Just hush!

Well... I know I've still a few months of catching up to do from last year, but give me a break! I'm sleepy! So, once again, a moment for a quick re-cap and then I will, really, embellish on the key points. I swear....

October 2009
Halloween (without my children, boo.)
Moved to Gresham (also, kind of boo)
Walter was stolen from me. Anger.

November 2009
Thanksgiving (what's with the holidays this year falling on dbags parenting time days?!)
Damn, it's been a while, what else happened?

December 2009
dbag stopped paying child support after 2 months... Who'd have guessed?!
Happy birthday Aiden! (and Delaney, and Kt!)
Made a pretty sweet teepee cake for Aiden.
And a playstation 2 controller cheese cake for Chai.
Christmas Morning, just me and my boys (best day ever)
Walter was returned!!! And Mark at Kadels in Gresham is awesome!

January 2010
Happy birthday to me (now this was the best day ever!)
Kerry the douche moved out, and stole my kitchen in the process (Yippee!)
Boyfriend moves in with me.... uh oh.

February 2010
Got to see Storm Large with the Oregon Symphony!
Also, just a side note here, Kt rules.
Made a fair-to-middling Thomas the Train cake for a little boy's 3rd birthday.
Happy birthday Duke!

March 2010
Bad ass drive to Utah
Finally finished family tree tattoo
Boyfriend (now ex) moves out! (sigh of relief)
Was pretty much robbed blind by said ex-boyfriend. this month was fun.

April 2010
What the hell happened here?! My baby is 2!!
Made a sweet airplane cake, and a motocross track cake for Truman's parties.
David has a new baby girl! Hello Rowyn Averi!
Made a pretty sweet pregnant barbie cake for Keely's shower.
Started painting! (trees, naturally)

May 2010
Crazy ass day trip across a few cities with Kt and all 4 boys! This one needs explaining!

And again... The books! Oh the lovely books! So many new (to me as yet) authors, and titles, and styles, and stories! I love me some good book! Still writing (not as much as I should) and very much still painting. I should have assaulted a canvas years ago!

Crazy, Beautiful

So... April, huh?

Well, the biggest occurance of that lovely month (in my opinion) was Truman's first birthday. His cousin Bryar was born just 9 days after Truman, so my brother and I decided to combine the two birthdays into one large party. It was a really sweet day, weather was gorgeous, babies were cute as all hell, a lot of family and friends turned out. My mom made an extremely girled-out butterfly cake for Bryar, which was wicked cute, and I made a rad little turtle cake for Truman. Two turtle cakes actually, a large one for the family on behalf of the boy, and a little one rollin' along in a tiny Radio Flyer wagon for the man-of-the-hour himself. They loved it of course. Truman dug right in two-fisting that sucker and stuffing his face. Bryar went about it with two delicate little fingers, trying to keep her finger nails and clothing as clean as possible. Like I said, wicked cute.

Then of course, April brought the final of 3 temporary custody hearings in my attempt to acquire full residential and legal custody of my two little boys. (I have had full custody of them from the moment they were each born, I've been just been trying to get things in legal documentation!) So, the hearing sucked. The judge we were assigned to refused to hear the case whatsoever. She read her case notes from the previous Judge and decided to force my boys and I to move back to Oregon within ten days of the hearing, so that the boys would be closer to a father who refused to see them, call them, contact them or support them in any way for the previous 12 months. We were literally in and out of that court room within 7 minutes. Not a word was allowed to be spoken on behalf of either party. Just a complete stranger's snap decision that heftily altered the futures of two innocent little boys. Righteous, gotta love this legal system.

Elliot flew down from Oregon a few days later to stay one night with us and help me drive back to Portland. We loaded up a Uhaul trailer with the necessities of our possessions, kept the boys awake all day to ensure a solid ten hours of sleep that night in the car, and had the family over for one last dinner and goodbye hoorah. We were loaded up and waving to our family around 7 p.m., and arrived in Portland around 9 a.m. the next day. Elliot did every mile of driving himself. At one point in Idaho, early in the wee hours of the morning, Truman woke up with a mild fever and we were stumped in our search for infants tylenol by closed grocers statewide. We found a safeway with inner lights still ablaze and pulled in to the parking lot. We were intercepted halfway to the doors by a sweet old gentleman who informed us that the store was in fact closed but being remodeled, which explained the lights. When we asked him for a recommendation on where to find the tylenol, he asked us to please wait for a moment, and returned minutes later with a bottle of infant's tylenol which he had purchased from inside the closed grocery store, and happily refused any sort of compensation. I wish I could remember his name but I will never forget his face, or his sweet smile of genuine care for an ailing baby. It was such an awesome gesture. Truman had a comfortable, fever-free sleep for the remainder of the trip, thanks to that sweet man.

As I said before, crazy move... beautiful drive!

Say what?!

Hmmm... How long has it been? I'm not going to jump in to everything all at once because, frankly, that would be damn exhausting. So instead, I'll just list off the major key points that have impacted my world in the last few months, and touch on each one individually at a later time... Here we go:

April:

Truman turned one!

Went to Oregon for the last of my temporary custody hearings

Moved to Oregon (crazy move, fun damn drive)

May:

Got engaged! (and shortly there after, unengaged!)

Started new Job in Oregon

Went to my first Kills show

Reconnected with a lot of old friends (which has really been beautiful!)

June:

Dang, what the crap happened in June?

July:

Happy Fourth, Holmes!

Rylan's first birthday

Final Permanent Custody Hearing! (We won, d-bag can suck it!)

Mom came to visit

August:

David's 23rd birthday

Reconnected with some more old friends (so much fun)

Corey and Andrea got married!

Found a live-in nanny (she's rad)

Mom's new company opened it's doors (Itsadogthingshop.com, Check it Magooch!)

September:

FISHER'S 3rd BIRTHDAY (boo. and Hooray!)

Happy Labor day to you

*Most definitely there are things missing from this sad little list, but, I shall recall them and bore you to tears with their insignificant details! Oh! I just remembered... a GREAT many wonderful books! Now there is a list worth getting excited over!!

Caterpillar Sandwiches

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TRUMAN!!!

For his birthday, we thought eating bugs would be fun!!

Turns out, eating bugs really IS fun!

We made us some caterpillar sandwiches, with ham to make 'em look fleshy!

They were pretty tasty, and fun to look at. The grown ups had a harder time eating the poor little buggers than the children did... it was weird for Paps to bite off the head of a cute little dude just minding his own business on Paps' plate!

Fisher thought plucking off the eyes and saying "HA! Sucker! I've got your eyes, haha!" was the highlight of his evening. We had a blast! Normally I would use spinach tortillas, not wheat, so that the buggy fellas are green, which is just much cooler, but I couldn't find them and didn't want to store-hop in search of them. Oh well though, these guys were cool!