My lost week

While most people were making resolutions and getting organized and dusting off gym memberships, I was slowly succumbing to what I thought was just a cold. It started Sunday night with the tell tale post nasal drip in the back of my throat. And as each day went on, the symptoms progressed and changed. By Wednesday I was a hot (literally) mess of ill. Fever. Achy. Ugh.

On Monday, I was so caught up with trying to not be sick that I neglected to take a photo. I figured I'd make it up on Tuesday, no big deal. But then no picture was taken on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or Friday. I was just too sick to even think about it.

Today I decided that instead of letting those five days of no pictures completely derail my photo-a-day project, I would reconstruct my lost week by taking photos of the things I may have taken a photo of each day. And I used the camera on my phone since that's what I would have done in light of being sick and not having the time or energy to be artistic.

Monday

I should have started the Zicam on Sunday at the first "sign" of illness (as the instructions indicate) but I waited until Monday and alas, it was too little, too late.

Tuesday

By the end of the day, my nose was sore, red, and chapped from blowing it so much that even these Kleenex Cool Effects tissues especially formulated for raw noses felt like sandpaper to my battered and abused nose.

Wednesday

One of the best perks of working from home is being able to work from your bed if needed, and I needed to!

Thursday

Yes, I'm drinking lots and lots of water!

Friday

Drugs. Finally. (Diagnosis: Upper Respiratory Infection)

I'm all caught up! I even stepped outside for a few minutes this afternoon and took some photos with my dSLR.

Saturday

Lost week, recovered!

2011 Year in Review

Two things before we get started:

1. This post is SUPER long.
2. I used a combination of the new Facebook Timeline and my Flickr stream to pull all these events together.

January - I began 2011 thinking that I would do another 365 project.

I only went about 60 days into that project before getting so far behind that I, much to my dismay, gave it up.

January is my birthday month. I turned 37.

January was also our family's first foray into Basketball with both kids playing on Upward League teams. Julia did quite well for her first time on the court, Galen pretty much just liked to run around and play. Typical. January was also known as the month Julia did not go to school. Nashville experienced some atypical winter weather, aka snow in amounts more than one inch, which pretty much shut the city down for days and days and days.

Tweet/FB status, "And there was weeping and gnashing, the fifth day."

The end of January brought the long awaited and much anticipated BLISSDOM!! Five of the best days of my life. I was crazy busy working as a volunteer for the conference and working the One2One Network booth and I barely slept but every bit was worth it to be with my precious friends, hear fabulous speakers and oh yeah, there was that flashmob.

February, the shortest yet most difficult month for me. Too much gray, and the snowpocolypse of 2011 continued which meant more snow days and grumpy kids home from school. And, I gave up Coke for Lent (see also: my brain must be addled).

Tweet/FB update from Feb 9, "Middle of the day & Publix is packed. I want scream, "but I actually do NEED milk!" #snowpocolypse #nashville"

Basketball continued through the end of the month. Julia showed some mad skillz and Galen still liked to run around and play. We had an "old skool" blogger reunion where several of us from "back in the day" ::cough2005cough:: got together for lunch and reminiscing and catching-up.

In March I accompanied David to Boaz, AL as his barbershop quartet competed in the District semi-finals which won them the right to compete in the international competition in Kansas City in July. We had a lovely weekend (Nana & Pop kept the kids) and I got up after about 2 hours sleep on the Sunday morning of "spring forward" to Daylight Saving Time to get this photo.

FB update, "Galen was trying to remember the name of character in a book we read last night. As he described the character, I offered, "You mean, Mia?" To which he replied, totally deadpan, "Let's call her Anthony."

April brought more and more Spring weather (and some severe weather that had us taking cover!) and the S.A.D. fog finally lifted. We got to reconnect with old friends who were in town for the weekend and meet their adorable son.

Easter arrived and I could drink Coke again. Sweet nectar of fizziness.

Tweet/FB update, "I love having a musically talented child! I was treated to piano music while I made dinner and post-dinner music is trumpet solos!"

May marked the one year anniversary of the severe flooding in Nashville. That was rather surreal. And then Nashville was hit with a 13 year swarm of Cicadas. Also surreal, and loud.

Tweet/FB update, "What? I can't hear you! Did you say the cicadas are really loud?? #thecicadasareREALLYloud"

Galen and I (and the rest of the Otter Creek Kindergarten) were treated to an insider's view of the Nashville Zoo.

Galen "graduated" from Kindergarten. (sob)

The cicadas continued.

On May 26, Julia turned 11. Also on that day, in the wee hours of the morning, she and I boarded a Gray Line bus to head to Charleston, NC with the Nashville Children's Choir - Touring Choir. We had four, fun filled days of sightseeing and singing.

You know what Charleston doesn't have? Cicadas.

In June, school finally ended after all snow days were made up and we settled in for a summer of all four us being at home together. All day. Every. Day. Julia started summer swim team again and Galen just liked to jump in and get out and jump in and get out. Typical.

We celebrated David's birthday with a homemade meal of Hungarian Beef Stew and German Chocolate cupcakes.

Tweet/FB status, "I made one of those meals tonight that makes you feel like your kitchen will never recover from chaos."

I got blueberry happy and made some lemon blueberry tarts.

My second favorite blogging conference, Type-A Parent Conference, was moved to June this year. I headed to Asheville, NC with Jana & Alli and we had a fabulous time, as usual.

The cicadas finally went away.

July was a head-spinning kind of month. David spent the first week of it in Kansas City competing in the international Barbershop Harmony Society's annual contest. His quartet placed 8th in the world! I was unable to accompany him this year but I sat in rapt attention at my laptop watching the live screen cast.

Fourth of July was spent with grandparents, aunt, uncles and cousins, oh my!

Summer swim team finished with a splash. (punny)

David came home for a few days and then headed back out again with Julia to go to a summer camp in Pennsylvania - she was a camper, he was a counselor. That left me and Galen at home together for 10 days straight. And we managed to survive! We registered Galen for first grade (how is that possible?) and watched so much Phineas & Ferb that:

FB update, "There has been too much Phineas & Ferb in our house lately. I swear I just heard a sound that I thought was Perry the Platypus."

Galen and I flew to Florida with some unexpected delays, "Long story short: storms, circling, more circling, low fuel, diverted to Orlando, waiting to gas up. Also, HUNGRY." We finally arrived in Tampa where Granny and Pa had been patiently waiting and the pizza parlor had been patiently holding off on cooking our order until we could pick-it up...at 10 PM. I think that's the latest I've ever eaten dinner.

David and Julia arrived in Tampa the next day after driving from Pennsylvania. See also: we were all very tired.

July ended with David and I celebrating our sweet sixteenth wedding anniversary.

We started August off with more travel. We arrived home from Florida and David headed to Arizona for business. He came back and I headed to San Diego for BlogHer. BlogHer was simply amazing. I loved being in San Diego. I got to ride in a pedicab! I loved getting to reconnect with blogging friends. I got to meet several bloggers that I admire. I got to hang out by a lovely pool and sip cocktails. I got to attend some fabulous parties and dance the night away.

I returned to Nashville from BlogHer and was immediately thrown into back-to-school mode. Both kids started at new schools this year and there was a lot of prep to be ready.

Tweet/FB update of the month, "I've decided that if you really want to know how I feel about anything at all, you must talk to me on Skype b/c I am emoticon dependent."

And then once school started, it was kind of downhill from there, or at least it was quiet!

September 1st - I restarted my 365 project (and so far, I'm keeping up with it!)

Granny and Pa came to visit. Galen started playing flag football. And since Julia is at a school with a high school football team, Friday night football games were on our calendar.

FB update, "Taking your very mobile 6-year-old to a football game dressed in the school colors means you frequently "lose" him among a sea of red shirts. Next time? Bright yellow."

I took my most favorite photo ever.

David and I treated Julia to a Taylor Swift concert. (It helped that NEEDTOBREATHE was the opener.) And I became a bona fide Mac user.

Probably the most significant thing about September was that after almost a year and a half of home church with one other couple in our neighborhood, we "joined" (for lack of a better word) a home church group in Nashville called Reunion. It has been a good thing.

October was (and pretty much always is) another whirlwind month. Every weekend was full of something. I attended the Food Bloggers Forum here in Nashville. That was a tasty weekend! We took our annual trek out to Gentry's Farm for autumnal outing fun and photo opps. David and I attended a beautiful wedding. I got to see Mat Kearney in concert. Our car hit 100k miles. I played mad scientist/baker and created a Franken Cookie. We carved pumpkins and went trick-or-treating.

Tweet/FB update, "I bought a handmade broom today. And I'm downright giddy about it."

Yep, that was a pretty typical October.

We started November right off the bat with Galen's birthday on the 2nd, barely recovered from the Halloween sugar coma.

I helped host a 3 Musketeers "Like-Up" party in Nashville with some of my other blogging compadres.

It was a month of baking things I've never made before. It started with a gingerbread assignment for Blissfully Domestic and then there was a pumpkin pie for Galen's class Thanksgiving party and then I made two chocolate pies (from my grandmother's/mom's recipe) for teachers at Galen's school. I had fun flexing my baking muscles on all these recipes!

Tweet/FB update, "On GMan's Christmas Wish List - Guitar, Drum Pads, Speaker & Microphone. Heaven help us, we're raising an entertainer."

For Thanksgiving, we loaded up the Caddy (aka land yacht) and headed East/Northeast to my aunt and uncle's house in Fairfax, VA for a first ever family reunion on my mother's side. It was a lot of fun hanging out with aunts, uncles and cousins that we rarely get to see.

We did a little bit of sight seeing; took the kids to the National Zoo. I got a free cupcake from Georgetown Cupcakes for knowing the "secret" cupcake of the day (revealed on Twitter each day). Went to the see the new Muppet movie with all the cousins. And I got to reconnect over coffee with my good friend, Scottie for a couple hours one morning.

And here is December. An unusually quite month for us this year. Since David and I both work from home, there were no obligatory office parties to attend. We're in lull between sports (football ended in October and basketball will start up late December, early January) and there were only about 2 1/2 weeks of school before winter break.

December 1st brought out the much anticipated "Advent/Countdown to Christmas" wreath. It's a wreath made up of circular boxes numbered 1-24. Each year I fill the boxes with either a slip of paper or some candy. The slips of paper have things written on them like, "watch a Christmas movie on a school day" or "drive around and look at Christmas lights & eat pizza in the car" or "make snowman donuts", etc. The two they look forward to the most are "eat dessert first" which they interpret as "dessert for breakfast" and a scavenger hunt which always results in a gift at the end of the hunt (this year they each received $10 Sweet CeCe's gift cards).

Tweet/FB update, "Annual viewing Home Alone brings out the pint-sized vigilante in Galen. #watchyourstep"

The Nashville Children's Choir was part of the annual "Christmas at Belmont" concert which is recorded and broadcast locally and nationally on PBS. It was great fun for the grandparents in Nashville and Florida to see their granddaughter singing on television.

One of the best things about the month was the whirlwind trip I took to Dallas to see my friend Katie get married. Sarah was there, too as the wedding photographer and we all had a blast being together again!

We spent Christmas at home this year and then joined up with the rest of the Carden's in the afternoon for more revelry, food and gifts. This year heralded the first ever White Elephant/Dirty Santa gift exchange among the adults (and a couple of the kids). It was tremendous fun. Lots of laughter and memories made. I think we've hit upon a new tradition.

If you've stayed with me to end of this super long post, thank you. Even if you just skimmed it to see just how long it was. (Don't worry, I do the same thing.) This was a good exercise for me, looking back over the year and remembering.

Tomorrow is the beginning of 2012. As much as I'd like to resolve to be here (on the blog) more, I know better than to say that. Thanks coming by and reading whenever I have the inspiration to write. We'll see what 2012 brings!

Happy New Year!

Still here

Every time I come over here to post something, I freeze up. I even started this post, then changed my mind,

then changed my mind again.

I used to love blogging. What happened?

I'm not quite sure.

My reluctance comes not from one but from fragments of many. A precarious pile of bits balancing like a fragile house of cards.

I'm mostly afraid of my own thoughts. And none to keen to explore them right now when there are bills to pay, children to raise and fleeting life to be somehow be lived.

Maybe someday I can write again.

Weekly Winners, September 4-10: Back in the Saddle Again Edition

Getting back on the 365 train has had me snapping a lot of pictures every day. I think I've taken more pictures this week than I did the entire summer. It's been quite nice having my hands on my camera every day and once again looking at the world through that tiny, view finder rectangle.

she waits

do you channel The Wiggles every time you encounter fruit salad? yummy, yummy!

a new toy

certified

let me in?

a peek of green

the defender of our castle

bumpy landing

in tent

Photos taken with my Canon Rebel XT.

Head over to the fabulous Lotus' place for more weekly winners!

To see more of my photography, please visit my Flickr page.

Weekly Winners, September 1-3: New Year Edition

In my world, it's a new year. Cheers!

I restarted the 365 project that I had abandoned earlier this year. You can see my progress so far right here. These are some of the photos from the last three days that did not make the 365 cut.

I bought these flowers for two reasons. The first was so that I could photograph them, the second was because it had been far too long since I'd had flowers in my home and celebrating September 1st seemed as good of a reason as any to buy myself flowers.

On Friday, I saw a photo that Rachel had pinned to Pinterest. It was a lovely shot of a an old typewriter. I just happened to have an old typewriter sitting right beside me and I was immediately inspired. I lugged the thing outside and started snapping pictures. I didn't quite get the shots I wanted because it was getting near dusk and the light was fading but I did get a few that were quite nice.

We've done a big ol' fruit basket turnover in our home over the last week in an attempt to create actual work spaces for me and David. I've been working at one end of the dining room table and he's been working on the couch, the bed, at the dining room table, etc for a looooong time. After we got our desks set-up, David went back to our bedroom and came out with this lamp. It had been originally purchased as a bedside lamp for his side of the bed. It was rarely used and then quite awhile ago the light bulbs from it where nicked to use somewhere else. He decided it was too pretty and too functional to just be sitting in the corner collecting dust. It now resides on his desk.

Besides the fact that it is a very attractive lamp, my favorite part about it is what I remember when I look at it. When we were shopping for this lamp, we spent around three hilarious hours late one night looking at lamps on the Internet. I dare say we saw every weird, ugly and downright bizarre lamp in existence that night. We laughed until we cried and our sides ached. I'm quite pleased that he decided to bring it into our work space to be enjoyed on a daily basis.

Another new year started back in August, a new school year. And not only a new academic year but new schools for both of them. Our daughter headed to middle school, sixth grade, at a private school. Our son headed to elementary school, first grade, at our local public school. It's already turning out to be an awesome year for both of them!

 

New Year

Sometimes I realize that I'm often too quick to correct my children.

Since Tuesday, my son has been saying that today starts a new year. No, a new month, I would chide.
Oh, that's right, a new month, he would concede.

This morning when he got out of bed, he came to my room and spoke excitedly to me through the bathroom door, "Mommy, it's a new year today!"

"A new month, honey." "Oh, yes, a new month!"

The thing is, the beginning of fall (and yes, I know it doesn't technically begin until the 23rd) has always felt more like the beginning of new year for me than January 1 ever has. This is my favorite time of year, one that is refreshing and exciting for me. September 1 holds the promise of cooler days, turning leaves, comfort foods, spiced scents, bright blue autumn skies, and a season's worth of traditions that I look forward to every year.

Out of mouths of babes, it's a new year today!

"By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer’s best of weather

And autumn’s best of cheer."

- Helen Hunt Jackson, September, 1830-1885

And today I resuming my 365 photo project. I think these colors are perfectly fallish.