Penguin tales and such...

Ok, I must make one correction, the car that we bought is a Passat, not a jetta, ok whatever close enough. Right now, all I care is that it has four wheels, is safe, and will go throughout the snow. Our poor abused car (my Saab) has been diagnosed. It is not good. It would have been fine, but we decided to be responsible adults and bring it in to have routine maintenance. That was a mistake, a BIG mistake. The mechanic changed the timing belt (er...let us just say wrong) and returned to us a sputtering shadow of my car. The once running car can now only sputter. It has been diagnosed (two mechanics later) and it is not good. We will see, it was so nice to have TWO whole days with TWO nice running cars. What to do, what to do. I know what I want to do, but we all know it wouldn't be nice.

OK, onto better subjects. We have unwittedly scarred our child for life. How? You may ask. I will tell you: The March of the Penguins..Yes, the terrific, heartbreaking documentary has turned our child into a perpetual penguin. Caden wobbles around all day holding his "egg" gently on his feet, just like a penguin. This is not the bad part. You see, the problem is that it seems this movie has equipped Caden with a great curiosity of the birds and the bees, where did I come from ,how did I get out of there, etc etc those kind of questions. It has been a cute and sometimes funny addition to our daily life.

Here are a few things we have done for the holidays, and some of the things just hanging around.


clove and citrus. This is one half, the other half turned moldy. Why doesn't Martha warn us of these things? :)

Our snowflakes have been hung...as you can see, we don't really need to make paper snowflakes, we have plenty of our own outside! But they are cute anyways!


Our stockings are hung...


and granny is hung! I made this ornament a long long time ago. It has made it through four cross country trips! She deserves her prime spot front and center on the tree.


This is such an adorable picture of caden! This was his present to us at "family day" at preschool today. Such an "angel" (he is supposed to look like an angel, with chenille stem halo and all, the body of his angel is made from a tracing of his foot) A very cute idea!


I just had to share this pic. It is a picture of a photocopy of "my boys", hands. I just liked it. :)

Tis the Season..

to be busy for too many reasons...We have put an end to our car trouble and bit the bullet and bought a new to us car. It is an all wheel drive Jetta wagon. It is nice and we are thankful to have two cars that will safely travel from point a to point b. My Saab (which is now Paul's primary car) had been in for routine maintenance and came back to us sputtering and with the engine light on. Not happy. No no no, you don't take a perfectly good car to someone and expect to get back something that cannot even idle. Five hundred dollars later, all seems ok. We hope.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, we have misplaced the charge cord for the camera. I should be able to get one of the camera's to work.

Tomorrow Caden will be going to a school Christmas party. It is an annual party that the kids have, which gives mommy and daddy time to go Christmas shopping. We have been very behind with this whole Christmas stuff, we haven't even designed cards. This year, we are purchasing cards. With the new house and the car drama, Christmas just snuck up on us.

I officially "retire" from filling in at the architect's office on Wednesday. We fired Caden's daycare last week, so Caden has been coming to work with Dad. This will not work for much longer, and I cannot work too much as it is, so it was great while it lasted.

The nerve blocks that I have been doing have been deemed ineffective, so meds have been doubled. Maybe one day, when the total disc replacements become more reliable, this will be a better route. This is our only option right now. We have been thinking about getting a spa later. The doctors seem to think that this could help a little. Our pool will be great in the summer. It is difficult to talk about this, but it does majorly effect the way we live, so sometimes you just have to get it out.

The craft room is almost set up. All I need to do is to buy the ceramic supplies. This will be happening in a few months. I can't wait! In the meantime, I have some sewing to do!

I will try to post some pictures of our Christmas decorations and festivities, not to mention the snow...

I Finally Figured it Out!

That's right folks, I have finally figured out my sewing machine. I spent hours and hours reading the manual and trying over and over. I went through an entire spool of thread! It is one of the simple Singer drop in bobbin. Apparently I was using the wrong bobbin. The lady at the sewing store was like "duh!". I felt so belittled and stupid. I was like "you know how it is when you are just learning to sew on a different machine...." and she was like "no...I don't" Well, wouldn't it be nice to be as perfect as she apparently is? I know I will not be returning there again. I am so happy to start sewing again. I am working on turning my Crate and Barrel shower curtains into regular curtains (they are not made of shower curtain-like material, just a normal curtain material. I went to the Crate and Barrel outlet a few months ago right as they were discounted from $40 each to $4.95. I got four of them! I finished one, it looks pretty good. I'll post a pic when I finish them.

Caden has been home sick from preschool, he has had a perpetual runny nose. Hopefully a little time off and away will clear it up. We made paper snowflakes for the window, ala Martha Stewart

We have had a large car dilemma. Paul's car blew the engine. We have been down to one car for about two months. It isn't working well. We need to make a decision. It looks like we are going to purchase a car (used) and get back to paying a car payment. ugh! It just isn't worth paying for a car to get fixed when fixing it costs as much as another car. We have it at the dealership (a friend). It will be fixed and then sold and then we will split up the profit (not much, but at least not a complete loss) It seems to happen all at once. The engine went out during escrow on our new house.

It has been snowing lots here. Nice and cozy! That about sums it up.