art sale

one of my absolute favorite artists, Amy Ruppel, is having a big sale of her newest works...
you can check it out here here.






oh I cannot wait until we find our own place and I can set my studio back up and start creating and carving into ceramic.

We have found a condo close to Caden's school with a couple of openings in mid October. We are hoping and praying that one of those will work out for us. It has a small one car garage that I can convert into my studio. Who knows what furniture we will have to move there, though, since every single piece of our furniture was damaged or destroyed when the movers transferred our property from the broken down moving truck. It has taken us weeks to finally get the correct information to the correct people (we hope) so that they can take care of this for us. It is so sad to tell Caden that he cannot play with his bike because the wheel has been bent or his favorite truck is "missing" because it really is shattered to pieces. It is just stuff, though. That is why Amy's work above ("portable home") really speaks to me. My home is wherever my family is. Our "stuff" makes us more comfortable, but I am thankful for our love.

9000 miles in 30 days or less

Well hello there! The title sums up the last month of our life. South Carolina to California, California to South Carolina and then back to California with our moving truck. Yep, we did it. We are crazy and we know it. Visiting California and our family made us miss being near to family. Going back to South Carolina in the hottest summer in over 100 years made us miss it even more. We love our house, friends and family in Michigan, but have found that in the past 5 years the economy makes it quite difficult to survive. Within two days of our decision to move back "home" (where we grew up) in Northern California, Paul was offered a job with the American Red Cross (going back to his roots in disaster services) and we were able to get out of our lease. The house we were leasing was nice, but would not cool below 93 degrees when it was hot and humid outside and the pool had broken once again. We had fixed it once already on our own just waiting for them to have a pool service come, which they never did. But the icing on the cake was Caden's first day of school. The school actually lost our kid for over an hour and would not let us go back to try to find him. Paul had to go to the police officer in the parking lot to get anyone to listen to him. Caden was so traumatized. I had never seen him like that. They discouraged parental involvement because of security concerns. That was the final straw. Caden only missed two days of school when we made the big move, which included three broken moving trucks. But that is another story in itself, lets just wait to see if Penske actually lives up to their promises.

Ok, I cannot resist. The first truck made it halfway to our house before the engine light began to blink and screech something awful. The second truck, which Paul meticulously packed made it about 15 miles until the lights started to flash along with loud, strange sounds. Sixty miles later we were directed to a shop that found the front tires to be unsafe and stripped, but they had no idea why we were having the other problems. So we were sent on our way with a hope and a prayer. The truck made it to a rest stop in Tennessee. We waited three hours in the middle of the night for a mechanic to come, he couldn't help. Two hours later a tow truck showed up, but was unprepared for a 26 foot truck, apparently he was told it was a 16 foot truck. We arrived at a cheap dive in Morristown, Tennessee at three thirty in the morning. Paul was told to meet the "movers" at eight the next morning to transfer our worldly possessions from one truck to another. The next truck lasted until Nevada...but 95% of our possessions are scratched, cracked, damaged, ruined etc. Now, we are basically storing our broken stuff in a storage unit and staying with my dad until we find a place to lease in South Auburn. At least we arrived safe and sound, stuff is just stuff. A lot of it is not replaceable, but at least we have the memories. I can only imagine what people feel when they lose their homes to fire or flood.

My laptop was one of the things destroyed in the move...so I will try my best to post pictures and update the blog. Thanks for stopping by and for all of your prayers and help in this last bump in our path. We hope we are "home" and Caden will go to the same schools we did, we feel safe here and that is what matters.