Happy Thanksgiving

It's been almost six months since I lost my grandma, and every so often, something reminds me of her and I get emotional again. The plan was for us to go to Blythe for Thanksgiving and spend it with my family on that side, and especially to see my grandpa. When I woke up Monday morning with a throat so sore that I could barely swallow, I knew my strep from three weeks ago had returned. Not being able to find an appointment that day with any doctor's office in Surprise, I went to urgent care to make sure that I wouldn't be contagious and we could still visit with my family. So we were all prepared to go, I had made enough dessert to feed an army, all we had to do was wake up Thursday morning and drive. And when we woke up, Bailey's throat was really sore again and her glands were swollen. So of course we had to skip our family celebration. Jason and I rushed off to the grocery store to get components for the meal because, of course, all I had was dessert. We were able to pull off a pretty nice meal. We had a roast chicken wrapped in bacon (which kept the chicken really moist!), green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and rolls. And although it was just the five of us, it was nice to talk about what we were grateful for and to make our preparations for the Christmas season, most importantly I think, to make our plans for how we can help others. And even though we gorged ourselves on desserts (well, the kids did; Jason and I were actually pretty reasonable), we haven't made a dent in how many goodies we have in our house.

Today I took Bailey to the doctor, and of course it came back as strep. Talking with the nurse practitioner, she suggested we bring the younger two in to have them tested as she thought they might be asymptomatic carriers. They of course were closing in 10 minutes and the kids were at home, but they were nice enough to stay open long enough to have Jason bring the kids down. Sure enough, Lindsay tested positive for strep, so she's probably the reason Bailey and I keep coming down with strep. So now we just need to get Jason tested and on some antibiotic, and then our whole family will be on antibiotics. 'Tis the season for sharing, right?

Long time gone

Wow, I was just looking at my dashboard account to get some information about a post I posted to my business blog and realized the date on my blog for my last post was back in September. That's so sad! So just a quick post today, a little update about everyone. Bailey is still in band and loving it, she's playing the clarinet in advanced band and going to be starting the trombone with beginning band. She writes all the time and has her own tumblr page (don't ask me what it is, she changes it all the time and I can never remember what it is). Cole is doing marginally better in school this year. He's still having the same issues and we don't know how to help him, and I'm still fighting with the school to get him help. He sees a psychologist and psychiatrist often to help him work things out, but that's a long drawn out process so progress is slow, frustratingly sometimes. He really enjoys video games, which we use to help him work on things that are hard for his brain to do in other environments. He started band this year and is doing percussion and is doing really well. Lindsay also started seeing a psychologist for her anxiety, it had gotten to the point where it was just interfering with her life so we wanted to help her with it. She also started band this year and is playing the clarinet just like her big sister. The band teacher loves our family because we have such talented musicians.

Jason is just busy with work and tennis a few times a week. He doesn't have a lot of down time, and when he does it's usually to help me out with housework. My business has taken off this time of year. I've heard this time of year is comparable to a CPA's March and it really has been for me, two to three bookings a week until the middle of December, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I've been very surprised at how quickly my business has grown and I've gotten so much positive feedback from my clients and their friends about the quality of my work. I love my job very much. I do have trouble learning how to balance the new found work with taking care of my family and the house, but it's nice to be busy. If you want to check out my work, you can view it in one of three places, my website, my blog, or where I post most of my work, my facebook page. I'll be taking our Christmas card photos this weekend so hopefully I will have the time to post them here soon.

Bad Mom

 Of course I didn't forget my little girl's birthday, but I did forget to blog about it. I'm definitely finding being a work from home mom challenging and my blogs have been put on the back burner. This week, though we celebrated Lindsay joining our family 10 years ago. I think she always hits me the hardest because she's supposed to be my little baby girl. I still remember her being this little thing snuggling me with her thumb in her mouth. She is my little spitfire and the one I know no one will be able to talk into doing anything she doesn't want to do. I have been so blessed to be able to be this one's mama and I can't imagine my life without her. Happy birthday Lindsay, I love you to the moon and back.

Birthday girl

I haven't posted in awhile, but I couldn't let the day go by without wishing a happy birthday to my sweet teenage (yikes!) daughter. I can't believe I'm old enough for a teenager, but she is the best thing I've ever done. My life would never have been the same without her. I'm not looking forward to the next few years, I've heard it's pretty rough with teenage girls, but I know our bond will survive. Love you with all my heart.

Cutting back

I know there are some of my Stampin' Up! customers that follow my blog, so I thought I would update here. After much thought, I've decided to give up my website. I'm not getting enough business from it to justify the cost so I've decided to let it go. I'm going to remain a demonstrator, in fact I just celebrated my 8th anniversary, but I'm just not going to have a website. If you need to get in contact with me, you can comment here or email me at mommymauss at yahoo.

Some things are hard to say

Jason has been giving me a hard time about not posting lately, but I've been having a hard time, which makes it really difficult to talk about on a public forum like this. At the beginning of June, I got a phone call that I've been fearing: my grandma was in the hospital and they were going to have to put her on a respirator. I dropped everything that weekend and drove out to see her and to be with my family during the crisis. I had my moment alone in the hospital room with her to say goodbye and tell her how much I love her, but we all knew that she was ready to go so we all had to be strong for her. I came home the next day knowing that I'd had my chance to say goodbye and really needing the strength of my husband to get me through. My grandma passed away on our 12 year anniversary, and really since I got home from my trip, I've had a hard time. I know that I will be with her again, but I think it's just hard for us to say goodbye for now. As selfish as it is, I really miss her and wanted her to stay on the earth for awhile longer. I think we always think that we have more time, so there were times when I didn't go visit for one reason or another, and now all I have are regrets that I didn't take the time to see her more often. It was very cathartic for me, however to be able to create a collage that we will display at her memorial this weekend. I will share it once we get home, but I would like my family to be able to see it for the first time there and hopefully it will make them happy and sad like it did me when I was creating it. And I was really happy to be able to put my growing photoshop skills to work in a way that made me really happy (like restoring a photo that had been cracked). I'm grateful for the knowledge that I have of the future, that I will see my grandma again and that she was greeted by all her family when she got to the other side. And most of all, I'm grateful that I had this amazing woman in my life who loved me as I loved her, the way only a grandma can. And as she always said to us when expressing her love, I love her 2 pieces.

Photography final

My inspiration for my photography final this semester came from a couple different places. Throughout the semester, each of us had to give a presentation on a different artist. The artist that I was assigned, Nan Goldin (just a warning, if you google her to see her images, some of them are explicit), takes a lot of self portraits. And while I don't really like her style of photography or her subject matter for the most part, I admired her courage in taking photographs of herself. So towards the end of the semester I started wondering if I had the courage to do the same thing. Then, right before we got our assignment, Jason starting giving me a hard time about my "difficult" life and how I basically just sit in the loft all day and play games on my computer or scrapbook while occasionally working on my photography. So when our professor gave us the assignment, he talked about how a montage can be an elongated narrative, and I immediately thought about taking photos of myself in the loft doing all the things that I do. Well, logistically that didn't work out because my loft is just small enough, or the areas that I sit are small enough, that I would have been sitting in front of myself so I would have been blocking myself in the photo. Instead, I started thinking about a photograph that a friend of mine did in our class at the end of the semester of her laundry and it got me thinking about all the things that I actually do around the house that my husband doesn't always see me do. I decided to focus on the kitchen because it is the room in the house that I spend most of my time either with, or doing things for, my family.

I'm blessed to have a big, beautiful kitchen that gets incredible light during the day so one day I decided to just see what would happen if I tried. Jason was working from home that day so he got to laugh at me getting all giddy when my test shots looked like they were actually going to work--I know, I get really silly when I find a way to produce the art that I see in my head. So this was my end result (if you click the image, you can get a larger view):

When assembling a piece like this, the point isn't to get it to line up perfectly, by creating repeating patterns (in areas like the cupboards and the chairs) it adds to the sense that time has passed, so when you're telling a story like mine, that is a good thing. Another deliberate choice that I made was that while my upper half was never broken up, my bottom half was. In this choice, I was trying to show the movement that I make as I go all over the kitchen working during the day, but keeping up my upper half intact shows the strength I have as a mom to get my chores done and take care of my family. 

When I think back about the short amount of time that has passed, ten months since I first set foot in a photography class, I am incredibly amazed at what I have accomplished in such a short amount of time. Next semester I'm going to be challenging myself in a whole different way as I take my first film class, so I'm excited to continue to grow as a photographer, and I look forward to the challenge.