CABstudio

LOVE the spring weather we're having. So much so that I just bought a few tulips and daffodils to get some color in my yard besides the instant green grass that popped up this year. Yay! Looking forward to watching all my plants grow...Hopefully the mole and woodchuck didn't do too much damage last fall!

yummy rain...

It's actually raining.  I can't believe it, but I totally love it!  The snow is melting and my window is open letting in the fresh breeze...  Smells so good!  I left it cracked all night and the cool air felt amazing.  So glad that spring is here!  I've been working on cleaning house a little bit.  Got a LONG way to go!!!  I need a pro to come in and help me organize, I think.  I'd love to say that I spent the winter doing things creative, but I think I hibernated instead.  Didn't do much of anything productive and now I feel a little like a slug.  So we're dusting and vacuuming hard to reach places...tossing things we don't need or use, giving away others.  It is starting to feel GOOD!

Brett has potty trained himself - small miracle!  Jeremy told him he couldn't go to school until he wore big boy underpants, so he put some on the next day and that was that.  Now he is constantly reminding mom that he gets to go to school...  He'll be 3 in  two weeks.  Can't believe it!

Matthew just finished up the first session of karate and loved it!  I didn't get to see him, but Jeremy went and took video of the class.  He's excited to do it again (it's a community class - nothing fancy) and his pops signed him up for coach pitch baseball for the summer.  Yay!  He can't wait.  He gets to go to summer school for a couple of weeks, too, and we're excited for him to advance his math and reading skills even more.

Mikala is done with her softball clinic and that season starts next week.  It's her first year, so we'll see if she likes it better than track! :)  One more trimester and she's officially in high school.  Still need to sign her up for driver's ed and she wants to take a class during the summer.  Her idea, not mine!  Love her intelligence.

Jeremy's still working hard at all of his jobs.  We enjoy the occasional night off with him, but they're few and far between right now.  He's a popular official in the twin cities!  Love it.  We took the boys to the bowling alley/arcade a few Saturdays back.  Had a great time for most of the time, but towards the end they were so tired!  It was a long day, but I got some classic photos of Brett throwing himself on the floor because he wanted it to be his turn to bowl. :)  Funny!

Me?  Still freelancing with hair and makeup for weddings.  Working on setting up a destination wedding branch of the company so I can travel and do weddings at the same time. :)  My goal this spring is to really get back into doing creative things.  I miss doing crafty things and I really miss oil painting.  Not that I was great at it, but it's such a fun medium to play with.  Photography too.  Love taking photos of architecture for whatever reason.  Maybe because you don't have to wait for it to hold still to get a clean shot!  Love taking pics of the kids, so now that it's getting nice out we'll start going fun places to get pics of them at this age.  They're all so precious!  Breaks my heart a little.

Hoping to fill in the pool this summer for the boys so they can have a fun area to play in.  Right now it's just a gaping hole with a bunch of junk in it!  The problem is how we're supposed to get fill dirt down the hill on either side of our house to fill it in.  We'll need so many yards of dirt!!!  Should be an adventure.  Maybe we'll do it one yard of dirt at a time and pay the kids to help. :)  Fun family time. 

So we had this enormous possum outside our back door eating an apple one day in the middle of the day!  How weird is that?  They're supposed to be nocturnal, right?  We stood at the back door and stared at it and it didn't move.  Took a ton of photos.  It finally scampered off when I opened the door and went outside.  Now I hear that if you see them during the day, they may have rabies.  Great.  He's probably living under our deck! lol  One more critter for Jeremy to capture this spring...

2010 Greetings!

Jeremy is still employed at MYAS and loving being an official for division 1 & 2 baseball, basketball, and football.  He is also still invited to be an umpire for the St Paul Saints.  They all love him!

Cathi is busy with the home and kids, but also now half owner of Smart & Chic Bride which expanded nationally over the past six months.  She's one of the National Level makeup artist/hair stylists and a part of the Destination Wedding team.  She also enjoys writing freelance for 6 different online magazines and has contributed over 300 articles in the past year.

Mikala is as busy as ever.  Lots of honor classes (4, I think?), lettering in swimming, extra band classes (pep band, jazz band, swing band...) and activities, seminary president...what doesn't she do?  She also babysits all the time without getting annoyed at me and cleans when asked.  I'm still waiting for her to get all dramatic on me, but so far she's really level headed and completely sweet!  Not sure where she gets that...

Matthew is a precious and precocious kindergartner.  He loves to learn but is even more excited by the prospect of lunch and playing outside.  He's got lots of buddies in school and comes home with his backpack full of letters and pictures that they make for him.  This might be a preview for the upcoming Tom Sawyer personality...  He's lost 2 teeth and looking forward to losing more so he can put that money in the bank.  He's determined to marry his friend and have 10 kids and be a dentist or "oil" surgeon (oral surgeon) - depends on the day, a race car driver, and a million other exciting things.  He also wants to buy himself 11 cars and 11 houses so he has 11 garages to put them all in.  Silly boy.

Brett is...fabulously like both of his parents.  He challenges us in every way and keeps us on our toes.  We've resigned ourselves to the fact that he will walk the line no matter what he's doing.  He always wants to do everything on his own and will let you know that at the top of his lungs regardless of where you are or what you're doing.  Love it!  I'm all for independence. :)  He knows how to work the system and is scary smart about it.  Mom to Brett while he's chasing after his brother - "Brett, please stop doing that!"  Brett - "I wanna make my brudder so happy!"  His excuse is that he's just trying to hug him.  Matthew pushes him away eventually, but not usually before Brett gets in a couple good solid shoves!  Gotta love brotherly love, right?

Here's a few photos from a shoot my friend did for me this year.  I got tired of my usual dim photos, so I had her take care of them for me. :)

Hope you all enjoyed the holidays!  We had a fabulous Christmas at home with lots of fresh snow. :)  May 2010 bring all sorts of fabulous adventures and goodness to you.

Hugs! - Cathi

busy busy busy....trip tp new york for work, thanksgiving with the in-laws after spending a couple of days in branson, missouri, catch up on work i didn't get done while out of town, visit from my parents, and now getting ready for christmas and matthew's 6th birthday. trying to make everyone happy is proving to be more difficult than i really wish it was. will post pics later of new york, branson and probably christmas too by the time i get to it!!!

Halloween - finally!

I'm a bit of a slacker.  Admitted.  But at least it's only November.  If I didn't make myself sit down and do this today, it would be about February before anyone got to see the kids' costumes!

    

So Mikala went as a broken doll.  Creative.  I bought her a costume but it looked bad when she put it on so we took it back.  So disappointing!  And it's more fun to come up with something that you know no one else will be exactly.

Matthew was Optimus Prime.  He wanted to be the black Batman costume with big muscles, but so did every other boy his size, so when mom went to get the costume...no luck.  He was fine with Optimus.  Transformers are always cool!  Especially riding a rocking horse.  Kid makes me laugh!

Brett was a dinosaur rider.  Matthew had been a cowboy riding a horse two years ago, which was really cute.  The difference between the two is that the horse costume actually had fake legs hanging over the side so it looked more like a person riding a horse than a torso sticking up and out of the creature's back - which is exactly what happened with Brett.  But he was adorable and people on the street stopped and "awww"d at him, so it must not have looked too weird to them!

Jeremy and I are a little scroogy with Halloween, I think.  I haven't dressed up since I was 18 and I don't know how long it has been for him.  We both worked on Halloween, so we figured the kids were lucky they got to go trick-or-treating at all! :)  Someday we might...who knows.

Now I actually have to go check on Brett.  He's in the bathroom brushing his teeth.  He decided to potty train himself today.  He took off his diaper and hit the little boys room a couple of times - ended up running around the house bare-bum naked, so I talked him into a pair of underpants.  He thinks it's pretty cool and I believe he's gone through almost 2 rolls of toilet paper already in the past 3 hours.  Hopefully he's got it all out of his system for nap time!  I am SOO not in the mood to change his sheets or mine, depending on where he falls asleep...  Glad he's motivated, though!  Small miracles.  I hate potty training!

carving pumpkins...

it's so much fun!  Especially when you have a helpful teenage daughter who scoops out the icky stuff for you so all you have to do is carve.  she wanted the pumpkin seeds so she even separated all the goo.  Yay!  I think they actually turned out pretty well this year!  Brett loved hauling them around the house - our mistake!  He dropped them and they got all bruised and oozed pumpkin blood - so smelly!  It was an adventure trying to find a spot on the pumpkins that was carve-able.  Funny!  How do you explain to a 2 year old that he can't use the special cutting tools to cut into his pumpkin because they are sharp?  This kid sneaks scissors when my back is turned to cut open snacks, cut the noses off paper airplanes...  He loves to color and has done so on several walls...  He even helped me cut the grass yesterday!  I let him push the lawnmower.  He thinks he's invincible.  Crazy kid.  But he's so cute!  Tells us "I love you so much" all the time, out of the blue.  Can't resist.

Matthew is so excited for Friday.  They get to have a Halloween party in class and a little parade for the kindergarten.  Cute!  I don't think he realizes he only gets to wear half of his costume, though.  It will be funny to see him in just the bodysuit with no mask or weapons.  Kids won't realize he's Optimus Prime...  Trying to prepare him.  He gets so emotional about stuff like that! :)  What a sweetie.

Work.  Been doing it forever.  Part of who I am.  But MAN!  I could use the longest vacation, followed by a return home to an immaculate home with no laundry, a live-in chef, a maid, and a personal assistant.  And maybe a massage.  I'd get so much more accomplished!!! :)  Makes me stronger, right?  All this opposition and struggling - creates an environment of creative thinking.  Can we petition to have another 10 hours added to each day?  I might actually get through an entire list of things to do if I had another 10 hours each day...Who can I talk to about that?

Mikala has her last official swim meet tomorrow, but the coach invited her to go to sectionals to swim with the relay teams if they need a back-up, so she's super excited about that.  So cute!  Wish I could bottle all the positive energy my kids put off.  I'd be using that instead of supplements/vitamins for sure!  :)

last minute visit to the apple orchard...

since i am leaving for nashville tomorrow, we thought we'd take the kids to the apple orchard and spend the afternoon as a family.  had to post some pics for all the grandmas. :)

 

want to see...?

If you want to see what my business is up to, go to Smart & Chic Bride.  We're adding cities every month and should be in a total of 10 by this time next year.  If you know  a stylist in another city that would love to do hair and makeup for weddings, give them the web address.  They can contact us with their bio and portfolio and we will make sure to follow up with them.  Who knows?  Maybe their city is already on our list!

We're going to:

Hudson, WI & Duluth/Rochester, MN - now

Nashville - October '09

New York City/New Jersey - November '09

Florida - January '10

Las Vegas - February '10

Dallas & Houston - March/April '10

...and the list is growing!  If you know Oprah or anyone on the Today Show, we're interested. :)

pics to go with my last post...

I didn't have time to upload the photos before, so here's the pics of Mikala's homecoming dance debut (she went with a few girlfriends...), Matthew's lost tooth and first day of school (happened within 12 hours of each other!) and Brett.

And a few random landscape from an early weekend morning up north before a wedding I did a few weeks ago.

That's it for now - just enough time to upload those photos!

SOOO much going on!

It's amazing to me how so much can happen in so little time.  Once school started, it was like an avalanche.  The night before school started, Matthew lost his first tooth.  He got to start school with a little gap in his bottom teeth.  Now the one next to it is falling out!  He was so cute on the first day.  I teared up when Mikala started Kindergarten, and I did for Matthew, too.  It's just so adorable to see all these little people trying to figure out what's going on.  He was so proud of his new clothes, shoes and backpack.  After 2 weeks, he's still loving it.  Favorite class?  Phy Ed.Gym.PE.  Whatever it is they call it now.  That and lunch.  He's ALL boy! :)

Brett is just learning everything at a rapid rate.  He imitates everything Matthew does, so I fully expect him to knock out a tooth and be reading by the time Matthew is done with this school year.  He's my little buddy while Matthew and Mikala are at school and daddy's at work and his baseball/football/basketball games.  He actually spends a lot of time just doing whatever while I work.  LOVE nap time!  I get so much done...  Last Sunday he came down with a big fever, so we gave him Tylenol and hoped it would wear off.  Monday morning he started throwing up and when I went to change him, I noticed that he was covered (his entire torso) with this flaming red rash.  It didn't itch him, but he said it hurt every time we tried to touch him anywhere.  We took him to the doc office and they told us what we already knew.  He was sick.  Nothing they could do.  That night, his temp got up to 105.3, so we took him to the ER.  ER doc said he was fine.  Yeah, he could have a seizure due to the high fever, but it would probably break after 72 hours and he'd be good as new.  He's on day #6 now.  Rash is gone (thank goodness!) but he still has the fevers that come and go, and he's trying to get rid of this ginormous cold sore on the inside of his mouth.  Poor baby!  He's spent most of the week either laying next to me or on top of me.  Doesn't want anything but mommy.

Mikala.  Oh my little Mikala!  She went to the homecoming dance with her girl friends last weekend.  She's at the football game tonight (required) because the band teacher makes all the high school band kids do pep band and marching band.  She says she's not a fan of that part, but she loves playing the trumpet enough that she goes to school an hour early every other day for a zero hour class.  With budget cuts, they pretty much eliminated band from the curriculum as a regular class and now it's just a lot of time for something she enjoys doing.  She gets credit, but those are early mornings!  She has to do home study seminary once a week on Wednesdays, so that takes a lot of dedication on her part as well.  They made her class president at seminary.  Not sure what that means, but she was a little excited about it.  She's in the middle of the swim season and is enjoying competing in the 500 freestyle, the 100 breaststroke, the 200 medley relay and the 200 freestyle relay.  She's not necessarily the most competitive, but she has a lot of fun and tries to beat her previous times.  When she's not doing all of that, we usually find her doing homework for one of her 4 honors classes or painting on a canvas with acrylic paints.  The girl can draw!  She just has natural talent that makes me a little jealous. :)

Jeremy is busy, too!  He got asked to be on a division 2 football officiating squad this year, so he travels on Saturdays out of town to bigger games.  We're proud of him.  He now does college level in all 3 sports: basketball, baseball and football.  He has had a ping pong tournament at the house and would love to again, but he's so busy that it's hard to do.  Most Sundays he ends up taking the kids to church for me since I have to work - he's a good sport about it.  It's NOT easy getting Matthew and Brett to be quiet in church.  Just not happening any time soon.  Brett is also trying to potty train himself, so we get a lot of "I meed to go pee toilet!" when it's really quiet in the chapel.  Too funny!

My big news?  Our business, Smart & Chic Bride is expanding!  I convinced Julie (my business partner) that it would be a great idea.  I thought we would be starting small.  NOPE!  We're going big or going home.  We flew out to LA in August.  October will see us in Nashville, TN.  November we're headed to New York City.  January we're headed to Florida and February to Las Vegas.  March or April we'll be going to Texas, Dallas and Houston.  We're also spreading in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  We're adding stylists in Duluth, Rochester, and Hudson, WI.  So by this time next year, we'll be in at least 10 cities!  We are starting to get requests from stylists around the country and stylists we know here that are moving to move to their cities.  It's really cool.  Right now it's A LOT of grunt work.  Most nights I am up for hours working on the computer while the family is asleep.  I still do the actual hair and makeup at weddings, then I also do correspondence with our brides and all the scheduling.  Now I am also in charge of our "staff" (freelance stylists who work with us) and the networking with vendors.  It's so crazy.  I knew it would be a lot of work, but I had no clue it would be this much work!  It's okay.  I will appreciate it more someday...  I still write articles for the online hair magazines and do hair for friends at the house for fun.  Spend a lot of time driving the kids to school and other appointments.  I'm just a little overwhelmed and tired.  A lot.  Waiting for my cash cow to come along so I can hire a maid and a chef and a nanny... :)  Wouldn't that be nice?  I'm building character.  I keep telling myself that!

So that's it for us right now.  Crazy, crazy.  Sorry if we aren't the best at keeping in touch.  We get a little distracted and wrapped up in our own business.  We still love you, though!