Heyyyyyyyy blog. I can’t believe that I’m still doing this in 2026, can you??? Where are we? What’s happening? It is currently January 2026, but since I am way behind on my blog (maybe my resolution can be to get caught up). We’re back in uh, October I think. Here I am teaching adults the “narrative self-portrait” class I taught second graders last year. Success! They all whined and complained about drawing self-portraits (nobody likes to draw self-portraits), but every adult participated and they’ve been coming back for my once-a-month art lessons too!

Through the magic of Instagram I landed myself a cool new friend, and twice a month we meet up with a group of artists in Snohomish at a coffee shop to work on projects, discuss upcoming shows, and just yakkity yak in general. How long have I searched for an artist community and it only took me TWENTY YEARS of living in the Seattle area to find one??? Fate, baby.

October was stressful because of GG dying but it wasn’t (and couldn’t be!) ALL bad. My sweet little redhead celebrated his 6th birthday and our house was so crammed with guests (minus the ones that couldn’t come because they had a cold) that I declared it to be the last kid birthday party at the house. To that end, Goo’s birthday party this upcoming weekend is going to be at one of those overpriced jumpy palaces. Hey, at least I don’t have to clean my house! Woot woot!

One wild and rainy and windy October day, we met up with Rachel’s family at the pumpkin patch we go to every year. October was so busy and it’s hard to make plans with another family so even though the weather sucked, we had to make it work! It was so cold that at one point my little redhead was crying and I had to take him into a barn in an attempt to warm him up.

I was wearing chiffon and FROZE MY BUTT OFF, but I have to admire Rachel’s pluck! She’s 6 years younger than me and never seems to get sick/have bad cramps/have a lack of energy and she never misses our weekly yoga class. I’m very grateful for her friendship. It’s not easy making friends in adulthood, with all of our adult baggage, and with little kids to boot!

The nursing home activities department is really cool right now so not only are they letting me teach art classes once a month, but they made each day leading up to Halloween a special costume day so Josh and I dressed as Kurt Cobain and a hippie for “favorite decade”, he dressed up as a vampire one day, and one day without even planning it we dressed up as grapes and a gardener. My patients love it when I wear a wig!

Halloween was not great for me because I was horribly ill, but I think I already blogged about that so let’s not re-hash it eh? The boys had fun trick or treating with their friend and it took them over a month to plow through all of the Halloween candy they trick or treated in our neighborhood.

Not to be confused with our 20th wedding anniversary, Josh and I celebrated 20 years of our first DATE in November! I love telling the story about how I asked him out…who knows how long it would have taken him to ask me out! Sometimes you just have to GO FOR IT, Eddie.

My mother moved into her new place! It’s lovely. It has a really nice back yard with a porch, little stream and pretty trees to look at. Jared provided some strength to help us move her stuff over, and she’s completely out of her old place. Rachel and I went thrifting in Snohomish one day, and then Mom took us out to the “Angry Crab” for dinner that same day.

I taught the extremely rowdy third graders a lesson on “neon sign art”, and it was Goo’s idea to mount it on neon cardstock to go into the “glow room” for the art auction in the spring. The boys received lots of art supplies for Christmas and have been painting rocks, making shapes out of model clay, and drawing up a storm! The little redhead does imitate his big brother a lot (for good or bad) and I love it when they draw together. Warms this old broad’s heart.

Around November 20th (and maybe partly inspired by my new pink-haired pal) I re-dyed my hair pink, and it’s still pink! Blonde feels so drab now, what can I say? Also I get treated better with pink hair. I dyed it prior to Thanksgiving and then I was irritated that I was too sick to go to Thanksgiving dinner over at GG’s (I still call it GG’s) house. Bob got a cold right around that same time from someone else, gave it to Fleeta and Fleeta got REALLY sick and was sick all December long.

In November we celebrated Rachel’s 40th birthday by going downtown to Chop Suey and shaking it around for 3 hours to late 90’s/early 2000’s pop music. Three hours! We danced! I had a little cough medicine and a yellow Red Bull prior to going out, and made it until midnight and then I was DONE. My entire body hurt the next day. I tell ya, the mind is willing but the body….eh…..

It is fun having friends that like to dance! Well, Rachel likes to dance, and Jared likes Rachel, heh heh heh. We invited their family over for a 2.5 hour NYE “rave” on Wednesday and they stayed on the dance floor with me while Josh spun records. The boys gave up the dance portion pretty early on and spent most of their time playing in Goo’s room. Jared had been promising me fry bread for months and he delivered! His grandmother’s recipe, with a big old side of fresh honey butter to go on top. YUM.

I did, in fact, publish FIVE children’s books this year! I look back and I don’t know how I did that, but I did that. The fifth one was the hardest because I wanted a lot of detail in the illustrations. I do have a plan for a sixth, but I’m in no rush to complete anything.

I don’t really make resolutions per say but I do resolve to spend more time walking my little girl! She loves it.

Bob and Fleeta left today–they came to stay with us after Christmas for GG’s memorial, which was lovely. I didn’t take a lot of pictures but Fleeta and Josh and his cousin Alyse and her son James all gave speeches, the service was sweet and the slideshow made everyone cry and there was certainly a lot of love in the room. I’m grateful that I married into such a wonderful family. I’m grateful for my own family. I’m grateful for making new girlfriends this year! I’m grateful that my body mostly allows me to do what I want. I’m grateful for creativity. I’m even grateful for this blog. Ta ta for now!