It Has Come to My Attention...

That I have never had a formal interview before... EVER. Yes, I am 23 have worked in three or four jobs (without much of a break since I was 16.5) and have never interviewed. I haven't even had a "fake" training type interview. Absolutely NO interview experience (have you caught onto that yet?)... until yesterday.

I realized this startling (and detrimental) fact while driving to the Auburn School District to interview for a Special Education paraeducator position. Well, sitting in a room with a person asking questions wouldn't be too bad. Except it was four people. Four principals. Four principals that all have a paraeducator opening at their school. Four principals with two pages of questions on which they will rate my responses.

During one or two of the questions I actually started answering before having a complete thought of where my diatribe was going and was thinking "oh shoot, what was the question again?" All-in-all I think it went just fine (although they were curious as to why someone with a Math Education degree was looking for paraeducator work, they understood when I told them I had to take tests to get my Washington licence). If I haven't heard from HR by next Wednesday it "would be appropriate to call"...

As Promised... SO DARN CUTE!

I am going to start with another Dallas picture, but first some background. Dallas has been into Toy Story and its sequel for a while now. One of his favorite parts of either is the opening of Toy Story 2 when Buzz is flying around and fighting Zerg (that you later find out is just Rex playing a video game). A few weeks ago he started putting his arms straight out in front of him, his hands in tight fists, and would "fly" with Buzz.

Shortly after this started my Mom gave my all of Jadon's old clothes to hold onto for Dallas in the future. Among the clothes I found a size 4-6 (which basically means Dallas could wear it as a dress right now) Buzz Lightyear T-shirt. Dallas proceeded to wear that shirt for the next 48 hours straight (he even made us put it on over his PJs). Also Dallas discovered Jadon's Buzz Lightyear action figure . Dallas has slept with that toy almost every night since. As most of you know, Dallas still isn't talking much. We try to coax words out of him but he knows the sign for a word all we ever get is the sign. Since Dallas doesn't know a sign for "Buzz" I decided to take advantage of that. When Dallas asked for the toy I insisted that he say "Buzz" before I gave it to him. Well after a few tries Dallas decided to make up his own sign for Buzz, he promptly straightened his little fisted hands out in front of him. Cam and I agree that it was a very clear "Buzz". I think it is so cute when he does it so I tried to get a picture of him doing it. And we succeeded.


This is the only picture we got of the two of them together. I wish we could have gotten them to smile. I think it is cute how Dallas is playing with Chelane's hand though, very priceless.


This is an after-the-shoot picture. We took Chelane's pictures first and by the time we were half-way through Dallas' shoot Chelane was out. She slept through all the noise of the following photo shoots and only woke up when Dallas stood on her. Andrea took the opportunity to get some over-the-shoulder shots. I wish I knew how much of my face would have been showing... I would have leaned out a little more.


The next two are just of Chelane (yay!). I would like you all to know you owe your thanks to me for the cute faces. I was standing right by the camera making baby talk and weird faces to coax these smiles out of her.


When we put her on the hardwood floor (it was a little cold) she went into a "survival mode" (pretty much the same thing she does when we put her in the bathtub) and threw her arms straight out and didn't move. I do love the wood floor as a background though, very pretty.

Well those are pretty much all the pictures (seriously I think I posted all of them in this post or the last one. I am glad I got some little baby pictures of Chelane because I really never got any of Dallas. Feel free to comment on your favorite photo!

Oh geez... Dallas just took Chelane's socks off, got to go!

I'm a model, if you know what I mean...

Vivian was having her friend Andrea take some pictures of her kiddos, so I asked to tag along and get some of Chelane and maybe Dallas and perhaps some of them together. Well, really none of the pictures with the two of them together worked out. Dallas wasn't too thrilled with posing and Chelane really couldn't run around with him but once we stopped trying to pose Dallas we got a few cute pictures that are definitely his personality. This is making me look all the more forward to the summer when we can hopefully do a more outdoor shoot and get some candid pictures with my one hundred mile an hour, no attention little boy.

Some of Andrea's kids were running around with sunglasses so of course Dallas had to get in on that action. We got this priceless shot of him. I like to call it "Dallas goes to Hollywood," I LOVE his mouth.

This next one was one of the "posing" ones that actually turned out Ok. However she was trying for a whole different look (like him actually looking at the camera and having his arms crossed). We even tried bribing the kid with M&Ms (Vivian unselfishly donated to the cause) but that had no affect either; this kid is tough to crack. He simply waited for us to stop trying and noted where the M&Ms were put and got into them later...


This is another of the more candid ones with him playing with his hat. It is a REALLY cute picture in my opinion.

These next few are of Chelane. She was the perfect little model. I only had to act like a dork to entice smiles out of her when she was on the cold hardwood floors. Other than that she was smiley and cooing all the time. She even cooperated while laying on her belly. This is one of my favorites right here, and apparently the only belly picture that turned out :(


This next one was what Cam said was his favorite when we were looking through the pictures for the first time. Poor Andrea had some problems trying to get Chelane to hold her feet still enough to not knock the towel which is the white background you see.

I am going to have to post a few more of the Chelane picture because they turned out SO DARN CUTE!

Carrie Stroud Photography

Now I REALLY don't want to post about this because I want to win this, but I get an extra entry if I do mention it... so I am torn.

Carrie Stroud did some family pics for my parents and siblings back in July and I LOVE them. Unfortunately only me and Dallas were in Washington for the shoot because I would have LOVED to have gotten family pics with Cam as well. Now she is giving away a FREE photo shoot and I am determined to win it (or at least be able to schedule a photo shoot the next time she is in Washington and we actually have jobs and money, etc.). You can see some very talented photos on her blog and I will also post some right now! (If you look close on her blog you can see a picture of my pregnant belly and of my niece, Nyah).




Also my little signature picture thing is a Carrie Stroud picture.

Sanctity of Human Life Day

I meant to do this post on Sunday or even before to give everyone a heads up, sorry I didn't get to it! I don't know how many people heard about President Bush proclaiming this past Sunday as "Sanctity of Human Life Day" but he did. He made, what I feel, was a very moving yet short talk with his announcment. It use to be on the Whitehouse press release page but since Obama moved in it has been moved or deleted. Luckily I found his full text on another page. As you could guess it has gotten pro-choice people up in a huff and proclaiming that Bush has "waged a war against women" during his presidency.

As a woman I don't feel threated by Bush, in fact women that don't exercise enough self control to not have unprotexcted sex and decide they can fix their "mistake" by killing a human, disgust me. Twisting it and saying a human fetus isn't a human and given that "inalienable right" to life until it is out of the womb or wanted is ridiculous. Of course there are exceptions: rape and the mother being endangered by the pregnancy, are the most prominent in my mind. There are so many adoption agencies and other provisions to allow mothers to give up their babies after birth, why is there a need to destroy them instead?

I know this is quibbling about opinions and I don't mean to offend anyone, this is something I feel strongly about. I think Sanctity of Life Day is a worthy cause and look forward to see if it is honored in the future (probably not though, huh?).

" I am going to have to get a nice 12 gauge...

just for you." And I don't think Cam was meaning as a birthday present.

Chelane is a cutie and Cam and I are already looking forward to her dating years with cringes and shudders. Today when she woke up from her nap she was cooing and playing with Cam when I heard him say, "I am going to have to get a nice 12 gauge, just for you..."

Stagnant

I really hate when blogs get to be more than a week old. I read many friends blogs and frankly get annoyed if there is nothing new for a while (*cough* Christine *cough*). While I was thinking about this today I realized MY last blog post wasn't very recent itself, so to avoid being a hypocrite and annoying myself I decided I should write something intelligent, witty, and above all engrossing for all my blog readers... but I couldn't come up with anything.

Cam is still waiting to hear back from job applications. He is thinking (I think he is thinking at least, sometimes it is hard to tell with him... and sometimes his opinions and plans change quickly... sometimes I wonder if he is pregnant... oh shoot, where was I? Oh yes...) of applying with the Washington State Patrol (WSP) again (he applied back before Dallas was born while we were living in Utah but they somehow missed that he was out of state so we never got the info packet that he needed and it turned out to be a big mess so Cam just said "no" and focused on something else), but he needs his discharge papers from the Army reserve and we just found the form that he needs to fill out to request it. Average response time is 2.9 weeks, but that is including all the really, really old forms from before the 70's that they have to dig up. Hopefully the response time will only be a week or two. I guess if he doesn't end up wanting to apply with the WSP having his papers isn't a bad thing anyway; who knows, other employers may want the papers too.

I have applied for two positions with the Kent School District, both para-educator positions. I have to go through some tests and classes and who-knows-what-else to actually teach and I don't know if that is what I want to do anyway *sigh*. I just finished filling out an application that I will probably go drop off or mail tomorrow for the Auburn School District (again para-educator).

Yeah, I know, this is all over stimulating to the point of unconsciousness.

Dallas on the other hand is making some progress in social abilities since we moved up to the great Northwest. We went to Grandma's "Moving and Grooving" class at the Children's Therapy Center last Friday (and will be going again this Friday, it is an every Friday sorta thing). They have a play-time then a singing-time then another play-time followed by a group activity. At the end of the first play-time Dallas had some reluctance to put the toys away and go sit in the circle. At the end of the second play-time he picked up and walked himself over to the circle to do the group activity without any prompting. Yesterday we went to a story-time (that really wasn't a story-time, it was an activity reserved by some mother-group, but they let us stay anyway) at the Maple Valley Library and Dallas would get up and dance with the other kids at appropriate times and then come back to sit with me. He still doesn't obey all the time and he still has some fits, but the kids is improving lots.

Chelane is a talking machine. I think her and Dallas will probably progress with their talking together (I believe she will be an early talker). She is babbling up a storm in her crib right now actually, and the babbling is getting progressivily more annoyed sounding... I think she may be hungry so I should probably get on that...

Because You Were Wondering

Cam says he never posts anything because he had nothing to say.

(Oh and please scroll down, I did post two other things today)

A Plethora of Pictures

I am sure you are all happy to see the title of this post. My posts have been very picture-less the last month.

This first picture is Dallas playing in a box again, but if you will notice the box is very small. He smooshed himself in it and proceeded to watch TV. I guess the box (and the way Dallas had to fold himself up to fit inside) was more comfortable than it looked.


This next picture is another marker mishap. Apparently he put it in his mouth and up his nose. What a lucky marker... (sorry about the booger shot).


Some night in the middle of December (before we moved) I went in Dallas' room after some WoW to make sure he was covered before I went to bed. This nightly ritual used to include putting Dallas back into his bed, but we hadn't had to do that since the summer really. I had to that night though. Dallas' closet had been cleared out and packed so there was ample space inside. Yes, our son came out of the closet...


These next two pictures I just took and not only show off the quirky personality of Dallas but also the amazing PJ's I made for him while in Canada with quite a bit of help from Cam's mom. The print was some little frogs and bubbles with green buttons. I was counting up to three and telling him to smile before I took this picture. The mouth shape and hands are from him saying and signing "go" when I reached three.


I did it all except for putting the shoulder in and some of the piecing together (Cam's mom was nice enough to do those scary parts for me). However she wouldn't agree to put in the buttons or button holes. The PJ's were all done (hemmed and everything) except for the buttons and I just KNEW I was going to ruin the pj's then and there. Surprisingly it all went fine and other than the button holes being a little too far in they are perfect really. I give all the credit to Cam's mom and beginners luck (sorry for the runny nose picture).


This next photo was also taken today. I found where the amazing ergo baby carrier had been buried in the garage (with all the stuff we moved) and since I had already received a quick tutorial from Jen a few days before I decided to see if I could replicate what she did. And I did. I put Chelane in and carried her around the house for a little bit really loving the way it felt. I took it off and stowed it back in the box it came in.

A few minutes later Dallas comes out with the carrier wrapped around him the same way he saw mommy doing it. I put Cam's old, pink stuffed monkey Chee-chee in the carrier and cinched it up to a Dallas-size and let him walk around the house a bit. The picture got taken a few minutes after I had done this and, as you can see, he is already getting tired of it and taking the ergo off.

Recooperation

It has been a long while since the last post. I apologize. Cam and I took the kids up to Vanderhoof, British Columbia for Christmas. It was pretty cold, and "warmed-up" to about 20 degrees F near the end of the visit (it had been negative 20 degrees near the time we arrived). Cam's sister had a snowsuit and gloves her boys had outgrown so Dallas was able to go sledding and play in the abundant snow.

Cam took Dallas outside to play, did odd jobs for his parents around the house, took the kids and me around to visit his friends, and participated in a basketball tournament at his old high school. The tournament was all alumni (or current faculty) and the current varsity team. The alumni were split into three groups: the fresh out of high school (I am guessing 20 and under), Cam's age (20-30ish), and the well experienced (30+). They did a "round robin" thing (so each team played 3 games, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening) with and hour or so break in between. Dallas, Chelane and I made it to the 4th quarter on of each game and sometimes saw the whole 2nd half. Well, Cam's team went undefeated. It seemed that they had pretty steady energy and most other teams peaked around half-time and peetered out by the end. Anyway Cam seemed to have lots of fun at his old stomping ground.

I spent most of the time sewing. I made Dallas some PJ's (Cam's mom did the arms for me though), and 3 flannel blankets for Chelane. Cam's mom made Dallas a stick horse head (that we still need to stuff and put on a stick). We also managed to find Cam's old teddy bear and stuffed monkey named "Chee-Chee" that Cam's mom generously fixed up and laundered till they looked practically new (I took them home with us).

Dallas spent lots of time playing with his five and three year-old boy cousins that live close by and exploring the basement of the house. We didn't bring a booster seat for him so I am sad to say he lived off of cereal for most of the vacation (it was impossible to make him sit for an extended period of time and eat). He also started to sing along with hymns at church (before you get too excited let me tell you he isn't saying any lyrics or even staying with the melody, he just sort of sustains a note...)

Chelane was held and fought over by uncles and aunts and grandma and kept mostly indoors and wrapped in blankets.

I am sure I will take and post some pictures soon, but for now we are still trying to get settled in and I need to clean out the camera... we don't have a memory stick so I holds about ten photos...