tis the season

our xmas cards arrived in the mail today - they are awesome.  my shopping is complete - near complete, i mean the big stuff DONE.  took myself to the american girl doll store, ka-ching and bought huxley the biggest coolest truck i could find.  did my parents have as much fun xmas shopping for us - the barbie ski hill, WOW. 

and now we plan our meals and entertaining and family time, thats the part i like the best, planning meals, cooking them, having friends over, playing with the kids, staying up late, sleeping in, staying in jammies, going for walks, coffee, a few skis, movies, read a few good books, play a few bad board games, shop for snacks, make snacks, eat snacks. 

back

we're back after an episode of tonsilitis (huxley) and his last anti biotic tonight (crushed into sippy cups of lemonade and taken to bed, bad habit hey, juice in bed).  he spent days "cuddle with mom" on my lap, lying against my chest with his favorite blanket just so, so he could lie against it "so cozy mom" with "runny nose" every 20 seconds, and we wiped his runny nose.  now he is feeling better but is still "cuddle with mom". 

lux started basketball last week, geoffrey was busy so she went with a friend and her dad, the coach.  she was stewing over what to wear, as she would, and came out of her room with her soccer jersey on backwards because "the number is in the front in basketball and the back in soccer", i stiffled my giggle and said "oh i didn't know" and she returned to her room to put the jersey on the right way and announced "it was uncomfortable that way".  off she went with her ridiculous, white, shiny, basketball shoes and her gym bag, full of water balls, sweatpants, two basketballs, a hoodie and a snack.  practice was across town from 7-8 on a school night, so you can imagine the shape she was in when she arrived home.  awesome.

i know its been sometime

so much time i forgot my password. we're prepping for our thanksgiving vaca, getting out of dodge, cause honestly i think we are the only people who don't have family to celebrate thanksgiving with, and no one invited us to join them (losers!). so why stick around?? spending christmas alone is super fine with me, in fact its perfect, thanksgiving though seems a tad depressing, and lux asks the obvious questions like "whose house are we going to for thanksgiving" and "why aren't we going to anyone's house", you know the usual, when your 6 and you assume the world revolves around you. she has the week off from school, and we have her parent teacher conference tuesday am. i will keep as an artifact the letter we got from her teacher "pointers for a successful parent conference" a) be open minded to feedback b) show appreciation c) don't be emotional d) show appreciation e) be grateful - REALLY didn't you mention that more than once, what honestly do you expect us to do?? her teacher this year is goofy and i think has a "parents are the enemy" sort of viewpoint, i mean thats likely too strong of a statement but its something like that. i'm quite certain geoffrey will be super direct and it will make for a GREAT parent conference - because we do have some niggly concerns that she is being held back a bit and not challenged...because she is superstar to us! jeez i've missed writing about huxley's little moments, like for instance at bedtime when he says to me when he suspects i'm getting ready to leave the room "you're not going anywhere", "sit down, hold hands", "mommy ALWAYS here", "daddy always here", everyone says this particular form of emotional attachment is just his age, nope its huxley, he's HIGHLY tuned to where i am particularly. today he woke up from his nap and i wasn't home and upon seeing geoff he said "go away, i wait for mommy" and he meant it. yesterday we went to bellingham and wung his nap, what a terrible mistake that was, no nap and instead of passing out at bedtime tht you would have thought he would do, bedtime was a total battle, he was exhaused. we went to celebrate sweet amahra's first birthday. okay i will write more, i'm an ass for not. good night.

Huxley acting strangely, maybe he's sick!

My house is usually chaotic at 6 pm, people need to be fed and bedtime awaits right around the corner. Anyways after we battled or I battled through the evening and into the night, well by the night we weren’t battling anymore, I knew that my little monster just didn’t feel well, it was either he was upset from the epic temper tantrum I forced him to have in his room or was just plain sick. And just as I drifted off to sleep at 10:30, maybe 30 minutes after he finally did, he woke me up howling in his bed and he was covered in barf. Poor gaffer, he has NEVER barfed before so was horrified. So I bathed him while Geoff de-barfed the room and changed his sheets and he sat in the bath shivering saying “I okay, mommy cean it all up, it all better now”. At this point given the flurry of activity and tears and running bathwater Lux was up sobbing that she couldn’t sleep through the racket and took herself downstairs. He barfed once more about an hour later cuddling with Geoff in a chair, had another bath and hair wash, PJ change and finally fell asleep at midnight. No more barfing. But I did hear him maybe at 1 or 2 in the am singing “Old Macdonald”. He seems perfectly fine this am, but full of stories from his epic night. And he went to his “music party” as he calls it and at the end marched right up to the teacher to give her a hug and said “thank you, see you next week”.

a few weeks in

and lux seems totally adjusted to being back at school. i would say that the mandatory snack in the classroom and her eating her WHOLE lunch each day is making things better/easier for her. although she eats me out of house and home when she gets home.

she happily jumps into her homework, we usually do most of the week's worth on mondays so the rest of the week we don't need to worry about. she will have a hot bath, put on her PJ's and we sit and do her homework and then her and huxley play and we eat dinner (this is after her 30 minute swim team practice from 330 to 4 when she swims i bet no less than 30 lengths of the pool). then she passes out in bed at 715. AND then we tackle huxley and his bath and bedtime routine, which some nights is pretty tricky, like tonight at 850 pm when he sat in tears in the living room with me in the dark, not sure what he wanted. either he doesn't feel good or he's upset that he was sent to his room and wasn't allowed out and a massive tantrum ensued. likely not the best move on my part but i try my best and it was either having a blood boiling tantrum in his room or in any other part of the house.

nite nite,time for a bath and my book. i've been sleeping so i'm keeping a pretty strict routine for me to see if i can maintain it.

i'm sick!

i've been in bed for two days, today i'm worse than yesterday. i have a cold and i feel fevery and every joint and muscle in my body ache. and huxley when he sees me in bed shouts at me "get up". i know buddy its disconcerting to see one's parents in bed sick when you are 2, i get it, parents don't get sick days, when we do everything is upside down. a day or two in bed used to be a treat, magazines, ice cream, cokes...now its a dread of the laundry i'll face when i get out of bed and what will everyone do for dinner and what about lux's lunch? but the fridge is full of leftovers and geoff can make a lunch and presumably the laundry and vacuuming will still be waiting for me, when i do decide to get up and out of bed. i think, or know geoff thinks i'm crazy that i worry or think about these things, but my house like his job is a precarious balance of things always on the verge of not working, a day or two off of grocery shopping and house work could really send me in a panic, like a day or two of missed deliverables would for him (and i work too, so i know this, so there, put that in your god damned pipe and smoke it). and lux needs new ballet shoes and at least 2 new good fitting, quality swimsuits and googles and i the swimsuits need to be purchased, well by thursday ideally, as do the ballet shoes for sure and i know its only monday but when will i get to this if i have a mountain of grocery shopping, meal planning, house work, lunches, planning car pools in front of me?? and a few big work deliverables that i don't even know how or where to start.

i don't know how moms that work fulltime out of the house manage, i don't, either they don't sleep or their houses are a wreck or their husbands vacuum. i feel grateful that i work a bit leaving me lots of time for the other senseless stuff called life. and no one told me (mom) that life is a lot of work and its not a good idea to spend two days concurrent in bed, or at least it does have consequences on the other side.

i didn't mention and it would be unfair to miss mentioning that i had a date tonight with some pals to see The Help and i can't see it now with them that i am sick, thats disappointing.

operation freedom over...maybe

possibly returning to work fulltime, like real work, like get up in the am, get dressed and go to work work, like people are looking for me to do things work, like 40+ hours a week work that really is 50 and consists of the important part of my day 8-6 and bleeds over.

totally unsure if i'm ready or want to do this, if i will ever be ready again.

what happened, was "work" that fucking awful or is parenting that meaningful. probably both, i left fulltime work burnt out, exhausted, dis-enfrantished, uninspired and a whole bunch of other things. that was 1.5 years ago and since then i've become VERY accustomed to my life. my family has become VERY accustomed with my life (unbenounced to them - can someone tell geoffrey this...). but part of me feels ready to leave the nest, at least temporarily. dependant on killer child care and a schedule that not only works for the x's but for me too.

these decisions are never easy for me, well most decisions aren't easy for me, consequently i make very few of them, at least the hard ones.

but i call this operation freedom, maybe its operation "avoid making any challenging decisions and continue to work a little and raise my kids alot and seriously what i want to do with the next 20 years of my life".

too lofty for 10:13 pm for an on and off insomniac.

We're back, well I'm back

I didn't go anywhere but I'm back to writing on this, because I know if I don't I will have only fleeting memories of my kids. Even now that Huxley is 2 and Lux 6 I wonder, was she like him?? 2 is a cute age, my kids by 2 or a little after 2 seem to become normal human beings, well Huxley does, it seems if memory serves me correctly Lux has always been relatively normal. But he is hitting his stride, revealing himself to us and although I believe him to be much less complicated than his sister, what you see is what you get, to say we have struggled with him is an understatement. Gawd you must think we're awful parents demanding perfection - we're not - we're older parents, busy parents, parents without a real safety net of the kind of uncomplicated support that family would provide where and when we could say, not ask "watch the kids on saturday we need to clean out our garage". Nope we don't have that, but we get by and life is full of choices (I remind myself daily). So back to kids, what this is really all about, not me bitching that that I'm breakfast, lunch, dinner, bathes, and bedtimes everyday! So 2 and 6, pretty neat ages, toddler and grade one'er. My grade one'er back in school for a week today, she has adjusted, day one was TERRIBLE, day two marginally better, three through now, pretty good. Night one was a heap at bedtime with tears not quite or actually able at all to articulate her general feelings of insecurity. I could have said "I hear ya sister, I feel like that most days" that the stars didn't align perfectly and someone looked at her funny and she was unsure who to sit with and even when to sit and that summer break was OVER (that in and of itself is a pretty crushing concept and reality to absorb at 6 or at 41), and that maybe her lunch wasn't quite right or maybe her outfit or maybe the teacher or maybe dad or mom. I worried to the point of making myself sick, Geoff braced me, I had a good conversation with my mom and I'm better now and more importantly so is my star, my best gal. My two'er - funny kid, HUGE big personality, fills a room. He has a big boy hair cut and a very big vocabulary, I understand everything he says and he seems to understand me, awesome, we're communicating! When I say no, I know he thinks fuck you but he says to me "okay fine" and thats pretty good because I seem to say "NO" alot. Here are a few of his other funny sayings: whata me noise (what is that noise) pick you up (pick me up) i feezing (I'm freezing) fine (he gets from his sister) okay so (he gets from me) got it (he gets from his dad) He likes books now, Toot and Puddle (or Toot and Cuddle), he LOVES to play with his Thomas Trains and cars. Do all boys lie in their cribs, beds, floors for hours with a car going zoom zoom back and forth? He loves to play kitchen and picnic with Lux's dolls and his teddies "you want milk, you want cacker". His is very responsive to a routine and seems to fly out of order if we adjust it, without notice. Bedtime in particular, bath, "mommy pick you up" - at that time of the day means mommy put me to bed, 'bider (itsy bitsy spider), 4 cock (1, 2, 3, 4 oclock rock), a few books and few cuddles and down. Only until I return back to his room 30-45 later and quickly re-do the routine until he is out, like a light, by that time its close to 9 pm. He likes to sleep, but can rally for a late night, something his sister has never been able to do!

and i'm done

looking forward to a weekend of camping, just with lux. and that tells ya something, i hate camping. but h is on fire these days and i'm beat up, tired and done.

first week of summah holidays

and lux has passed the coveted "swim" test that took her ALL summer last year to pass. gawd when that child has a goal she achieves every damn time. i'm not sure where she gets her will, conviction, determination and spirit from - CERTAINLY NOT me, maybe a little of me now but not me at 6. so there you go, she passed it, two widths of a pool, easy peasy. she amazes me everyday, and at the sametime i worry some about her drive to achieve, to make us happy and proud, something we need to be mindful of.

huxley is huxley, mildly interested in the potty, mildly. he puts things together in HIS time, which isn't my time or anyone else damn time. and beneath his bravado is a little one missing his nanny corinne and her daughter, we can tell, in the midst of a regular moment he will cry when i leave the room and his constant "mom where are you" "dad where are you" is some sort of cry for certainty that we are there. he's a tender fart and a momma/dadda boy. i could forever have a 2'er in my house, he is lovely and funny and bright and certain.

his new expressions - i pood'ed, farted. but otherwise he is always talking, always connecting with us, as she was at this age, as she is now.

doser of a weekend

1. 105 - 106 fever
2. 4.5 middle of the night trip to the ER (not me, Lux and her daddy-0)
3. canceled birthday party
4. rain, rain and more rain - um sort of over it and seriously comptemplating a move
5. missed day before last day of school and most of the parties/celebrations that end the school year
6. late to good bye dinner for our family nanny that was with us since H was 20 weeks old, and cared and loved for the kids as much as anyone, maybe more
7. AND to top it off an unattended 2 year without a diaper, without having his daily number 2 - crapping on my living room floor, at least he was decent enough to do it on a clipboard

its all in perspective when we sat beside a lovely couple for our good bye dinner with a pretty handicap little guy, younger than huxley, their only child. i held mine extra tight tonite, thankful for my little girl's fever nearly gone and my son bright and healthy and full of pooping on the floor spirit, both tucked into their beddys and fast asleep.

night night xo

happy birthday lux

6 years ago on a memorial monday our lux came bursting into our world and life hasn't been quite the same since. i remember vividly going from no kids to kids. geoffrey and i had 5 years with no kids and we were happy and felt fairly complete (i won't say totally complete since we were quite sure we would have children). anyways i'm very grateful for those 5 years, i needed them, we needed them and most importantly our children needed them.

back to lux. so after an uneventful may 30th of not much if any labor but no more amnio fluid she was finally rushed on to be delivered at 7:59 pm. i remember our first night was fine, i'm not sure if we (geoff and i slept), wee lux did. the next day i suppose was a typical first day of a newborn, we struggled with diapers and squaks from our little one, we were exhausted, overwhelmed scared beyond anything recognizable...so there she was, and what an incredible journey its been, what a kid, what an amazing kid.

so today on her 6th birthday she learned to ride her bike, a two-wheeler, on a grassy field and on the playground of her school. its a milestone for sure. way to go lux, how proud we all are of you.

happy birthday to me

lovely day, birthday seem to get better, or everyone tried awfully hard to make sure i had a lovely day, particularly lux, it was so important to her that my day went just so, and of course it didn't, days never do, or days with huxley rarely do :). its a life lesson for my perfectionist to just "go with it" and embrace what you get and have a wonderfully happy day anyways. hard for her to do that, hard for me to do that, but i'm learning, with age, experiencs and with huxley you have to learn "go with it". so i had a lovely day. a starbucks breakfast, long haircut (not sure i'm crazy about the cut, but i'm "going with it", a shopping spree at nordstroms, Geoffrey "buy whatever honey", lunch in the nordstroms cafe, playground with the kids, dinner at jac's, home for cupcakes. so i spent NO time in the kitchen today AND had the house to myself for 30 minutes while Geoffrey took the kids to buy cupcakes and i honestly couldn't remember having my house to MYSELF, well forever, months probably. it was lovely. all very nice to have my kids, husband, friends - and all from afar, parents, family, in laws, friends sending me warm birthday wishes. i somehow feel like i don't deserve any of it, but it was very nice and i love you all very much and today i feel touched but your warmth and love from nearby and faraway. thank you.

bite orange juice

slowly he puts it all together, bite not drink, orange juice not beer...building blocks, all logical, in order, easy to watch and understand, it builds on top on top, each step a logical one, one you would say "right i get that".

hers path isn't she is bright, fabulously bright in an entirely different way, more i can't think of the word, spastic?? not sure, different for sure from building blocks, more complex, not linear, something else, instinctive like his, maybe more watching, listening studying, perfecting, that is her, always perfecting, before she shows us, perfecting in her mind, on her own? but so is his (instinctive), always watching us, listening to us, watching our expressions, intently studying our words. he doesn't give a shit about perfecting, he just lets his actions, thoughts carry him from one step to another, and most of the time i hate to admit, since he drives me mental, its always perfect.

you think of little ones that don't have this, adults, kids constantly talking, to them, around them. mine are very much who they are because of this, constant chatter, facial expressions, emotions (mostly happy).

i can say now she is reading, she is a reader. its not a definitive line like when they walk for instance, its blurry, its hard to know what is memorizing and reading but its reading now (hard to measure when she has what i think is a photographic memory), but anyways.

i did nothing remarkable today, if you're wondering. i made chicken "parm" and lux said "oh i love your chicken parm" and i thought, wow that's interesting i've never made it. it was too spicy, it was store bought sauce, which isn't my MO, but what the hell, it was pricy but on sale so i assumed it would be good. geoffrey said "oh a casserole". i don't think we'll be having chicken parm again anytime soon, tell me its a casserole and it comes off the rotation, geoffrey should know this.

words won't stop

we have another talker folks, not one but two, two talkers, that talk non-stop to me and break any natural, nice to have silence - with talking. i thought that i would have one and that the other would be the strong, silent type, not one that was at a loss for words but rather didn't feel the need to well talk non stop. Nope, i got two chatty cathys.

huxley's new thing (because we always have a new thing) but his new things seem to be on steroids since he's obsessive (not like anyone or anything i've ever met), is saying "mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom" (you get the picture, but add mom 30 more times, in order to get my attention and tell me the samething he just told me 5 min before, usually that he wants candy or something equally inappropriate.

anyhow the kid likes to talk. and i love a guy that can talk, there is perception or stereotype that men/boys don't talk - not my dudes, not Geoffrey, my dad, bros, good guy chums, father in law OR my son. they all love to chat and that i suppose is why our sweet Huxley like his darling sister is a talker and for now or the next 18 years, quiet moments will be very few and far between for me.

signing off mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom mom

Lux was home today

lux stayed home sick today - i should have kept her home yesterday (monday) i assumed she wasn't that sick, but after last night, having us up every hour with a fever, sore throat, head ache, tummy ache, poor kid felt terrible.

i think i realized what worries me most when she is sick is that huxley never catches, never. and i wonder why, why wouldn't he catch it, they touch the same things, he drinks out of her cups (when i'm not looking), etc etc. shouldn't your kids pass their sicknesses back and forth, thought this was part of the territory...

i attempted to nap when they were down and then realized since EVERY time i have attempted to nap when they nap, or at least he naps and she is busy or elsewhere, my napping wakes them up - it must send them a message from my bedroom door thru theirs "mom is sleeping, wake up" and so they wake up and i just fell asleep. lol. and why the hell should i be napping, is the better question. but shit i love to nap!

he wanders around the house yelling "momma??" "daddy??" "sissy??" and we say "yes" and he yells "toothpaste" or "ice ceam" or "beiber" or rather most of the time "dusicdbdsong". i think he just likes having a dialogue with us, experimenting with calling out to us to create a connection and a dialogue.

tomorrow she must be better, they are doing their classroom auction project, the jackson pollock paintings. she will be very disappointed to miss it and we'll be disappointed not to have the opportunity to bid on her piece!

a few words - watching the oscars

back from a week vaca, lux had a week break from school. we needed the break, a break from the pressure of our never ending schedule, a time to decomprese, to ski, to nap, to go to bed early, to not cook dinner or breakfast or lunch, to not do laundry or walk the dog, managing work the nanny friendships and social engagements.

my mom did that all for us :), thanks mom and dad. we skied, ate out, or ate snacks in, stayed in a condo, made a mess and didn't give a shit about the mess, slept in, slept early, slept often, i wore the same socks for a week without washing them, i don't think i washed my hair either, but instead bathed the kids every night and laughed with them, often, in the bath, at bedtime, in the mornings - huxley "mommy??", "daddy??, geoff??" us - "yes huxley"; huxley "hi". he burnt his fingers, poor buggar, overcame a terrible cold, learned new words (why can't i think of any of them, but i know there were new ones), smiled, laughed, danced, napped, ate salmon, lots of fruit and rice krispies (for the first time).

she - well what can i say, she does everything, everything well (no perfectly) with enthusiasm and an unbreakable spirit - can you say she's a pleaser - she's a pleaser and i worry what her future holds being such a pleaser! but for now, she skis green runs "the cut" to be exact on Grouse mountain. She is kind and all loving to her brother, she keeps us constant company, she too ate salmon, ate little boxes of sugar cereal (who can resist little boxes of sugar cereal or more importantly her), got up early, woke the rest of us up, slept on the floor of our room, slept on the pull out couch, never never complained of being cold, in the bitter cold, complained about her tiresome and horrible ski equipment, long ski lessons in the cold. she played with her vancouver friend billie with walkie talkies - grandpa are you reading this, its a test, she wants walkie talkies for her birthday and who better to get them for her than you! she played with her loving cousins that sincerely seem to love to play with her, thank you holly and fraser, i think you love to play with her as much as she loves to play with you. and her hair grew i swear 2 inches.

geoff got a 3 hour snow shoe in, of lovely peace and quiet. yeah geoff, when is the last 3 hour peace and quiet you've had...i can't remember, but i'm awfully glad you had it.

i, well i just took it all in, i got a good ski in alone, however if i wasn't alone i would have complained about the miserable cold.

but for now, i must ready for the busy week ahead, ballet, lunches, 100 pennies, garbage and recycling day, load the dishwasher, fold laundry, text the nanny, compare schedule with geoff (is everyone covered ALL the time) arrange the week...one, two, three go, is everyone's life like this??

BUT well done Kings Speech - i have renewed faith in the Oscars, well for now.

i feel like this most days...

hard day - pouring rain, schleping kids, attempting to work (attempting in all caps), triple booked, not prepped for valentines day (well nothing purchased for the kids, geoff hardly matters), pouring rain, did i say that - which sort of makes everything more challenging, particularly since i decided to actually blow dry my hair today, dress in something besides lulu lemon and put a bit of make up on.

anyways, hard day. but this snap puts it all in perspective - someone else had a harder day than me, a diaper rash on his ball sack so red and sore he had to sport a pair of his sister's undies and fell asleep on his change pad at 6:30 and later in my arms. and we sat in his dark room for 30 minutes with him in my arms, fast asleep still recovering from his 2+ hour crying fit.

happy valentines day everyday - really when i look back all in all it was a pretty good day - minus the diaper rash, we didn't need that :)

and i promise to write more, even though most days i have literally nothing to say, except writing about these two crazy cats.

how can you take a guy in red, penguin jammies seriously

its a wrap

2010 recap, a milestone year
If you can stomach it, here’s my recap of a stellar, milestone year…maybe the most influential and memorable year yet (for me).
Most notably, we met a little fellow named…Huxley, after a slow, quiet and mellow start, Huxley started the year at about 9 months, not yet crawling but damn close. Seems with crawling he got his stride and the term “came into his own” takes on a whole new meaning. In this year he has crawled, walked, talked, cried (a lot), had colds (a lot of them), has destroyed, emptied on a daily basis every cupboard and drawer we have in this shack, has bitten, scratched and hit, hollered and generally pushed me to places I have NEVER gone to in my life, has brought me to tears, frustration and exhaustion I don’t think I have ever known – but mostly has warmed my heart, our hearts completely and I can’t seem to resist him. None one really knows who he is “like”, I suspect he is busy like Geoff was as a little one – but I’m pretty sure his persistence and focus are like no one else’s. As I write this he has taken apart my office drawers and is sitting in one on the floor with a roll of packing tape, maybe he intends to tape himself into the drawer, let’s hope…

Our eldest and I can’t help but say my star has continued to amaze me in every way. She (Lux) started her foray into leaving the house full time and entering Kindergarten. It sort of marks the beginning of the end in a way – for her, for me. We made the conscious choice to have neither child attend some shithole of a full time/full day daycare and instead have had both home with lovely nannies and when needed a little pre-school. Lux was more than ready for school and has immediately adjusted to her full days with 23 others. She is on the very verge of reading, maybe she is reading, hard to tell what has been memorized and what is actually reading. Anyways, she is our constant companion, I can’t wait to pick her up from school each and every day – usually she looks as if she has walked out of an all-night night club with her hair, clothes askew and her little eyes adjusting to the light of the playground, and she pounces on me “did you bring me a snack, am I having a play date, what are we having for dinner”…she collapses in bed each night at 7 pm and jumps up every morning ready to take on the day, usually fully dressed in skinny jeans and a “rock and roll” t-shirt with a distinct idea for her daily hair-do.

Geoffrey’s year can be easily summed up into one word “flap” he spent most of the year in a flap and I suspect it will be the same in 2011. Airadis continues to slowly and organically grow; Geoffrey manages the company with an iron fist, vision and a “failure isn’t an option” outlook. I admire more than words his perseverance, his focus and his drive, but mostly I admire the fact that for the hours that he works (more than ANYONE I or any of you know) he remains steadfast in his commitment to his children and ensuring that every minute NOT working is by their little sides, being an active caregiver to them as well as just a regular old dad playing Xbox. I hope though for Geoffrey that 2011 finds some balance and he can continue to pursue a little time for Geoff to go for a run, a bike ride and round of golf, we’ll see, these seem to be luxuries that aren’t valuable enough to pursue.

Okay me – in the midst of this swirl that is my family and they don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon, I have faced some pretty large changes in my life. I (hopefully) permanently kicked a full time career in corporate America to the curb. Since the birth of Lux which also marked a considerable change in my work outlook, I have been terribly unsatisfied and unfulfilled. No matter whatever path or schedule I choice I couldn’t seem to swing it at home and with Lux entering school fulltime in September I decided in April it was time to go once and for all. And while I wasn’t ready for the mommy-track, and doubtfully ever will be, I joined Airadis thanks to Geoffrey have enough contract work to keep me happy and keep me home the hours Lux is not at school. I haven’t regretted my decision for a millisecond but it has taken some adjusting too and sorting out in my own head what it all means.
Well that’s it; to be honest it’s been a huge year, huge, and not an easy one – a blessed one yes, but not an easy one. 2011 we’re making HUGE changes in terms of roles/responsibilities both at home and with the company, I now own anything administrative with Airadis including all the finances – that’s sort of big and I’m not thrilled about it. At home we’re starting operation “buckle down” with a 5-7 year financial plan that is pretty lofty, but at 40 its time to have those goals, did I mention that I turned 40.