The girls started school yesterday. Clark doesn’t start preschool for 3 weeks. I have to tell him about 30 times a day, that no, we’re not leaving for his school yet. It doesn’t start for 3 weeks.

He doesn’t seem to get it.

Or if he does, he’s just hoping that if he continues to ask, the answer will change.

I’ve made a bit of a happy discovery. My mom recommended this brand of stevia powder (they make a pure version that is much more concentrated if you have issues with maltodextrin) and I just tried it. It’s really good. The stevia I used years ago had a strong aftertaste, and this doesn’t. And it’s cheap.

I just used it for the first time, in a glass of milk with unflavored protein isolate powder and vanilla, and mixed it up with my new little toy (which I bought at Costco yesterday for $30).

Very, very good. No funny aftertaste, very sweet, no calories, and it isn’t artificial! I’m so excited. When we went to Oregon last month, my mom’s boyfriend was growing stevia in his garden. We plucked a leaf and chewed on it. It tasted just like the stevia extracts you get in the store, so they can’t be messing with it too much in processing.

So now I can make my protein shakes without sugary syrups, which is what I’ve been doing because artificial sweeteners are scary.

Max’s sleeping through the night was a one time thing. I’ve talked to a number of people now who thought that because he slept through once, we were in the clear.

Nuh-uh. Last week was miserable.

So, things are busy around here. The kids go back to school on Wednesday. Abby’s freaking out about junior high. We did some clothes shopping on Saturday, but haven’t picked up school supplies yet. I have a bunch or errands to run today.

I don’t know why I can’t think of anything interesting to say. It didn’t used to be so difficult. But with all the kids home all day every day, there’s really not much time to do anything interesting. I’m always attending to someone, or multiple someones at any given time. And I’m tired as heck.

Except, I’ve been trying really hard to exercise when I put Max down for a nap in the late morning. I’ve been at it most of the month. 45 minutes on the elliptical everyday, and weight lifting every other day. It feels good. And at some point, I’m going to shed some pounds, right?

In other news, Pretzel went bye-bye. I had to keep nagging Abby to feed him, which I’m not ok with. I didn’t even like the dumb bird, so I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for it. But it bothered Abby when every time she’d put her hand in the cage to feed him, he’d freak out so bad he’d bash into the walls of the cage and screech like she was trying to kill him. He never calmed down the tiniest little bit. The pet store very graciously took him back and gave us a refund. But not without lecturing me on unrealistic expectations.

Whatever.

I’ve had birds. This one was a freak.

She still wants a bird. So, we’re going to spend some time researching and finding the right bird for Abby. And since it’ll most likely be more expensive than a lovebird, we’re starting a fund.

Max just slept through the night for the first time in his life of nearly 11 months. Which means, I just slept through the night for the first time in nearly 11 months!

I’m so happy!

Summer is almost over. I can’t believe it! There are so many things I’d thought we’d do this summer! And we didn’t. Of course, having an infant really cuts down on the “get up and go” types of things we can do. But still.

It’s ridiculously hot here right now. It has been for a few days. Everyone’s sweaty and a little short tempered.

Max has cut his first tooth. It’s not in all the way, it’s still just “cut,” but it’s there.

I’m still playing and writing music with my minimal free time. Trying to record. It’s nearly impossible to get away to my brother’s house sans kids to record. But we try.

I found out over the weekend that one of my sisters-in-law has a brother that works at a custom guitar shop that’s an hour or so south of us. It’s pretty cool. I’d never heard of them before, but spent some time yesterday poking around the website and learning about a bunch of crazy things you can do to an electric guitar. They have this split Jazzmaster that looks totally fun.

I tried a few weeks ago to spin more yarn for that shawl I was working on, and it’s just too blasted hot, so that’s on hold.

I’m going to order some wool this week so we can sample dye and test braid for my m-i-l’s rug we’re planning to make starting in the fall when Clark is in preschool. (Clark in preschool? How can he possibly be old enough for that already)?

I think that’s about it. Perhaps when the kids are back in school, I’ll be a little more interesting on the blog again.

Last Wednesday, mom’s boyfriend Marvin taught us all how to do a landscape painting. (Happy trees)!

Here we are with our final works of art.

They all match, so we’re going to frame them all together.

It was a lot of work. It took most of the day, but it was very fun.

but we’re still scrambling, getting Abby ready for Girls’ Camp this week. She leaves in a little over an hour.

Here’s a neat picture from our drive home on Saturday.

We’re in south Washington, right by the Columbia River. These wind turbines look like they’re about 20 stories tall. They’re enormous. Some of them are right by the highway, and it’s amazing to drive by the sheer mass of them. There are seemingly hundreds of them along the river bordering Oregon and Washington.

So, yeah. I haven’t had much time for posting. The kids and I are in Central Oregon visiting my mom, (yes, where the fires are), miraculously not getting smoked out. There’s a lot of smoke but it’s mostly being blown south. Once darkness fell last night, we could see flames around the edges and billows of red smoke. It was eerie.

We’re having fun. I’m tired. I’m not sure I’m ever going to be not tired again.

I have loads of pictures I’ll post at some future date. Yesterday, mom’s boyfriend taught us how to paint landscapes with oils. We all painted some mountains in front of a lake with pretty trees. It took much of the day. It was really cool.

Max is almost 10 months. It’s amazing how fast it goes.

He doesn’t much like having his picture taken. Perhaps it’s because the camera blocks his view of me, something he’s trying to rectify in the next two photos.

Abby’s bird, as I mentioned before, is named Pretzel. He’s a big dork. We’ve had him for a month now and he’s shown zero improvement in settling down and being a good pet for Abby. I’ve had a number of birds since I was young (a couple parakeets, a lovebird, a green cheek conure, and I nursed a surly, sick double yellow headed amazon back to health for a pet store once who didn’t like to be held before I got to him).

I thought I was rather proficient at hand training. So I called the pet store and voiced my frustration, hoping for some words of wisdom and she unexpectedly offered to take him back.

Abby’s not ready for that yet, so I asked for help instead. The lady said to take him out and hold him against my chest, talking softly and that it was way too early to expect him to sit on our finger out in the open without trying to fly away. It could take several weeks of this before he’ll calm down.

Well, the other birds I’ve had got over it soon enough, but I’m willing to try. He does seem to like being caved in like that. He relaxes a bit.

Dumb bird.

Our jam session Monday afternoon was great! It was only the bass player that ended up coming, but that was perfect because we were so productive! I’d brought music for 7 original songs (the songs that we’ll record acoustic, since I haven’t yet figured out how to play electric guitar with any grace whatsoever) and we plowed through them in my brother’s living room. I played and sang my songs, he picked out a bass part, I gave input as far as “I like the activity in the beginning of the chorus, but I want it more simple at the very end.”

“No, more simple than that.”

“That’s good.”

“How ’bout at the beginning of this song, instead of coming in full throttle, you take just a little bit of time to work up to it? Maybe half of the first chord progression.”

“I love the resolution you added there.”

“That walkdown before the vocals came back in was great!”

Hee hee.

It was so much fun. He was great to work with and the addition of bass to my songs really spices things up.

I’m so excited!

So the next step is finding time to go to my brother’s house by myself and lay down a solid guitar track so the bass player can do his part. Then when I meet with the drummer and lead guitarist, we’ll be working with the recording so I can focus more on what I want them to do instead of worrying about my playing.

I put heavier strings on my guitar Monday night to try to fill the sound out in the recording a little better. Which makes it more difficult to play. Something I really don’t need. And we’re still trying to figure out how to best mic the guitar for a balanced, full sound.

Messing with mic placement and configuration took all of our recording time on Saturday, so I’m going to try to get a couple songs laid down on Friday.