Some quick pics of our camping trip and what I've been up to.

Oh my goodness, its been too long since I posted. I apologize to my followers. I have had a big surge of custom orders and I'm getting ready for the Fort Lewis Holiday Bazaar coming up the beginning of November. Plus family just always takes priority for me. This weekend we went camping on the amazing Olympic Peninsula. We camped at Lake Quinault and hiked all around the rain forest there. Saw some lovely waterfalls and walked through what felt like landscape of the dinosaur age. I couldn't get enough of taking pictures and was wishing I had my DSLR that I'm supposed to be getting for Christmas. Christmas!!! That's so far away haha. We also swung through Forks and Port Angeles, which was fun and interesting being a fan of the Twilight books. Here's a couple of pictures of our trip.

His name was John

This is a more personal post than I usually write, but I needed it today.

Fifteen years ago this week my father passed away. Wow, seeing that in writing is crazy. Fifteen years!!! It seems like yesterday. Every year during this week I try to fight off the memories and sadness, and every year it gets the best of me. I tried today, ended up with a migraine. Thank goodness for a hubby that understands and will take the reigns with the kids whenever I need him to.

So I decided not to fight it. Instead I am going to celebrate him. I'm writing this blog post to remember him. To remember the things I remember about him. And maybe those of you who know me, but never knew him, will understand him better from my memories.

This is a drawing I did of him five years ago to help me cope with this week.

1. He was born in England, and even after living in America for most of his adult life, he still loved his tea and drank it at the same times every day.

2. My friends loved his British accent. They would call my house and hope he'd answer just to hear it.

3. He loved the most disgusting foods. Liver and onions, kidneys ugh. Now that I think about it....he did seem to love eating organs. Ewww. Thank goodness my mom would cook something else for me on those nights.

4. He loved video games. Many a days I'd come home from school to find him in my room playing my nintendo.

5. He wore boat shoes all the time. No socks, all year round.

6. He loved our dogs. Supposedly we only had them for me. But they were really HIS dogs.

7. He had artistic talent, but never did anything with it. Probably why he pushed me to do something with mine.

8. He had a look that would turn you to stone when he was mad. I was a very good kid because of that look.

9. But he would never have laid a hand on me. Gentle to the core.

10. He had a habit of leaving the last cookie in the box for two weeks, then when someone finally couldn't take it anymore and would eat it he'd be mad that it was gone.

11. He loved taking care of our pool in Arizona. He'd mutter about it but he was out there messing with it all day long. He also played with the sprinklers constantly.

12. He loved playing sports. He and I would go play basketball and racquetball all the time. He played football (soccer) as a youngster. He looked athletic even as he got older.

13. My brother looks so much like him. I wonder if he realizes just how much. My son looks a heckuva lot like him too.

14. He wore polo shirts a lot. Never t-shirts, they always had a collar.

15. He looked really nice in a tux.

16. He always made up these funny rhymes. One I remember so well. Peter Piper picked his nose and rolled it in a ball, he rolled it thick, he rolled it thin, and flicked it down the hall. His mother who was passing by, caught it neatly in the eye.

17. He would not have been happy with my choice to get married at 19. But he really would've adored my husband, I know it.

18. He was a terrible dancer. Like he was going to do the George Burns soft shoe, then just didn't. Never stopped him though.

19. He died at age 49 from a defect in his heart.

20. He was loved and is missed and will never be forgotten.

Of course I could never put all my memories of him in a list...but this was a start. :)

I love you, Dad.

New Year, Renewed Focus

It's been forever since I posted, life has been hectic! My family has moved to Washington State and we've been busy getting settled in. We love it here so far and are excited to spend at least three years exploring the area. If we like it as much after that we are going to try and stay until retirement in 7 years. We will see!

The kids are liking it too. The little man only has to go to school for 2 1/2 hours a day, so he's happy. Mommy of course is not so happy about that. Not only does it seem pointless, but it doesn't offer much of a break! If he was in full day I could take the monkey to daycare once a week and get a whole day to myself. As it is, not possible. But other than that, we love the new digs.

The move caused me to have to ignore my little business for a while. But I'm back at it now and driving at it harder than ever. I opened a second shop called TheYarnChick on Etsy for my crochet items to move to. I've designed some new styles, including an adult style that I'm really excited about. They've gone over well, I'm all sold out at the moment. But here's a picture of it. I am determined to get into some craft fairs this year so I am focusing on building up inventory. I list everything in my shops because hey, if it sells it sells, I'm not going to be picky about where. But I would like to have a good 100 hats of various sizes plus other items at the very least ready for a show in the fall. My focus is staying on, TheYarnChick for now, although I will still be adding items to my jewelry, art, and gifts shop as time allows. I'll need a change of pace once in a while and I don't want that shop to die from lack of inventory.




I have also stretched myself out a little bit. I've opened a shop on a new site for handmade items called 1000 Markets. It's a lovely website, that is well put together and makes my shop look really professional and clean. I have assisted in starting up a Homefront Market there and am as involved in that as I can be. The Homefront Market, like the Homefront Team I'm a member of on Etsy, consists of shops where their owners are all military or military family members. At this point we are all military spouses. It's a wonderful group to be a part of, with very talented ladies that support one another to no end. I'm very proud to be a part of them. I would love if you came by and browsed these ladies' shops, they really are incredible women.



So as this new year has dawned so quickly, I am refocusing on my shops and determined to make them even more successful than last year. Keeping in mind my family still always comes first, wish me luck! Happy New Year everyone!

Girly Newsboys

Just a quick post to show you my newest product. It is a slouchy version of the brimmed beanie to create a newsboy cap for girls. I love how they look and they've been a hit so far.

I've stopped taking custom orders in my shop for now. I have a few to complete before the move and then we'll be on the road and homeless for at least a month. I'll have my already created inventory with me, and I'll be doing some crocheting here and there to have new inventory when we finally get where we're going. But the custom orders will have to wait until we are settled into a routine again. Thanks for understanding!

Less than a week before the movers come! I can't believe how fast it has crept up on me.

Tooting my own horn haha

I'm so thrilled with how well my hats are doing. This week I listed two hats and had them both sell straight away. (Thank you to those who purchased them! I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.) Here they are in case you missed them in my store. I plan on making many more in different colors. As of right now I am sold out of hats in my shop and have a custom one to make tonight. If you'd like a certain color, please ask, I'd love to make something special for you!

Also have added some new earrings recently.

On a more personal note, we showed the house this weekend. They seemed to really like it but I honestly got the impression they aren't seriously looking to buy. The husband might be, but the wife isn't. And we know how that usually goes. On the bright side having them come to see the house made us get off our butts and get a lot done on the house. It's looking really good. More to do of course, only so many hours in the day, but we should be able to get it listed officially when Mark gets back off TDY.

The kids are doing well despite being sick over the weekend. My daughter came down with a bad fever on Friday night. It was severe enough to cause me to take her to the ER. She is fine, just has an ear and throat infection that seems to be getting taken care of by the antibiotics. Now my son has come down with the fever as well. So I suppose I'll be taking him to the doc to get some antibiotics too. They are still in pretty good spirits except for the occasional "we miss daddy" moments. They are obsessed with the movie Enchanted right now. I've got the songs in my head constantly. Cute movie though. "That's how you knoooooowwwwww...." lalalalala

What have we learned so far?

We've learned quite a heckuva lot actually! I attempted a hat with no pattern, just an idea in my head and a will to live. After a few nights of work, no idea how many hours exactly, this is what I came up with. I made it to my daughter's size, because I knew there was no way it was going to be perfect and therefore unsellable. And I was right, it has definite flaws. But she looks like a cutey patooty in it, so I'm pleased. Especially since I learned so much doing it and will be able to make a great one next time. :) Plus my son wants one now too...of course!

We spent the weekend preparing our house for potential buyers to see it next weekend. Still a lot more to do this week but if they decide to buy it'll save us a lot of work in the long run. Keeping our fingers crossed the wifey likes it! The husband has already seen it and is ready to buy, but you know how it is!

Here's some fun pictures of my kids displaying their inner nerds:

No idea where they go that from! ;)

A Downer of the Military

Today is one of those days we military folk have to deal with from time to time. The day when a friend leaves us for a new duty station. This is one of the parts I don't like about being active duty military. You get to know someone, become good friends with them over the two to three years you are stationed together, then it's time for them to move on to somewhere new. And we'll do it too, in October we will be the ones leaving our friends here behind. Someday we hope to be lucky enough to be stationed together again, or maybe be able to visit....but when, after retirement? Eight years down the road for us. We'll be moving three more times and leaving a lot of friends during that time. The good thing is the times we live in. We have the internet, email, digital cameras, webcams, Myspace, blogs, and cell phones and so...no excuse not to keep in touch.

On top of it being a friend who is leaving ME, it's a friend of the entire family. She and her husband were a couple we spent a lot of weekends with, playing poker, watching sports, just hanging out. She babysat my kids and they love her. My son especially is very close to her and had a pretty bad day when we had to tell him she was moving far away. Heck, you can't blame him, he's five now and she has been a regular babysitter and friend to him since he was two. She threw me a baby shower when I was pregnant and she was there the day my daughter was born. She sat in the hospital room visiting me and holding my newborn daughter for hours. She is one of those people that is right there whenever you need them, and without hesitation or expectation of payback. I hope I was able to convey my thanks for that properly. I helped her for several days preparing her house to sell in time for her day to leave...a bittersweet duty when you want to slow them down and keep them around for just a few more days.

So to my friend, she knows who she is, I wish you the best at your new place of duty. I hope it can feel like a home for you. Be safe on your upcoming deployment, and you better keep in touch! The Thompson family will miss you.

The Dynamic Duo

I love my kids, but they are crazy. I get the camera out and they really just lose it. Banana sandwiches crazy. But at least I got my daughter to leave her new hat on long enough to let me take a couple of pictures! I think it helped she saw her brother was also wearing his hat. Okay, so it's a tiny bit big for her...I'm still learning about how to get the size right for the right age, but it still looks cute on her and she has room to grow. And she'll need it if she ends up with a big ol' noggin like daddy. For some reason the angle of this shot makes the flower look too high up and really big, but in real life it is in a good position and isn't very big. Weird.



I had planned on having another one done this evening, but I fell asleep on the floor with Ava at 8:30! I'd say my sleep deprivation caught up to me. Normally as soon as it's bedtime for the kids I suddenly get a burst of energy to get me through some alone time. I slept for four hours on the floor with Ava and woke up starving. So rather than having another hat to share, I'll share the little cell phone pouch I made myself last night. More practice for making different things. And an easy one to make in any size, love that.

And last, but never least, my son dressing himself like five year olds tend to do. Nuts crazy mad, but I love them!

Patience!!!

So recently I've lost some of my patience with my kids. I hadn't had a decent break in quite a while and stress is starting to pick up with a big move coming up later this year. I was feeling bad and remembered I kept an article a few years ago for just such an occasion. It was written by Catherine Newman from her "Bringing Up Ben and Birdy" series. It helps me every time I read it. (Along with a couple of hours of mommy freetime.) I thought I'd share it with you, for those times when your little ones are bringing out your monster side.

___________________

Are silver linings in the eye of the beholder? But what if I'm the cloud, what then? Is the silver lining the mere hope that I will change yet, become more the person I want to be? Or maybe if I'm the dark and brooding one, then the silver is these children who shine out nonetheless, glimmering from the gloom like angels of joy. But let me back up a second, and tell you what happened to me today at Whole Foods.

The kids were with Michael at a friend's house, and I was meeting them there for dinner, picking up just a few things on my way. And if you ever, ever get a chance to go grocery shopping without your children, then you know what it's like: this kind of dreamy wandering around looking at this and that, not pushing that godforsaken car cart that moves like a cross between an amusement park ride and a beached whale on the sand, not pulling mysterious strawberry hulls out of your baby's mouth and shuddering to wonder where the strawberries even came from in the first place, not figuring out exactly how many microseconds you are from the bathroom at any given moment.

I love grocery shopping. I love grocery shopping by myself. So imagine my surprise when, in my gauzy-happy state, like I was meandering down the aisle at my own wedding, I took a cheddar cube from the bowl of "tryers" (as we call them) and was practically slapped across the face by the aproned cheese worker who darted out from behind the counter to scold me. "The toothpicks are right there!" he said, yellingly. Then: "Jesus Christ," while he whipped the whole bowl to the back, to be incinerated, I suppose, with the rest of the earth's Contaminated Things. Honestly, you'd have thought that my fingers were oozing with smallpox blisters.

And yes, I should have used a toothpick. I understand that. I've worked enough food service jobs in my life to know how irritating it is when people don't follow basic hygiene principles, like Don't put your lips to the mouth of the ketchup bottle or No vomiting on the glass front of the pastry case. But to be scolded so! I flushed crimson and my eyes filled with tears. Not that I felt so bad about the cheese cube itself — but oh, the shame of being chastised! My heart banged. I practically scuttled out of the store without even the lettuce and cilantro I'd been instructed to pick up.

Later, I wished that I'd recommended that maybe that guy quit his job. When everything anybody does constitutes proof, for you, of the evil and bankruptcy of human nature? Time to pursue a new line of work! (And again: I know the feeling. Once when I was waiting tables, a woman held up a slime-edged salad green and yelled across the restaurant to me, "Would you serve this to a guest in your home?" and I yelled back, "Would you yell at the host of a dinner party?" and quit. Okay, I didn't. But I wished I had.)

Crushed

Are you wondering where the silver lining comes in? Or what on this green planet any of it has to do with childrearing? I'll tell you. Walking ashamedly back to my car, it occurred to me: This is how Ben must feel when I scold him. And it's one thing to be scolded because you behaved in a way that was unkind or frankly dangerous. It's another thing to be scolded because you made a mistake or were dawdling or had a negative feeling or were being a child, for goodness sake. I have so blissfully few opportunities to be reminded of that vulnerable/humiliated feeling that comes from being spoken to in that way. And here was an opportunity.

You see, this thing happened when we were in California — not such a big deal, but I've been turning it over in my mind. We were staying in a youth hostel on the coast, and in the kitchen there were lots of recycling bins and a special can crusher to make it all more compact. I thought it would be fun for Ben to try, so I called him over, and we popped his empty orange juice can in, and I showed him the handle to pull. Only when the can was halfway crushed, Ben grabbed it back out, said, "Mama, no!" and burst into tears. I was, inexplicably, furious with him. Partly, I think, because he was "acting like a baby" (ugh — I see how awful that is), partly because it was such an unpleasant surprise, his response, especially when I'd had this idea that the whole thing would be fun for him (our own expectations are always glumping everything up, aren't they?). Maybe I was hungry, too, and tired. And I spoke so sharply to him that I'm ashamed to write it here. I didn't ask questions, or bend down to find out why he was sad or worried. I just said, "That's enough, Ben! My god, it's a can. I don't see what you're getting so hysterical about." And I more or less grabbed it from his hands and crushed it myself.

On the bulletin boards a few weeks ago, in response to my having written about scolding Ben for lying, a reader wrote this:
"I don't usually chime in here — but I had to this time, to say, please, let's go easy on our kids. I felt so sorry for Ben in this installment. Lying by a 5-year-old — considering it such a terrible thing — seems overblown (and I know Catherine acknowledges that). As one wise poster has said, for the kids it's an experiment. When your world is fluid and your heart is good, lying is not such a big deal. I'm trying to remember to treat my 5-year-old more as I treat my 2-year-old — to relax and remember he's just a child. I hold his heart in my hands."

Yes! Oh yes! Every time I think of that line "I hold his heart in my hands" I practically burst into tears.

In the car, maybe five minutes after the can incident, I apologized to Ben for having been so unkind and so impatient and it was only then, when I finally asked, that he had the opportunity to explain his reaction to me. "Well, for one thing," he said, "the can was so pretty, with that bright orangey picture of an orange on it. But also," he hesitated here, "I thought that machine was going to put more juice in it! I didn't realize it was going to smash it up." I was stunned. I had forgotten to explain to him what was even going to happen. Imagine how horrified you'd be if you put your whiskey sour glass up on the bar for a refill and the bartender whipped out a hammer and smashed it to smithereens! Poor Ben. "I'm so sorry," I said. And he said, brightly, "That's okay! Can we get pancakes with strawberries again?" And I was forgiven.

But oh, yes, we hold each other's hearts in our hands, don't we? All of us? But especially those good ones, those small but enormous ones of our children. Gentleness is such a worthy goal. Doing no harm. I rededicate myself to that purpose.

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I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I do every time. It might instill some guilt, sorry 'bout that, but I think it's more helpful than anything. And now my patience has returned, even if only temporarily. Whatever it takes to be a better mommy, I'm willing to try it.