A Past Life

A few weeks ago we had a small flood in our basement. Will and I frantically tried to get stuff out of the way of the incoming water so we threw things to the opposite side of the room, the bathroom and Moira's room. A few nights later I went to say goodnight to Moira and she was looking through my old sketchbooks. I had tossed them into her room so they would stay dry. I hadn't thought of my sketchbooks in years. They had been lying around collecting dust. Sitting there looking at my old drawings brought back a lot of memories. Moira was amazed and couldn't believe that I was the one who had done those drawings and paintings. I could hardly believe it myself. I haven't done any art work in years. Certain events robbed me of a big piece of my soul and my young, bold, full-of-life self died. That included the part of me that liked to draw.

Here are a few of the pieces that I found in my sketchbooks. This is just a fraction of what I have done.

I was fascinated with bubbles and how they were filled with swirling colours.

This was a dragonfly drawing that I worked on for a long time. I was so proud of it. But then an art teacher who I hated proceeded to write on the back of it with a black felt tip pen. The writing showed through to the front and was forever ruined. I never bothered to finish it.

This is what my lips really look like close up. I put red lipstick on, blotted them on a piece of paper and drew them.

When I was 17 I spent two weeks in Paris. This drawing came from a photo I took from my room at the hostel looking into the courtyard.

I don't know if I will ever draw and paint again. Maybe when the kids get older and I have more time and patience. For now, it's just a reminiscence.

Moira's 9th Birthday

It's hard to believe that my first born is now nine years old. Her birthday was this past Monday, a school day, so we let her open her presents in the morning before she had to leave for the day.

To Moira, from Liam

A Tinkerbell colouring set

New rollerblades

A dock for her iPod

After dinner Will's parents, Jimmy and the girls came over for cake. We couldn't find the candles so Jimmy held up a flash light that he turned off when Moira blew on it.

Moira had her birthday party yesterday. Since we weren't able to have our Easter egg hunt this year, Moira wanted to do it for her party.

Opening up the eggs

The birthday party

This and That

As usual, I feel like I'm playing catch up with the blog. There isn't always anything really big happening here, at least nothing blog worthy. But the little events add up quickly. Here is a recap of some of the things that have been going on in our little section of the world.

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We've had a wet spring, including lots of hail. The nice thing about it is that we've been seeing some beautiful rainbows from our backyard. This particular one had two arcs and both ends touched the horizon.

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After we got back from Las Vegas, we saw a new bird's nest outside of our garage. Kyla and I even watched the robin work on her nest one afternoon. Kyla made me check the nest every day to see if there were any eggs yet. (Here is the robin in her home):

Then one day we got a wonderful surprise:
Yesterday I realized that I hadn't seen the mama around lately so I checked the nest to see if the babies were OK. I was sad to see that it was empty. Something must have taken the eggs. She worked so hard on building a home for her babies and they were taken from her. It was heart-breaking.

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For my birthday this year, Will set up an appointment for me to get a new tattoo. This is a friend of Will's brother. He did a great job.

When Kendall was working on the sides of my neck, it was all I could do to sit still because it tickled so much. But it was painful when he was filling in the maple leaf. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. It's still healing now and is itchy. I have to wear my hair up because I don't like anything on my neck right now.

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I decided to start my own artisan market for this summer. It's difficult to find venues that are inexpensive to do and don't require you to commit all of your summer to. Will's brother has an auto repair shop with a big parking lot that stays unused on weekends. It's in a great location and I wanted to be able to provide people with a casual and cheap way to sell their items. The market is the 2nd Saturday of each month so there isn't a lot of time commitment. I also wanted a way for the community to be aware that there are alternatives to shopping in big box stores.

Only five of us were able to set up this Saturday. I'm hoping that next month will be better.

I'm re-working my set up. I don't very often get a big space to myself so I spent a few days trying to figure out my layout and getting it spiffed up.

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I took a new direction with my Etsy shop. I opened up a new one called Girl A Go-Go Designs and I'm upcycling t-shirts. I get them from the Idaho Youth Ranch which is an organization that raises money for under-privileged kids in Idaho through their chain of thrift stores.

This was a turtle neck that I cut the sleeves off of, redid the collar and I painted the peacock on to the front.

This is one of my favourites. I cut the sleeves off and one of the shoulders of this t-shirt. I cut the shoulder off a black t-shirt and then sewed it on to this one.

I made a few skirts out of t-shirts too. They are super comfy.

Vive Las Vegas

Last weekend Will and I and the kids went down to Las Vegas for the Highland Games. I've always wanted to go to Vegas and I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity for a trip down there.

We rode in the motorhome with Will's parents. I wish I could say that our drive down was fine, but it was anything but. Somewhere in no-man's-land between Idaho and Utah, we witnessed a one car crash. A pick up truck suddenly flipped and rolled into the median. We immediately stopped and Will ran over to the crumpled up vehicle while his dad called 911. No one at the time was sure what had happened, but Will said that one of the tires had its tread blown off so we think that's what caused the accident. There were four people in the car, a husband and wife and an older girl and boy. The two girls walked away unharmed. One of the guys was being choked by his seat belt so Will had peel the door off and cut him out of it. He died five minutes later. The other guy was badly crushed and he had been scalped so no one held out much hope for him. And there was nothing they could do. We were so far out that there was no ambulance nearby and it took a half hour just for a cop to show up at the scene. By the time we left, about an hour after the crash happened, Life Flight still hadn't shown up yet. A couple of days later, Will was reading the police report and apparently there was another cop on his way to the accident when his car flipped over. He was unharmed.

But, wait. It doesn't stop there. A couple of hours later we were the victims of road rage. We had stopped to get gas and when we were pulling out of the service station a man in a pick up truck, who was at a stop sign and saw us coming, proceeded to speed up anyway and then honked his horn at us for pulling out. He got angry, turned into the suicide lane to try to pass us and cut us off. Well, he missed and ended up hitting us instead. He jumped out of his vehicle and proceeded to yell profanities at Will and his dad. The guy called the cops and we had to wait for them to show up. When the cops finally came, he told them that we cut him off and he had to swerve to miss us. He also said that Will threatened him. This is where karma comes in. When the guy honked his horn at us, he caused someone at the gas station to look up and see what was happening. He stayed as a witness for us and told the cops that it was his fault, not ours. When the police were telling him this and that if he had to swerve to miss us, he was driving too fast and it was still his fault, he started yelling at them. Anyway, we lost another hour because of him. We drove late into the night and didn't get as far as we had hoped.

It was a long drive down so we amused ourselves by eating pretzels from between our toes.

We stayed at the campground behind Circus Circus. It was one of the first hotels to cater to families. We took the kids there the first night. There was a big area with lots of carnival games that the kids could play.

Enjoying $5 slushies while waiting for the next act to start in the indoor circus area.

We watched two acts at the circus. One was a couple who performed illusions and then this acrobat.

I saw these shoes in the window of a really cool shoe store inside Circus Circus. I tried to convince Will to get a pair, but he said that he couldn't wear them without getting a pimp suit too.

The Strip. It didn't disappoint.

A bad picture of the Trump Tower.

I had such a great time walking the strip. And it wasn't just the lights and the enormity of the buildings that gave me goosebumps. It was also all the people and cars and the honking of horns. Even though I love my big backyard and having chickens and seeing the sheep out in the back fields, it all reminded me that I'm a city girl at heart.

The Highland Games were held in a park that was filled with peacocks. They roamed all over and were quite used to people. They are so beautiful and the loud cry they kept making brought back childhood memories of Stanley Park and the peacocks that wandered freely there too.

Who knew that peacocks could climb so high up in the trees?

This one wandered into our booth while we were packing up. He was particularly interested in the shiny clothing racks we had.

This albino peacock, while not as colourful, was still beautiful.

Random Photos

Here are some random photos that I took over the past week.

Kyla and Penelope taking a nap together:

Playing dress up:

Last weekend we got a lot of snow. Moira built a snowman with two penguins:

Sugar likes to hang out in the field right behind our house and catch mice. I circled him in the first photo.

More Pics of Penelope

Penelope is just so darn cute that I had to put up some more pics of her.

It's amazing how a two pound kitten can manage to kick a 50 pound dog off her bed.