12-25-09

ET phone home!
Jes gets a hooded wrap for Christmas to face the Colorado winters.

Watch out!
Aza gets a tool set so she can fix all things broken.

Watch out fish in Arizona,
Squirt is coming to get you with his new fishing rod and reel.

And Jes is ready for her summer trek across the west.
Who's like her daddy? Hu?

A good Christmas was had by all. My favorite gift? Two gift certificates for hour long massages at a spa nearby. Think I'll schedule one for the afternoon of our first faculty meeting back at school!

12-24-09

I will try and take good pictures tomorrow of everybody. Today all my people pictures turned out wrong. But the cookie picture turned out great! Wow, what a spread of cookies we have accumulated.

So far three people have asked me to keep this blog going- Aza, Moonie, and Dan. I have a few more days to think about it. Sometimes I wonder where I get the time to always be thinking of a photo, always writing about the day in short blurbs. But then again, I wonder whether it's time well spent to document my life, our lives, in photos and short blurbs. Sometimes I find I'm able to remember an event because of the blog. When did we go to Hawaii? Oh, I blogged about that. It was the first year of the blog. It must have been 2007. And so forth.... And I'm glad, now that I'm gone from our home in Virginia, that I have a running record of our last three years there. And I wish I'd had the technology to do this when the kids were little. I've forgotten so much. So much. Too much.

Food for thought.

Back to those cookies....

12-23-09

Table cloth ironed, all ready for the homecoming.

Squirt and his Grandma make his favorite cookies, which he proceeded to eat in large quantities afterwards.

Jes finally arrives home for the first time since June, this time to a new home in Kentucky. Sisters together again.

12-22-09

I am thinking I might end this daily photoblog on December 31st.

12-21-09

Sophie watches birds out the bedroom window.
I went to work today and attended a meeting. Got a bit of shopping done.
My mother's china cabinet was delivered this afternoon. Where to put it?

Here next to the kitchen?

Or here, next to the window on the side?

I think we'll put it on the far wall next to the window.

My youngest children, Squirt and Aza, goofing off in the kitchen.
Squirt is trying to blind me with a laser pointer.
Thanks, Squirt.

12-20-09

This morning Aza departed from her two day stay snowed in the mountains of West Virginia. We waited and watched a flock of robins invade our front yard. I got out my telephoto lens and caught some awesome photos of them.

By 4pm Aza was home. I had been following her online through AT&T's cell phone tracking service and was waiting on the front porch for her to pull in the driveway and snap a photo of this homecoming from a four day trip over the mountains. Welcome home Aza!!!

12-19-09

Aza sent us this picture from her phone camera this morning. She is stuck en route to Kentucky... and luckily made it off the interstate last night to a warm hotel in West Virginia. This morning she started digging her car out. We have no idea how long she will have to stay there before she can drive home. What a mess.

12-16-09

Squirt arrived yesterday after a two-day delay in Colorado because of the snow. Tonight he cooked dinner and is making himself at home.

12-13-09

Dan finished painting the ceiling of the studio kitchen today. I finished painting the walls last night. It's less funky, for sure. A little more stoic but with some stuff on the shelves and a nice little rug, it will be perfect. Goes well with the rest of the room, as seen below. I wonder if I should paint the back of the shelving the trim color. Hmmmm...

Party tonight at the 7000+ sq. ft. home of my Dean. We had a good time and the house was great for large parties. Squirt is stuck in Colorado, no flights leaving any time soon. I am very anxious to have him home safe and sound.

12-11-09

Moss ball from Texas has gone to seed. I'd like to plant some of those seeds and see what happens!

Friday. Faculty meeting.

Our motion passed to create a new masters degree program but we got in an ugly argument with other faculty members about the new department we have been encouraged to develop. It was so ugly. Had my first thoughts of not staying here during that faculty meeting.

Dan made me watch The Big Lebowski for therapy this evening. It helped.

12-10-09

Before and after photos of the bathroom in the studio. It was a bear to paint, all those tight corners. But painting is a type of therapy for me, and I enjoy the thrill of completing a project.

The front yard was full of birds that looked like robins. Big fat robins. Do robins migrate south? Could they have been robins on their way south for the winter? Today I had a migraine and stayed home in bed fighting it off with OTC meds since I'd gone over my limit on triptans this month. Went to school to grade some presentations, but other than that just stayed home on a sick day.

12-8-09

Tuesday. This day I taught my last class of the semester and gave a teaching evaluation out to my students. This day I sat in my office with the door closed, missing the college faculty meeting, and cried in that brown chair for three hours. This day I found out my son will not finish his first year of college and is coming home on Sunday (there is more to that story... too personal even for a personal blog). This day was full of grief. But I went out to dinner with my science and math faculty friends (three of them pictured above dressed as the blue woman group) and drank two cups of coffee to drown my grief in while eating coconut shrimp.

12-6-09

Sunday. We painted more of the studio. The upper color is actually a grayish sage green. Future photos in good daylight should reveal the true colors. But you can see that the floor is down but the kitchen is still funky purple with an orange ceiling.

12-5-09

First snow. This blog post (being typed on 12-13) demonstrates how vapid my memory is. Without a clue or context, I forget my life. The 5th of December. It snowed. It was a Saturday. I look at my calendar and see that we had a dinner date that we cancelled. Ah, now it's coming back. We cancelled because Dan was sick. I wasn't feeling too great either, recovering from a migraine the day before.

12-3-09

My sister had a baby today! My brother-in-law sent me these photos of my new nephew, 6 lbs. 2 oz. Fozzie Bear.

It was difficult day at work, and a difficult day in my head as I wrestled with some family news. But the miracle of new life trumps all. Welcome to the world, little bear.

12-2-09

My students made wind turbines and water turbines today, measuring current, voltage, and calculating power. I need to work on this lesson some more, as it was a challenging exercise for them.Perhaps not appropriate for elementary preservice teachers, perhaps so.

12-1-09

December 1st. My brother W is here visiting and we went down to the Kentucky River today. Crossed over on a car ferry to the other side.

11-27-09

Swamp, party, boudin, helium balloons