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What's New?
Memory Cottage is on Facebook! I'm embarrased that I haven't gotten my web page quite up and running, but I promise it's coming soon. Creating the site as I want it to be is a little over my head, and it takes me a long time to overcome resistance and the learning curve needed to fix it.In the mean time, I'm doing what I can to promote our business. Please visit my facebook page for news and info for now!
Home:
July 12, 2009. Many of my close friends and family (especially those on facebook) have been able to follow the saga of our move to Asheville, NC. If you scroll down to my February 2008 update, (embarrasingly my last update to this page...) you can read my note describing our hopes for this move. So far for me it has been a dream come true. We have gone through a lot of stress getting to this point, and we aren't sitting pretty - we still have a lot of hard work ahead. However I am full of hope for the future and so grateful for the opportunities we have been given.
I have made a few postings on my blogs:
- Gossamer Threads - where I share general crafts, news, family events.
- Memory Lane - whose tagline reads: A journal of my adventures in archiving and family history research - and the technology and resources I use to pursue them.
As for family news, I have not done a good job of keeping up with anyone, aside from generally very proximally close family and friends. There has been a lot of upheaval in our lives, but generally towards a happy end. It's just hard sometimes when you are in the thick of it to focus on the positive. Anyone who has had to move a family of five across a few state lines knows what I'm talking about! Here's the latest: Trip was laid off from his job at SmartMoney magazine in February. We put our house up for sale in March. We purged and cleaned, donated lots to the rummage sale, had a pretty good yard sale, cleaned and made repairs. I also took a temporary job at my friend's accounting office, and we got in one more trip to Asheville in April with my mom, Lory. I think it was May when we found our buyers, a nice couple who wanted the house for their vacation home. On June 16th we sent all our belongings down to storage in NC, the day before the last day of school for the boys. For the next two days, we packed the things we planned to take with us, and cleaned the whole house out, and by 5am June 19th had begun our 14 hour drive down to Asheville, with Trip's brother Chris and dad Lou driving his van packed to the gills with our stuff - computers, necessities, folding tables and chairs and air matttresses.
We arrived at our rental house in Mars Hill late that afternoon. Since then we spent many hours driving around to the houses on our list - anything in our price range, feeding to one of three very nice high schools in the area, with at least 3 bedrooms and a full basement. Out of what boiled down to 2 serious contenders, we put in an offer on our favorite on June 29th. After some bargaining back and forth, they accepted our offer - and an acre of land and 1985 built 3 bedroom ranch with a full basement will be our new home.
On the down side, we are living a bare bones life right now, the boys really miss being settled in with all their stuff, and we've put in a lot of hours in the car which has lead to too much eating at restaurants (often good, but expensive) and snacking on road food (very bad!). However, we see the light at the end of the tunnel. We plan to close at the end of July. We've met so many nice people already just living here in Mars Hill. Yesterday we met some of our new neighbors and have gotten a better idea of the lay of the land where we will be living, which is in the south part of Asheville. It will be good to stop making the drive back and forth to Asheville from where we are now, which is 20 minutes north of the city. But in any case, we are doing fine, and soon will be even better. Thanks to everyone for your prayers, well wishes, gifts, hugs, and most especially to Chris & Jenn - because helping us move the way you did was a gift beyond measure!
Family
 Elliot - Almost 11 years old. Elliot still LOVES Pokemon, really likes Bionicles, loves
reading. He is growing so fast! The top of his head reaches just above my upper lip now, and his voice is getting deeper. He has been on the High Honor Roll several periods this year, and is really an amazing kid.
Alex - 8 years old - Alex's favorite pasttime is numbers, playing Ken Ken, wearing his heart monitor, pedometer and workout watch, tracking all his stats, saving his money, playing with his calculators, He's really remarkable! He's a lot of fun, very friendly, and thoughtful and sweet.
Nathan - 6 years old - I think Nathan just grew 2 inches in the last 2 months. His greatest interests are his artwork, bugs and other animals. He loves to draw, and is commonly found at the table, pencil, pen or markers in hand, humming and drawing a wonderful array of monsters, dragons, and Pokemon battles. Recently he has been giving some local ants swimming lessons in a puddle in our driveway, and we also just adopted a toad he found at the playground. What Nathan seems to crave the most is attention from his brothers, and its led to a lot of struggles when he gets too pushy. He is looking forward to when we can adopt a baby sister, and still makes it his personal mission to entertain and protect them babies and smaller children every where we meet them.
Old News: February 9, 2008. It's been far too long since my last update. All is well, for the most part. I have not been keeping a good correspondence with anyone, but have been intensly involved with family stuff and history research, as well as several projects mostly sewing and scrapbooking, and I have read a lot these last few months.
I felt pretty bad that I couldn't get Christmas cards sent out. It has been a long time since I've been in touch with many of my distant friends and family. I was immersed in many memories of friends and family while I worked on 10 years of photo scrapbooks. My sister Alison mocks my scrapbooking hobby - I guess it's too "suburban" but I really have come to enjoy it. I've been making more cards and generally enjoying the creative process.
In an effort to document and share the fun of some of my projects and life in general, I have been keeping two blogs. They are:
- Gossamer Threads - where I share general crafts, news, family events.
- Memory Lane - whose tagline reads: A journal of my adventures in archiving and family history research - and the technology and resources I use to pursue them.
I have not been writing very regularly on either one lately, but I'm glad to have them, and I have been doing a better job at keeping a journal online than I have ever been previously. (I've had several diaries in life that started off with a bang in January only to fizzle out a few weeks later, but I've had my Gossamer Threads blog since January of 2005!) I made a seperate one for the archiving stuff because I wanted it to be more strictly informational, rather than personal.
The biggest project we have in the works is that I have been planning and hoping for major move to Asheville, NC, with luck maybe even as soon as the end of the school year in June. I fell in love with Asheville, NC when we visited there in Spring of 2006. After coming home and realizing that we aren't happy with our current living and working situations, and thinking long and hard about our hopes for the future, our dream is to move to Asheville and work together in our own business. I'm still figuring out a lot of the details, but our business will generally be a professional organizing business, heavily directed towards helping people deal with family photos. Trip would primarily do the digital work, while I would get out to meet and greet as well as doing computer work. I will go out to people's homes and help them organize, sort, and label their photos, then I will bring them home to make them into movie slideshows for DVD or scrapbooks and other media they can share. I will branch into organizing many other parts of people's households, and even help with researching the family history and writing people's personal memoirs. Obviously this is work I already do and enjoy. Right now I am still in the process of writing up our business plan so that we can make it all official.
Work: Trip is the Production Manager at SmartMoney Magazine. Some months ago, we learned that within the next two years they are planning to eliminate his department, let some people go, and incorporate others from his department into the Art Department. Since that time, we have had no news about this big change. For now nothing has changed, although Trip has far less patience with the commute, and the job can be very trying at times. However, it's a good job for now, and we are fortunate.
I have been working for Frank still, once a week in the office and a little
by phone. Last year I had a job taking care of a little boy, just a few months older than Nathan. This year, I have been doing more computer lessons, and several organizaing jobs, doing things like basement cleanouts and file organizing. I also had a good run of sales on ebay, and still plan to so some more things to sell. The work I am happiest about is my archiving work, and
several people in the family have sent money to support the site.
Genealogical
News: (Click to view the list of updates to several family lines. Many of these lines have not yet been updated on the website, as it requires a complete overwrite of the entire site. But as always, if you need an update, or have news to share, please contact me and I will do what I can to keep everything current.
I'm opposed to the war in Iraq, I was from the beginning, but I certainly
believe we owe it to our military families and soldiers to protect them,
support them and bring them home safely. A military career is one I considered
for myself at one point, and I hope and pray that the thousands who joined
in the hopes of finding opportunities that they just couldn't find at
home can come home whole and quickly!
Updated February 10, 2008
Page Index: Adoption
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| Nathan
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| Community Supported Agriculture | Conscientious
Objectors | Elliot
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& Fitness | House
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Nathan | NJ Places to Visit | Parenting
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| Sasha |
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& Paper Crafts | Other
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| Sustainable Gift Giving | Surnames|
| Vaccination | Voluntary
Simplicity| Waterbirth | Women's
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