Memorabilia #17: Artwork. . .

I realized today that when I posted Memorabilia #1, I said I would be going through boxes for a few days.  I must have been in denial to think that I could empty the family room, Gloria's room and the room Zach moved out of 6 months ago (leaving most of his stuff behind) in just 3 days.  I'm definitely making progress but it feels like it might never end.  One of the things that keeps me going is knowing that I can post some of the treasures that I find right here on the blog.  Plus I'm really enjoying my new scanner/copier/printer that is WIRELESS.  I'm easily entertained. 

Today I found piles and piles of artwork.  There is definitely a difference in the way Zach and Gloria draw.  I don't want to say it's necessarily gender differences but it just might be.  Gloria tends to draw pretty pictures with princesses and ponies, rainbows and unicorns, friends and family.  Zach, on the other hand, draws creepy, gory, bloody pictures with swords and jagged edged weapons.  Here is a little sample of what I'm talking about.  Both of the pictures were drawn in the past, the first one was probably drawn 6 or 7 years ago and the second one, maybe 3 or 4 years ago.  Try to guess who each one belongs to:

I assumed the second picture was depicting a little teen-aged angst but when I asked Zach about it he pointed to the creepy figure and said, "No, that's Gloria. . . "  And somehow that made me feel better.

Memorabilia #16: Zach's First Quiz Trip. . .

This is one of the few pictures I have of Zach's first year of quizzing.  I wasn't involved at all as a coach or otherwise so I love that I have this cool picture.  I'm assuming Jeff took it since I believe he drove the team to this meet at Hayden Lake that year.  Zach is in the 6th grade here so the other Zac and Ashlie must be 8th graders.

This coming weekend we will be traveling to Zach's very last quiz meet as a participant.  I imagine he will continue to be involved in some way in the future but this will be the very last meet that he will compete in.  It's also in Hayden Lake.  Kind of bittersweet. . .

(Note from Jeff:
Hey Tanya...
No mystery there.... It was at the Nezperc War Monument along US 95, on WhiteBird Hill between Whitebird and Grangeville. :)

We didn't take the trek through OR because the kids wanted to see Idaho and take a more scenic route.

It's a great photo and we had a good time that weekend.

I wish you all well and best of luck to Zach. Love and hugs to everyone.
Miss you all.
Jeff)

Thanks Jeff!!!

PS On a totally unrelated note, technology has been kicking my butt lately.  I've been winning some battles with my new fancy-schmancy wireless printer but I'm not a fan of IE9 and I'm not sure how I feel about the changes to Blogger since I added the "new" editor.  I guess time will tell. . . 

Sneak Peek. . .

Memorabilia #16: OLD Youth Group Pics. . .

The Family Room: The BEFORE Picture. . .

Ugh. . .

Years of spending all of our time and money on the business has led to obvious neglect of our home. I'm not much of a home decorator to begin with since I'm not sure if minimalism is an actual style, so it doesn't bother me so much if my walls are white and my wall hangings are mostly non-existent. What DOES bother me is that my kitchen chairs don't match, my kitchen cupboards and counter tops have taken 16 years of abuse, I have no trim around any of the doors and a chunk of my carpet has a bare spot from where the dogs tore it up when it was only about 1 week new.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here and say that if I lived alone, which I'm very glad I do NOT, I would have maybe a couch and a table and a desk for my laptop. And very little else. I have learned that when you have "stuff" you have to spend time on your "stuff". Dusting and sorting and moving and situating. I would much rather do something else. I've spent the last 10 years purging my stuff. I used to LOVE collecting books. Now I use the Library and the Internet and have gotten rid of all but a few dear-to-me-books. (Obviously pictures are important to me so I have several boxes that I can't seem to do anything with but can't get rid of them either.) There isn't much in my closet because I've never had an eye for fashion- jeans and a t-shirt suit me fine. I'm drawing near the end of my home schooling years so there are about 5 book shelves worth of stuff that will soon be finding a home through Craig's List. I like the fact that I don't have a lot of stuff.

BUT. . . I don't live with minimalists. I wouldn't trade any of them but I'll just say that sometimes I'm fighting a losing battle. I won't mention any names. . . Gloria, Rob, Zach . . . but there has been a collection of stuff piling up in what used to be the family room over the last year. We don't really use that room for anything and it's connected to the garage which now houses the newest family member, the baby Mustang, so it's an easy room to close the door on and try to forget about. It's an understatement to say that it has been a stuff-magnet. More like a Stuff-Explosion. I've avoided it just like I avoid the back yard. But it won't go away.

I've spent the last week or so facing the giant that is my family room. I have to take some of the blame because, due to the fact that I couldn't get to the attic stairs, boxes of things I started to sort last spring were still around as well as the Christmas boxes that didn't get put back up there LAST Christmas (made it much easier to get to them this year, however). All of this is very difficult to admit but I can finally face it now since there seems to be a light at the end of this long, dark, crowded tunnel. The family room is now almost empty and there are plans, REAL plans, in place to make it a cozy, you know, FAMILY ROOM. Imagine.

I hope to have an "after" picture within a week to post with the "before" picture at the top of this page. . . (Keeping my fingers crossed. . . )

Locks of Love. . .

So Gloria decided a few weeks ago that she wanted to have a shorter hair cut. I didn't want her to make a hasty decision that she might regret so I made sure her appointment was far enough down the road that she would have time to change her mind. Well, the appointment was today and she didn't change her mind.

Mechelle has been cutting Gloria's hair since her very first hair cut as a toddler and I totally trust her judgement. Gloria brought her a picture of what she wanted her hair to look like and Mechelle made it happen. . .

Gloria's loss could become someone else's gain since it was long enough to send to Locks of Love. . .

Gloria was very happy with the outcome. . .

The photos with my phone couldn't do it justice so I took a few more at home:

This is the picture that the style was taken from:

It's pretty darn close. . .

Memorabilia #15: My Babies. . .

Memorabilia #14: Friends. . .

Memorabilia #13: Musikgarten. . .

1998 was a big transition year for our family. We lost Grandma Bert suddenly in August just a few days before Zach's 6th birthday, I quit the daycare with very little notice for a variety of reasons but mostly so I could help Grandpa Harry not be so lonely, Zach started kindergarten in September and Gloria was born in December. I found myself without a job for the first time since I was 16. It's not that I didn't have anything to do, though. Zach attended kindergarten at Cole Christian School in Boise so by the time I dropped him off and went back home, it was time to pick him up. I had my hands full with a new baby as well as spending quite a bit of time with Grandpa Harry and taking care of my nephew, Spencer. I don't know if I had a little post partum or if the events of the end of 1998 just threw me for a total loop but I know I wasn't really myself.

If all of that wasn't enough, BFC was going through a transition of it's own and the church had a major split in February of 1999. We stayed. Most of our friends left.

Sometime that spring I decided I needed to get a job. I don't remember what my thought process was about it but I was used to being employed and we probably needed the money. Spencer was in daycare a few days a week since I couldn't take him full time and he had a music class that took place 1 day/week at his school. My sister told me about it and said I could easily do these kinds of classes. I contacted the owner of Musical Kids, became a certified Musikgarten Instructor and started teaching music in the fall of '99.


I didn't love it but I didn't hate it either. The first year I taught exclusively in day cares and preschools to the 3 to 6 age group. It was part time, just a few mornings/week and my parents helped out with Gloria. I even taught music at my dad's daycare in Middleton. This is an example of the program that I would hold at the end of the year so that the parents could see what they were paying for:



When I took the Musikarten workshop, I especially enjoyed the Mommy and Me classes so I started one of those at BFC just to see what kind of response I would get. I took Gloria with me and Elsie and Megan (and their mommys!) signed up, too. I ended up offering several of these classes over the next few years:



In the meantime, Rob was starting up a little side business in our garage.

Things are a little blurry in my mind because there were so many things going on at that time but I believe he built his first case in the beginning of 2000 and quit his full time job at Aatronics at the end of 2001. I worked at Musical Kids until the spring of 2002 when I got tired of handing over 50% of my earnings to the owner. It just wasn't cost effective.

I still have the note that Rob wrote me sometime that spring that says something like, "Quit working for Kristen (the owner of Musical Kids) and work with me".

So I did. . .