High on a Mountain Top

This post is brought to you by the Bunn family & the letter B!

Boulder or BUST! That was the Bunn family motto this week. One of our old roommates is getting his PHd in Bassoon Performance - and we were out there to see one of his PHd recitals. The preformance was SPECTACULAR and we had a GREAT time.

Loki bagged his first peak (that's what they say when you reach the summit of a tall mountain - you "bagged" the peak)! He got to meet Wade (WB's best friend) & Jibboo - Wade's boxer!

We, of course, made sure to squeeze in a little extra time to eat bagels and catch up with Banjo Billy. We wanted to chat with him about bus development. Despite our fall out, he was VERY helpful and offered us alot of really good advice and tips for building our wild bootlegged speakeasy on wheels!

I must admit, I really do miss Boulder. It's so beautiful, there. And life with the boys is SOOO laid back. I was definitely BEDAZZLED for a few days. I remember moving back to TN because I wasn't sure if the baby and the boys would mix so well. And as it turns out, they DO!

It's definitely been a little weird revisiting all of our old stomping grounds - first San Fran and now Boulder. I don't think we're quite ready to leave Tennessee but we really enjoyed living in those places - that being said - there's a good chance that we'd enjoy living anywhere!

How crazy am I????

Ok, I know the answer to that, but listen to what I may be up to......

Local pottery studio, Achy Breaky Ceramics, announced they are closing at the end of the month. Selling off their entire inventory, supplies, ceramics, etc. I call them to see if they had entertained the idea of selling the entire studio, meaning I would have a second studio. Yes, that's what I said, I asked them if they would sell the whole studio. Of course, they said yes and then proceeded to give me a price that made me just about hang up the phone (way too high). But, I am going by there tonight to see some of their numbers and see what their space looks like and what their deal is. I am not going to buy another studio on my own! Heather, who was once my manager before she got pregnant, may be interested in going in as a partner. Of course, it will be Doing Dishes, and mostly mine, but she would help with some of the up front cash. She would also be in charge of that studio and marketing and so on. It's really up in the air and I am sure Brian thinks it is a horriable idea, but I think it may work and if it's meant to be, it will.

More to come......

The Wheel of Life

Thank God Wheel is in town for 2 weekends cause I just couldn't make it all the way down to SeaWorld last weekend. It was bad enough that I had to rush through work just to try to beat Elena home from her cruise before she saw the bathroom without me being there to see her reaction. Well I can say it MIGHT be the happiest I have ever seen her. She actually had tears in her eyes. I think she was more excited to see the bathroom than to see me after a week. :-)

Anyway, she absolutely loves it and wouldn't change a thing.

So this Saturday is the Wheel of Fortune thing, after work. Katie that was really funny how you wrote your comment like a puzzle, witty!

In other news I have some absolutely horrific news which I wasn't going to share until we know for sure but my mom found a lump in her other breast a week ago. She went to the doctor and he felt it too but said it's not necessarily cancer, blah blah blah. She has a mammogram scheduled for Tuesday and now Tuesday can't come fast enough. Nobody knows except me and my dad. She wasn't even going to tell us until after Tuesday but the other day she called me while I was in Goodwill with Elena and I could tell in her voice something wasn't right. So when I asked what was wrong she told me and made me swear not to tell my bros and sisters. I nearly broke down in GW and poor Elena thought someone was dead from the way I was crying.

Anyway, my mom is really kinda having a positive attitude about the whole thing and trying not to think about it(yeah right). I spent most of the day with her today and she's been pretty good. She has already scoped out a surgeon and an oncologist since her last time with this she was in NY, so she wanted to get a jump on finding good doctors here. This really fuckin sucks. I sit here and try to figure out why these things keep happening to good people, but that is time wasted.

So keep my mom in your thoughts please and I'll let you know on Tuesday what comes of her test. Love you guys!

Bachelorette Party!!!

So I'm having a party tonight through Friday night. Whoever wants to come just drop on by anytime. There'll be food, drinks, music, etc. all week (or unless Elena comes home early).

That's right she has left me until Saturday afternoon. She went on a cruise with her family for 6 days. And yes I probably could've gone with if it was returning on Friday instead of Saturday. So far last night was miserable, I couldn't sleep a wink. I was convinced someone was at any second going to bust through my bedroom door and slit my throat. The best part is if Elena is here I'm the "tough one" who goes out at midnoght to put out the trash or feed the cats, etc. If she only knew what a chicken I am. :-)

In other news...I am finally getting a shot at pursuing a lifelong dream of mine. The Wheelmobile is coming to Orlando this weekend and I'll finally get to "try-out" for Wheel of Fortune. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm very excited and really hope that I can make the right impression on the producers to get on the show. If I'm chosen the filming takes place later in the year. So wish me luck. My sister is so jealous, at Christmas she and I have nightly competitions at 7:30

Hope everyone is doing well, back to work. :-)

Part deux

so, after working all day, I just feel like being more philosophical than literal. I miss my dad and I wish that he were here and I could smell him and hug him and hear his voice. Sometimes when I am driving in my car (and not listening to children's music), I can hear him singing in his goofy way. He was an amazing singer (guess where Sarah gets it) but he would sometimes just belt out songs so loud and goofy that as a teenager we would roll our eyes, but as a child we thought he was hilarious. He knew every word to almost every song. He would always ask us "who sings this" and I would always jokingly say "Jefferson airplane." Believe it or not, if you say it enough, sometimes you get it right more than you would think. But seriously, we got really good at that game and sometimes I play it with Brian. He would give us rub-a-dubs, which were basically him scratching our face with his 5 o'clock shadow. We would laugh our heads off and ask him to do it again and again. He would make a funny noise and then kiss us goodnight. For some children that have divorced parents they feel like their parent is missing from their life. I can say that I never remember feeling like that. Sure, I wished a million times that my parents would get remarried or never have been divorced, but I never felt like he wasn't a part of our lives. We talked to him every week or whenever we wanted to, we saw him whenever we were out of school and spent almost the whole summer with him. He always took us on road trips and as a teenager I hated them, but now I look back and they were wonderful. Just wonderful to spend all that time with him. Wonderful to learn how to fish and steer a canoe, how to skip rocks and how to set up a tent. I also always knew that he loved us. His parents weren't big on affection, but he was much better. He would always hug us FOREVER when we got off the plane or right before we were getting on to go home. The night before we flew home, he would always come in our room and tell us that he loved us and give us an extra kiss and hug. I can only speak for myself, but I cried almost every time I had to leave him. He was a great dad! Sure, he didn't teach me how to drive or tell me to stay away from boys, or how to tie a tie, but he was a good dad and I miss him so much. Not just today and tomorrow, on the anniversary of his death, but everyday. Today is just so much harder because it brings back all those bad memories and just makes it so much more real.

If I could turn back time..... (this is really long)

If I could, I would go back to well before 9/20/04. That is the day that I got the call that would change my life FOREVER. (disclaimer: If you haven't heard this story before, grab a box of tissues). Brian and I were sitting on the couch, watching TV. The phone rang and I could see it was Hagerstown, so I knew it was my step-mom. I knew my dad was on his Boundry Waters trip. So, I wondered why Carol was calling so late (it was 9:20pm). I answered and Carol said "Hi Katie, is Brian there?" I said "You sound like you have a cold" and she said "yeah, I am fighting something." I gave the phone to Brian, all the while wondering why she needed to talk to him. Moments later, I knew something was wrong by the look on his face and he mouthed "it's your dad." He handed me the phone and from then on I think I cried for the next few months. Carol said she had wanted to make sure that Brian would be there for me when she told me what she needed to tell me. She said that my Aunt Pam and Grammy had come over and that they had been called by my dad's best friend, Scott, and that Scott told them that my dad had an accident. So I said "What kinda accident" and Carol explained that from what she understands, my dad had a stroke or something and passed out and fell out of the canoe and they can't find him. I don't remember much more except for screaming and falling on the floor and screaming and crying and screaming and crying. I knew Beth hadn't been told, so I knew we needed to get to my Mom's house. All I could say was "oh my God, oh my God, oh my God" and "I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do" over and over. Somehow, Brian got me in the car and we went to my Mom's house. Because it was so late, their house was all locked up and I had to bang on the back door. When Hal came to the door, I remember just screaming, "They think my Dad is dead" and my mom came running from the other room. I guess I must have told them the story or Brian did, I don't know. But my Mom called my Dad's house and I think talked to my Aunt Pam and she explained the rest and that they hadn't told Beth. So, then my Mom took it upon herself to try to tell Beth. They knew she was home, but she was all alone and they didn't want to tell her by herself. Mike was at a hotel for work about ?2? hours away and they couldn't get him. Finally, my mom got the desk clerk who knew Mike to go to the bar that he was at and tell him to call my mom (at least this is how I think it went down). Then Mike called his best friend, who is a cop and a good friend of Beth's as well and he went over to Beth's house and when he got there, he told Beth to call my mom and she told her. Mike left and drove home to be with Beth. I just remember calling everyone and asking them to pray for my Dad and to pray that he was still alive. My mom was worried that I was freaking out so she called a friend of hers to bring over some Zanax or something like that but I refused to take anything. I remember just pacing around her house and crying and then I had this enormous need to have a picture of him. So I went through my baby books and found a picture of him playing the guitar and me watching. I just held that picture for days, I couldn't let go of it. I don't remember going back home or going to sleep or getting a plane ticket or a lot else. I remember the next day I went to the shop and Stephanie came over so I could show her how to run the shop. I remember calling a minister friend of mine to come over and pray with us. I remember making a diaper cake for a shower that was for a friend of mine over the weekend at the shop. I remember going through that day in a haze and just believing that they would find him alive. Then, we are at home, standing in the driveway and I call Carol to find out if they knew anything and I think it was Beth who told me they found his body and he wasn't alive. I think for some reason she assumed I already knew that. But I lost it! I truly had thought that he was alive just laying on some island somewhere. The next morning I flew to Maryland. I remember being in the house, so upset. So devastated. But there were all these people there, just helping and getting in the way and it was stressing me out. Apparently, at one point, I just yelled "Everyone needs to leave so we can be with our family." I don't care if it was rude, it needed to be done. My step-mom's friend, Gail, was helping us return phone calls and writing down who brought what and so on. She had received a call from the local news station and they said they wanted to do a memorial story on our dad. Gail had asked us and at first we said no. Then they said that we could just write a statement and then we said yes. So, this total douche bag, Victor Blackwell, comes over to our house with a video camera and we give him the statement and he says "Would it be ok if we just got some video of someone?" and we say "no" then he asks if they can just film some empty rooms at the house, for affect and we say no and get pissed and basically kick him out of our house. (After that, people told us that they called his boss and told him what a douche he had been. Now the douche works here in Jacksonville, how funny is that. I sent him an email telling him what an ass I thought he was and now that he is in my town, he better not do anything like that again.) I'm exhausted and I think I will finish this later.

What a MESS!

This is Brian and Reagan at Eagle Harbor last Friday night. She was eating, or should I say wearing, frozen blackberries. What a mess, but she had fun. Luckily, they were swimming in the pool so it just washed all off.