Day 13

So here I sit watching Owen getting into trouble with his piano teacher for not reading the notes as I have been asking him to do. I've had to back off with his practicing because we get into such fights. Does this sound familiar Mum?????! Hopefully she'll get him fired up to actually practice properly. He resists me every step of the way. And it looks like she might have done it.

Morgan is waiting for her singing lesson which will commence after this lesson.

I spent this morning getting my accounts in order for Stop N Crop. I closed down my personal savings account and transferred the balance (what was in there) into my business account. I was inspired to do this after setting up my online banking for our personal accounts yesterday.

Had a client come by again today and she paid up for all the days she's been coming and I think she may not be back for a while as it all added up to what seemed like a lot by the time she was done. Hope not though as it was nice to have someone use the workshop and not have to teach.

Tomorrow Lisa is coming to use the workshop for a little while. I'll be doing my "Once Upon A Time" Page class tomorrow night and then on Sunday I'm holding my next kids class at 1pm Sunday. So it will have been a not bad month for me, considering how little people have been coming in the past. Fingers crossed things are looking up.

Anyway... that's it for now... more later.

Day 12

I'm exhausted, just reading everything we did in the last couple days. And the hits just keep on coming..... I've spent this morning converting all our bills to an online bill paying account, and no I'm not that silly to give out the details online, just to say hopefully this will save a lot of time in the future, but suffice it to say, I still have to transfer our money from our old account to the new one before I'll be able to do any online paying. All very confusing and a little time consuming in the beginning.

I was asked today to help chair the raffle at the annual funfair for the school, but I had to turn them down, as I'm so swamped getting everything sorted with this move and all. Aside from the packing there are so many little details that I'm afraid are going to fall through the cracks if I don't keep on top of it all, you know minor stuff like setting up a phone line, and cable or satellite, finding dentists and getting doctor records transfered to Portland. Not to mention just the everyday running of this house. Owen starts baseball practice tonight at 6pm. UGH with a capital UGH!.. The time is terrible as dinner is usually at 6pm and bed at 7.30pm. I'm hoping to get Maxi to come sit for Morgan on Monday nights just so I don't have to drag her out to practice. She hates to go! Still waiting to see if they managed to switch Jacob to Owen's team as I had a long conversation with the wife of O's coach and she said she'd try to get that sorted out for us. Will find out tonight I guess.

Day 11

Just a very quick note as I have to, and I say that with a big HAVE TO, do my taxes today as we have an appointment with our accountant on Wednesday. So as it's Oscar day and a party for the kids, it will be yet another full day. Okay that's it, short but sweet. No photos today either. Will write more later.

Day 10

Here I am again... ten days into my 27. What you may ask is that all about, well somewhere I read that it takes 27 days to form a habit, and as I'd like to keep this up as a habit, I want to get to my 27 days. Sounds like I'm in a reverse sort of rehab!

Last night was long. Morgan's talent show was a lot of fun and we couldn't have been more proud of her, but man it seemed to be a long drawn out affair. Did our parents really do this for us???? We got there around 6.15pm and left at around 9.30pm... I think there were over 90 acts ranging in approximately 1 minute in time. Some of the acts were pretty good, the Hula girls and Jazz, solo dancing had all the kids rocking in their seats. We definitely had some good voices and some not so good. I doubt "American Idol" would come knocking at this stage. But Kudos to everyone of those kids who got up and performed, it can't be easy to get up in front of strangers and perform an act. One classic moment, when a kindergartener forgot her words, she turned to her mom who was in the wings and said "Mom did I mess that up?" For my part not at all, that girl can sing, and I can't imagine how tired all these kids were at that time of night to be performing for the second time that day. Will try and figure a way to upload the Morgan's performance at a later date.

This morning we were off to a slow start, having got up late, only to have found out that Owen & Jacob did not make the same baseball team. Now we're trying to do some damage control, because Owen and Jacob don't want to play at all unless they're on the same team together, I'd already withdrew Morgan from baseball when her friend Oona dropped out, so now I'm hoping the powers that be at the South Pas Little League will compassionate enough to switch the teams up so they can be on the same team together. Especially as these two hardly ever see each other and being best friends, and us moving and the like we were hoping this would give them one last hurrah together. Fingers crossed!!

Well that's it for today. Later one and all!

Day 9 ish

Yeah I know I haven't been on for a while but it's been a really busy week especially as the kids had yet another day off on Monday and it kind of threw my whole week off. I feel like I've been playing catch up ever since. Plus piano/singing lessons resumed on Tuesday after a 2 month hiatus which actually was pretty good. Miss Ki is very nice, but somewhat pricey and if it wasn't for the move we'd probably have found a new music teacher that's a little less expensive. Still she was kind enough to work with Morgan a lot this week as she has her talent show, which is actually tonight, where she will be singing for the 3rd and final time "Reflection" from Mulan.

I also finally have a new client for Stop 'N Crop and she came by on Tuesday for a few hours in the afternoon. I'm not usually open on a Tuesday but as she was a new client I made an exception. But it was a bit of a mad rush to get the kids after school while she was working in there.

Wednesday I went downtown with my friend Lauren to the fabric district and then my client came back again on Wednesday afternoon to work again in the workshop. Plus Morgan also had art class that day swapped from Thursday because of talent show rehearsals. And then on top of that I had an evening class with my regular client Jennifer where we made this great rain page using this new product I have called crystal effects I think. Basically it's a type of adhesive that when it dries it dries wet . My biggest problem was that with this computer out of action (I didn't get it back until Tuesday) I didn't have access to my rain photos and didn't really have many until I remember late on Wednesday afternoon, while Morgan was at her drawing class and Owen and I had decided to go out for tea, that I had the photos from Washington D.C. when the kids and Darren came out to visit for the weekend and it rained. SO I finally finished the 2 page layout at 7pm that evening about an hour before Jennifer arrived. She did a terrific page based on my layout of her kids playing at the Hungtington garden's water area. We even broke out the sewing machine to use that technique for the pages.

I should add that while I was doing all this I was also running around doing the usual family stuff like grocery shopping, laundry, helping the kids with their homework, making lunches for them, getting Owen to practice the piano and the like.

Yesterday being Thursday I picked Morgan up from school at 1135am and took her to get her bangs trimmed, then we practiced her song a few times and then after I picked up Owen from school got Morgan ready for her dress rehearsal. She looked so cute in her lavendar chinese dress with her black ballet slippers, (a sudden brain wave I had while trying to figure out what she could wear with tights as it was way to cold to wear flip flops at the moment) We also put her hair up with 2 chopstix and off we went to rehearsal. Of course right as we got there it started to rain and then some. That's a whole other story , leak in my car finally discovering the source and fixing it with Darren's help. Therefore, avoiding a costly visit ($115) to the dealership just to look at the car and not necessarily finding the problem. Anyway back to the rehearsal. Well let's just say that the first half (the only half I witnessed) was extremely long and painful. Bless these little souls hearts. Even Morgan, who isn't half bad started off in a key way, way too high for her. So we then spent the rest of the evening practicing the song. I even downloaded the song for her to listen to. Thank god one of her friend's mom, who is a musician, was setting the microphone on stage and gave her the correct key to sing in this morning when they did the performance for the school this morning. I wasn't there but a lot of the mom's came up to me after school and told me she was much better today and soooo very cute in her outfit. The whole talent show was based on a pirate theme and when I dared to suggest she wear a pirate costume, Morgan bluntly informed me that Mulan wasn't a pirate and she wanted to dress as Mulan. I pointed out that the song would work for a pirate wench but she wasn't having any of it. "Mom!! Mulan isn't a pirate. I'm wearing a dress!" And that pretty much was the end of that. Still the costumes everyone wore to school were fantastic, all these pirates. It was pretty cool.

Anyway tonight Miss Morgan will perform once again for the friends of families of the performers, so we will go out for Chinese... see a theme here... and then go to watch the performance. Apparently the 5th graders are selling cookies, cake and flowers for the performers so we thought we might buy some for Morgan. I think she'll get a kick out it. Will give you the low down on the performance tomorrow.

Got to go and do sheets now. Oh the life of a hapless housewife.

Day ???? I think 8

Okay this is a really quick blog. I am in computer hell having just received my old computer back I am currently having to reload every program I had on here before I can get this piece of **&%@#*$) up and running again. SO I will get with it again tomorrow. Tata.

Day 7

Wow I just realized it's been over a week since I started this monologue.. I'm sure there will be days when I will have absolutely nothing to say, but today isn't one of those days....

Darren & I started the day off taking the books off the shelves and deciding which books to keep and pack and which to give a way or rather sell at the Estate sale we'll be having in May... Then down came the shelves, the top ones haven't seen a dust cloth in 7 years!! UGH! and sneeze. Owen was once again in trouble this morning for being rude and sulky.. That boy seems to be having a very very slow learning curve at the moment. So he missed out on going to the movies with Darren & Morgan. The two of us stayed home instead and finished packing the boxes of shelves and I have to say it was very nice to have some alone time with him. He cleaned off his book shelf too. It was kind of cool because we found some old photo albums and had a good look through. Really were we ever that young and good looking???? And THIN! Owen said he didn't recognize, I didn't recognize me! AND Darren had hair, black hair! Anyway the boxes seem to be taking over the house and we aren't moving for 6 months. Still it's a process and by doing it slowly and in stages I'm hoping it won't freak me out too much. Yeah right!

By the time the other two got home, Owen and I had had lunch out on the deck on our comfy patio furniture and all was right with the world again. And it is warm.. I think it's been in the 90's the last couple days. Who would've have thought it's February. Global warming at it's ... what? Best! Worst? Weird! And that's all I have to say about that.

Last night was fun, we went out for a really nice Mexican meal with our friends the Chavez's, and as the weather was so nice, Darren broke out the Camaro and we drove to the restaurant with the top down. I call that car the beast, it certainly roars like one. The kids love it though especially when Darren revves up the engine and races up the streets. The wind plays havoc with us long haired gals so we both wore head scarves. Owen, however, had us beat in a particularly funny but ultra cool pair of goggles which are two sizes too big for his head.

George was thrilled because he finally had a chance to take a ride in the beast as he's been coveting the car for 2 years now and this is the first time he's gotten to ride in it. Timing was never in our or his favor. Darren took the boys home in the beast and I got to ride with the girls in Lynne's more hair friendly mini-van. It turned into quite a late night as the kids played video games in the house and we grown-ups hung outside drinking margaritas & beer while the guys smoked cigars... very civilized. Sort of. Around 10pm we staggered home as Darren or rather George had driven the car home earlier. Needless to say the kids moods today have had a direct corrolation to their late night last night. Just as well tomorrow is a holiday.

Day 6

So no-one got sick from me as far as I can tell. The playdate went off without a hitch, save for a few scrapes and bumps... Owen had to go to the doctor's office this morning, he'd developed this rash that had spread and when I called to ask what they thought I should do, ( I told them the rash looked like this rash I'd had as a young teenager/adult) they instantly thought he might have scarlett fever.. which is highly contangious. SO you can imagine my alarm at the thought that we'd infected all these people. Need not have panicked though, it's exactly what I thought it was and there is no contagion and it will clear up on it's own in a week to a month.

This evening we're supposed to be going out for Mexican food with our friends, the Chavez's so am glad Owen is not typhoid Mary.

It's a beautiful but hot day out today and the kids are outside eating lunch, who would've thought it was the middle of February it feels as though you could fry and egg on the sidewalk.

Owen is also mad at me right now as I told him he had to go practise the piano and of course he'd rather be playing with his Lego. The trials and tribulations of a seven year old. I'm getting a lot of "Fine" along with the stamping of the feet and "Don't talk to me" and the proverbial tongue poked out at me in his effort to be rebellious. Can't wait for the teenage years... the joy of it!!!

Nothing else to report so enjoy the weekend..

Day 5

Update on the computer... what a scam. So I took the computer to a different I.T. place and it turns out I DON'T have to change the hard drive, just reformat the old one and reload all my programs. Hopefully this will do the trick. Still it's going to cost a couple hundred $'s to do. Of course I am terrified that I will lose all my ITunes, so they are going to back that up for me and reload it all onto my computer. Fingers crossed.

Spent the morning working with Lauren a some bubble invitations for a client. They are seriously cute. See photo attached.

This afternoon both kids have playdates with friends at our house and I'm cooking dinner for one of the families. Really all I talk about is food?... I guess I do, but then again, I'm practising being descriptive. To top it off, I'm starting a cold. Had a scratching painful sore throat for the past couple days and my nose is starting to run.. eeww! Thank god bacteria is killed due to high cooking temperature. Hope that doesn't put anyone off!!

Post Script

Okay this truly sucks!!!! I just popped in to check on my notebook computer only to find out that my hard drive is failing and the I.T. guys tell me that is very common in computers these days that they are only designed to last upto 3 years... how crappy is that!? Anyway am not ready to buy a brand spanking new computer so I'm just going to get the hard drive replaced. It's still going to be cheaper than buying a new computer and that way I can make it last at least a little while longer....

Day 4 - yeah I know I skipped a couple days

So I skipped a couple days, but with good reason, my notebook is still in the shop and yesterday was after all Valentine's Day (hence the red color for my blog today.) Scrapbooking Fun Class went very well Tuesday night (Changed the date because Wednesday was.... yes Valentine's day) considering I wasn't at all prepared but Jennifer was very happy with her page as was I. And I even managed to come up with a very cool page for Morgan. I'd captured a particular great photo of her at the park with Grandpa Jim the other day and changed it to black and white and then played with the photo. Of course, the next project has to be with Owen...

Yesterday was a fantastic day... Darren pretty much spoiled me rotten, NOT going into details except that he took me to this GREAT Sushi place in Studio City. OH MY GOD - absolutely the best sushi I have ever eaten. We sat at the bar and the chef prepared food for us suggesting what he thought would be a good menu. I should've listened because he had choosen really well for us, from albacore sashimi (my favorite) to blue crab handrolls, and yellowtail sushi (the yellow tail coming from Japan that day - it was delicious) but I had to have this one Crunchy roll which had shrimp and tempura topping, the chef looked at me and said he thought it might be too heavy and he was right. Next time (and there will be a next time) I will listen to him.

The rest of the day was just as great, I got to take a nap (me take a nap and I was out cold for 2 hours) and he picked up the kids and made a fantastic dinner. The kids were on a sugar high from school and Morgan crashed around 4.30pm and took a nap on me. I was worried she was sick because she NEVER takes naps - but she was fine after we sat down for a scrumptious Beef Wellington dinner with red wine risotto and baby carrots. If it sounds mouth watering that's because it was. Darren is the BEST cook. We ended our meal with some very yummy cupcakes from a new cupcake store - DOTS CUPCAKES, on the Arroyo. I'm not big on icing but the chocolate chocolate cupcake was to die for.. strawberry one was a little too sweet for me... but still scrumptious.

Well enough about food.. Finally after dinner we exchanged Valentine's gifts , the kids, bless their hearts bought me a talking rose, you know you get to record your voice and then play it back. It's very tacky but I just LOVE IT! All in all it was the best Valentine's ever. So how was yours????

Day 3

So here I sit after an intense day for me of trying to sort out my wayward computer.. it's driving me nuts and as I am not an I.T. person, I'm having a lot of trouble trying to get anything technical to work.. still finally managed to back up my photos on both computers and this notebook will be heading into an I.T. store tomorrow for a tune up.

Spent the day with the kids, Darren and Grandpa Jim. Kids were off school today for Lincoln's Birthday. I swear these kids have way more time off from school than I ever did... when do they ever get to learn!! I had a ton of phone calls to take care of this morning to arrange for flooring & painting companies to meet us at the new Portland house in March so they can give us estimates on the work that needs to be done. Once that was taken care of and after a trip to Best Buy for my new hard drive, we headed downtown to the restaurant Philippe's, best french dips in town, really good too... although Morgan wasn't so impressed. It's one of those old restaurants that have been around for 99 years and has sawdust on the floor, quick turnover in clients and people lining up in droves. The benches were communual unless you were lucky enough to grab the little "Booths" (they are really four person tables along the side of a wall as far as I could see). Still it reminded me more of a throw back to the 50's with the ladies scooping up ice cream shaped coleslaw and noodle salad on paper plates with huge slabs of meat on french dip buns. The menus hang on the walls stating quite matter of factly that you can have beef, pork, lamb or turkey dipped sandwiches and breakfast up until 1030am only. Not much room of error there. You can also get a bunch of sides but to be honest if you are going for a french dip what else do you really want but beef on a french roll. It was delicious, the meat tender and melted in your mouth... I pretty much inhaled mine, but no where near as fast as Darren and Jim who polished off their lamb sandwiches in a blink of an eye. And lets not forget the spicy mustard.. wow!! Let's put it this way my sinus's had been bothering me for days and after the mustard I didn't feel the need to purchase the sudafed I was planning on buying.

After our little 'light' lunch we headed into chinatown so Morgan could get a new Chinese dress for her upcoming performance at her school's talent show. She's singing "Reflections" from "Mulan" and informed me she just had to have a purple chinese dress, seeing as her red chinese dress was a might too small for her. I must say it is really pretty. That girl really does have good taste for a 5 year old. We wandered to the bakery to get her some chou su bao, (okay I spelled that phonetically as I have no idea at all how it's spelt but the long and the short is we picked up some pork buns for her as she didn't eat any lunch.)

When we got back to Pasadena we headed to the park with a very excited Milo and a very reluctant Owen who really was in a funk as we never made it to Kidspace (the kids were fighting earlier in the day so they lost that privilege) but after being told if he didn't go to the park he'd have to stay home with me and help with the chores which included laundry and picking up the dog poop... amazing how that seems to be the great motivator for going to the park.. no sooner had I mentioned that and we were all going, them on their razors and me loaded with my camera. And incidentally they had so much fun there (especially after meeting up with Alyssa & Nicolas) that neither one wanted to leave when it was time to head home. Iposted the picture I took of them up the tree... couple of monkeys.

Tomorrow it's back to school for them and me, well I've got to prep a scrapbook class for tomorrow night, usually it would be on Wednesday but as it's Valentines Day Wednesday, I decided to hold the class a day early. We're doing a layout for a relative, not sure yet who I will pick.... I'll have to sleep on that one. I could write more but I need my beauty sleep hahaha...

Will write again sometime soon.

Day 2

Well our day started with rain, if you can believe it. The weathermen have been predicting rain for months now and never delivered and finally it came in a heavy downpour and lasted no time at all, a few hours in the night. Still in southern california a few hours is a lot.

Kids have been sharing a room. Morgan on the top bunk and Owen on the bottom bunk. Yeah she actually slept through the night in her own (well Owen's top bunk) bed. Yipee a full night sleep without a little warm body pushing me out the bed.... Reason for this. Grandpa Jim arrived for a couple day stay and he's going to be staying in her bedroom.

Last night was nice, Darren and I had a date night and instead of going to the movies (there's not a lot of appealing stuff out to see right now) we went out for dinner at a local restaurant Briganti's in South Pasadena. Food was decent nothing that blew me away but I'd eat there again. Wine was very nice but made me sleepy. But best of all we talked, not argued. We discussed the move to Portland this year and what we were hoping to accomplish but also we discussed how we talk to each other and how we can improve on that. I need to take things less personally and he needs to temper how he responds to me. Should be interesting to see how that works out.

Jim arrived and immediately Darren waylaid him into drawing plans for our new kitchen for the Portland house. He being an architect is very useful and he's already come up with some great ideas with variables now all will depend on getting accurate measurements when we visit the house in March. This has been the hard part that this move has taken so long.... I feel like we keep bunny hopping along getting all invested in the move and then realising it's 5 months away. Still it will get here sooner than any of us will be ready for. I'm just trying to keep positive about the move so that it won't freak me out so much when we finally go. I even scrapbooked (Did you really think I wouldn't bring in around to scrapbooking - look at the title of the blog!!!) a double layout to honor our current home and the new house... can't finish that page until after we visit in the Spring though. I really like the layout though. Wish I had the original idea but I saw a similar layout in one of my magazines and had to just "scraplift" the idea. It was very therapeutic and it made me really think about the good times we've had in the Milan house....

Well that's it for today... I'm going to get the kids some lunch, get them to stop watching TV, yes I know it's Sunday but really we need to do something other than TV. Hopefully stop by to see some friends locally.

Day 1

Alright, I admit I am inspired to start this blog, for no other reason than Mike & Rita did. Now they may have a fancy vacation to write about but, me I have my life, which is anything but ordinary. With two young growing children to occupy my life and if that wasn't enough a husband in the entertainment industry. And me, I have my passion, Scrapbooking. Now that may not sound particularly glamourous to some people, but to those who have also caught the bug, they can tell you that it is an amazingly relaxing and creative outlet that can occupy hours upon hours of our time.... not always in favor of the family. Well enough of that... I will post more later.