CONSOLIDATION ~ Shadow's Birthdays

I take a lot of pictures.

 A LOT!

So often I find I need to upload these bad boys to an external hard drive...

or the cloud...or anywhere that is not my computer. 

While going through the pics to wipe my laptop clean, I realized I have an accumulation of pictures from Shadow's birthdays (and such)!

I thought for fun I would just put them all in this post and document this business!

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2008

Shadow Raven was born on a snowy day in December, back in 2008.

Brent and I were lucky enough to be there for her birth

 (mainly because we drove Judy and Greg to the hospital).

And let me tell you, being on the other end of labor is not fun! 

I mean all THREE of my labors combined weren't as long as Judy was in labor...

This whole being in labor for a day or more business is crazy!

Anyways, Shadow was so tiny and sweet...

Making sure baby's vitals are good to go.

Taking some of her first looks around...

Holding Daddy's hand

Blowing bubbles

 After leaving the hospital Shadow and Judy stayed with us a couple days, while the snow settled down, until transportation was safer. We got to help Judy rest and get lots of sleeping newborn baby snuggles.

I can't remember if this was Max meeting Shadow for the first time....

Holding Grandpa's finger

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2009

Fast forward one year to 2009! 

I just had August that October 

(I always felt I got pregnant so fast after being around sweet newborn baby Shadow)

 I can't find any pics of an actual birthday party, but I have some of our December gatherings...

(just had to throw August in here! 2mnths old)

Love her eyes...

Rockin' the cute fluffy orange boots

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2010

Now 2 years old her curls were out-of-control CUTE!

All my boys at the party, with their papa

Shadow opening her presents...

Rebecca played happy birthday on the keyboard! While the penguin cupcake cake was brought out. (I have no picture of the actual cake)

The only proof of the penguin cupcake cake, Max's teeth showing the frosting...

August 1yr old now...being entertained by the bubbles.

Getting her annual fireman sweatshirt from Uncle Jay.

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2011

August and Shadow are almost the same size now and play together great!

3 and 2 year olds can do that...

He especially liked her vanity/piano/princess toy...

Can you believe they misspelled her name?

The game Judy made for the party. The kids actually did really good with it...

Let's not forget this year Charles joined the ranks...

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2012

How time flies(especially in a blog)...Shadow turns 4yrs old!

The kids are all giNORMous  at this point.

Judes kicked it up a notch with the game planning this year.

There were several games with prizes for the kids.

*It was nice having so many birthdays in the same location,

for comparison sake.

This year they got her name right!

Shadow is wearing the birthday present from us...a sequin skirt and polka dot stockings (I still want my girl)

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2013

This year Shadow turned 5!

We weren't able to go to town for her first ever bowling birthday party.

We were super bummed!

But, here are some pictures of our December gathering...

Shadow at one year old meeting Santa (papa)

Shadow at 5 years old, helping Santa

And we hope to not miss anymore birthday parties!

Life Imitating Art?

Creativity flows through me.

I am a master at starting projects and working on different crafts. 

I have sewed my own clothes, quilts, and pillows.

At the school I used to work at I would rock the bulletin boards.

My older sister makes jewelry.

My Dad can paint amazingly with pretty much any medium. 

So, I figured with all this creative potential I could finally risk taking an Art class at the college level.

Not only did I need an art credit, drawing sounds more fun than music theory (aka lots of reading)

The first class we literally just drew lines and circles. 

We had to break our conventional way of holding our "tool" (graphite for this exercise) we had to unlearn using lines and points. We were to hold the "tool" with our whole hand. No pencil grip.

Use our hips and full extent of our arm. (like a sword fight with your canvas)

Now in week two I can say I successfully assemble my easel.

Our second class in week one after lines and circles, we were taught about value.

Value = Dark and Light

Fading and making mute values...

We had to create a storm.

Clouds.

Drawing clouds.

Sounds easy enough. 

We were given instructions like:

 "NO detail"

"Use the edge of your tool"

"Close your eyes and see the storm, now project that images on your canvas"

Well, this is apparently what I projected....

While drawing I did have the canvas horizontal, upside down, every which way trying to make sense of what I was doing. This drawing pad is huge (to me) like 2'x3'

 In conclusion, I must have been thinking of under water. I can see sea urchins, a dead star fish, and squiggly seaweed...

Clouds?

Maybe not!

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Now in week two we had to play around more with VALUE. 

This time we were given an image of a squirrel.

Yes, a cute little squirrel eating a pine cone for us to massacre with our inexperience....

We first had to draw him upright, and then we were to turn the photo upside down and draw him upside down, only focusing on shapes and value.

Pretty much, I was the only one in the class whose upright and upside down looked almost identical!

The instructor was nice and said that it just shows how "focused" I was on what I was doing!

Here is my squirrel UPRIGHT!

 And, here is the one which I drew completely upside down.

Hopefully, I will learn a lot of cool things in this class. Then I can get really into art and that would be the start of another fun hobby.

I just wish I had the attention span to stay with things a tad longer...before they get boring to me.
 For now I will just try to imitate being an artist...

Whew...A Weekend for Two

This past weekend (as I noticed most of my blogs start this way) was Brent's company holiday party. Which used to consist of a giant plate of chicken wings and bowling, have grown into linens on the table with a hotel stay. This years the hotel was the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Portland.

I was incredibly bummed when I got there to find my camera battery was dead, shockingly again!

I was only able to snap a few photos of our hotel room while Brent got ready.

In preparation for the trip I had to recruit Grandma to watch the kids and the dog. (She is not too fond of the dog) Leaving early on Friday morning I headed over the Mt. Hood pass, making my way to my sister's house in Tigard. Luckily there was no snow on the mountain roads.

Brent and I connected to make our way into the lovely downtown traffic and chaos. There are the slogans such as "Keep Portland Weird" that really ring true when you find yourself downtown.

The hotel had valet parking only for a little over $30. I was more interested in finding somewhat closer, cheaper overnight parking. We found a garage one block away for $23. Not a super great rate, but still earned our business.

Cocktails and appetizers started at 7pm, with dinner starting at 7:45pm. It was way later than I am use to eating. I did not do a great job planning accordingly and by 7pm I was ravenous  moderately hungry.

The perks as your hotel goes up in price...EVERYTHING costs more!

All of the lights had to be manually turned on. There was not "light switch" weird...

gotta dig the carpet! Love patterns with lines...

Our soggy view from the room. The construction on the building across the street!

Brent's boss hands out tickets which you use at the bar for drinks. Making him one of the first people everyone makes a point in seeing right away.

Brent is always a gentleman and lets me just perch myself around the other wives and female employees to talk, while he caters to my beverage and food needs. It was actually great table arrangements and we had the pleasure of sitting with two other gals who were Coffee People peeps. (So we've known them a long time)

Dinner was great.

We drank and were merry!

Brent's company Heads went around giving speeches and pats on the backs to each other. The dinner ended with giant layered chocolate creations...

We finally made our way back to the room, close to midnight. With the intention of going back out to paint the town red! BUT, when we attempted to find everyone they disappeared, plus they were going to a bar that was 8 blocks away...and frankly I was way too tired for those shenanigans.The town painting will have to wait until next time. We went BACK up to the room.

Before I could slip my feet out of my heeled boots, Brent was asking if I wanted to go running in the rec. room. "Um...NO!" (Mind you we are now past midnight)

Still we walked to it and checked it out. It was a very nice rec. room. Tons of weights, mats, and treadmills, music playing...

The next morning Brent put one of those treadmills to use, while I showered and got ready for our day of adoring each other (minus ALL the kids)!

We had SO many ideas it was hard to get them all in.

One thing we had to "put a pin in" was going to Voodoo donuts. Brent really wanted to go. Like, seriously bad...but it was raining! We decided we will go in a couple weeks when  we do have the kids (stay tuned).

Instead: We went to one of our SE Portland favorites Cup and Saucer for an actual breakfast. They no longer have my favorite jalapeno omelet (sad face), although they could still make it if I asked...

Ahh, SE Portland streets. Like this one for instance, is supposed to be a two-way street?! Anyone who did not grow up around here might find that weird.

Brent and I usually like to order one thing and split OR we order two things and swap halves.  This time we ordered a scramble (substituted the tofu for eggs) that had sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, stuff like that. And biscuits with vegetarian gravy.

Can I just say having time to eat is amazing.

Sitting and actually tasting your food, while enjoying conversation...ahhh!

It was awesome.

After breakfast we swung by for a quick cup of coffee and chat with our favorite person/grandmother Annette! She and I were going to be hanging out the next day, but we stopped by so she could see Brent. She was elated to see her "honey Brent". We made tentative plans to take her to Idaho during Spring Break to see Brent's cousin and family.

Another thing that turned out awesome...

We actually went and saw a movie. Catching Fire, the second movie in the Hunger Games series. I wanted to see the Hobbit, Desolation of Smaug, but Brent often falls asleep during those movies. It is nice when I have an opportunity to be flexible and make him happy. (I've been working on this)

After the movie we made our way back to Salem (where the apartment/crash pad is)

We picked up a few things at the store, for Brent to make us his salmon chowder.

We also picked up another movie. While Brent cooked I prepped appetizers.

We snuggled and ate our food, it was great!

Brent had to work that Sunday, so as mentioned before I made my way over to Annette's. This was one visit that I have been looking forward to for awhile. Every time I venture over there I have August and his little paws on everything. He rearranges her pictures and magnets, stacks her pine cones and rocks. This time we just sat drank our coffee and worked on a very difficult puzzle!

 This puzzle...

 Annette's rocks were wet and beautiful..

I headed back home around 3pm, because while I was in Portland over the weekend the mountain had got over two feet of snow! The roads did not look too good.

(the following is a dramatization)

To my surprise when I got up there they were cleared of snow. Crazy!

I arrived home to six arms and kisses.

While I was away, grandma kept the boys busy baking breads, playing games, and having special movie nights.

We all had pretty excellent weekends!