Oregon Vaughns

I apologize for being lax in posting on here. It’s not that there’s nothing going on; rather – there’s too much going on!

Stacey and Lily have been super-troopers lately, allowing me to work late nights. You see, I entered a recent competition here in Corvallis, called Startup Weekend. It’s a group of entrepreneurs who gather together at Belle Valle Cellars, and we had a “business blitz” trying to see who could start a new business and get the furthest in two days. I made a pitch, it appealed to an enthusiastic small group of people, and at the end of two days, our team won the competition.

Our business is called SherpaDash and it’s a web software company that looks at how your website is performing, and gives you marketing recommendations to improve its performance.

I’ll spare you too many details, but it’s been exciting and I’ve truly relied on the support of all the family in understanding and time in allowing me to work extra on launching the business. So thanks, everyone.

One exciting element to it is that I will be traveling up to Portland on Wednesday with my team to pitch in front of a bunch of investors, VC’s, and entrepreneurs to get feedback and possibly win $15k in business services.

I’ll keep you posted, and thanks again to all of you who have supported us this last week.

That girl amazes me every day…  She always has new tricks…  She has recently started telling us when she wants her diaper changed.  She will walk over to her diaper bag, pull out a diaper and start pointing.  If we are at my parent’s house, she will grab the diaper and then start walking toward the bathroom (my mom always changes her diaper in the bathroom at their house).  Tonight, she was insistent on getting her diaper changed, even though it was dry.  She just got it in her mind that she wanted a diaper change and there was no stopping her!  Oh well.. Could be worse, right?

She understands so much.  She and I were sitting on the couch and she was jumping around.  I turned to her and said “Lily, would you like mommy to read you some books before bed?”  She looked at me, climbed off of the couch, crawled to her bookshelf and brought me 4 books (she got them and brought them one at a time).  Once we had the four books that she wanted, she sat in my lap and we read them all twice.  Soon after, she fell asleep in my arms.

I was in complete shock that she understood my complete sentence with no prompting or anything!

She has also decided that walking is now her main mode of transportation…. Running is soon to come…

I went to Timberhill Athletic Club this morning and took Lily to the playroom.  She used to go to the play room a few times a week, so many of the staff knows her from her younger days….  She hasn’t been in a few months because we had been avoiding the high populated areas during the flu season/scare.  Well, I decided it was time to take her in for some socializing and so I could get a workout in.

When I left her, she began to cry — to be expected.  I kissed her goodbye and headed upstairs to start my workout.  “Out of sight out of mind”??? The crying was sure to stop moments after I was gone.  Wrong.  After 5 minutes on a machine, I get a page back to the playroom.  I walk in to see my daughter getting toweled off and a big mess.

Lily cried herself hysterical, began to hyperventilate, and then threw-up.  The second she was back in my arms, she stopped crying and was happy.  Yikes.  I sat with her in the playroom for nearly 30 minutes.  We sat together, played a little, got comfortable.  She eventually left my side and went to play on her own.

At this point, I tried to sneak out.  Back to working out!  She is happy in the playroom.  Wrong.  After another 5 minutes of working out, I was paged back to the playroom.  She was not having it.  I tried.  We went home and called it a day.

“You confused me into submission.”