Graphology

Last night for Girl's Night Out, we had a handwriting analyst come read our handwriting. The woman who FLEW out here just for this is a professional analyst, does forensic analysis for the police, has been told by the police she is as accurate as a polygraph, and is writing a book about it. (She used to work for SouthWest, so she gets free flights, but how cool was that for her to fly here just for us?)

Here are the results of my analysis. You will have to decide for yourself if you think they are right. If I have any comments, I'll write them in parentheses. Here goes:

First there was a drawing test. We had to finish drawings based on a shape that was already there. For a circle, I made it into an Oreo. The circle reflects your self image - (I do use cooking as a way to define myself, most people made smiling suns or something cheery, which is for sure not how I define myself) For a rectangle I made it into a hearth and fireplace. This represents home life for me (like to be home). For two parallel but different length lines, I made them into a windshield of a car with tho people inside. This reflects how I relate to others and have friendships (best one-on-one, I think). For a tic tac toe grid I made it into a square foot garden - this reflects my competitive self. (I don't have one!) For a half circle, I made it into a snowman - this reflects my social self image - cold (ouch, but yeah). The rest all indicated creativity, going with the flow of things, stuff like that.

Now, on to the handwriting, I am:

open to new ideas and religions (I think so)
have a good relationship with my parents (I do)
am honest (sometimes to a fault)
am more organized with other people's stuff than my own (uh, yeah!)
I know I am awesome (her words) but question myself a lot (a lot of self questioning going on here)
have a lot of frustrations in my life (yeah)
have strong friendships (for sure)
can keep a secret (I'll never tell...)
very good listener (always been told this)
finish projects (my own, not as much, but a project for someone else - yes)
love people (til they give me a reason not to)
am a peacekeeper (yeah)
lover, not a fighter (yeah)
don't like confrontation (for sure)
good communicator (I think so)
fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me - meaning once you have violated me in some way (friendship, professionally, etc) you don't get another chance (abso-freaking-lutely)
introvert (yeah)
have old fashioned values (I've always thought so - honesty, loyalty and kindness are my three favorite attributes)
harder on myself than others are (who isn't?)
rule follower (yeah, in fact I have stated this to Tom recently)
present a more closed off public persona (agree)
very creative (creative, but not artistic)

I would say I agree with 99% of it. Now, you might say these are pretty generic attributes, but there were 5 of us there last night and we all had a variety of different qualities - good and bad. The other girls agreed on the vast majority of their readings too. Some did like confrontation, some were better talkers than listeners, some were rebels, some didn't have good relationships with parents. Some were more religious than others, some were extroverts. I thought it was very interesting and wish I had more time with the analyst.

Memory lane

I've been copying old photos from cds to the computer over the weekend. It was so fun to see these old photos again. I had almost forgotten how stinking cute the kids were. These were some of my favorites.
This was from fall 2002, visiting my Grandma and Grandpa Grover. Kaelin was in her 'sticker phase' and Grandma had given her a sheet of them to play with during the visit. As you can see, she decorated us well.
There is a shot of Evan and Kaelin playing with Salsa, our mexican milk snake.
Then Kaelin sleeping with a rubber lizard she named Lake. That was a well traveled lizard. He went to Idaho, Washington, and in 2003 he went to Hawaii. Kaelin just LOVED lake! Eventaully there was a papa Lake and mama Lake, but the original was always the best.




Here is a shot of the kids and myself at a friend's wedding.
I just love the expression on Kaelins face in the picture of her and my Dad.
Evan with his buzz cut. He was so mad at us for doing that! He wore a hat for weeks.
Kaelin was a big coloring fan. As you can see, sometimes it was exhausting.
The last shot is from Valentines day in 2002.





I had so much fun going through the photos, I'll have to find some more favorites.
And there you go, a blog post for March! I've been a slacker. :)

Yay! The videos posted!

Evan and Kaelin play 'Scorpinok' and Evan plays "Return to Earth". Grandma plays her fancy version of chopsticks.

Recital, life and ears.

First I thought I'd post a couple of pictures my photographer friend took of me the night I had my makeup done for the Pioneer Woman book signing. Katie and her husband Dan own Peekaboo photos and are wonderful photographers as well as great people.

Well, not everything I wanted to post is working tonight. Evan and Kaelin had a piano recital a couple of weeks ago. Evan found some Transformers music he really liked but it was too complicated for him to play. He modified it to be something within his range and his teacher liked it so much she asked him to play his arrangement of the music at their piano recital.
The video wasn't uploading for some reason, so I put it on Youtube.(Actually not, it won't load)
We had a nice Thanksgiving all to ourselves. It was just the four of us with the whole shootin' match as far as food goes. I cooked all morning and the kids did the dishes. Nice!
Thanksgiving night we headed up to the VA to see Grandma and Grandpa Grover. While we were there Evan and Kaelin played their piano pieces for them, which we all really enjoyed. That got Grandma in the piano mode so she played her famous version of chopsticks. She was pretty fast at getting going but I got most of it recorded. I'm in the process of putting that on Youtube too. I'm sure Grandma will be thrilled to know she is on Youtube. Then again, I probably won't tell her! (As I have been typing this I have been trying to upload to Youtube. It says the file is corrupt and won't upload. Crap! I guess whoever wants to see it will have to see it here or request a CD. It plays just fine on my computer. I may try again another time.)
We got ready to put up our (stupid and ugly) fake Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving. We put it up in the living room and left it undecorated overnight to see if the cats were going to leave it alone this year. What do you think, can you tell a cat was in there?
We moved the tree to the basement and had to fix every single branch. The cats apparently lounged on each branch and smashed down the fake needles. Now the cats are locked out of the tree room downstairs. It's very pretty, but I miss having it in the living room. Oh well.
We all went to grab a burger tonight and stopped at the mall to do a little Christmas shopping. While we were there I jokingly asked Kaelin if she wanted to get her ears peirced for her birthday. She actually said yes. It took another 30 to 40 minutes for her to work up the nerve to do it but she said it didn't hurt as much as she thought it would and she was glad she did it. What a brave girl!

And last, but not least, instead of the gratuitous cat shot I decided to post a drawing that Evan made. It is of Tom's truck as a Transformer. Pretty cool, huh? And, just for formality's sake, this image is the property of Evan and cannot be reproduced without his permission. (Unless you are a blood relative and I have unflattering photos of you as insurance.) :)

The Pioneer Woman

For anyone who doesn't know who The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, is - click on the link on the side of my blog. She wanted to be a city girl, fell in love with a cowboy and lives on a cattle ranch. She is witty, a talented cook and photographer, and just an all around nice woman. Her blog's popularity has skyrocketed and she just published her first cookbook.
About 5 or 6 weeks ago I saw that she would be at The King's English bookstore in Salt Lake City on Nov 4th. I immediately planned on going. I was going to leave early in the afternoon so I could get there in time but due to kid's various lessons and other factors, I was not able to leave until 6:15 for the 7 pm book signing. I had called King's English at 4:20 asking if anyone was already lining up. They said no and that I should not have any problem getting my book signed if I didn't get there til 7. What I did not know is that The King's English (which I'll just now call TKE) did not really know who Ree was and were very unprepared for her popularity.
My friend Lynette and I got there at 7 only to see several hundred people standing around. TKE had some wacky system of assigning people a letter and number ticket. 20 A's. 20 B's, etc up through R. (Only about 300 tickets) I was in the line of people who had no ticket.
I did see Ree for a second as she walked past the line into the store and got a picture. She was tall and very pretty, smiling and waving.
As we stood in line TKE started calling letters. It took about 20 minutes for the A's to go in, 20 for the B's. After over 2 hours they had been calling H's. We thought it was going ok and were hopeful. About then a TKE employee came out and said if we didn't have a ticket they could not guarantee we would get our books signed. They said they would stay open "as late as they could" but most likely those without tickets were out of luck. She revealed that even though they were calling H's, the actual signing was happening for the E's. 2 plus hours for 80 people's books. With well over 500 people standing there, it was obvious that we were not going to get my books signed. We left.
Even though I didn't get the books for my brother and myself signed, it was still fun. I had a good time with Lynette, we met nice people in line who shared hot chocolate with us. It was a beautiful night, not too cold for November. I was disappointed to have not gotten the signature, but I got a pic of Ree. I had a great time beforehand with my makeup artist friend, Dawn Weidauer who did my makeup for me before I headed to Salt Lake.
I'm thinking that the next time TKE does a book signing, they better figure out who they have coming! Check out this story I ran across this morning from another blogger: http://jetsetcarina.blogspot.com/2009/11/handle-this.html

October

October has been a very fun month. We got to start it out in Disneyland!

We were there with my whole family for 5 days. My folks flew all of us down there so we could all spend some time together. What a great trip we had!

Tom wore his Indiana Jones hat every day, I think he looks pretty darn good in that hat!
We rode the Tower of Terror several times. Here is a picture of me filming the ride. I even filmed the part where the cast member says "please, no video during the ride". Don't worry though, I ended up deleting it, our memory stick was pooping out and I had to delete some stuff so I could take more pictures.

I have a photo of my mom and myself on these stairs when I was little. I wanted to get one of my mom, my daughter and myself. I love these stairs!
Most days we took a break and went back to the hotel to rest and swim. This is one of the few pool pictures. Evan was looking awesome in his swim shirt.
We all had a fantastic time and are so thankful to my Mom and Dad for getting us all down there.
I was finally able to complete and install my windows this month. I am really happy with them and soon will be making a window to go in the transom above the door.
I let the chickens out for a few days while the weather was still decent. The cats were very entertained. We had a pretty rainy month, but that is better than snow, which we started getting this week. Thanks Sarah, I stole this picture off your camera when we borrowed it. :)
Tom and I had 3 Halloween parties to go to this year. We went with Bacon and an egg. I think Tom's bacon costume is awesome! I enlisted the help of my friend Alesha to help me with the egg. It doesn't look hard, but you should have seen the first version!
Tom just can't resist looking for trouble...I'm still surprised that we made it through 2 flights and 5 days in Disneyland without getting sick. 2 weeks later though, Kaelin came down with what we believe is swine flu (based on actual diagnosis of others and some symptom comparison). Thankfully, it wasn't too bad for her though. We now also believe that Evan had already had it during the summer.
Not much else going on. Kaelin is going to be a vampire for Halloween and Evan is a cereal killer. (yeah, cereal. we have little empty boxes of cereal glued to a shirt with bloody knives sticking out of them.)
Next week I am going to a cookbook signing for Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman. Maybe I'll get a picture with her. That would be cool! I'll post a pic if I get it and will also post some Halloween photos.

Here is my first completed window. These shots are all at different angles to show how the colors in the dichroic glass shift as your angle shifts. The side that has the sun shining directly on it has a colored reflective surface. During the day we will see the transmittted color while people outside see the reflected color. At night when our lights are on and it's dark outside people outside will see the transmitted color and we will see the reflected color in the house.
The window is filthy from the flux and patina. I'll be taking it out to the glass studio where it will take at least 1/2 an hour with a toothbrush and little pointy sticks to get the window clean.
The next step is to insulate and seal it between two pieces of tempered glass. Then it will be ready to install in the sidelight.
On to the next one!