CK and Me

I have been having a really rough week. I will spare you the details but I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon to get an email about one of my layouts being featured on CK and Me. Follow the link to that feature...

It's been awhile...

Life has been so busy. We lost our sweet Zoee two weeks ago. That was a really tough thing for our family. We really miss her. When I come in the door and I don't have her waiting for me right there, excited to see me and her chain jingle-jangling...when we are cooking and she's not right at our feet waiting for either things that drop or for us to throw her some scraps...when I get up in the morning and we don't follow our everyday routine of going outside together and then immediately feeding her (cuz if you don't feed her immediately she lets you know)...so many things we are all missing about our sweet Zoee.

I have opened the Camera Art studio in Hillsboro and we had the Portland Bridal Show last weekend. Wow! What an event that was! It was my first time setting up the display and having to figure out how to do that. It comes with about 6 panels and you only need 4 to set up our 10 foot booth. I discovered after setting it up the night before that I grabbed the wrong pieces that fit the 10 foot booth size. With the amount of time we had left, we decided to take the one piece off the end, take it home and do surgery on it. We got done at about 9pm, an hour before our time was up!

We are beginning to book weddings for the 2010 summer season and I am excited about the brides and grooms that we will be capturing the memories for on their special day. I hope it is a busy wedding season for us.

Well, that's it for now. Back to work.

Christmas is over...

I am happy to have had a nice Christmas with my family this year but I am thankful now that it is over. I hope to get a few things done this coming week...I'm taking the week off from work so I can get some "work" done. I hope to take apart the greenhouse from my parents old place and put it back together at my house. I also hope that I can get some scrapbooking in. There are a few other things I would like to do too. I think I might make a list of everything I want to do and then I can prioritize better. Anyway, happy that Christmas is over and we can look forward to the New Year now. Hopefully, 2010 will bring good things.

More on Zoee

The options were 20 weeks of chemotherapy in order to extend Zoee's life about a year, possibly two or Prednisone which would put her lymphoma in remission for about 4 to 6 months, possibly up to 8 months. We decided to go with the Prednisone treatment. We can control her pain with some pain medication and she will feel pretty good, unlike if she went through chemotherapy. I felt like this was the right thing to do. We are just going to baby her and love her up in the time we have left with her. She has been on the treatment for about 5 days now and she is doing really well. She seems to feel pretty good and can move around pretty well. This will give us some more time with her and she will feel pretty good during that time.

A Sad Day for Our Family

I noticed my dog, Zoee, seemed to be having a hard time moving around and looked quite sad when I got back from my Washington DC trip last night. I was quite concerned this morning when she didn't hear me get up and begin scratching at my son's door to let her out so she could get to me - the everyday routine. I went looking for her in my son's room. I opened the door and she was lying on the bed but didn't even lift her head to show interest in coming with me. I called her and she came. She was moving even more labored this morning. I was quite worried after she showed no interest in food. By the afternoon, she hadn't moved from the spot where she laid down after I brought her inside this morning. I decided to take her on an errand with me to Home Depot to see if that perked her up. I was thinking maybe she was depressed. When she sat on the passenger seat, I could see that the glands around her nipples were huge and hard and the skin was irritated. I really thought I had figured out what was wrong. She had a skin infection in the past and I thought for sure that this was it. I turned around immediately and returned home. I had Scotty take Zoee to the vet for me.

Not long after he got there I got a text from him. He said they think Zoee has lymphoma. And he said all her lymph nodes throughout her body are huge and affected. I was in shock. She is only about 8 years old. I figured we had a number of more years with her. It appears that she is probably in about stage 3 of lymphoma where all her glands are affected. It could actually be even further along than that but we would only know if we did more testing. The hard part is that chemotherapy and other treatments would only be used to extend her life a little longer and there are no guarantees on how long she would have. The doctor said maybe a year, maybe two if you are lucky but then again it could be less. It is not about curing the cancer. It is about extending her life so we can have more time with her. I can't even imagine putting her through chemotherapy in order to spend more time with her. Some people may consider that humane but I don't. She doesn't have a way of telling me, "Yes, I want to go through all that excrutiating pain and fatique and nausea and fatigue, etc., etc. in order to spend a little more time with you". Since she can't tell me what she wants, I have to make a decision and I just can't put her through that. Quality of life is what it's about. I don't want to see her in pain. It is important that I still see her wag her tail when I tell her I love her and to see her doggie smile. Tonight she actually worked very hard to get up from her bed when she heard my car keys jangling. She met me at the door and gave me that look, the one where she begs me with her eyes to take her. She had a bit of a bounce in her step and I knew she felt well enough to go on a ride. We got our pizza take-out and when we got home she waited in the kitchen for her pizza crusts just like she always does. She actually found one of her Kong balls in the house too and wanted to fetch it a couple of times - a bit slower than usual but she did it.

It appears that we are going to go through some hard times coming up here very soon. I am going to miss her terribly. She has been one of those dogs that you curse because she tries to go on walkabouts every chance she can (sneaking away from the house if you are not watching) and she has anxiety attacks when you take her in the car and she walks us when we try to take her for a walk, but in our home she is at her best. She loves her family always has a smile on her face. She has all her own little quirky things she does which makes her Zoee and I love her for everyone of those.

Leaving for Washington DC

I don't travel much. It's too difficult to take Jovanna with me or to leave her with someone else. I was offered the opportunity by MESD to go to the National Federation of Families Conference in Washington DC and I decided to take Jovanna with me and let her go through the Youth Track at the conference. We leave tomorrow morning. I have not been to a Federation of Families Conference yet but I understand it is a really inspirational thing. I am told it will revive my spirits and renew my inspiration to continue the battle for better care and respect for my family and other families raising children with special needs. I need that right now. Sometimes the challenge of raising Jovanna really begins to weigh heavy on me and right now, as she is becoming a teen and add that with the already challenging behaviors of Autism Spectrum/Aspergers and it just becomes too much on some days. I work day and night to help change the system and support other families raising special children and at times it feels like we are just stuck, there aren't any options, there isn't enough of me to go around. Hopefully, I will experience a renewed sense of hope and inspiration over the next few days and hopefully, Jovanna will be able to hold herself together enough that I can attend the adult conference sessions while she participates in the Youth Track.

She made a poster for the conference poster contest a few months ago and we submitted it. The focus of the contest was "Childrens mental health matters to us, what matters to you?". She did this really cute poster with several children of all different colors (some really interesting colors) and some were boys and some were girls and wrote the theme on the poster. I guess we will find out while we are there how she did. She is excited and is sure she is going to win. I hope she can handle the disappointment if she doesn't. But it will be exciting to see her work there. We leave Thursday at 12:30pm with a stop in Fort Worth, TX and then off to D.C. All day on a plane...with Jovanna... Wish me luck!

I am thankful for...

As Thanksgiving is approaching, I am thinking about what I am thankful for. Sometimes my life seems to go so fast and I am so busy and I have many challenges around raising my special needs child that I can at times feel like I don't have much to be thankful for. But when I really force myself to think about what, if anything, there is for me to be thankful for, I can identify some things.

I am thankful that my dad is still with us. He has battled sickness for more than two years now, so close to death so many times and he is still hanging in and still with us. We don't know how much time we have left with him and it will be devastating for our family when he is no longer here, but I am thankful that he is still with us.

I am thankful that I have a home to call my own. Almost five years ago, I had to sell my home and get rid of the lifestyle I had become accustomed to in order to take care of my daughter who was in serious crisis. It was an incredibly painful thing for me. After owning a home for more than 10 years, I had to become a renter. For some, this is not a big thing. But for me, it was. This last summer, all the stars lined up for a short time and my window of opportunity was there. I was able to buy and move into my new home on July 1. Sure, it's a fixer-upper with a lot more work to be done. But it's mine. I am thankful to have a home to call my own.

I am thankful that my son, Scotty, is doing well. He has grown and matured so much over the last couple of years and he is doing well. He got laid off from his job about a month or so ago and he has decided to go to school and get his Associates in the Welding Program at PCC. I am thrilled to see him considering a step like this and excited to see what new journey this will take him on. I am thankful that Scotty is growing, maturing and a fine young man.

I am thankful to have a man that loves me and that I love back. Jose is perfectly suited for me in every way and makes me feel fulfilled. After spending so many years in a miserable relationship, I am thankful to have found this wonderful man.

Taking on the Family Business

I always knew it was my dad's dream to pass on his wedding photography business to his kids. I started shooting weddings with my dad when I was about 25. I really enjoyed it and I was good. Over the years, I have done so many aspects of the business. I have photographed weddings, put proof books together, matched negatives to prints ordered (back when we used to still use negatives), taken proof books apart and prepared for storing, met with potential couples, put orders together, worked the bridal shows, and when my dad got real sick two years ago I spent an entire summer running the business while my mom tended to my dad. Now, my parents have decided it's time for them to retire. They want to hand the business on to their kids and I was the one who stood up and said, "Yes, I want to do it." My sister is an amazing photographer too and she can sell like you have never seen. She wants to be involved but she doesn't want to take on the risk and run the business.

Last week, I signed a contract to lease space in a business complex for Camera Art. We begin setting up the space Dec 1 and the Portland Bridal Show in in January. I know I have the skills to run a business and I have run this exact one before. It is really about whether there is enough of me to to do all that I do. In order to earn enough to cover the expenses of the business, we have to do a fair amount of weddings. I have to balance all this with my 30 hour week job with Oregon Family Support Network and running Scrapdango and taking care of my special child and family. Mmmmhhhh...I wonder if I can do it all. But I'll give it a go.

So far I have secured and paid for space, delivered a sample album to a wedding site, revised the wedding contract and they will be printed this week, revised and paid for the Bravo Guide ad, booked two 2010 weddings and very soon I will be setting up our new space. My mom has been very helpful and trying to bring me up to speed with everything I need to know.

I was very happy with the Bravo Guide ad. It turned out beautiful.

I'm not sure if this will work but here is a link to the pdf ad to share.

Camera Art Bravo Guide Ad

Gearing Up for Winter...

Well, it's that time again. I really enjoy the spring, summer and fall seasons. I love planting my garden in the spring and camping in the summer and other seasonal activities well into the fall. I am not a winter person. Just do not like it. I tend to feel cold all the time anyway so when winter comes, I feel frigid all the time. There are a few things I enjoy about winter though. I love making fires in our fireplace and sitting around and watching TV or movies with my family. It just makes for such a great cozy feeling. I also love it when it snows. Oh my, that is heavenly to me. I have such a blast making a fire and watching the snow fall. Then we all get out and play in it. Oregon doesn't get much snow and that is what makes it so exciting. We love to talk about, "Well, I wonder if it's gonna snow this year." And we all get so very excited when it does. Snow and ice have the ability of shutting down the entire state though when it does happen because we Oregonians aren't used to it so we are never prepared for it and we don't know how to drive in it.

As I prepare for the winter, I just transplanted a few blueberry bushes from my folks property that they just sold. Those blueberries have been a part of my life for 20 years and I just had to see if I could take them with me now that my family is preparing to leave the property forever. I also transplanted a bunch of their special blackberry starts. These are the most wonderful blackberries. They don't have any prickers and they are big and taste like sugar. We have covered them in hay and are beginning to get the garden area ready to bunker down for the winter. We have also been trying to get a good supply of firewood for the winter.

I look forward to getting some good scrapping time in this winter. I usually spend a great deal of time scrapping in the winter. I can't get outside to do much so I try to use whatever time I can get doing my scrappy projects. I guess winter isn't all that bad!

It's Finally Time for a Housewarming!

If I wait till everything is done, it might be a few years before we ever have a housewarming. So, next Friday it is! We've done so much that I feel like we can have some of our friends and family over and share the joy of our new home. We will have some drinks and some snacks and I can point out everything we've done so far. I plan to have before and after pictures too! It should be fun!

Images I am considering using...

Here are three of our companies wedding images (Camera Art) I am thinking about using for our Bravo Guide add. So hard to pick...



















OR







I can use three images and these are the ones that I am considering right now.

Keeper

I was forwarded this today in an email and it really touched me.

Keeper

I grew up in the 50's with practical parents. A mother, God love her, who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it. She was the original recycle queen, before they had a name for it... A father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones.

Their marriage was good, their dreams focused. Their best friends lived barely a wave away. I can see them now, Dad in trousers, tee shirt and a hat and Mom in a house dress, lawn mower in one hand, and dish-towel in the other. It was the time for fixing things. A curtain rod, the kitchen radio, screen door, the oven door, the hem in a dress Things we keep.
It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy. All that re-fixing, eating, renewing, I wanted just once to be wasteful. Waste meant affluence.. Throwing things away meant you knew there'd always be more.

But then my mother died, and on that clear summer's night, in the warmth of the hospital room, I was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't any more.

Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away...never to return. So... while we have it... it's best we love it.... and care for it... and fix it when it's ! broken.......... and heal it when it's sick.

This is true. for marriage..... and old cars.... and children with bad report cards..... and dogs with bad hips.... and aging parents..... and grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it. Some things we keep. Like a best friend that moved away or a classmate we grew up with.

There are just some things that make life important, like people we know who are special....... and so, we keep them close!


When I read this, it made me think about my grandparents. My grandma and grandpa didn't throw anything away. After they died and we spent some time going through some of their things, we found nail clippers that were rigged so they would still work (as opposed to going out and spending $2.50 on new nail clippers) and yard tools that my grandpa had used an old broom handle in place of the original handle that had broken. It was really quite amazing what we found.

Then I found myself thinking about my father. He is so very ill and has been for a number of years. He is the most amazing man on this Earth, at least I think so. He loves life so much and his body has been trying to kill him for the last 20 years. But he won't let it. He has pulled through so many grave situations where the doctors told us he wouldn't make it and he did it again just recently. A few weeks ago, he became ill with Ecoli. We all have it in our bodies but he has polycystic disease and his liver is full of cysts. Recently, a few very large cysts on his liver burst and released Ecoli into his body. His heart only ever functions at about 15 - 20% so the infection in his body and the drugs they needed to give him to kill the infection was literally killing his heart. His heart was stopping multiple times a day and they gave him a 2 - 10% chance of making through a 24 hour period. Of course, he once again beat the odds and came home. He is quite depressed though, like I've never seen him before. He is getting tired of constantly having to battle and beat death. He is getting tired. This poem really made me think about him and I need to be ever so diligent and making sure I keep him close and make sure he knows how much he is loved.

I don't know how much time I have left with my dad, every day is a gift. I hope that I can use each day to the fullest extent of that gift I have been given.

Look what I did with my Cricut!

I had this planned out for the last several months and finally got to it! The word "family" is wood letters that were already painted from my craft store and I used my cricut to cut out the black vinyl letters for "It's not the home I love, but the life that is lived in it." Is that cool or what?

Starting to Get Somewhere...

The laminate is all completely done throughout the house. Almost all the doors are new, except we have to hang the front door yet and then detach the new doors and paint them. We have only a tiny bit of molding around one of the doors and the front door after we get that in and then it seems that we can take a break. I think we will start on the kitchen remodel in the spring. I'm tired. I'm worn out from the schedule of work and then more work at home. It is time to start decorating and putting everything away where we want it. It is looking really good and I am starting to feel like we actually accomplished some things. Of course, there's more work to do but I think we can set that aside for awhile and just enjoy life. We still have to tackle the kitchen remodel, the hall bathroom remodel, new windows throughout and then somewhere down the road, maybe next year (?) we will expand the master bedroom and bathroom. For now, I am happy to begin making our house a home. Pictures coming very soon...

Design Team Search at Scrapdango!

It is time again for a new Scrapdango Design Team Search. The current team has been wonderful and I have enjoyed them but it is time once again to do a new search. We are filling both Sugar and Spice kit designers but also a couple of leadership positions for Blog Coordinator and Design Team Leader. You can get all the details of how to apply and whats involved on our Forum.

Catch me in Scrapbooking and Beyond!

This month you can find one of my layouts in Scrapbooking and Beyond. This is one of my favorite scrap magazines. I get a lot of inspiration from it. I found mine at Fred Meyers but I have seen them at JoAnn's also. Take a peek and see my "Bucket List" layout on a 2-page spread!

Teen Room! Too Cute!

We have finally got Jovanna's room ready. I still have a few things to put away in her room but for the most part it is done. I had so much fun creating this room. It was like creating art and I am so proud of how it turned out. I would like to eventually get her a black nightstand and dresser to match her new bed, but we can pick those things up later. Wow! It looks too, too cute!



Here's a shot of the lights off and just the way cool new light on!

Here's a few other details...










































Of course, you know who that is, right? She's a Twilight freak! She thinks if she can get a picture of Michael Jackson and a few horse pictures up then it will be perfect!

A teen room!

I am now tackling Jovanna's room. She had all these plans for these very strange color combinations and I feel bad, but I had to trump her. I found a picture of this very cool teen room in an IKEA book and showed it to her. I used every bit of enthusiasm and tempted her with the purchase of some new things to fill the room to get her to agree. I think it is going to be sooooo cool! We have three colors on the walls. There is this really nice lavendar, a sweet pink and a hot pink. I just got done painting the walls. So, the idea here is the room will be decorated with purples, pinks and black. I bought her a new black sleigh bed, a furry pink lamp, new pink/black/white bedspread, curtains in pink and purple beads that will hang down from the curtains, and lots of little fun decorations. I think it is going to be way cool. She is 11 and entering into her teen years so I am hoping that this will be "cool" for a number of years to come. I will post some pictures soon. We will put carpet in very soon and then we can set-up her new things.

What a camping trip!

We spent last weekend at Carter Lake, just South of Florence. We brought our friends Emily and Arlo with us. Arlo is Jovanna's friend. We were able to get an idea of just how much time they can spend with each other before it is too much. Well, unfortunately, that would be about the time it took to drive to the campground. They ended up in constant competition with each other and were triggering each other all over the place. It is interesting, if you look at the pictures I took you would think that we had a wonderful time. The pictures would suggest that at least there were some good moments...hard for me to remember those though. We were constantly intervening between the two of them and trying to keep them from killing each other!

The area was wonderful. We had the lake, the dunes, the ocean, crabbing, and camping. It was truly a beautiful area.
When we first got to the site, the wire that is part of rolling up and down the tent trailer popped! I was thinking we weren't going to have anywhere to sleep but with some borrowed tools and after Scotty arrived, we were able to get it fixed. Whew!









Here is Emily rolling down the dunes...








Jovanna and Arlo after making the mile and 1/2 trek on the trail through the dunes to the ocean...


Scotty and Kelcie joined us at the beach


Jovanna at the campsite


Scotty by the lake


After a whole lot of whining, Arlo finally agreed to help Jovanna across the water to the other side. Aren't they cute?


A very sweet camp neighbor loaned us her canoe boat and was so tickled to see it getting some use. Here is Scotty and Jovanna on the lake...


And before we left our trip, we stopped off at a beach in Florence to let Jovanna play in the sand a little bit. Warning signs were up about some water quality issues so we didn't play in the water though.

We are getting tired!

I always thought that it would be Jovanna that would be the death of me, but now I'm thinking it's gonna be this darn house! My body is so exhausted. There is still so much to do. We got most of the living room flooring in and we are heading down the hallway but we ran out of laminate flooring. I have to wait till I have a little extra money to buy the rest of what we need. We are taking a break for a few weeks because we are tired (and grumpy!). We are going camping this weekend for some R&R. We are going with our friends Emily and Arlo. Arlo and Jovanna have recently discovered each other...they are both eleven, both on the Autism Spectrum, both identical in so many ways - like two peas in a pod. They quite the romance developing right now. It is very cute to watch. I heard that they actually stole a first kiss with each other too!

I have a feeling that I'm in trouble if she is already kissing boys!

Here they are...

Notice how they are both barefoot? If you don't know much about children on the Autism Spectrum then you probably wouldn't understand the significance of that, but I assure you...the two of them together is quite significant!