"And if you rub it, it will grant you three iWishes"

Well, it happens to everyone at least once.  You come downstairs and sleepily turn on your computer while getting breakfast.  Suddenly and without warning, you find a scary "I refuse to boot up" screen and realize that the worst has occurred - the hard drive has crashed.  If you're like us, you are wholly unprepared in this worst of moments.  You haven't backed up your documents, pictures or music in two years.  A sick feeling begins in your stomach.

In my case, I immediately called my computer-genius and ever calm husband, who was already at work.  Help!  Well, evening came, and Rob started attempting the great repair.  To no avail.  So many parts of the hard drive had crashed, along with other important computer components, that my laptop was unsalvageable.  Along with aforementioned precious files.  We took a deep breath.  I tried to hold back the tears.

Then we made the decision that we'd both been considering all day.  There was no place to go but the Apple store.  So we hopped in the car, pajama-clad Ellie in tow, and headed over to that wondrous place.  A few minutes later, we walked out with an iMac.

I'm trying to properly mourn the loss of my HP laptop.  I am deeply mourning the loss of my files, and send a plea to any and all who might have pictures of us to please email them to [email protected].

It's hard to properly  mourn the loss of a PC, however, when I'm staring at the shiny iMac in my office.  My mourning is mixed with absolutely giddiness about my new life.  I am a Mac person.  I have long imagined myself part of the artsy, literary, ultra-cool Mac group.  I may spend my days firmly entrenched in the decidedly PC world of law and business, but underneath all that PC exterior is the heart of an artist.  Well, I'm hiding no longer.  And I'm looking forward to many years of photo, movie, and artsy creations.  Deep breath and sigh, and into a brave new world.

Daddy's Little Buckeye

Well, it's game day. Ohio State Buckeyes v. Michigan Wolverines.

If the Bucks win, Rob will post a detailed victory report. If we lose, well, let's not think about that right now.

Kick off is at noon. Go Bucks!

Happy Halloween!

Ellie was a princess, of course. She had a tiara and a wand and a tulle skirt with hot pink bows - a birthday present from the Bowler girls. And, yes, her shirt says "Tiaras Make You Taller." Well, Rob says, whatever works...

Marc and Sarah came over and spent the evening with us. We ordered pizza and answered the constant ring of the door bell. Before it got dark, Ellie wanted to sit on the porch and hand out the candy herself. So of course we did. When trick-or-treating in Loveland closed at 7:30 p.m., we went over to the Strikes house where Monica and Jon were house-sitting. Pratt was an iPod this year. The picture doesn't really give the full view of the costume, which was elaborate and accurate. Then we went over to Nana and Keith's house, of course, to get ooohs and ahhs from them. Ellie twirled her wand and held onto her treat bag the entire time. She even kept her tiara on until we got to Nana's house, when she decided she'd had enough of being taller. It was a late night for a little princess, but too much fun to turn in early!

Anyone feel like applesauce?

Okay, our blog is sorely out of date. Sorry. I've been wanting to write this story for awhile, and have very little idea how to put it into words. I did something recently that I've never done before.

I canned. You know, like our mothers and grandmothers did. With the cooking and stirring and steam-sealing. The Kerr jars and lids. The whole thing.

Our friends the Harwards can a few bushels of apples every fall. You know, just a hundred or more pounds of apples. Nancy has an applesauce machine and a steam-sealer (or whatever it's called that seals the lids to the bottles), and years of expertise. So my friend Monica suggested that we join her this year and get some applesauce in our respective food storages. I signed up for half a bushel, and Ellie and I went over to Nancy's house one rainy afternoon to get to work. Monica brought Pratt, and the two kiddos traded off taking naps in the pack and play, eating, and playing. They did pretty well for the first several hours.

By the time 5:00 hit, we knew the end was nowhere in sight. So we called our husbands and told them to come over for a pizza/applesauce-making party. Once Rob, Michael Harward, and Jon arrived, they joined the applesauce-making extravaganza, which made the whole thing go faster - and re-energized us. We ate delicious Dewey's Pizza (for those of you who have access to this delightful place, I highly recommend the Green Lantern - goat cheese and artichokes on a pizza!) and then got back to work in the kitchen.

By 9:00 p.m., Ellie was absolutely demanding that we take her home. Monica, Jon, Nancy and Michael pressed forward until past 10:00 until the whole project was complete.

Our total? We made 70+ quarts of applesauce from 4 bushels, which we figure totals about 170 pounds of apples. My half bushel of apples made 9 quarts, which I was sure would last us forever. But this week we're polishing off the second quart, and we're going to have to start rationing applesauce.

Next year a bushel? It's possible. Now that I've entered this particular realm of Mormon Motherdom, or Pioneer Womandom, or something, there's no going back. For a complete photo essay on the project, visit Monica's blog (which is NOT Jon's blog - literally): http://www.cherryredmustang.blogspot.com/

Repeat Purchases

We lost Ellie's sunglasses. I don't know where they are. They must have escaped to the world of odd socks, important papers, and keys. I think the world is called A Safe Place. For three days I looked for them. Meanwhile, Ellie kept grabbing mine, and they kept slipping off her nose. The ones she managed to hold on to she also managed to loosen the screw and take apart. After three days of unsuccessful searching, I knew we had no choice but to buy a new pair. Turns out, baby sunglasses are hard to come by in October. I checked the children's resale store around the corner - none left. The Children's Place, which had rows and rows all summer. All gone. Target - bingo! Sure enough, tucked in the newborn aisle, were sunglasses. Only two pairs left. There was no deciding which pattern looked the best - we took what was there and checked out. Ellie kept them on the rest of the day. Literally. Except when she took them off and handed them to me so that I could put them back on.

So life is happy around here again, where sunglasses are appropriate attire for everything, including dinner.

How To Define This Working Life

I am a full-time mom. Rob is a full-time dad. Rob also works 12 hour days, 5 days a week, and sometime 4 hour days on Saturday. I work 10 hours a week. I am not a stay-at-home mom. I don't stay at home all day. I am not a housewife. Am I a homemaker? But doesn't Rob help make our house a home just as much as I do? We've never found the proper term for women that give up careers, education, or the dream of both to devote all day to nurturing children while our husbands work to pay for the nurturing our children need. I've asked around, and no one seems to be able to come up with an alternate term. My cousin Celia, a brilliant woman who was quite the executive before choosing to "stay home", and then taught English part time at a Utah college, describes herself as a Mother. That seems the most accurate. Although I don't know any men who write Father in the blank on personal information forms for occupation, and every father is definitely full-time.

The first time I confronted this term-problem was when I had to fill out a personal information form at a doctor's office right after quitting my full-time job as a litigator at a big downtown Cincinnati firm. There was a blank for Occupation. I paused. Well, I'm still a lawyer. But I don't have a paying job (a job ''outside the home" - which doesn't include all those women who continue their professions from home offices). So I shrugged and wrote "stay at home mom." But it bothered me.

Seven months after Ellie was born, I got a call from a friend who practices intellectual property law part-time. She works 5 hours a week, exclusively from home. The firm is small, woman-owned, and comprised mostly of young mothers. We have one, lone male attorney. Bless him. They were looking for a part-time estate planning attorney, and I signed on. I work 10 hours a week for The Wolfe Practice (check us out at http://www.twplaw.com - we're awesome). I spend Wednesday afternoons in the office, and log in the rest of my hours from home. Wednesdays are sometimes back to back client meetings. I am finding that I can't get any work done at home unless Ellie is down for a nap. So days are definitely busy. But fun. I'm having a blast. I'm so happy.

Who watches Ellie while I'm at the office, I'm often asked. The answer? She goes to a daycare center a half mile away from the office. The Gingerbread Academy. I think it's a wonderful, nurturing, learning place. But I notice the moment of pause that people give at my announcement that I take my child to daycare. Daycare carries quite a stigma. I find myself always backing up the announcement with a paragraph about how much I love the Academy, how I think the socialization is good for her, how they give me ideas for what games and learning activities to do with her at home. Frankly, I'm a big fan of a good daycare center. But there have been several days over the last several weeks where I've needed office time two days a week rather than one. Not only is this expensive, but I've found that, emotionally, I can't handle having Ellie in daycare two days a week. I'm sure she's fine - plenty of children spend five days a week in daycare and grow up to be wonderful, contributing citizens. But every family has to make decisions about what's right for them, and for us one afternoon a week at Gingerbread is plenty.

You can have a lengthy, passionate conversation with any mother about "what's right for us" and how to balance "family and work."

Working mothers (but don't all mothers work, regardless of whether any of that work takes place in a office?) face different experiences than working fathers (and isn't fatherhood work?). I'm not saying that fathers couldn't have the same experience as working mothers. I'm just saying that by and large they don't.

And here comes the point of this blog: two hilarious stories from recent weeks. Last Wednesday, I was running a bit behind schedule getting to work. Just as I drove out of the driveway, my gas light came on. There was no time to stop for gas, and I calculated that my gas mileage was sufficient to get me to Gingerbread, then to work, and then back to Gingerbread, and then to the gas station down the road. I was correct, by the way. By the time I left work, it was pouring sheets of rain. I decided to stop at the closest gas station to work, rather than waiting for the cheaper gas station close to home, thinking that I definitely did not want to run out of gas in the pouring rain.

After pumping the gas, I went to turn on the car. Nothing. Literally, nothing. The guy at the pump next to me said it sounded like the starter was out. And this gas station had no mechanic. Luckily, there was a mechanic at the gas station across the street. So I pulled out the umbrella, put Ellie and I under it, and walked across the busy intersection through sheets of rain in my black dry clean only suit and 3 inch black stilettos. There was a tow truck guy in the waiting room, who towed my car across the street. Turns out it was the battery, which apparently had had enough of drought and heat and rain. An hour later, I had a new battery and was back on my way.

Next story, and this probably illustrates best what I find is unique in the experience of "working moms." I had a court hearing last week, on a day that Gingerbread is full and has no opening for a part-timer like Ellie. The hearing was a 9:00 a.m. I got Ellie bathed and dressed. I realized my black jacket was still at the cleaners. So we stopped at the cleaners on the way to the highway, where I removed the jacket from the plastic and put it on. We hit major, major traffic heading downtown, and I had to call the judge's chambers and tell the clerk we were going to be late. (By they way, the clerk was whispering, because the judge had a criminal docket before our hearing, and when I got to the courtroom I found three handcuffed, prison-attired individuals waiting their turn to make their case to the judge - fascinating). I stopped outside Rob's office - again, pouring rain - and picked him up. We drove up to the courthouse, where I hopped out and headed in for the hearing. The opposing attorney, whom I'd never met before, is just coming back to work after maternity leave, and we chatted about the difficult decision of how much to work and how to find good childcare before we started talking about the case. Forty-five minutes later, I called Rob (driving around town with a sleeping Ellie) and he came to pick me up. We dropped him back at work, and headed back to the 'burbs. All in a day's work. Thank goodness for team effort!

So there you have it. A long post, and somewhat indulgent on my part. Just a few thoughts I had to put out there. Now Ellie is down for a nap, and I'm going to sign on remotely to access my desktop and client files at work. Good luck to all women out there striking a balance. Let me know if you come up with a word to define what we all are doing.

An Identity in Brush Strokes

A year after creating sort of a bare bones blog, Rob and I spent some serious time revamping it a few weeks ago. Last week, I decided that Ed Mell's masterpiece of the Grand Canyon was really the picture that needed to head up our blog - our identity. After all, I was trained by my parents to love Ed Mell and to worship the Grand Canyon. And Rob and I were part of the great Hinckley Expedition through the Canyon two years ago - four days roughing it, drinking water out of tadpole infested streams (our water purifier broke on about day 2), eating oatmeal mush made from the silty Colorado River, and hiding in our tent from the immense rain storm. A truly extraordinary experience and yes, we'd do it again tomorrow if Clark sent the clarion call.

Anyway, it has occurred to me that if we are reporting Team Lesan's adventures from Loveland, Ohio, the Grand Canyon really isn't the best heading picture. So I've replaced it. But it brings up the very unanswerable question of identity: what is it, and how do we create it? And what is the soundtrack and the setting? What melodies and brush strokes? Things I can't possibly answer on a Sunday afternoon. Anyway, this Western girl just can't take Ed Mell and the Grand Canyon off the blog forever; it would somehow indicate that the Grand Canyon is part of a past and not current identity. So here it is, forever preserved, and I hope I haven't violated very many copyright laws in displaying it. Mr. Mell, it's only because you capture the Canyon vista so wonderfully, so please excuse me.

Every Castle Needs a Queen

Yes, doesn't it? To that end, HRH QE2 and I made our first trip to the Loveland Castle last week. Yes, Loveland has a castle: Chateau Roche. A man named Harry Andrews spent his life building the castle - by hand - on the banks of the Little Miami River. According to the castle's website, Harry had an IQ of 181. In the early 1920s, Harry ran a small Boy Scout troop that met for activities and camping along the banks of the river. Harry decided he would start a new Boy Scout-ish organization that would sweep the nation: Knights of the Golden Trail. And so the knights needed a castle. The movement never really took off, but Harry's KOGT still maintain the castle and give tours. I didn't really get the full story from the knight at the front desk; I'm not sure how you get to be a knight these days, but I do know that the only thing the knights really do now is maintain the castle. The knights all seem to be middle-aged.

Harry actually lived in the castle, in a tiny room on the second floor. Apparently he also had a secret room that was discovered some years ago. From time to time, other knights have lived in the castle, but the knight we spoke with said that has never really worked out. Apparently, the castle does have it's own ghost...

Anyway, it was a gorgeous sunny day, and Ellie and I had quite a wonderful time exploring the rooms and gardens. We met tourists from as far away as Kentucky and Florida. We even saw pictures of weddings the castle has hosted, as well as video clips of Harry building the castle through the years. A truly Loveland afternoon. For those of you who need to know more about Loveland's Chateau Roche, you can visit its website: http://www.lovelandcastle.com

Ellie's Adventures

Ellie has been exploring her world lately in a serious way. For a long time, she moved herself about with an army crawl, necessitating daily washings of whatever outfit she happened to dust the floor. Then one day she suddenly found her hands and knees, and she's been going crazy ever since. Then she discovered that not only could she pull herself up on furniture, she could pull herself up the stairs. We've only had two major falls - she's pretty good at it, and she doesn't seem to consider a bad tumble a setback of any kind. What a champ. She's also learned to pull all the books off her shelf and thumb through them at rapid speed. Today at church she found something very new and fascinating - the organ pedals. We are practicing for the Primary program in the chapel, and to keep Ellie occupied I let her pound on the organ manuals (organ off, obviously). Then she saw the pedals. So I put her on the floor and she crawled all over them like an obstacle course. It was a perfect plaything, and I sincerely hope that the organ can't be ruined while it's off. If so, I suppose this blog is me owning up that it is my fault if the organ starts making strange sounds - or no sounds.

Ellie also *loves* her sunglasses. She won't keep any sort of bow or headband in her hair, but if her sunglasses fall off, she immediately tries to get them back on. She gets lots of compliments on them, and looks very sophisticated at the park, in the car, walking in the sunshine, or sitting in church.

It's also Buckeye Football Season (yes, in caps), meaning that Ellie has a new Buckeye jersey and must wear it every game day. She loves the feel of the fabric and is quite happy to crawl around at Grandma and Grandpa's house while we watch the Bucks win week after week after week. Nothing says autumn has arrived like football at THE Ohio State University. Go Bucks!

(And in case you haven't heard, Gordon Gee, a fellow Mormon, is returning to Columbus for an encore performance as President of THE OSU. Good thing the OSU song, Carmen Ohio, is set to the same tune as Come Ye Children of the Lord!)

Golden Throat, this is Jazz Square: We May Have a Problem

Well, obsessions come and obsessions go, but I think this one may be here to stay for quite some time. A few weeks ago, we started hearing rumblings about something on the Disney channel called High School Musical. Apparently, the made for tv movie came out some time ago, and a sequel was debuting. One member of our bishopric had to miss a major sporting event, because the TV in his house was surrounded by high school girls having a High School Musical 2 debut party. So he shrugged his shoulders, sat down by his five daughters, and watched it with them. Another friend happened to call a home full of teenage daughters on the Friday of the debut. Before she could explain why she was calling, the mother said, "I hope you're not looking for a baby-sitter, because High School Musical 2 debuts tonight, and you won't be able to find anyone in the stake willing to babysit for you." Ada told me that she was planning a HSM2 party with Erin and Alex, and that the movies were filmed at East High (Go Leps - wait - Wildcats!) and in St. George. What is this phenom? We pulled out our trusty DVR and set it to record #2, as well as the rerun of #1. Several days later, we sat down after putting Ellie to bed to see what all the fuss was about.

The rest, as they say, is history. We haven't been able to watch anything else for days and days and days. Even now, we're watching highlights from HSM2. For those of you who know the shows backwards and forwards, we watched all the big songs: You are the Music in Me, Gotta Go My Own Way, whatever it is that Troy laments on the golf course, and Everyday. Well, it ended all too soon, so now we're recaping the first one. It started because I just wanted to see the opening Start of Something New, but then Rob wanted to see the winking girl in the musicale tryouts, and then we couldn't miss Gabriella's soliloquy, with that light in her hair and her cool dance moves on the East High stairs. So here we are, singing along. Yes, iTunes has been most obliging in providing us with our favorite songs, so we can memorize the words while we're driving.

So that's all I really wanted to say. For those of you who are yet unschooled in the stories, put some fresh batteries in your Tiki Warrior costume and get going...Wildcats are in the House!

Somewhere in Middle America

Once again, Cincinnati is in the midst of an extreme heat emergency. Each morning, after Al Roker reports that the midwest is still experiencing above normal temperatures, our local weather woman pulls up her "Power of 5 Radar Network" and advises that we all stay indoors until further notice. It's a dousy, people, it's a dousy. Other than the weather, though, life here in Middle America (not to be confused with Middle Earth) is quite lovely. I'll try to give the highlights so as not to commit you to a full day of reading through the tales of our life. This month has been a big one, and I can't possibly do justice to all the major events. Perhaps these pictures are worth 1000 words or more.



August 4 was Sarah and Marc's wedding day! It was beautiful and perfect. Ellie was a doll, lasting until 11 p.m. before begging for bed. Mom came out for all the festivities, and we had a ball. Mom stayed for more than a week after the wedding, during which time we sewed curtains (and by "we" I mean Mom) and put together our wedding scrapbook (again, "we" is Mom). I mostly sat at my computer during the sewing and scrapbooking sessions and worked.



Dad flew into town for a 24 hour layover on his way to Kohler, Wisconsin, and we kicked off Ellie's birthday celebration with a Reds game. We ended up with a beautiful night of baseball, and the Reds even won the game to top it off! We kept celebrating all week long, culminating in a party on Wednesday the 15th, her actual birthday. We can't believe it's been a year! She looks like such a big girl, and is so aware of her surroundings. She really interacts and communicates with us, and it's fun to watch her skills develop.



Much more to come on all of these subjects, but for now we'll just leave you with a taste of what we've been doing. Now that we've revamped our blog, you can expect more frequent tales from Loveland, Ohio. Yay!