All About Me

I did this layout for the ndisb newsletter, originally. It didn't make it into the newsletter, so I'm posting it here. It was fun to put together.

Ten Long Years

I've had the Steeleye Span version of "Ten Long Years" going through my head, which is actually about a prison sentence, but hey, it's a cool song.



We were married ten years ago today, September 6, 1996, in the Salt Lake temple. It's been quite an adventure, with nine months in Korea, then three years in Newfoundland--a lot of uncertainty and not being sure where we were going to end up. Since we've been in Washington a lot of things are more settled, but we've definitely found parenting to be the biggest adventure of all. And well, we're still not sure where we're going to end up. I'm thankful to have Doug to share this grandest adventure with.



Yesterday we went to the park with our Bishop's daughter to see if we could get some pictures. It was kind of rough. Kate has been developing camera aversion. And, of course, since we were at the park, she wanted to play, not pose with Mom and Dad. This is probably the best one that we got.

Doug and I both tend to be pretty laid-back people, and not overly sentimental or demonstrative, but I wanted to take this chance to express how much I love him. He's been my companion, my partner, my consultant, the father of my child, my support and encouragement. It means more than anything to have someone with me who cares about the things that I care about, who wants me to be happy, who's willing to work with my weird food problems and occasional crankiness. The fact that he also thinks a trip to the Indian lunch buffet and the bookstore is a great way spend a day is just icing on the proverbial cake. He's such a great dad and I love seeing his joy in just spending time with our daughter.

I asked Doug last night if he would write something for me, for our anniversary, and this is what he did for me (yes, I cried when I read it):

10 years.

Yup, a whole decade!

I think about various other milestones and experiences in my life. High school was 4 years. My mission was 18 short months. The longest I ever lived anywhere was 6 years (until Provo, which was a total of 11 non-contiguous fun-packed years.) I've been in school longer than I've been married--well, I guess that's where my priorities and opportunities were up to this point!

Then I think again, in wonder--I've been married for 10 years. I've got a wife --another person--with whom I've spent 10 years living, laughing, crying, driving, cooking, reading, sleeping, and lots of other -ing things. 10 years! Has it been that long? It must have, but it seems different because of the subtle changes that happen over time, and the fact that we have done some rather extraordinary things together.

Some things about my wife haven't changed--the oatmeal, the long showers, the orange juice in the fridge, and the desire to feed furry things. But other things have--there is a richness, and a depth, that happened in my long-term relationship with her, as I have shared experiences with her beyond what my own limited viewpoint would be.

I have also changed, in some ways. Marriage can do that to a man--take him out of himself and try to put somebody else's needs as greater or equal to his own. I can't think of anything significant, in my core, that I have had to sacrifice (as if that were a bad thing). There are things that I have chosen to change, but there are not many, and they have been minor.

And this is, in some ways, an important measure of our relationship. In the electromagnetic spectra of our lives, we share many wavelengths. (It is a measure of our fit that I can even use terms like this, and know that she will understand, and laugh!) I chose Helena, and to my astonishment, she chose me back. Out of many people, she chose me as the one she felt likely to succeed with. And I have never forgotten that.

It's not just compatibility. That seems to be a term to mean that something X will fit into a space in Y. Certainly, there are some gaps, some aches, from which our permanent loving relationship has erased chronic pain. We are not the same, and sometimes the gears don't quite mesh. But those were only a few, and then we find out that the important things are beyond the gaps. We fit, but we blend. We complement, but we also share important vectors. We experience failures, but do not isolate them as the whole of the being. It is incredible to me that we share, to a large degree, a destination, and the means to get there. Once the initial shock of what is termed love brings a person's life to a standstill, then this shared movement and desire is so far beyond it, that love seems to be a poor term for it.

But love is the word I will use, and hope that she can understand what it signifies. Here's to another 10 arbitrary measurements of distance and time! And then some more! Let us continue on our journey together, where we can help each other become the things we desire to be.

Digital Chopsticks

Here's what I've been working on lately! We had these super cute pictures of Kate playing with chopsticks at I Love Bento, our local Japanese place run by Koreans, so I made this set with the word for "chopsticks" in different languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese). I took of a picture of a real set of chopsticks from I Love Bento and extracted them, then made one version uncrossed with no shadows, and one version crossed with realistic shadows that I made myself. The shadows were fun. I ended up taking the chopsticks outside and crossing them the way I wanted, and taking a picture so I could look at the way the shadows fell.



Here's the layout I made with the pictures of Kate. Isn't she funny? She was about fifteen months old there. Maybe she'll catch on to chopsticks early. I remember first trying them when I was about six.

I made two red chop-style stamps for the chopsticks set, and they were so cool that I ended up getting sidetracked and made a bunch more. It was fun to work on something quick. I got each set put together and uploaded to the store in a day. (And these are small enough that I was able to upload them from home without any trouble from our Comcast connection--hooray!)



Oh yeah--here's a link in case anybody wants it!

Elvis is dead and I don't feel so good myself.

Kate was 20 months old yesterday. Boy, August just zoomed by. Where did it go?

Kate has been learning about counting. Sort of. When we're looking at books, we'll ask her if she can count something, and she'll point to things and say, "One, two, three, five!" and then clap. So cute.



We've been sick. Kate came down with it first, and passed it on to me and Doug. (Yep, we share.) We all ended up staying home from church yesterday. Actually I wasn't feeling too bad by then, but I didn't feel up to taking Kate, and I didn't think she should be going to the nursery sick (though, come to think of it, that's probably where she picked it up in the first place). So we stayed home and recuperated. Kate has developed a violent aversion to having her nose wiped. She screams, she struggles, she runs the other way. Nose-wiping has become a three-person operation. (That's one wiper, one wipee, one human vise grip.)

The Bishop asked me if I could print out some of the photos that I took when I was in Young Women's to replace the very outdated photos that are currently up in the display case outside his office. I put this together yesterday:



(If you look closely, you can see Kate in the bottom right picture!) I'm not working on my commercial stuff on Sundays, so it was fun to putter around with something else for a while. It kind of reminds me of a movie poster. I used a paper from Veronica Ponce's "Cottage Bluff" kit that is free at Two Peas here.

Surprise!

Amy B. posted this picture of her daughter on her blog (and isn't that layout wonderful?). I'd seen the picture before and expressed admiration for the dress she was wearing, so I had to post a comment and express it again. Actually what I said was, "I totally want that dress!" And she sent it to me! (!!!) Kate got a package from Libby, with the dress in it and a cute little denim jumper (and everybody knows how much I love denim...). What a fun surprise! Thanks Amy!

Music Time with Daddy

Doug and Kate playing with the cittern (it's like a big mandolin with ten strings), in the back yard.

Sidewalk Chalk (and other stuff)

We found a few stubs of sidwalk chalk outside by the neighbor's back porch, and Kate was having such fun with them that Doug picked up a bucket for us. Kate, and Doug, and occasionally some of the other kids in the complex, have all been decorating our patio. It's very colorful.

This last week we went up to the Seattle temple with our friend Tom, and left Kate with a family in our ward. We were gone for over seven hours, which was definitely longer than we've left her before, but she did just fine. (We, on the other hand, were sitting in the cafeteria saying, "I wonder what Kate's doing right now?")

We've noticed a difference in the way Kate plays with her toys, in the past couple of weeks. She'll sit and play with the little Fisher Price people for long stretches at a time, moving them around and making little talky noises. We wonder what they are saying to each other. We were at Target recently and she must have spent a good twenty minutes playing with the Schleich animal figures, completely engrossed. Now we're trying to decide which ones we should get for her first. Probably the lions, or the tigers. Or both.

What's brown and sticky?

Here's the marshmallow on a stick that I made for the ndsib August mega kit. I had a real stick that I took a picture of, then I traced it with the vector paths pen tool and filled it in and added my own shading. It needed a bit more texture, so I tried taking the original photo and overlaying it on the new version, but the lighting was opposite what I had created and it just didn't look good. So I thought, "How can I get the texture without the shading?" and it hit me--high pass filter. Ta da!

Spam Spam Spam Spam

I've frequently had to delete one or two spam comments a day, which is not a big deal, but the volume has suddenly increased drastically, so I have turned on comment moderation. This means that I get to approve or reject any comment before it gets posted. I've been doing a lot of rejecting. Darn spammers.

19 months

Kate is nineteen months old today! We've really noticed a difference in her language in the past week or so, as far as putting words together and repeating what we say. It's a hoot. (I've been trying to get her to say "Hey nonny nonny.") She shows signs of understanding "big" and "little," though colors still seem to be largely eluding her.

While we were out walking I showed Kate a flower called a Lily--the same name as her tiger puppet--and now she keeps pointing at random flowers and saying "Lily!" She also thinks that any little bird now is a "dee-dee-dee." She's so observant and imitative, and she remembers things.

Fire!

I made this in Photoshop yesterday (finished it up yesterday, anyway). It's going to be in the August mega kit at ndisb. Now I'm working on a marshmallow on a stick.

Keeping Cool

One of the things I liked about this apartment is the patio and the little grassy lawn area out back. Of the four buildings in the complex, ours is the only one where the back porches face east, so we're nice and shady in the afternoon. We've been spending a lot of time out there while it's been so hot.

This is Kate on Sunday, with Ozzie, one of her puppet friends. (We couldn't decide whether he was supposed to be a cheetah or a leopard, so we declared him an ocelot and named him Ozzie.) She was so cute with her little pink skirt on, I just had to get some pictures. We've discovered that if she's out there barefoot she's less likely to run around the side of the building where the beauty bark is, so we don't have to keep chasing after her. We can sit outside and draw or grade papers or talk to Grandma on the cell phone.

When Kate sees this picture she points and says, "Ossie! Ossie!"

Brother, can you spare a bird?

I have a new project which involves drawing animals (and other things). I did this little guy yesterday. I've been teaching Kate to say "chickadee-dee-dee!" She's got the "dee-dee-dee" part down pretty well. And when we were outside the other day we saw a real chickadee, so she got to make the connection.

I had this idea just a little while ago and immediately started searching for photos on pbase and contacting people to ask if I could use their pictures. It's been a real pleasure to converse with these talented, generous people who share a love of nature and the visual image, and I've been thrilled by responses from people like Tom Robbins and Greg Lavaty, who said I could use any of their photos that I want (as long as I credit them and let them know which ones I use). They have so many wonderful, gorgeous pictures. It's seriously like being a kid in a candy store. (Check them out! The chickadee is Tom's.)

I posted this on Two Peas not long ago:

Five reasons why digital designing is better than drawing pencil portraits

• I don't have to make sure my hands are completely clean and dry before I start working.
• I can eat (and drink) while I'm doing it.
• It's not such a big deal if my daughter jostles my elbow in the middle of something.
• I don't have to worry about the post office losing or damaging my designs.
• Two words: undo button!

So now I'm designing and drawing. This should be a bit less stressful than doing portraits, though. At least that's the plan. The chickadee only took me a couple of hours, which is promising. (And we got our scanner hooked back up, finally! Yay! It's been in a box since the move.)

Things have been going well at ndisb--over 200 people have downloaded my firefly sample tag, and about 30 have actually bought the kit. Off to a good start!

Cheesy grin

Well, it's actually a goldfish cracker grin. But they're cheesy.

Look, she's got teeth! Those top ones poked through, finally, too. She had a couple of molars come in before the top front teeth. Our Kate is an odd one.

Kate has started putting words together--mostly with "more," though the other day she was saying "my Daddy!" very cutely. I don't think she knows what "my" means but she sure looked pleased with herself when she was saying it.

Doug has been exchanging family history information with Ola in Norway. He sent us a file with documents going back to the 1600's. Lots of neat stuff. Ola and Doug are fifth cousins once removed.

Boogie Kate

Yesterday we went out to the Freedom Fest at Fort Lewis for a little while. There was a retro 70's band called The Afro-Desiacs (or something like that--I never saw it written out). When we went into the concert area to check them out, they were playing that song that goes "Boogie-oogie-oogie till you just can't boogie no more." So here's Kate boogieing. (That looks funny. Boogying?)



We had a pretty laid-back kind of day. We figured Kate might appreciate fireworks, but would appreciate them even more when she's a little older, so we stayed home. It turned out to be a good thing that we were home, because we got a call from a man in Norway who was doing some family history research. Doug's mom has done a lot of geneaology and has information on where the family came from. This was somebody on the other end of things looking for information on where the family went. It turns out he and Doug are distant cousins. That was pretty cool.

I'd like to send big hugs to some friends who lost their father a couple of days ago. He will be missed.

Here it is!

My big news: I'm now a designer at ndisb.com! (That's Natural Designs in Scrapbooking.) I got my firefly kit up in the store today. It's official--I've got my profile picture there and everything. Woo hoo! (Yes, I'm excited....) And I'll be featured as a new designer in the July newsletter, which should be out in the next week or so. Theresa and everybody else at ndisb have been just great, showing me the ropes and helping me get set up. The biggest problem was getting those big files uploaded--apparently our Comcast cable modem connection, for which we pay good money every month, does not like uploads of more than 10MB or so. Doug was able to take my files to school and send them from there.

You can see all my stuff (so far) here. If you download the free sample tag, there's a coupon for 10% off the full kit. I was especially pleased with the way the stitches and my larkshead knot ribbon turned out.

Doug has been so amazingly patient and helpful as I've been working on all this (everything always takes longer than you think it's going to...). For my next project I'm going to tackle some of these pictures from Ohio. Actually my immediate next project probably should be straightening up the house a bit. And then I really, really have to free up some space on my external hard drive.

Sneaking in an update...

Kate is 18 months old today! How the time has flown. We went to the park and she had a great time on the slide. She can't quite figure out how to sit down on it herself, but she slides, with help, and shrieks "wheeeeee!"

We just got back from Ohio on Saturday, and I've been busy getting things ready for my digi-designer debut (such as it is... one kit so far, but there's still a lot to do to get ready). I'll have pictures of Kate and fireflies (real ones and digi ones) soon!

With a "Waaah! Waaaah!" here (and a "Woot!")

Kate has been complaining a lot when I change her diaper. I think it's not so much that she hates getting her diaper changed, but that she doesn't like being interrupted. She's busy playing and gets dragged off to the changing table. Of course she's going to fuss. "Mom, you're cramping my style!" (In fact it was while she was on the changing table, hollering at me with her mouth wide open, that I first noticed that she had a molar up in the back.) So, I've been singing Old MacDonald to her to distract her. She's got quite a repertoire of animal sounds now, which makes for a very interesting farm. It goes something like this:

Me: "Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on that farm he had a ... tiger! What does a tiger say?"

Kate: "Raah!"

Me: "E-I-E-I-O!"

The farm is populated by the typical cows, sheep, and chickens, but has also been known to feature monkeys, crocodiles, and even dolphins.

We finally heard back from Olympia (actually we called them, since we got tired of waiting). Doug didn't get the job. So I suppose we'll be here for a while longer, yet. This is not a bad thing. It's been a good place for us.

And I have news! I'm going to be a digi-designer! I've got this firefly kit that I've been working on (the bug, not the TV show) for weeks now, and finally finished. More-or-less finished. I may end up doing a little more with it. Anyway, I contacted the owner of one of the online digital scrapbook shops, sent her my kit, and she liked it! She liked it a lot, even! She asked me to join their team. Wheee! Now I get to spend even more time on the computer! Details to follow.

Father's Day

I love watching Doug and Kate play together. They are just so cute. Doug is a great dad. He reads her stories and makes up funny little songs (it's quite hilarious to hear "The Gingerbread Man" in various critical interpretations, like the Marxist reading or the feminist reading) and even lets her play with his cittern sometimes. It's fun to see how excited Kate is when Doug comes home. "Daddy" was one of her first words (along with "hi!"--she started saying them both right around the same time). Sometimes when we're in church she points up at the stand and yells "Daddy!" Here she's finding Daddy's nose.



This is my dad, piled on by most of his progeny. Barb was either a very small baby or not born yet. I was probably about 11. When Dad used to give us horse-back rides, or throw us up in the air and catch us, I always got to go first. He said it was easier to start with the heaviest one and work his way down.

Happy Father's Day to my daddy and Kate's daddy!

Knotty!

I spent a good part of the day yesterday (and part of this morning) making this knot in Photoshop. Isn't it beautiful?