Saturday, October 27, 2007

Bronson baby walks!!!


Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Aunty Aimee and Baby Bronson

So, you may be wondering - are the fires raging along the Southern California coastline affecting us? Well, not too much. The air is heavy and the sky is smoky (elevated smoke), which just seems like heavy fog & pollution. At Ultimate practice today there was some ash falling onto the field and we avoided too much runing due to poor air quality. People say they can really smell the smoke, but I don't think they grew up in parts where people are constantly burning shrub in the backyard.... so I don't smell it. The air just feels heavy and warm, and the sun is red/pink and the moon is tinted red.


Monday, October 22, 2007

Whew....

It has been a busy busy BUSY October - I have had job interview after job interview, Matthew is now TAing an undergrad course that requires him to teach 2 lessons a week and Bronson is... well, Bronson still is not walking. But imagine how much busier it would've been had he been walking!

Matthew is busy at school working away, building a little electrical engineering lab in the basement of the Astro building for his radio astronomy research.

I've had several job offers and settled on the one I wanted all along - Guest Relations Coordinator at the Athenaeum (the private club on campus). The club houses events, a hotel and a few restaurants. I work on the hotel portion. The job includes benefits (yay medical!!!) and is 8am to 12 noon on weekdays which leaves me plenty of time to spend with my Bronson bear! Currently as I train I'm working 8 hour days and I'm pretty tired!

Aimee has arrived and been thrown into the realm of Bronson caring - poor girl has a 12 hour day with him tomorrow, as I have Ultimate team practice after work, and Matthew has a squash class in the afternoon.


Bronson is SO CLOSE to walking, he does a few steps every day, but only upon encouragement, he's so much more comfortable crawling, so he says "Why bother?"


We had a nice visit from Grandma Diane and [Great] Aunty Denise last week. They were here for 4 days and we hit every store within a 15 mile radius. Bronson LOVED having them here - he even stopped napping to spend more time with them.



Below is Aimees little room that we built into Bronson's room. Yes, she's half in the closet.




2 weekends ago there was a big Art Expo at the Pasadena Convention centre. I attended for the AMAZING art deals, and to take a class on marketing my work. I also participated in a competition they held - Top Artist. It was similar to 'Top Chef'. 5 contestants, 1 easel, 2 brushes and a tube of white paint; a second tube of mystery colour that we chose blindly (mine turned out to be ultramarine blue yay!), we had 10 minutes to paint an intricate fruit basket still life they'd arranged. After 10 minutes, the judges chose 3 people to stay. I made it through round one. Round 2 they gave us an extra brush, a tube of burnt umber and a hand held mirror. We had 5 minutes to paint a self portrait. After 5 minutes the judges spoke to each of our works and deemed us 1st, 2nd and 3rd..... I won FIRST!

It was pretty great - I painted with my fingers and actually did a pretty good self portrait. I won 400$ worth of art supplies, books and a free class at the Expo. I really enjoyed it and the prize is awesome! So, anyhow, it was a good time for me.