just tell me to RELAX...and BREATHE

Week in the Life 2010 - Day 3, Friday April 23rd

Day 3, Friday April 23rd...

6:15am J reminds me to get up

6:45am I actually GET up and see that it is snowing

7am R is up, comes in to watch a Jack's Big Music Show, this time it's Dance Party

7:05am In the shower

7:15am Ellery calls - we agree the weather is much worse than we expected (esp. in the mountains) and we should reschedule Vail for Monday.  Lots of phone calls to get this arranged (Ellery's babysitter, James, Kim).  We can make it work.

8am Breakfast

8:35am talk with Elle again.  She's going to keep babysitter for part of the day and come here to discuss the work plan, furniture, etc.  Go to furniture stores.

I am ready, Rip's stuff is ready.  Rip is still upstairs...

 

8:45am Drop R at Emma's.  They will be headed to a birthday party before school.

8:40am On phone with mom to let her know the change of plans

9:30am Elle here - coffees, Vail talk.  Looks like all contractors will be able to do Monday, except one has to do 6pm.  Called J to make sure late on Monday will work and find out he'll be gone T - TH.  Good to know!

 

10am Talk with mom about design element for condo - Meme's horse painting? She loves that idea and will call Meme.

 

 

Did I mention it is snowing like crazy outside?

 

 

10:45am Found pics of Meme's horse and cowboy paintings.  More planning, looking through pics, etc.  Elle heads home to relieve the babysitter.

12noon School is canceled!  Kim calls - she's taking the girls home with her, and they will watch Willy Wonka

12:30pm Working on downloading, editing WITL pictures, talk with mom, James.  Catch up on a little blog reading.

 

Tuli is my helper.

 

3pm Head out to pick up Rip.  It has stopped snowing.  Mostly.

 

R is in a pair of Emma's pjs.

 

 

3:30pm Cereal and tea for our mid afternoon snack.

 

Tuli isn't sure about the tea kettle.

 

 

 

4:15pm Feed Tuli.

4:20pm Tuli is asleep.  R checks the weather on my iPhone.

 

4:40pm R finishes reading her latest chapter book, and it turns out that Roberts isn't really a vampire bat.

 

4:45pm R records books on her book list, then decides to record all of her April books in a little journal for herself.

 

5:15pm Haven't heard from JC yet.  Planning to go out for Mexican food.

5:25pm Text to James to coordinate dinner.  He will meet us at Hacienda.

5:55pm Beer.  Just made happy hour.

 

Queso, tortillas, enchiladas.  Perfect.  Oh, and free dessert for J's birthday.

7:05pm Out the door and heading home.

 

R decides to ride home with daddy.

 

R lets Tuli out of her crate and gives her some big hugs.  This is a routine.

 

7:20pm R is stalling.  Get to bed!

8pm Editing pictures in my studio, and a little wine.  J is watching tv in the other room.

 

8:30pm R shows up in my studio because she has "growing pains" and needs a leg massage.  Must be nice. 

10pm Still working on pics, blog, etc.  Listening to the wind/rain and the random sounds of the PBS telethon that JC is sleeping through in the other room.

12:40am James finally surfaces to take Tules out and we head up for bed. 

Week in the Life 2010 - Day 2, Thursday April 22nd

Happy Earth Day AND James' Birthday! (again, use your imagination and pretend that it is Thursday the 22nd...)

7am Rip in our room, gets under the covers to cuddle and watch a Jack's Big Music Show

8:05am Call James to sing Happy Birthday (speaker phone)

8:10am Latte in hand.  I feel smarter already.

8:11am Ellery calls to discuss tomorrow's appointments in Vail, planning to meet up later today in person or over the phone

8:20am Oatmeal is ready.  It is POURING down rain.

8:45am R paints cupcake picture for J

 

9:10am Emma is here. Girls disappear while Kim and I chat.

9:20am Make R's lunch.

 

Dishes stay in the sink for a while...

 

Tuli is enjoying the fact that it is no longer raining.

 

Check on girls - doing crafts in the basement.  Dishes, laundry, try on my bargain finds from yesterday, etc.

 

11:05am in the car and on our way to school...

11:19am Drop off girls for Lunch Bunch.  Park the car and go inside to pick up drink pouches and corks (collecting these for upcycling through TerraCycle).  The girls LOVE being my drink pouch helpers.

 

11:38am King Soopers for groceries and gas

 

12:49pm Lukas Liquors (beer, wine)

1:02pm Costco - ran into a friend there and chatted it up, found the camera for J's birthday gift

1:32pm On my way home.  Skies are pretty dark.

1:34pm The rain begins. 

2pm Fixed the ski video on the blog, a load of laundry, gift wrapping presents, email.  Apparently there was a tornado warning at school.  I bet R was NOT happy.

4pm Waiting in the carpool line to pick up the girls from school.

 

4:15pm Drop off Emma and head home.  Sunny skies and tulips in bloom.

 

4:30pm Finishing up birthday projects.

 

5:10pm J shows up without calling first! Have to send him out on a walk with Tules so we can finish up the birthday surprises.

 

I think James likes his gifts.

 

Appetizers, beer, while I cook dinner (beef tenderloin, rosemary potatoes, broccoli, salad).

6:45pm Dinner is finally served.

7:10pm We all mix our own icing colors and frost our own cupcakes.

 

Another round of Happy Birthday to You (CHA CHA CHA!)

 

7:30pm J and R upstairs for bed

7:45pm Folding laundry.

8pm Into the PJs for me.  I put away leftovers while J does dishes.  Cool.

8:30pm Online - emails, download pictures, upload photos and send to Jeanette.  J is downstairs too (watching the NFL draft).  Nice to both be on the same level of the house.

10pm Upstairs to watch the news.  J is OUT by 10:25pm so I turn on LOST episode from Tuesday night.  Uh oh.  Jack is now with Locke.  Yike.

11:30pm Fall asleep watching an HGTV show.

12:45am Wake up and put all my junk on the floor, back to bed. 

I seem to keep falling asleep with a lot of junk on the bed.  Maybe I should take a picture of that.

Week in the Life 2010 - Day 1, Wednesday April 21st

Good morning world!  It's Day 1 of WITL 2010!  I know, today is not ACTUALLY Wednesday April 21st, so use your imagination....

6:50am Rip is in our room, cuddle time because Mom is not ready to be up

7:00am R's alarm in her room goes off and freaks Tuli out.  R turns on a Jack's Big Music Show on On Demand and all is well for 20 minutes

8:20am Breakfast is served (oatmeal and a non-fat latte for me, multiple rounds of breakfast for R, ending with oatmeal)

 

 

 

9:30am Drop R at Emma's house

10am Driving

 

10:05am Phone call with Ellery - making plans for Friday (VAIL).  Called my dad to make arrangements for a contractor to see the condo

 

10:15 My stomach is gross and the bargain-hunting is too good at Goodwill -- skipping Yoga today.

 

Also squeezed in a trip to Michael's for good measure.  A few good finds + a small canvas for R to paint for James' birthday present.

 

1:05pm James calls from NM - he's finished up his day trip early and is getting on an earlier flight.  Will be here in time to join us for dinner:)

 

2pm Spontaneously decide to clean out R's books and cards in her room.  Tuli spends the time trying to destroy R's pink rug.

 

3:32pm Rain

3:39pm Thunder

3:41pm HAIL

3:43pm Bigger hail.  Tuli decides it's a good idea to run out into the hail.  She was wrong.

 

3:49pm REALLY BIG HAIL.  Starting to worry about my carpooler right now.

3:56pm Looked like it had let up, but a new round of hail is here.  Tuli and I continue to observe from the basement.  Finally sunshine through the rain a few minutes later.

4:17pm James arrives

4:22pm R arrives from school.  She is sad that Emma has a playdate with another friend without her.  We have a little chat on the stairs about disappointment...

4:44pm Tuli has puppy energy.

4:45pm Jump in the shower while R does homework on our bed.

 

5:25pm Leave for Pasta Jay's (5 minutes late, as always)

 

5:35pm Meet Jeanette and the girls (Kate, McKenzie and Ashley - yes they are identical triplets!) for dinner.  Wine, food, and catching up.

 

Oh, and a little goofiness.  I think Jeanette and I figured out this is the first picture of the two of us since High School.  Oh my.

 

7:05pm on our way home with our leftovers in a tupperware and a bag of corks from Pasta Jay's (they've been saving them for our school project through TerraCycle.  Thanks PJs!)

7:15pm R is a live wire, checking on the tulips in the front yard, checking on our ladybugs in the fridge, procrastinating bed time

7:30pm JC and R upstairs for bedtime

7:30pm Making cupcakes for James' birthday (the 22nd) - thank you Betty Crocker

8pm Making buttercream frosting (homemade - yum!)

 

8:30pm J and L eat cupcakes:)

8:45pm J takes Tuli for a walk in the rain

9:10pm upstairs and in bed (uncharacteristically early for me) to watch CSI NY and do a little knitting.  Fell asleep instead.

10:45pm (or thereabouts) woke up and put all of my stuff away, called it a night.

Well, there's Day 1 officially documented.  Hooray!  If you're not bored out of your mind, be sure to check back for Day 2 coming up soon...

Week in the Life 2010 - oh yes I am!

One of my absolute favorite projects has been A Week in the Life, a concept created by my favorite scrapbooker, author and life artist Ali Edwards.  The concept is pretty simple: document 7 days in your life by taking pictures, jotting down notes about the day, saving scraps of paper (receipts, articles you read, junk mail, pictures your child draws, your to-do list, etc)...

It takes some dedication to carry around your camera every where you go for an entire week, but the results are SO worth it.  Ali's WITL project has such a following that Real Simple Magazine even did a write up on it this past month.

I've done this project twice, in fall 2007

and fall 2008...

and last year I did a photo shoot for a DAY in my life (but without the journaling and paper trail, pictures only and of course I have yet to start that scrapbook!). 

So now I am tackling WITL 2010 and today is Day 3.  I will be going back and using my blog to document the highlights day by day.  I think that's going to be my best bet at keeping this simplified and organized, and it will give me my best chance at getting this project completed relatively quickly.  So far, I've taken at least 400 pictures (over 3 days) and I've narrowed those down to my favorite 100.  That's pretty good for me!

In 2007 I followed Ali's structure almost exactly (I took the WITL class with her, so it only made sense to follow along and besides, the layout is really cool) but in 2008 I kind of made up some of my own thing while incorporating her idea for baseball card holders and using some of her digital elements from Designer Digitals.  This year, I plan to follow Ali's 2010 plan pretty closely - 4 pages per day, which will be paired down quite a bit from what I've done previously.

Stay tuned.  It should be fun! 

If you are participating in Ali's Week in the Life project (which she actually started Monday, making today the "official" Day 5), please post a link so that we can see what you are up to!

Helping the dogs, or Ripley Uses Art for Good instead of Evil

Since I recently posted an email about Naughty Ripley, I thought I better follow up with a post about Angel Ripley (who usually lives here, I promise).  Since Ripley's 2nd birthday, we have asked birthday party attendees to bring a donation instead of a gift.  That year we donated new toys to Children's Hospital (thank you Veldhuizens for letting us borrow this idea), and in following years we collected toys for a local battered women's shelter, books for our preschool library, and children's books for a church in post-Ike Galveston, TX.  Early on, we would "help" Ripley decide where she'd like to designate the donations, but this year Rip came up with the idea all on her own. 

"Mama, I want to collect things for the dogs!" 

So this year we asked the party goers to bring donations for the animals at Denver Dumb Friends League.  We received a little bit of everything off of the DDFL wish list, including peanut butter, paper towels, tuna, baby food (those baby kitties have to eat something, you know), old towels, treats, food, and more.  THANK YOU to all who contributed! 

A few weeks ago, Ripley, Emma, and I headed down to the DDFL Buddy Center in Castle Rock to deliver the bags of donations.  Ripley also made a special note for the dogs...

My scanner chopped off the top part where Rip wrote "Age: 6"

The bottom part says "Dear dogs: I am celebrating my birthday with you!"

Ripley was really proud to bring the note to the folks at DDFL.  A few days ago, Ripley received this in the mail...

The coloring book is darling -- it's all about adopting a pet from the shelter. 

I'm really proud of Miss Rip, not only for wanting to help the animals but for using her artistic abilities for good instead of evil this time.

more ski adventures

Ripley got the chance to ski with her buddy Emma for the first time up in Breckenridge 2 Fridays ago (yes, we played hooky from school - our little secret, right?).  Emma's mama Kim was nice enough to ski with them and control the chaos.

No ski injuries...but Rip did take a header earlier in the morning, pre-ski, while jumping on the bed with Emma.  The desk sprouted legs, jumped up and knocked her right above the eye.  She bled something fierce, and ended up with 2 shiners (and a sunburn) by Saturday.  All from just this little cut you see in the picture below.

As you can see, these two never have any fun together.

(that's a snow leopard on Emma's helmet, in case you were wondering)

Here's a little snippet from the day...

And two days later with her cousin Emerson...

"Who has two black eyes?"  "I do! I do!"

That's the psychedelic mushroom dress that I FINALLY made for Ripley (I bought the fabric back in October at my favorite place Stash).  Here's a better look at the dress...this time R is with her cousin Cameron, and yes we are hunting for Easter eggs 7 days late...

Ripley's table incident

Apologies to those of you who may have already heard the story about Ripley losing her entire recess for drawing on the tables at school, but I figure I better document it here on the blog or I personally might forget the details!

Here is my email correspondence with Ms. DeSouza, Ripley's homeroom teacher...

-----Original Message-----
From: lawrenbc [mailto:lawrencoope@comcast.net]
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 9:17 PM
To: Michelle DeSouza
Subject: following up on Ripley's table incident

Hi Michelle:

I just wanted to check in with you about Ripley's behavior in class on Wednesday.  After school on Wednesday, she told me that she "owed" her entire Thursday recess because she was drawing on the tables.  We discussed it and agreed that she needed to come into class on Thursday, apologize to you, and let you know that it will not happen again.  At the end of the day today, she told me that she wrote a letter regarding why she wrote on the tables, but that she did NOT apologize to you or let you know that there will not be a repeat of this.  As of this evening, she is under strict instruction to do so tomorrow, and if she does not, there will be consequences at home.

If possible, would you mind prompting Ripley about this tomorrow, if she does not come to you on her own?  Although I will be reminding her in the morning, she then will be at a playdate with Emma Wackman, and later at Lunch Bunch, before she will ever be in your classroom.  I am concerned that she will have much opportunity to forget her responsibility....

Thank you for working with Ripley on this misstep.  If there is any permanent damage to the table, please let me know and we will get it taken care of!


Lawren Coope

Rumor has it that the drawing was a cityscape that spanned two tables.  I only wish someone had snapped a photo.

This is what I put in Ripley's lunch box the next morning (Friday) to remind her of her "responsibility" that afternoon...

Here is the response from Ms. DeSouza later that day...

Ripley came and apologized to me of her own accord right before reading.  :)

Great job Rip, right?  The funny thing is that Ripley was VERY excited to "get" to clean the tables in Ms. D's room during recess.  I think that was supposed to be a PUNISHMENT, but she enjoyed it thoroughly.  I wonder if we've learned any sort of lesson here?

And, in case you were wondering, R is the only kid who has lost her entire recess.  Twice.  Yes, you read that right.  Long after all of this went down, R and I were discussing the recess thing and she mentioned about having lost recess two times.  Apparently she was digging a hole at the base of the slide one day and lost her recess for that too.  All in the same week as the table incident.  Bad week, huh?  And I didn't even mention how that same week she got hit in the eye with the playground swing and got a shiner...

the birthday fun continues...

Two Saturdays ago we had Rip's big birthday celebration at Monart out in Parker. 

13 little girls + hybiscus temporary tatoos + Tahlia the art teacher (who happens to be the temporary art teacher at American Academy too) + art supplies = a Surfs Up birthday party...

We asked the Monart teacher to teach the girls to draw a surfer girl scene -- palm trees, flip flops, surfboards...it kept the girls very focused, busy, and amazingly quiet for a group of 13 little ladies.

Here is Ripley with her finished picture.

LaLa, Fwey and Grandma were all there to help us celebrate.  Fwey (with Ripley below) stayed with the girls through the art lesson, while LaLa and Grandma chatted it up in the other room.

My sweet girlfriends Ellery, Steph and Alecia stuck around to keep me company and help with the party (and for Steph to be my photographer -- thanks Steph for several of the pictures in this post!).  The cutie with the flower in her hair is Graysen, Ellery's youngest.

The room was equally quiet and focused when the cupcakes were served.

 

I about wore myself out making cupcakes this past month...box mix is a beautiful thing, but I did make my own buttercream frosting and it was WELL worth the effort, if I do say so myself.

It was a fun two hours with a bunch of happy, sweet, colorful little girls.  Have you ever seen so many prints on one set of ladies?

 
 
OK, I know my commitment to DOCUMENT things hasn't been as strong as I promised, and this post is two weeks late, but better late than never.  I'm pushing through and working towards getting caught up on all these great stories, I promise...hang in there with me. 

There are so many more stories to tell...