New Mary Kay TV Commercial

For the first time that I know of Mary Kay is advertising on television. I think it is a great idea and I hope it brings business my way. Here is a link from my Mary Kay site for the commerical.

BookCrossing

This past weekend I encountered "BookCrossing" for the first time. See the site for more info. The idea of bookcrossing is for people to share books with others for free in an anonymous way while tracking the book's journey online. You register your book and make an entry on the site that assigns the book a number. You write the bookcrossing information in the book. Then you leave the book somewhere or pass it on to someone and see what happens. I chose a book entitled The Letter by Richard Paul Evans. I looked up the book and it originated in Chicago then traveled to California than to a NC! I also found there are several bookcrossers in the Cary area leaving books at all kinds of places. It is a neat idea so I may try it. I will definitely try it with The Letter when I am finished.

Good Weekend.

Many families with both parents working spend their weekends catching up on household chores. At the Ashton home, that was not the case this weekend. No,no,no we were not a bunch couch potatoes but we had a good balance between work and fun this weekend. We switched off with the kids each morning so we both could get a little extra much needed sleep each morning. Saturday we had a leisurely day enjoying personal pan pizzas and then a hot beverage at Mr. Toads Coffeehouse. This is a cute coffeehouse that we found near at home. The cafe was very family friendly there was a couch and seating area that had children's books and toys. There was also a WI-FY network with portable computers you could use while you were there. So we made ourselves at home. James tried one of the systems which sucked and decided next time to use his own laptop. The kids played with the toys and we all got to relax. At Mr. Toads, we also encountered a phenomenon called "bookcrossing". See my post about this. Then we did an errand and had dinner at home. Caught a few fun TV shows as a family. Even watched a movie-"Batman Begins". Sunday morning we headed to the new donut shop near home then had our usual weekend shopping trip this time at Target instead of Walmart. Headed home and took care of a few chores. After dinner at home, and playtime for Taylor we all got to bed at decent time.

All in all a great family weekend. Now on to Monday which I hate.

Victory!

Read more about the triumph my tarheels had over the wolfpack this past weekend!

Carolina vs. State Weekend

Aah..Fall means football! This years meeting between my beloved alma mater and our arch rival is a little early on the schedule this year but that does not take anything away from the excitement. Last year you make remember the (unless you a State fan) the loss we handed over to Coach Amato. Things may be different this time. But atleast we can watch and not just listen to Woody and Mick on the radio. They are actually showing the game locally on WRAL. Having two small kids limits all sports viewing to be on television. No tailgating but hey in Raleigh-you have watch out you can killed after the game. Thank goodness for HDTV!

Family Dinner

Recently when Taylor and I were watching Andy Griffin on TV land , I saw an ad about the family table project On September 26, 2004, there is a project to get families to sit down to dinner all together at home for an enjoyable meal. There are studies that have indicated that families who consistently eat meals together have teenage children that are less likely to get in trouble. Now I am sure it is not the eating that does it but that correlation comes from the involvement of the parents in the child's world.

The idea of parents nor eating with children on a regular basis is hard for me to believe even though when I was in high school this was the case a majority of the time. Now, I understand not always eating at home. We ate out atleast half the time when I was pregnant with James. I definitely understand not always cooking at home. That is a struggle for me currently.

During my early childhood, I always ate "supper" with Grandmamma and Grandaddy, almost always Mama, and often with my cousin Jimmy. We always had a full meal with several side dishes and vegetables, meat, bread and dessert. Those experiences helped develop my love of food especially comfort food. Then once a week just like in the popular movie "Soul Food", we had Sunday dinner (lunch in our case) that my grandmama cooked. Grandmama Moffitt never went to Sunday school or church that I can remember because she stayed home and cooked lunch after she had already cooked pancakes-our traditional Sunday breakfast. Oh I could go on and on about the food, ham, roast beef, fried chicken, homemade yeast rolls, fresh veggies and usually one of Mama's cakes. Yummy!

Those meals not only left me with memories of good southern home cooking, but also left me with a tradition of eating dinner together that I automatically applied to my family even before the children. For the entire year when James and I worked split shifts switching off with Taylor @ 2:30 every day, we never ate together during the week. Not one meal! Sometimes we would instant message each other as I was eating my TV dinner at home and he was eating his at work. It was a rough time being apart. Now that we are all home at night it has been a struggle to eat together every night with James putting in long hours at the store and juggling Taylor and baby's schedules. We manage. Even Baby James is starting to eat his cereal and juice with us at supper time in his high chair. Last night, James had some last minute work to finish up and would not be home at his regular time so instead of waiting we ate without him. It just doesn't seem right when one of us is not there. So when daddy came home, he didn't want us to starve or anything but he still asked "Did you guys eat yet?" and then he ate "warmed-overs".

I know we are lucky to spend that time together even though our evenings seem like a race every night during the week.

Taylor's First Modeling Gig and My first publication!

Yesterday was a day of two important firsts for the Ashton girls (aka Ashton's Beauties according to daddy!). I learned that a chapter I co-wrote for a text book on DNA Sequencing had been published and was being sold. This is my first real scientific publication. Throughout my career, I have contributed to a few scientific publications that have been printed in Nature and other scientific journals but never a real book The book is called DNA Sequencing: Optimizing the Process and Analysis and it retails for $99.95 on Amazon and other retailers. Click on the word amazon to see the book online. My chapter is Chapter 12 Good laboratory Practices, Good Manufacturing Procedures, and Quality Assurance in the DNA Sequencing Laboratory.

My name is listed as Thalia Taylor though because when I originally submitted this work to the other co-author I was not Mrs. Ashton yet. I guess you could say I did this in my former life. That fact shows how long a process it really is to get a book written, edited, published and distributed. The last I had heard prior to yesterday was that the book was going to be submitted for actual publishing last August 2004. I submitted my work in early 2002. In the world of science and technology-3 years is almost a generation. I am sure some of the methods particularly in other chapters are obsolete at least in the world of Big Pharma and high tech genomic research venues such as Celera. I must also note that this was written for the good of science for students to learn and apply this knowledge to their research. I made no $ from this or will from the sale of this.

Taylor's first happened last night when we went to Sears to pick up the photographs from the kids first photo shoot together. While we waiting James noticed Taylor's photos in a collage on display on the wall of the portrait studio. Her photos were a part of a larger wall display that had some photos of professional models and some real people. We asked the clerk and she said the manager had chosen to put them up even though they did not ask our permission. The collage is really neat. They zoomed in and edited head shots taken from the other photos we had done. It is a bronze photo with a rose tint in a mat. Unfortunately, like her Mommy, Taylor was not paid even with a free photo for her work. It may not be such a big deal but we are proud. After we scan the photos we will post them for viewing on James' site and Taylor's site.

Update9/20/05 I have a copy of the photo collage that is displayed at Sears I will try to get it scanned this week and put up on Taylor's site.

Child Care

First, let me say all parents do what they gotta do. I can't imagine one solution for any parenting issue that fits all families. I feel strongly on certain issues regarding my family. For example, I am a strong advocate of not taking your children to daycare, especially how I see some moms use it. They go to work and take the kids to daycare early then pick them up late so they can work a full day have a long lunch hour and even work out. Since they get the kids up so early to go to daycare, I presume they must have dinner when they get home then get the kids off to bed to get ready for the next day. It seems they spend very little time raising their kids much less spending quality time with them. Now, I also understand that quantity and quality of not same, so the majority of time spend with a child does not always create a lasting memory. Much time is spend in the care giving and day to day maintenance, if you will, of the child. Since this is true, I have no idea how these daycare parents do it. Like I said earlier, I am sure this may work great for some families but I can't see it for my own.

Now if you don't use daycare what do you do when you need someone else to watch your child? For the last 2.5 years, only James and I have taken care of our children day in and day out with a few exceptions. Now we have to manage a growing business with me working full time so hurt switch off schedule does not work as well. So we had resorted to using a babysitting service which means $70 for 6 hours a day with various sitters in and out of our home. Not my favorite option. Hiring a nanny that we pay as a household employee, requires a lot of red tape so to speak and that sense of trust has to be strong. I think that is going to be our next choice but I am not sure.

I wish I could stay home so much maybe some day soon.

My Sweeties Sneak Peak Photo

Here is a sneak peak of the photo shoot we had done on Monday for Taylor and James' first professional photos. The photos are fantastic and we will be sending them to family and friends soon as well as online viewing. We are so blessed with such a beautiful family.

Our New Orleans memories

I have been so shocked and saddened by the recent events surrounding Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. We have relatives from James' grandmother's side of the family that live in Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, Maben and Water Valley, Missisippi. Thank God they are all safe!

Over the Christmas Holidays we traveled to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast to visit and for me to meet for the first time several of these relatives. I was 5 months pregnant with James and sick as a dog during this trip. After the long train ride home, I really had regretted going on the trip at all. I felt that due to the circumstances, I did not get to see the "real nawlins". Boy do I feel differenly now. That was the first and last chance for me to see what New Orleans looked like for so many years and experience that famous culture . I am certain it will never be the same. At this point is is difficult to imagine what the city will become. When I first met James (JR) during our first phone conversation we talked about New Orleans. I knew in my heart at that time that some day he would take me there. He did just in time I guess!

My thoughts and prayers are with the people in the area. Here are some photos from our trip last winter

Well, this will be my fourth attempt at trying to keep a regular blog. I still have the blog on my site http://www.thaliaashton.com/ , but I thought I would give this format a try to see if it will be easier for me to keep current. If you are not familiar with the term, a blog is an online journal. Some blogs are purely for photos which are easy to keep up with on a regular basis while some are for personal news and musings on day to day to life. Increasingly, the blog format is being used more and more for all types of news and important information maybe not as important as what is on Thalia's mind but you know stuff like politics, eyewitness reporting, and of course latest advancements in tech news. Blogs are also great for new moms to brag about their sweet babies! If you want to read from time to time feel free. I mostly am posting this so I will try and feel accountable for keeping up with current posts. Does once a month count as current? Also, if you read my blog frequently you may get the treat of seeing new photos of my beautiful family before everyone else does on the web. See Taylor's photos and Baby James for their photo albums.