OUCH

when the swelling in Aaron hand did not go down we took him in for an x-ray on Saturday. Turns out he has a broken hand. According to the the person reading the x-ray, a fabulously broken hand ( this IS Aaron ya know). in the above image you can see that he growth plate is completely out of place on his index finger.

Yesterday afternoon was horrible. Chris had to take him into the hospital where they needed to make the decisions to operate or not. At first they were going to operate, Aaron was very nervous (as you can image, so were the rest of us). The doctor, whose name was Chris Bowe ( a good omen?), then decided that it would be better to see the hand specialist first. We meet with him on Monday, he will do a somewhat non-invasive attempt on fixing his hand (they will numb his arm and obstruct his view). if that does not work he will have to have surgery. I hoep this works.

In the big picture, it could be worse.

we are so lucky for all we have. i must know this every moment of life.

hack ack ack

this cold sucks.... didn't' really sleep last night due to this cough.

Poor Aaron. Yesterday he was over a friends house, they were playing basketball in his yard when the wind knocked the basketball stand over, right on Aaron. I am keeping him home today. he got a pretty big bump on his head and his hand is swollen. The doctor said it sounds like he got a mild concussion and we may need to take him today to check his hand. it's not broken but the swelling has not gone down. How will he do origami?!

I had to cancel everything I had going on today because of the bloody cold. i am going t try to rest as much as possible. I am feeling guilty because there is a lot a need to get done here (besides the normal chores), find the missing negative I need for the book, put together curriculum ideas for the east school and so on.

instead I am obsessed with my back yard. the wood chips either need to be replaced or we need to add a ground covering. of course there is always grass, irish moss doesn't' need as much water but I am not sure how much activity it could handle.

my head hurts...back to bed

in the past week I have read two galley's of mystery type book that take place in Portland. I find that strange. One is by John Connolly which is based entirely in Portland and the other by William Martin which takes place in different parts of New England but he spends a good amount of time in the Old Port (in a fictionious antiquarian bookstore). in the John Connolly book the character is friends with Portlander June Fitzpatrick and was hiding out at one point behind Joe's smoke shop. So bizarre... Is there no escape from this city (or "a city in name only" as stated by one of these book)? When are we getting out of here? I also think it's odd that on one hand I complain about how small this place feels and then on the other I am purposely reading these book because of their relationship to Portland.


in other earth shattering news:

- Chris's has had hte same cold for 3 weeks. Now Aidan & I feel sick. hack hack hack
- if things work out I will see Karin, Emmy, Deb & Stephanie on Saturday night.
- Emmy leaves for Italy soon.
- Max's blue bass is on it's way to the shop for some minor repairs
- G had a horrible day last week. I think he is still feeling bad
- Joelle, Sammy and Z are coming on Friday (unless we need to quarantine the house)
- Aaron has turned this week into the week of many play dates
- Mika and Henry are bored of winter

okay...

i'm doing it.

after saying I wasn't going to do this for years and years I have finally decided to do weddings and portraits. what made me change my mind? 1. kids being old enough 2. finding a partner that I would enjoy working with and 3. it really is a good way to make money. Jennifer and I are currently putting together our information. With my schedule and her classes (she is a senior at MECA) we plan on taking just a few jobs at first but will get more aggressive in a few months. We did start a blog and may hang up a few flyer's locally. Not much on it now. Eventually we'll get a web page going too.

for portland families

Chris's friend Alex is having a kids workshop tomorrow from 10-1.
Sounds like lot's of fun. I think they are working on Cornell like peices. The address is 142 High Street.

yahooooooooooo!!!

Hi this is Aidan! Last week I had baseball tryouts and... I MADE IT!!! I am on B&M Beans! The fart team! Sorry couldn't resist! ;) HA HA!!!!!!

car alarms

an invention straight from the depths of hell. do they really stop people from stealing cars? when I hear them I either want the thief to speed it up or to track down the owner of the car and blow a horn in front of their house for a while. last night a car alarm across the street went on for well over an hour. finally at 11:45 I called the police and were able to track down the owner. I am so tired today. not fun.

before this annoying event Chris and I watched this piece on the art theft and search for hte Isabella Stewart Gardner Museums stolen paintings. Very interesting. had the best collection of characters. watch it if you can.

dumb and dumb

in the same weekend I managed to break mycell phone and Max lost his.

if you have recently upgraded yoru phone and are looking to get rid of your old (must be cingular that takes a certain card) one, please let us know.

things are looking up

Here's the plan for our trip: on our way down we will stop and see Jane in Virginia. we will have 3-4 days with Dad and Charlotte. 2 days in Vero Beach. then we are off to Disney. we have rented a cabin. it is a 5 min boat ride from the main entrance. this way, when the kids have the afternoon meltdown (which is a given at disney) we can go back and eat lunch and swim. From there we head up to Georgia to see Gabriel. then home.

plus when the boys and I went to the Y this morning it wasn't' freezing and we are getting a hardware store right up the street.

Deb tells me that she has spotted cardinals. Spring is on it's way!!

Aidan, Aaron and the boys down the street spend most of yesterday walking around the neighborhood with shovels. they made $5.50 each. Their method. they would spot a house with snow and start shoveling. if the person was home, they'd come out and ask if they were doing it out of the goodness of their heart or for $. the boys answered, "we'll do it for free unless you would like to pay us" (and this happened every time) they made a variety of amounts. one guy, $10.00. one lady cookies (yes, we knew her). Too bad they didn't' do this earlier in the year.

I went to a 70's party last night at Zero Station. Was very fun. I don't' have much in the line of 70's style clothing but was able to put something together. My new hair do was what really pulled it off. someone thought it was a wig.

Words from Max:

I went to poker last night. we didn't' play (as usual) but they did have a cake for me. Jesse gave me a toy dog. I also got some cd's victor wooten, primus and les claypool.

words from Aidan:

Hi, I'm Aidan. I am so cool and the red sox are going to go all the way this year. and....I had baseball tryouts last week. I will find out in one week if I made it.

max said I type so well I could be secretary.

because you need to smile

I could show you the whole episode but I will just post this one song.

I posted about this episode before. i really like musicals. Meg, I did see this as a possible jump the shark moment from your post.

Good thing

we postponed our trip. If not, we would have left eary this morning. The weather is horrible and G is throwing up.

Life is funny sometimes.

i know i'm nuts

so there is no need to remind me.

in my desperate need for guidance I decided to do a tarot spread. I am seeing that it looks like there may be good times ahead, change and success at something that may be seemingly stagnant? how can that be? I am not good at reading my own tarot. Especially when I want something new to happen. a bit out of practice on the whole. thoughts? I e-mailed this to Deb who is so good at reading.

* Deb pretty much got the same thing I did. I like how she narrowed the change bit down:

afraid of change, when change is right and natural now. go where your fears are but be adaptable, flexible.

why?

What am I doing that is so important or time consuming that I have not updated my families blog? nothing. nothing at all. I mean we are doing things. lot's of things. good things. bad things. fun things. boring things. but nothing worth writing about really. I feel like i am doing more preparing the way for things.

max was expelled.

Kidding..... just trying to make us sound more interesting then we really are. actually he told me to write that. he also said he hopes your leg falls off.

Happy Birthday Max!!!

The start of the baseball season

boy. there is nothing better than playing baseball in maine. Especially in March. I am not sure what I enjoy more... searing for the white ball in the snow or having to dig out of the hole it created and is now frozen in.

Max and I took turns sitting in the car. Here I am pitching to Aidan

Here I am ducking when he hits the ball towards me. My big issue with baseball is fear of the baseball. Wimp

This morning Aaron joined us on our morning trek to the Y. he was so cute. when I woke at 5:45 he was pacing in the hallway.

scary movie

this was a good/scary kids movie. check out these movie posters. I wonder if Aaron and G will end up in our bed tonight? hmmm...

Max and Sammy 2 years ago.

We are going to postpone our trip a few weeks due to a going on @ the store. The kids are a bit disappointed but fully understand. we may be able to take a bit more time this way.

that's all I have to report. off to get some work done then I'm in the boys school. fun fun :)

My mornign buddy

Aidan and I have begun going to the Y in the morning. He loves getting up and out while the house is still asleep. While i exercise he plays basketball. This morning he had the gym all to himself, when I went to go get him he was running around, shooting hoops with a big smile on his face.
We tried to wake Max, didnt' work out to well... sort of like trying to wake a bear.

boys in snow

On Friday we had another snow day. second of the season. Last time there were barely any cars on the road I let the boys play with our neighbor in the snow banks. they stayed out most of the day creating their own world out of snow our little street. This time there seemed to be more activity on the street so they had to stay in a yard. (they did find a tree to climb in a neighbors yard until she started screaming that it was her tree and she was going to call the police on them. Guess they didnt' understand that when I said yard I meant ours or their friends). They ended up in our yard building this hungry snowman. He was very cute. sorry I didn't take a better photo, that would have involved me getting dressed and that just wasn't happening. Today he is a pile of sticks, olives and stones. poor snowman.

it's very cold again today. I can feel the money seeping out the windows.

It seems so strange that Max is almost 14. 14. 14 years old. CRAZY

Chris has not smoked for 18 days.

sometimes i wish there was an adult in the house

When Chris and I were first married we decided to move to CA. This very large decision was done over a bottle of wine (or two) and the non refundable one way tickets were purchased that evening. We almost moved to Seattle but changed our mind since my mom lived in San Diego. That turned out to be a great experience but one would think that we would have learned to put more thought into decisions. Up until now we have been pretty good about this. Last night we bought tickets and are moving to Cork, Ireland in 3 mos.

kidding... though I would love to do it. seriously.

a week or so ago we decided to take a road trip to FL. It sounded like such a great time that night and the kids are so excited. Now that we are actually putting it into action I realize that it's nuts. this is going to be a whirlwind trip. 1 night here, 1 night there, 2 night here and angry family members who feel they are being slighted.

why? why? why?

plus... the thought of leaving Henry in a kennel was just to disturbing for us so we decided that we were going to take him with us. has anyone ever taken a dog on a road trip?

maybe I should have someone house sit.