9th Annual Beach Trip. We have been to other choice NW locations... notably La Push... with the musty, saggy old beach motel rooms that certainly did NOT sleep 8 adults comfortably. And the other noteworthy memory of the trip to La Push was our field trip to The Hoh Rainforest... which was "just down the road"... yeah, 4 hours later on a switchback logging road we finally reached the Hoh... Mike's memory for distances is not always trustworthy. But if you long to see moss oozing from trees... the Hoh is the place for you. Lots of moss. The capital of moss.

But I'm getting off track... this was a lovely town, lovely house, totally moss-free. The sun shone, the waves crashed, the sand stuck in all those hard-to-reach places, it was the beach experience that poets extoll and hearken. Hence, my current need to extoll and hearken.

Our favorite side trip destination has been The Death Cliffs at Hug Point. Well, at least Mike likes to describe them to newbies as the place where his nephew almost died last year. A strong selling point to mothers of small children... but back to my story. Last year, when we visited, the tide was coming in and there was the occasional "sneaker" wave that came in a lot farther than any of the others before. One minute, you're exploring a cave and the water seems miles away, the next minute you're scrambling up the rocks escaping the onslaught of frothy water that sends your discarded shoes and towels out to sea. The thrill-seekers were all about the near death experience and clinging to the rock walls as the undertoe beckoned... I had my moments as I watched Mike scoop little Riley up just before she was knocked down and hopelessly lost to the deep. Well... it seemed that dramatic at the time. But Hug Point really is a cool place to explore. I'd go back.

It was all lovely... until the vomitting started. Those stories are not worthy of extolling or hearkening... I'll just leave it at that.

PERFECT Fall weekend in the NW....

The foliage is brilliant... the sun is shining... the air is crisp... I shall feel comfortable declaring this to be the PERFECT FALL WEEKEND.

We went to the Pumpkin Patch yesterday with the fam... the girls loved going through the corn maze with Daddy and Grandpa... we picked out some GI-NORMOUS pumpkins to carve... and we had a lovely time with Grandma back at the house enjoying my first home-made soup of the season. Yum!

Karly is a wonderful photographer...

and friend :-)

Since she's one of the few faithful readers of my blog... I thought I would dedicate a post to her. And she took this photo of me at the beach... thanks, Karly!

I LOVE October!!

For some reason, October seems to be MY month...

1. I got my copy of Paper Trends with my Altered Take-Out box project in it... plus a huge box of goodies!
2. I met May - a Fiskateer, and Pea, and friend - and she gave me a ton of scrap goodies!
3. I will be featured as the Guest Designer at Creating With Paper
4. We're going on our annual beach trip with the *gang* next weekend
5. I love Fall photo shoots... like this little trip to the Pumpkin Patch with Riley & her friends

No worries...

Said with fingers-crossed, Riley is adjusting well to preschool. She has not cried once... unlike her sister... who cried almost every time I dropped her off when she was 3 AND 4 AND even 6...

I was enjoying a high-stakes game of Go, Fish! this morning with this charming preschooler... if you haven't spent time with a 3-year old lately, I highly encourage it.

The stakes were set with these parameters:

You win: I get to pay a horribly overpriced tuition and room/board package to the 4-year University of your choice.

I win: You agree to house me in a clean and well-respected Assisted Living Facility of my choice.

It's only fair... I tell her, her little doe-eyes drinking in all that I'm saying to her with trust and affection. And then she says: "Best 2 out of 3?"

What ARE they teaching them at preschool these days?

Circa 1987...

So - in about 10 days - we've been able to whittle the MIA list down to 130. We're already half-way home. Remarkable...

So thankful for help - Kelly, Karol, Christie, Susan, Dan, Kyle, Peter, Brian, Pat, Jamie, Stephanie & Jeanne... every little bit helps! Even if I'm still a stress-case. Baby steps.

We have our reunion date: July 14, 2007. Canterwood. Excellent!

Listening to I Am Sam soundtrack... Beatles covers... of course a favorite.

Tomorrow will be first attempt leaving Riley at preschool... fingers crossed for painless separation. Update to follow.

The Great American Pastime

A friend gave us 5 tickets to the Mariners game today... we gleefully partook in the Great American Pastime: Eating junk food.

Blech! I hate having a sugar hangover...

The game was fun - the boys rallied a couple of times - but the Rangers still outscored us 4 to 2. Taryn has an interest in baseball, which is cool. She can follow the game, even though she wouldn't want to play the game at this point in her life. Her little friend, Noelle, was entertained with the kettle corn, licorice, peanuts, Skittles, and lemonade... and all the vendors walking the stairs bringing enticing them with their forbidden delicacies like cotton candy and fondue skewers.

Yes, you read correctly. Fondue skewers. Strawberries and banana slices on a stick, covered in chocolate. The concessions are strictly upscale in Seattle.

Thomas, of course, had to get a heart attack special: Chili cheese fries. Ugh! I am very weary of what the evening will bring forth after those chili cheese fries...

Noelle scanned the crowd, did some quick calculations, and proclaimed "There are a trillion people here - or maybe even a billion." Seems about right... Riley wanted to know how many points the black team scored - the black team was the umpires. And Taryn's highlight was the 7th Inning Stretch. She just loves that song. And she was quick to tell Riley not to plan a potty break when Ichiro might be batting - because "he's actually good". How quickly they learn!
I kept myself amused by watching people with copious amounts of junk food scale the stairways in varying conditions of sobriety and motor function. A good time was had by all!

First Day Jitters

Taryn woke up this morning and said "Mommy - it feels like there are butterflies and frogs jumping in my tummy" I could have told her honestly... me, too.

The first day of school for me was always filled with anxiety, anticipation, excitement, and fear. I was trying to minimize those feelings for Taryn. We had the outfit picked out - for 2 weeks - so that was a no-brainer. She got her sassy new haircut last Friday. We've had her backpack and school supplies for nearly a month. We were prepared!

But our best-laid plans went quickly awry when I discovered that I had underestimated the chaos of the school parking lot on the First Day. Add to that the fact that the exact starting time of school was never clearly obtained... they apparently assumed that all of us former Afternoon Kindergarten parents would automatically know that school started promptly at 9:00 AM - and not 9:08 like we had thought. Oops.

Talk about a train wreck. Instead of gleefully skipping to the playground like she had planned, she opened the door and 24 seemingly strange faces were staring at her. She knew a lot of the kids - but at that moment, she wouldn't have recognized her own sister. She did what I would have done (and still long to do at times) she bolted across the schoolyard, screaming "I want to be homeschooled."

What can a mother do at that point? I reasoned with her. I pleaded with her. I tried the COUNTDOWN (you know... "You will comply with my request in 5-4-3-2..." you get the picture) But my best parenting tricks were falling as flat as feathered hair in a Mississippi rainstorm. Suddenly my brain kicked in and I went to the classroom to get her best friend. Emily was able to talk her off the ledge and in they marched - Taryn subtly pushing Em in front as they entered the classroom to minimize the peering eyes. Crisis averted. Phew.

I wasn't expecting the freak out. But it wasn't too bad. And I take total responsibility for arriving late. Tomorrow morning - we're walking - 35 minutes before school starts. It's destined to be a better day.

First things first...

We visited First Grade today! Taryn put her supplies in her desk and got the 411 on the first day... where to put her backpack... how to order milk... etc. I cannot even believe that she's going to be a big First Grader on Tuesday! That seems very old.

Had some great chats with old friends today gathering info for my 20 Year Reunion! This is the fun part, being able to reconnect. 32 people updated... only 198 to go. *sigh*

But I was able to enlist a little moral support - if not exactly a whole crew of eager beaver party planners - moral support is good.

Another recent layout to share, too...

Thank you, Sir, may I have another?

Our team is RED HOT... your team is SO NOT!

I'm in a high school frame of mind today... been contacting alumni for the past 2 days. But still managed to scrap the above **HOT** layout featuring KI Color Theory papers in my dd's fave color GREEN...

Can you say MOJO?

My mojo has returned from it's summer vacation. And let me tell you, I got no postcards, souvenirs, NADA... but I'm just grateful that it returned safely.

If you're not a scrapbooker and you're reading this, you probably think I'm crazy... but all the scrapbookers know what I'm talking about.

Things I'm looking forward to the most right now:

1. School starting
2. School starting
3. School starting

Do you see a pattern here? It's not that we haven't had a great summer... but I just LOVE fall and the feeling of going back to school. Even if it's not ME going to school. This will be a great year - Taryn got the teacher we wanted and her favorite new friend is in her class - so things are looking VERY good so far.

Other upcoming things I'm looking forward to:


- Reunion planning... LOVE hearing from my long lost friends from high school!
- Gilmore Girls Season premiere
- Creating Keepsakes Convention in Bellevue in November... working with KB at the Dollar Scrapbooking booth will be an amazing good time!

Wheeeeeeee.....

The Air Up There...

From our recent adventures in Central Oregon... the girls loved exploring the summit at Mt. Bachelor, especially the ride on the chair lift (I, however, was white-knuckled on the descent). Our trip was filled with new experiences for them - river "rafting" (well, okay it was technically a CREEK - and there was mostly floating happening) - the chair lift ride - hiking at the top of a mountain - playing in the snow in summertime - golfing on real turf - swimming every day - and Riley learning how to swim *underwater* (with her face fully submerged).