Chasing Bluebirds

obsession

so my newest obsession is ancestry.com and i do mean OBSESSION! we recently started cleaning out my grandpa's house and i hit the motherload of photos, letters, postcards and genealogy notes my grandfather and other family members took over the years. it is just a mind blow how much there is to go through. i have pretty much spent every spare minute scanning photos in and putting people into our tree. if you have never checked out ancestry.com, i highly recommend it. even for just one side (i have barely started my mom's side and already have found people i had no idea about) the site makes it very easy to track people down with very little info but be warned! it is the funnest treasure hunt type experience you will ever have!

italy in the 60's (florence)
wilson group shot at my grandpa's house
my grandpa's uncle
my brother and i in the 70's
my grandmother's photo album... here she is goofing on herself (virginia, my grandpa's younger sister is the other girl here)
my grandma at a house that is still around (yay google maps) and a short drive away from here. on the to do list to get a photo of that!! i still have more italy photos to share... someday!

fast forward

man, i have had such bad luck with computers lately! really, i spent at least 8 hours this past week making slide show dvds for my camp fire kids and at the last second of burning the discs had an error message i couldnt fix. back to square one. then i just typed up a heartfelt meaningul post here only to have my "new" computer lose it in all it's flashiness. good grief! i am out of time so instead of the post about how my trip is hurtling itself at me along with end of school events, lots of work, tons of camp fire bustle, i can only post a few photos of the kids playing with maggie (who is getting a lot more attention these days!)

oops ball stuck in the tree! no problem with the avocado picker at hand

i better sign off before something else happens!

resolutions

so this year i have the usual resolutions... keep hitting the gym (love my aquafit class!!) try to lose weight (always) and start painting again. for some reason i have had some kind of "block" keeping me from painting even though i love it and think about it all the time. actually doing it just seems so hard...

i hauled all my stuff up to the cabin a few months back and then ignored it for the three days i was there sooo... i hauled it back home and it has sat waiting for me to dig out and DO SOMETHING!! i have read books on creativity and i guess it's just a fragile thing for me, not really doing creative stuff but attempting to paint is a struggle. i learned to paint from my dad after several horrible art classes in college and he was just positive and happy to hang out so i loved it. i had one plein air workshop that was amazing and i painted the two best paintings of my life there. when i took it the next year i struggled (while we thought our cabin was burning down) the entire week and actually walked out during my critique at the end. i just couldn't take the criticism which i KNOW is not meant to be personal but it just floored me. i think it's because i really don't know what i am doing and don't completely understand the "how to's" of painting in a formal way. i am just playing around and if something is not the right tone or value or ??? i have no clue. i just know that "something is wrong" or "something is right" and thats about it. anyways! i am so happy i just jumped in today and knocked this little painting out:
i went back to my basics, back to how my dad and i painted and just copied something i liked, using it as a reference and tweaking it as i went along. i really liked how it turned out, especially since my brushes are pretty wonky and i wasn't using the right palette to mix paints. i bought water based oil paint and it was wonderful! hardly any smell and everything cleaned up great. hoping i can continue chipping my way back to a regular painting schedule!!

Spinning wheels, 2012

so i just got renewed for another year here on typepad, automatically and for some reason i was annoyed that i hadn't had a chance to decide whether i would continue with this blog or not. funny, you don't give something much attention but then you can't give it up either... my goal for this space originally was to post mostly about being a camp fire leader and it has surely morphed into many other things. travel journal, kids growing up journal, save the wetlands outlet...still very superficial really. facebook and now pinterest have overshadowed much of my blogging (twitter not so much), it is so quick and easy and interesting. i have found most of the blogs i read to be either really boring (lots of deep thought and thinking, which i did a lot of as a teenager and young adult: DONE!) or really annoying (whining about kids non stop and having baby after baby after baby: DONE) or all about food and cooking (YUM!). maybe a travel blog or "normal" parenting blog or two and thats it. 

 

Soooo.... since i must continue on i will dig just a tiny bit deeper today and post what is actually happening this morning and my thoughts on it:

because it reflects what is going on at this moment, right now... coffee grounds on the way to my new composter (all i wanted for christmas this year and santa brought it!!), "yellow" limes from the dwarf tree that finally produced fruit (i have been torn up about the loss of our lemon tree for like 5 years now and struggling to replace it), cork from the italian wine my husband got for me to try last night (from the region of italy we will be visiting in june...more to come on that), large jar i will fill with the organic farro i custom ordered from an organic farm in oregon that has been amazing! (this recipe rocks!), our avocados are finally ripening and this is a record year for tastiness, a nice flower someone placed in a jar (camellia) and a monster sized bisquick left over from camping to make pancakes for our sleepover guest this morning... last day of vacation for the girls and i have to work so a special breakfast is in order. i am thinking i might even elaborate on my job more in this space since it has become such an enormous part of my life (emotionally) lately, but we'll see. it's pretty heavy stuff. and now its time my morning ritual of coffee in the jacuzzi! Happy New Year!!

new likes

a few blogs i have been enjoying lately... my garden is pumping tomatoes out like crazy so gardening has been on my mind a lot. i was lucky to have plot neighbors who watered regularly while i was in utah and now another two weeks coming up with my mom in london, hoping for some more of that good neighborly help

the yellow house

and tend , my new roots , oh she glows and salt water farm... just a few places i have been visiting often. i really love the idea of a taking a vacation at a working farm and experiencing some hands on hard work that includes animals... oh to have a horse of my own!! for now though, it's enough to be working full time, gardening my 20 x 30 foot plot of mish mash, getting two camp fire groups up and running for a new year... so much to do!

 

 

my counter after a quick tomato picking trip. i make huge tubs of salsa that last about a week and a half. we eat caprese salads nightly and i made cheese enchiladas and added tomatoes/garlic/onions. STILL i have about a dozen left, what to do? (oh and more on the vines of 9 plants!)
this years tomatoes were the best ever! the winners were "purple cherokee" and "big rainbow" hands down! the sweet 100's cherry tomatoes started early and continue producing, sweet and plump picked right off the vine and eaten. i planted winter squash in late spring, early summer and have already harvested about 30 (acorn, several japanese pumpkin varieties) i popped in some seeds about a week ago and hope a few more vines pop up while i am on vacation. we just had a thunderstorm roll through, rain is good!!! more on the garden when i return from london!

obsessions

so lately i have been obsessed with farming and homesteading and gardening (put in tomatoes and peppers this week, maybe a tad bit early but we'll see) so i thought i would put out some of the cool websites i am really loving right now:

nest and the greenhorns have interesting ideas and the greenhorns has a list of farm blogs to last me a year

while tangerine dreams and. farmama.. a little out there for me but still fascinating 

two food blogs: green your plate and dinner: a love story 

from the cookie magazine folks: momfilter and travels with clara

projects i think are great: wwoof the movie and urban roots and the loog guitar.

for you locals: backyard bees and (the vanishing of the bees movie is on my wish list)

hoping for a trip to this farm someday

just finished this book and ready for the show... the marathon starts tomorrow on planet green, set your dvr!!

so all this plus the research i am doing for a future "dream" italy trip and camp fire meeting ideas, i am busy busy busy! hope you enjoy all these websites as much as i have and be inspired as well.

can't wait for the next trip, whatever it might be.

snapshots

wow, it's been a long long time

so i was thinking about this blog the other day and realized, there is not much substance to it and i am really just journaling and documenting my family life. not sure if i have even one serious "reader" not sure what this blog is even about anymore. i do enjoy writing stuff down and i love the photography but i am going to try and be more thoughtful here, just in case anyone is watching.

the past few years i have been on a roller coaster ride in my ultrasound career. never a day goes by that i don't have someone ask me if i like my job. it is so hard to answer because it is truly a love/hate relationship. i absolutely hate some aspects of it but absolutely love other things. i have been scanning patients for going on 17 years now and had considered myself quite a master at it. there aren't many techs who have been thrown in to the variety of places i have worked at. many many times i have felt i couldn't handle the situation i would find myself in, many times i had to reach down DEEP to stay on task and get the job done. hard patients, terrible schedules, horrific supervisors, condescending doctors, lazy and/or back stabbing bitchy co workers....long days, being on call in the middle of the night, being barfed on and just about any other gross thing you can imagine around sick patients, i have experienced. so here i am thinking i know everything and i apply for yet another per diem job, hoping to earn some extra money to take this fabulous trip to italy i am researching. to my surprise i was plunked down in a situation so demanding and so stressful i had physical symptoms of stress like i had never felt before, ever.
for weeks and weeks i "trained" at this new job experiencing stomach turning stress and the most god awful frighteningly gory patients to scan, the toughest protocols, the pickiest doctors and you know what? it made me a better tech, i learned (and am still learning) a lot! so when the boss at another account i was struggling to hold on to took me in the office after i dared to request a salary adjustment and literally chewed my ass off, i QUIT! believe me, i am no quitter, i actually have a hard time letting things go, i am a hoarder of "stuff" and i tend to hoard my jobs as well, staying per diem everywhere because i am scared to say goodbye to anything. i sat in that room while he told me what a horrible person i am because i don't have a "pep in my step" every day and have a bad attitude and threatened me and growled at me (yes he GROWLED!!) i thought, i don't deserve this? i just proved myself worthy at the most challenging hospital ever and i have never been fired, i have zero complaints from patients and doctors at this place and just because he doesn't like me, i am treated this way? no one deserves to be treated this way. it reminded me of a really out of control parent (guilty) and i didn't like how it felt to be spoken to in this manner, it made me think of my kids and how short i am with them because i work too much and am too tired to really listen to them after a long day of work. i realized that some of what he said was true and i had to be honest and say, this place is toxic, it makes me crazy, i hate the boss' guts and it's not healthy to be in this environment. i will never set foot there again, ever and it feels GREAT! i made a decision for myself and my family and i stood up for myself.
so on this new day off i am spending the day looking at past photos, working on this blog and hitting the gym. i will make lists of things i want to do and things that need to be done and start crossing them off. 2011 is starting to look pretty good.

this and that

so, the deck at the cabin really gets a beating from the weather, we have refinished it twice in 5 years and it is in need of refinishing again. what a massive job it is too! chris decided to go up and do it himself last weekend and somehow managed to do it all by himself. 

 
 

before and after, what a difference!
i wasn't hip to the color the first time we did it this orangey/red but it has grown on me now. we are beginning to see things fall apart on the cabin and it is needing more attention (paint chipping, fixtures breaking etc etc) i am getting that nervous feeling that the honeymoon is over. but that's what home ownership gives ya! at this point, we will fix what we can and live with what we can't. a few things i am liking at the moment: (not sure why i can't get paragraphs on typepad now...???) two cool movies. a cool house. something to dream about. another song to learn on guitar. looking forward to a quieter weekend with only a few things to do, guitar lesson, picnic lunch with my parents and watching the girls ride their bikes, checking out a high school musical with friends. i have been busy adding extra work days to pay for all the fun summer camps i have lined up for the girls this year. they are both doing a month long academic camp at our local college ( i loved walking the campus as a kid, really inspired me and i ended up graduating from there with my bachelors degree), three different camp fire camps and lizzie will do a stint at ballet camp (emily had 4 years of ballet and liz has been begging to go....so we will give it a try!) not sure if we will get swim lessons in, i am such a fan of swim lessons...hmmm, gotta work on that one. i am hoping for some long weekends up at the cabin, long bike rides and some beach days. yay summer! here are a couple more grand council fire photos:
(singing "say when")
the processional
a really gorgeous stage this year! wo he lo!

things i like

this movie

this camera

this tv show

these photos here and here

my new favorite magazine

my new favorite way to cook veggies 

ready to try this recipe

my new favorite website (lots of guitar practice going on around here and a long way from playing this song well!)

obsessed with watching you tube videos

just a few things i am liking right now, including this amazing family.

:)