The same, and yet, completely different

Hellooooo!  Anybody out there?  Not sure if anyone still has this blog on their radar.  Between my crazy job and my personal crazy (depression) all my creative energy just got sucked right out of me over the past year.  There's been no blogging and almost no digi scrapping.

I'm still battling depression and probably always will to one degree or another.  However, this Fall I am starting on a new season of life.  I quit that all-consuming job to focus on sanity and family.  I've been working 15 hours a week for the past month (loving that!!) and will quit completely on 10/21 after training my replacement for a total of 15 hours.  Hope she's a fast learner.

Annali started Kindergarten this fall and is quietly brilliant.  Somehow I got elected head room mother and will be coordinating the fall classroom party over the next couple weeks.  After I completely quit working, Tyler and I are going to be holding preschool here at home.  He's also going to speech therapy and Kindermusik.  We'll be searching out lots of fun, FREE activities around town.  Alex is working tons of overtime to make up for my loss of income.   He has been my rock throughout my personal struggles.  I couldn't ask for a better husband or kids.

Money is the thing that scares me the most about this new phase of our life.  I want to be frugal without making my kids feel poor.  We are all going to be learning new habits.  We've been much too loose with our money and have often given in to buying worthless trinkets for the kids.  I've been totally inspired by a blog called Filth Wizardry into exploring our creativity and using things we have on hand already.  My friends at work blessed us with a gift card to W@l-M@rt.  Today we stocked up on some art supplies to supplement the recycling bin.  I'm looking forward to lots of creative fun with the kids.

Wishing you all the best,

Pam

Wild Things

Alex and the kids were having a silly time with all the stuffed animals.  They kept egging him on to pile "more, Daddy, more!!"  I just love listening to the kids being silly with their Daddy.  I love watching him be an awesome father.

Digiscrap Credits:  Papers and elements from Jungle Boogie by Kay Miller.  This started from a template by Misty Cato but was altered significantly.

Tyler2008Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

testing

testing a new feature

Shoot the pig

Well today was Study Day 0 in our participation with the sw!ne f1u vaccine trial. Both kids had examinations, blood draws, and shots. Tyler was a trooper and very quickly got over the trauma of the needles. Miss Thing, on the other hand, was quite upset. It didn't help that I had told her a few days ago that there would be shots involved. She worried herself to tears for several days and then was tense every time someone walked into the exam room. While we were waiting to be randomized (apparently involving faxes back and forth to Wash DC study HQ) she fell asleep crying that she didn't want any shots. When they finally brought up the vaccine, she awoke to Tyler crying while getting his shot. Next thing she knew, she was being held down to receive her shot. Not a wonderful afternoon for anyone, including PoPo who was a trooper about entertaining and distracting the kids. We all survived and now they can tell Daddy what brave kiddos they were. Only 2 more blood draws and one more shot to get through. They are definitely earning their study stipends. Now on to our daily diary documenting temperatures and degrees of irritability. Right now they are laughing and jumping into a pile of pillows so I don't think anyone is wounded for life.

TTFN

August 2009 update

Well, I've tried transferring my Typepad blog into Blogger automatically but apparently it can't be done. I started transferring entries individually but that is a tedious and overwhelming task. Apparently I started blogging 4 years ago. While I haven't been a prolific blogger, that is still a lot of content to transfer.

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Life, hardware failures, and depression have sucked my digiscrapping mojo away. We've finally got things rearranged at home into something that makes sense for us. Our front room is now the office for Alex and I. We've also got an arts and crafts table for the kids. The center is open to leave plenty of room for scooters. Moving my computer & desk to the basement a few years ago was just a bad idea. I didn't like being away from the family and I hated having my desk become a dumping ground. Now I'm back upstairs, my desk is unburied, my EHD is repaired and networked, and I've got lots of new pics to scrap and stories to tell. Here are a couple recent pages (click images to see credits).

I can't wait for July!!

Just reserved a condo for our summer vacation to Estes Park. This is where you will find the West-Adkisson clan come July. Hopefully it won't be too hot to give this hot tub a work out.