"We do it the Hard Way"

Lunar New Year

2012-01-23T21:21:00.000-08:00

I made this card to send to some friends in Korea. (Hopefully they won't mind getting it a little late!)

I wanted to get some dduk guk, but with the weather lately I hadn't prepared anything. Monday was wonderfully sunny and even warm (relatively), which was lovely after all the snow and ice. So I called Doug, when he was done with his classes, and asked if he'd like to have lunch in Lakewood. We arranged to meet at Chung Ki Wa.

Doug had chicken bulgogi, and I got my dduk guk for the year. It was a big bowl with lots of dduk. Very dense. I was feeling pretty full afterwards.

The best part was that while I was driving down I had the thought that we should get some kim (laver seaweed) for Andy to have with his rice. I figured Doug was closer than I was, so I called his cell phone and asked, "Could you stop by Paldo World and get some more kim?" and he said, "I already did." Isn't he awesome?

It's the year of the dragon. My brother Peter is a dragon! 새해복 많이 받으세요!

ice storm

2012-01-22T16:46:00.000-08:00

Our snow turned into more snow and then freezing rain. Kate was off school Monday and Tuesday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and then a waiver day (not sure exactly what that is), and then we had three snow days in a row. So we were pretty much holed up for the entire week.

I've seen ice storms before, but not since we've been in Washington. They are quite spectacular. And very destructive.

I took these over by Fred Meyer. Poor trees! A lot of the trees around our complex had to have limbs removed, too.

A lot of people in the area lost power, but ours fortunately stayed on, so we stayed nice and warm.

I saw some crocuses coming up at the church the week before. I'll bet they were hating it.

snow pants and snowball

2012-01-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

We finally got our snow! Kate has been having fun playing in it. (She went out for a little bit before church on Sunday, and then we were in a hurry to get ready.)

I had the idea for this layout last year, but never got it done. (It's a quote from Little Bear.) Credits here.

I got a snowball started for Kate, and then she rolled it around for a while. She hasn't had many chances to do this sort of thing!

A girl and her snowball. After this she rolled it down the hill and it broke, so she turned it into a snow cave for her rubber dragon.

The snow pants are hand-me-downs from Glory and Sky. She wore them last year and we were pleased to find that they still fit just fine. She's got pink pants, a pink hat, pink boots, and pink mittens.

I crocheted this scarf--also pink, but it doesn't really match.

Doug has been teaching Kate how to stomp the snow off her boots before she comes in, and how to take off her things just inside the door. He says, "If you don't grow up in snow country you don't know these things!"

It was pretty good packing snow but now it's all crusty. We're supposed to get some more--maybe a lot more--tonight or tomorrow.

Get 'er done

2012-01-09T16:08:00.000-08:00

For our Relief Society book club this month we're reading The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. Last night I was less than a third of the way through (it's a bit longer than I thought), and our meeting is this Wednesday, so I only have a couple of days to finish it. I've always been a reader but these days I'm not getting through books as quickly as I used to--mostly I just read at bedtime, and then I fall asleep. (I blame the internet for completely destroying my attention span.) So today I decided to see if I could download the audiobook. I have cards at four different libraries in the area, and luckily one of them did have it available.

So I've been listening to the book and catching up on my back-log of blog posts from December. (You can change the date when you post, to get them to show up in the order you want.) Now I'm almost done with the book and I got a lot of photos edited! Yay!

Honey Pig (꿀 돼지!)

2012-01-05T17:37:00.000-08:00

Lunch at Honey Pig in Lakewood! (It came up as one of the local deals on Amazon, and Doug spotted it and bought it.)

We've been to Honey Pig before but it finally dawned on me that the name is a pun in Korean--꿀 is the word for honey but it's also the sound a pig makes.

It's one of those places where you cook the meat at your table. They had these thin little sheets of dduk (rice cake) to wrap stuff in. I've never seen that before. It seemed like one of those trendy things--putting the lettuce inside the rice instead of the rice inside the lettuce. It was good but I think I prefer the old-fashioned way.

We decided to go while Kate was at school, and I think that was really the best way to handle it. Andy just sat there and ate pretty steadily the whole time. Kate would have eaten a few things and been done in five minutes, and spent the rest of the time asking "When can we goooooooo?"

Honey Pig is the restaurant that used to be Dooriban. We went there several years ago with the Tracys, when Kate was really little. Later we went back and discovered it had changed names (and ownership, probably). Honey Pig seems very particularly geared toward the barbecue. Which is good, but most of the time we go for something else. (Kimchi jjigae!) The two places in Lakewood that we usually go to are Chung Ki Wa and O Bok Jip. 맛이 있어요.

Gathering Pink

2012-01-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

I love displays of color. Stacks of cardstock, cubbyholes of yarn, little drawers filled with rainbows of embroidery floss.... I remember once being entranced by a wall of socks at the mall.

I went up to JoAnn to look for some pink fabric to made a dress for Kate. Maybe something with hearts on it, I was thinking. What caught my eye was the array of fat quarters, sorted by color, lined up along the front of the fabric shelves. All those different patterns together--I just love it.

I'm planning a dress with a fabric skirt and crocheted top (like the autumn dress, but more of a jumper style, to go over a shirt). It turns out that matching fabric with yarn (or crochet thread) is more difficult than you would think. Pinks shade toward purple or toward orange. But I realized that if I use a variety of pinks that are close to each other but not exactly the same, then the crochet thread doesn't have to match exactly either. So I'm going to make a patchwork skirt with all these different pinks. Doesn't that sound cute?

I was quite disappointed to discover that the company that made the crochet thread I used for the autumn dress (America's Best) has gone out of business. If I had known I would have stocked up.

Andy sings the алфавит

2012-01-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

Our little hyperlexic boy loves watching alphabet videos on youtube. He has quite a collection of alphabet songs in English now (ending in "zee" or "zed") and he's even been branching out to non-English alphabets. He has a couple in Spanish and French that he has memorized, and this one in Russian. He was singing along with it the other day and it was so cute we just had to get a video.

For a long time he would just kind of chant along with the songs, but in the past couple of months he's started really singing. (With, you know, actual notes.) We love his cute little voice.

(I did take a semester of Russian, once upon a time... the only things I know how to say are "I am very glad that you are in the USSR," "Where is your husband?" and "I am a puppy." )

Welcoming 2012

2012-01-01T19:23:00.000-08:00

I have picked out a "one little word" for 2012. My word is FOCUS. I know I let myself get too distracted by the internet and it keeps me from focusing on the things I should. So I'm going to re-focus on using my time and resources to do the things that I really want to do. And on figuring out what those are.

We spent New Years Eve with the Tracys, playing Ticket to Ride and eating cheese and veggies till the unfashionable hour of 9:30. Yes, we are the big partiers. (Normally the kids get their pajamas on at 7:30, so that was pretty late for them!) We hadn't played Ticket to Ride before. Doug and I both enjoyed it. (He always likes maps.)

We've had several game nights like this, over the years, playing Settlers or Killer Bunnies or something of that nature at the Tracys' kitchen table while Kate played with the Fisher Price castle and other toys on the living room floor. (Other people's toys are always more interesting.) She would almost always go home with a beanie baby that she would borrow until the next time we were there, trading it in for another one. This time felt like some kind of milestone, or transition, as instead of playing in the living room nearby, Kate spent most of the time down in the basement on the Wii. My baby's growing up. (Andy ended up on the computer, right next to where I was sitting, playing on starfall.com.) We went home with borrowed Wii games instead of beanie babies.

We started 11:00 church today. We alternate between 9:00 and 11:00 (there's also a student ward in our building that keeps the 1:00 time slot, so we don't do that one, thankfully!) Since we were out last night the kids didn't get their Saturday night bath, but I thought, "Hey, we've got two more hours to get ready in the morning; we'll do it then." This worked out okay but I don't think I'll make a habit of it.

Andy is a Sunbeam now! The kids are assigned to their classes according to what age they are on January 1. Since Kate and Andy's birthday is right at the end of the year, they get to leave the nursery when they're newly-three. We have a picture of Kate as the Littlest Sunbeam, on her first day in Primary. Doug has told me several times that this is one of his favorite pictures of Kate, just right on the cusp of babyhood. Andy is actually not the Littlest Sunbeam, since there's another boy in the ward whose birthday is today. I also was not able to get a picture of him sitting in his chair, because he just wouldn't do it. He is a wiggler and a roamer. So he spent the first while sitting with his teacher, and then came to me.

I held him for just a few minutes and then he just conked out. Right at 1:30--nap time! (We've been trying to discontinue the nap but he keeps falling asleep anyway, so we just try to keep it short.) Kelly Dickson put her coat down on the floor for him and he slept that way till it was time to go. (That's his Happy Birthday sticker, on his shirt.)

I have to mention that we did not sing "Ring Out Wild Bells" today. I've always liked the way that last chord resolves.

Kate keeps asking me when it's going to snow. She knew that the solstice was the first day of winter, and anticipated that winter would bring snow. This morning when I went in to wake her up she asked me again, "Did it snow?" No snow. It's been pretty mild, lately. The cloud cover keeps in the warmth, like a damp gray blanket. (I'm not saying that in a bad way--it's kind of a cozy damp gray blanket.) Today was clear and sharply sunny, but still well above freezing. I'm okay with a mild winter, but I do hope we get at least one good snow.

Happy New Year to you!

The Twelve Days of Christmath

2011-12-29T18:42:00.000-08:00

I just had to share this, while it's still the season. It's just awesome. (Kate and I both enjoy the song. Especially the ninth verse. "A funny-looking S!")

I barely speak Math at all (or Maths--that's for Helen) but I love Vi's videos--they're just fun to watch, and I find her voice kind of soothing and mind-boggling at the same time.

seven and three (birthday!)

2011-12-27T22:00:00.000-08:00

Yes it's true--we now have a seven-year-old and a three-year-old!

I thought about getting balloons like I did two years ago, and then I realized--seven pink balloons and three blue ones--that's ten balloons. I don't think I could fit that many in the car. So we were balloon-less. But I did have some fun with Andy's new magnetic letters.

We had Kate's friend Emma over for cupcake-decorating and pretzel-making.

Kate put the candles in her own cupcake (rather haphazardly).

I still don't know how to avoid those reflection spots. Anyone?

We sang Happy Birthday to Kate and then sang to Andy. He seemed surprised when it was his turn.

Andy gets a little help blowing out his candles.

Messy!

More LEGO...

And a Littlest Pet Shop set from Emma.

Andy got the They Might Be Giants "Here Come the ABCs" CD and DVD set. (He kept looking at it and saying "ABC!")

And a couple of Mo Willems DVDs. (Pigeon! Yay!)

Next... pretzels!

The rolling-out part is kind of hard for kids. Something about coordinating the rolling and elongating motion. We don't realize that it's not as easy as it looks. Kate and Emma each made a couple of pretzels and then Doug and I finished off the rest.

We hadn't made pretzels for about a year and a half, and apparently forgot a very important point. We baked the pretzels on parchment paper and they stuck something awful. I wound up having to peel the bottom layer off each pretzel. So they were a little unsightly, underneath, but still tasted good! So if you're going to try this, remember: well-greased cookie sheet good, ungreased parchment paper bad. (At least if you do the baking soda bath... I think that was the problem. They were all wet and sticky.) Recipe here!

Happy birthday Kate and Andy! It's been a great year. Here's to many more!

"My last day of being six."

2011-12-26T21:52:00.000-08:00

When Kate got up in the morning she said, "Today is my last day of being six!" Which got me feeling all sentimental about it (Noooo! My cute little six-year-old!).

At bedtime I was sitting on her bed with her while she was drawing and telling me about dragons. We'd just been watching "Book of Dragons" (it's a new How to Train Your Dragon short) and she wanted to make her own Book of Dragons. As I watched Kate, kneeling on the bed in her new pajamas and drawing intently, I thought, "This is the last time I'll do this with six-year-old Kate," and I had to go get the camera.

My last picture of my six-year-old.

(This is what she was drawing)

And here's Andy on his last day of being two!

Christmas Sunday

2011-12-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

With Christmas falling on Sunday this year, we didn't have the full three hours of church but just went for Sacrament Meeting at 9:00 (I remember the same thing happened back in 2005, for Kate's first Christmas). We let the kids open one present before church, and then did the rest after we got back.

So we have Christmas pictures in our Sunday clothes!

Unwrapping Andy's marble run.

Kate had been angling for a Wii, so Santa brought us one. Doug got the unit hooked up the night before, and we wrapped up the controllers for the kids to open.

Of course we had to get a couple of games, too.

More Pokemon cards for Kate.

And new pajamas!

Andy was completely captivated with the marble run and played with it for hours. He couldn't even leave it long enough to open his other presents.

This is the Discovery Toys Marbleworks (from my mom! Thanks Grandma!)

Trying out the Wii.

Putting together a new LEGO set.

I got a new scanner--it's shiny! And Doug got another sword that hasn't come yet.

We had a nice church meeting and a nice day at home. I think our favorite part was watching Andy play with the marble run--our little boy who doesn't talk much was moved to exclaim, "This. Is. Awesome." Indeed it was.

2011 ornaments

2011-12-24T22:11:00.000-08:00

I sent Doug Christmas tree shopping by himself, and he came home with this noble fir that's about twice as big as the tree we had last year. It's really too big for our space (just a bit).

We have some cute new ornaments this year! My sister Betsey made these adorable little penguins for all the grandkids.

(Doug made me that camera ornament out of Sculpey a few years ago.)

We stopped by Coat Plaus World Market--always a fun place to go at Christmas time--and picked out some ornaments there, too. I got this cute little bird.

...and Kate found a dragon!

We had a Relief Society activity where we made these ornaments, filled with strips of sheet music.

Kate made this one at school. I can think of a lot of possibilities for painting on these ornaments, but the fact that they're glass makes me a little nervous. We try to avoid glass ornaments, in general.

gingerbread houses

2011-12-20T15:13:00.000-08:00

Kate's class at school made gingerbread houses. I signed up as a volunteer for the activity--just so I could take pictures, of course! (I did help out some, too.)

These were actually graham-cracker houses on milk-carton bases, but that doesn't sound as cool as gingerbread houses.

Kate's house had pet snakes playing in the yard.

Kate's friend Emma was sitting at the same table, so I got lots of pictures of her too.

The teacher had a system where she would ring a bell every so often and the kids were allowed to eat one piece of candy. Seems like a good idea, though I imagine there may have been some sneaking going on as well!

Zoolights

2011-12-13T13:22:00.000-08:00

We went to zoolights and took along Kate's friend Emma. It was pretty cold so we were all bundled up.

Catharine Tracy was working the front gate.

Kate and Emma examine a plastic iguana.

(And Pikachu.)

Doug got some video, too. (He added the music.)

Delivery Day

2011-12-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

We took the train table backdrop out to Port Orchard and delivered it to its new home. At first we were thinking that we couldn't fit the kids and the boards in the car at the same time, but then I remembered that I had done it once before, so we squeezed everybody in. (Both kids have grown a bit in the interim two years, requiring more squeezing this time.)

The backdrop is a present for Jerry from his wife Sylvia. They are also the owners of The Cupboard Under the Stairs.

When I took the boards out for the initial "setting the scene," I was able to prop them up on a little lip that ran around around the back side of the table. I was planning to do that again--set the boards up and take some pictures. But when we got there it turned out that the lip was gone, so there wasn't anything to prop the boards on. (Sylvia told me that they had to move the table over the summer when they had some water damage in that room and had to re-carpet.) So I don't have any pictures of the boards on the table yet. But we did line them up on the floor and admire them.

Sylvia got a couple of the neighbors to come over, and we were standing there looking at the painting and discussing how part of it reminded them of Cambria, California where they used to live (I didn't know I was painting California) when Jerry came home a little earlier than expected. He walked into the train room where we were all standing, and Sylvia kind of gasped and said, "Oh! You're back!" Then the neighbor said, "Hey Jerry, we were just checking out your train table--it's got a big crack in it! You're going to have to fix this. Come take a look at it."

Jerry walked over and bent over the train table, not even noticing the backdrop at first. We all started laughing, and then he backed up and looked down and saw it.

(Jerry's reaction... Awww!)

The train table is kind of a work in progress (it needs more trees and things--and that white stuff that you can see in the photo is some repair work from the move). It'll be fun to see what Jerry does with it now that he's got the backdrop to pull it all together.

Sylvia said they got the boards all mounted. I'll have to go back out soon and get some more pictures. In the meantime here are a couple of details from the painting.

I remember my roommate Julie using the term "post-performance adrenaline rush." (She was a ballet dancer.) I get that feeling from finishing a big project. Now I want to paint something else!

"Mairy Crimis"

2011-12-07T15:11:00.000-08:00

Kate made this card for her teacher. I love her spelling.

She did the whole thing in ten minutes before bed. She says this is Santa, and he's smelling a chocolate-and-strawberry-scented bow on a present. (No beard--beards are hard.)

Train Table Backdrop--Complete!

2011-12-06T17:46:00.000-08:00

Yes, I have decided that it's finished! Yay! (And there was much rejoicing.) I took all the pieces outside and got some pictures, in today's obligingly-not-rainy-but-nicely-overcast weather.

(I think my color balance is just a bit off... a little too blue, maybe?)

It occurred to me that I could add up all the audiobooks I listened to while painting and figure out how long it took, except that I listened to them while I wasn't painting, too, so that doesn't really work. I've had this project in the works for two years, but actual painting happened on and off over about fifteen months. (Slightly longer than The Cupboard Under the Stairs.) Painting at home is complicated. And now I'm done just in time to take the extra leaf out of the kitchen table so we can make room for a Christmas tree!

And here's the whole thing all stitched together. Eighteen feet long! I'm not sure exactly when we're going to take it out to Port Orchard and get it set up, but I'll be sure to get pictures of that too.

Art Appreciation

2011-12-05T18:01:00.000-08:00

(Andy wants to help.)

I think I may have finished painting today. I need to set it all up and look at it in the cold hard light of tomorrow, but it is quite possible that I am all done. (As long as I can resist the urge to mess with clouds.) Being done would be good right now--I do have other things that I need to do. (I did get a little de-cluttering done today... Yay!)

Doug and Kate are making homemade pasta. Some of the noodles have green food coloring in them. We can pretend they're braaaaaains.

"Pika! Pika!"

2011-12-01T22:19:00.001-08:00

We made a little squishy stuffed Pikachu for Kate. Actually Doug made it and I helped out just a little. She loves it! Pikachu has been going along to drop Kate off at school in the morning, and pick her up in the afternoon.

I did the stitching around the mouth, and painted the white highlights on the eyes. I also stitched closed the opening left for stuffing. The rest of it was all Doug.

Kate is into Pokemon lately--we got a couple of movies out of the library and now she's always pretending to be something-or-other, hopping around and repeating the name of the creature in a squeaky voice. Pikachu says "Pika! Pika!"

There is a kind of animal called a pika. (Pikachu's pika is pronounced like "pee-ka" and the animal pika is "pie-ka.") They're a type of lagomorph (related to rabbits). Pikas are a favorite in my family--we had some pictures of them in Kirsten's Bits of Intelligence, and Betsey did a super fun report on Pikas in high school. The really cool thing about Pikas is that they make hay. They gather grass and let it dry in the sun, then take it back to their burrows for their winter food storage.

Pikachu is definitely not a pika (the ears and the tail are a bit of a giveaway). But I can't hear Kate saying "Pika! Pika!" without thinking of pikas. They sure are cute little guys. I found a video of a pika near Snoqualmie. It would be fun to get to see one in the wild.

Time Capsule (High School Art)

2011-11-28T10:53:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, when we were cleaning out my parents' basement and taking pictures of stuff, I got some photos of some of my high school art projects. Since then I've been meaning to post these, and I figure now is as good time as any.

I took drawing and painting classes all through high school. Basic Art was a requirement, and then we had a lot of electives to choose from after that. I amassed quite a collection of creations, stored in a big brown portfolio envelope in my bedroom closet.

Shoe still life in marker (as I recall, we had to do this without blocking it in in pencil first).

Figure sketch (yes, this was the eighties).

Study of hands and feet.

Self portrait.

Graphic design exercise.

I've always liked this one. The assignment was to draw a crumpled piece of paper and then turn it into a landscape.

Psychedelic vegetables (in pastels).

"The Great Bird of the Galaxy" (during the rabid Trekkie phase).

This was done with some special kind of markers on slick paper. I don't remember what they're called.

Three-stage linoleum print.

Still life (oil on... what's this stuff called? Canvasette? Canvas skin? Whatever it is, it wrinkles.)

Another still life in oils (transparency exercise).

Detail from a painting that I created to be a cover for my story "The Prince Who Couldn't Do Anything" (which started out as an assignment for my Drawing I class, but I didn't actually finish it until right before I graduated.)

Notebook doodle (probably done in math class or something).

Another doodle. I did quite a lot of these--I called them "spaghetti drawings." I was always doodling in class.

We had quite an extensive art department at my high school. Carol Walker and George Armstrong taught drawing and classes like sculpture and "Art in Society," and Paul Buford taught painting and crafts. I wonder how much that department has been cut back now. I remember that I wasn't always excited about some of the assignments (when we had weekly sketchbook homework for Basic Art, I remember drawing my breakfast bacon one morning because I hadn't done anything else), but it was all great experience. I got to try a lot of different mediums and approaches, and challenge myself, which is always good!

The Five Best Toys

2011-11-27T10:12:00.000-08:00

I love this article from Geek Dad: The 5 Best Toys of All Time. I especially enjoyed this bit:

If you’re in a pinch, Laundry Basket is a similar item and can often be substituted for Box in some instances, though it’s generally not as great for costumes (other than a turtle).

I remember using my mom's laundry basket as a turtle shell more than once. (Ah, the simple days of childhood!) And Kate has been playing in boxes from an early age.

gobble gobble

2011-11-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

Kate's hand print turkey from school. She said they all painted their fingers in stripes, but then she moved hers back and forth on the paper to smear the paint. Like making a snow angel!

She also brought home this turkey hat. Cute!

We had Thanksgiving with Doug's sister Erika in Everett. (Grandma Mary was visiting, too.) We had a bit of traffic and heavy rain on the way up, and the kids were tired of being in the car, but we had a nice time. Kate and Doug both had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off. Hooray for five-day weekends!

This Thanksgiving I was particularly thankful for a washer and dryer, and hot water, and electricity. Andy threw up twice on the bed Tuesday night, and again the next morning (got the carpet that time). We're pretty sure it was from a hot dog he ate. Apparently some kinds are okay and some kinds reduce him to a Miserable Vomitous Mass. Poor kid.

Operation No-Nap

2011-11-22T21:10:00.000-08:00

After Andy stayed up till midnight two days in a row, we decided it was time to phase out his nap. As you can see, this doesn't always work. Some days he's fine, but then other days he ends up falling asleep in his dinner. Or on the floor right before dinner. (I told Doug he looked like a little turkey, with his elbows sticking out like that.)

On Papercutting

2011-11-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

For a Relief Society (church) activity we had an "Unfinished Object" night over at my friend Jeanette's house. I obviously couldn't lug my enormous painting over there, and I was feeling conflicted about some crochet projects, so I decided to do some papercutting. I made this as a gift for one of my Visiting Teachees, whose birthday is this week. (Could be a bookmark or whatever--it's about six inches high.) I combined some elements from this piece (from white papers press) with a "double happiness" character in the middle. She served a mission in Taiwan, so I just thought that would be a fun touch.

I've done a lot of knife work, off and on. (Lots of cut-out titles for scrapbook pages.) I find it oddly relaxing, and it's always fun to see the bits of paper coming away and revealing the design.

I usually do a graphite transfer to trace the image onto the paper (backwards, so the pencil marks are on the wrong side).

I like to cut on glass. (The granite worked okay too, but I was happy to find my glass again.) I know people who prefer to use self-healing mats, but I find that my knife blade kind of catches down in the mat and won't glide around those corners quite so easily. I also get a nicer edge on glass. (When I use a self-healing mat, the "lip" of the cut ends up bending the wrong way.)

I pull the knife towards me in little smooth surges, and sort of "walk" the paper around with the fingers of my left hand. One tip I've given people before is "Pretend you're a sewing machine." The cutting comes from the knife but all the turning comes from the paper.

Since I'm right handed, I like to have some light coming in from the left side so my hand doesn't cast a shadow right where I'm cutting. I find that curves go much better if I cut them clockwise rather than counter-clockwise (maybe this would be reversed for lefties). If you watch me cut, I'm always turning the paper around different ways. It also helps to keep the paper big enough so that you've got something to hold onto while you're cutting, but not so big that it bumps into your arm when you turn it.

A sharp blade makes a big difference. I went through three blades on this. (These snap-off style knives have a cap on the end that you can pull off and slip over the blade to snap it safely.) I keep meaning to get an X-acto knife but I just haven't done it yet. I like my metal craft knife just fine, but I might like an X-acto even better.

Toothless

2011-11-20T17:34:00.000-08:00

Kate lost her first tooth! She told me it was wiggly on Thursday, and it came out today at church, in the middle of her Primary class.

When Kate was a baby her first tooth didn't come in till she was over a year old. I hear the late teethers also tend to lose them later. Most of Kate's friends at school have already lost quite a few.

Savior of the World

2011-11-19T21:12:00.000-08:00

I got a video of part of the "Savior of the World" performance on Friday night. This is the scene with Zacharias in the temple. The "Come Deliver Us" song is so impressive with that big, full-cast sound. (And live orchestra!)

Mary with the baby. I've seen this play three times now and they always change it up a bit. It's interesting to see what they do with the set and the staging. JoLee told me that they ended up cutting a foot off the bottom of the arches that I painted, so they could have the angels visible over the top. This means that people have to duck when going through the doorways, but it works out okay.

JoLee asked me to come in and take a cast photo before the Saturday matinee. (I did this for the Broadway Revue, too.)

The cast watches Patrick and JoLee open a gift. (Those stucco walls on the side are the ones that Helen Christensen painted for the Aladdin number in the Broadway Revue. Hooray for re-purposing!)

Mary McGiffin and Brother Dewey, from our ward. (Mary is my new buddy--she's a Brandon Sanderson fan, and her sister is friends with RoseE Hadden.) Mary's husband Ben played the angel Gabriel.

It's been fun to be involved with these productions, however peripherally. Maybe when the kids are older we can get involved with the actual performing part.

Autumnal Sidewalk of Awesomeness

2011-11-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

ankle-deep
shuffle shuffle
rustle rustle
crunch crunch crunch

There's a row of maple trees with really big leaves along the front of our apartment complex. It gets exciting around this time of year. (Makes me think of Anne Shirley's White Way of Delight. In a different way, of course.)

"I'd never eat your brain!"

2011-11-09T19:25:00.000-08:00

My friend Julie posted a link to The Zombie Song by Stephanie Mabey (featuring cute drawings by Stephanie's fifteen-year-old niece). Andy was particularly enthralled and watched it over and over, and then started singing along.

Here's Andy singing, "If I were a zombie, I'd never eat your brain."

(Good to know.)

Chalking Wall

2011-11-08T21:32:00.000-08:00

The Multi-Stake Cultural Arts group is putting on Savior of the World again. Just a few days before opening night, I got to turn this blank wooden apron between the stage extensions into a rock wall to match the rest of the set. I figured chalk would be faster than painting, so I got a couple of Helen Christensen's pan pastels (which we used to shade the Mod Prom sets and Fiona's library). I believe I used the term "borrow," but Helen said she would just go ahead and submit the expense to the budget, because she knew I would use them up. I did.

This was definitely a quick and dirty job. (Literally--I still have brown chalk under my fingernails.) It only took about three hours. Hopefully good enough for set work!

The gym is all torn up right now with show preparations (and they have the doors chained up to keep people out, which kind of throws everyone off on Sundays). That's Fiona's library back in the corner. They still haven't found a place for it so it's just been on the stage.

I think this is the last year they're going to be putting on this production, at least for a while. Maybe they'll do something else that I can help make sets for. It's a lot of fun to work on things like this and then get to see them in use. Like magic!

Sprayground Layout

2011-11-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

In honor of Digital Scrapbook Day this weekend, I actually scrapped! (Gasp)

Paint Splatters
Border made with my crayon line.
Alpha by CD Muckosky
Block stamps by Christine Borgfeld
The orangeish square frame is by Katie Pertiet; the other two are from my Paper Drawer.
The polka-dotted paper is by Flergs. I didn't do a good job on keeping track of the others.

madronas

2011-11-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

I decided I should add some madronas in with all these conifers.

Trick-or-Treat Dragons

2011-10-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

Doug wore his doublet and hose to class in the morning. Doesn't he look dashing?

Doug made everything here except the swords and stockings (and shoes). He says I should point out that he did not wear the swords to school.

*Snicker*

What with one thing and another (I've been kind of preoccupied painting) I hadn't picked up a pumpkin yet, and Kate really wanted one, so I went out after school to see what I could find. What I found was that when you leave your pumpkin-shopping for the last minute, all the reasonably-sized pumpkins are taken, and you're left with a twenty-eight pounder. Which I'm pretty sure weighs more than Andy.

Kate drew the face. I ended up making the features a little bigger, to fit the size of the pumpkin, but it was her design. She wanted a vampire pumpkin.

The kids wore their dragon costumes (again). That's our go-to costume around here. Kate came up with something else about a week ago where she was walking around with a box on her head, saying, "Greetings! I am X398 from Ju-pi-ter. If you co-operate with my words you can be one of my minions." After I burst out laughing and told her I didn't want to be one of her minions, I convinced her that walking around in the dark with a box on her head probably wasn't a good idea.

Admiring the pumpkin.

We took the kids trick-or-treating over by Kate's school. Doug grabbed a Santa hat on the way out and said he was a Seasonally-Challenged Individual.

Andy thought we were going visiting and kept trying to run into people's houses (Doug had to hang onto him at every door). Everyone was really friendly. At one house I got into a conversation with the lady when I told her I liked her door--she started telling me all about how she'd lived in that house for 39 years and how much they liked the neighborhood. I asked her if Kate could get a drink, since she'd been complaining about being thirsty, and she gave us a bottle of water. (Then she asked Kate, "What year are you in school?" and Kate said, "Two thousand eleven.")

Almost all the houses had some kind of decoration. It looked the whole neighborhood really got into it.

We had a good time and got the kids home by 7:30! Now we make the candy last until Christmas.

Boating and Bribery

2011-10-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

When Doug volunteered as our ward coordinator for Parks Appreciation Day, he got a "Metro Parks Volunteer Familiarization Pass," which includes one-time passes to various Tacoma Metro Parks sites for free or at a discount. One of these was half-off a boat rental at the Marina ($30 instead of $60). We hadn't used that one yet, and Saturday was nice and sunny, so we decided to go do it.

The problem was that Kate, for some reason, decided that she did NOT want to go for a boat ride. When I told her what we were going to do (trying to get her ready to go) she ran into her room and hid in her bed, hollering, "NOOOOOO! I don't want to go! I'm not going to do that! Not ever!" All the regular cajoling ("Come on! It'll be fun! You'll have a good time!") did no good. She couldn't give us anything like a coherent reason, either--she'd just got it in her head that she didn't want to go, and she wasn't changing her mind. And lines like "Sometimes it's good for you to do things you don't want to do" really don't work on a six-year-old. (I know, shocking, right?) Doug said, "She's just going to keep this up--are you sure you want to do this?" I considered, and decided, yes, I do want to do this. She's going to come along and she's going to have a good time, and then we'll be able to use it as an example the next time she thinks she doesn't want to do something.

Well, in the end we bribed her with McDonald's (ice cream and playland). Perhaps this was not the most effective lesson, but she did come, and she did have a good time. She was pretending the boat was a baby sea dragon named Yoshi.

It was about 59 degrees, and windy on the water, so we had the kids bundled up. Andy really didn't like having the life jacket around his neck and just sat stiffly in my arms until he fell asleep. (I think he had a good time but it was hard to tell.) It was kind of funny because I had just commented to Doug that it was nice not to have to schedule things around Andy's nap, and then he fell asleep anyway. (Just this week we decided to discontinue his daily nap, after he stayed up until midnight two days in a row. Bedtime is going much better now.)

We went out by the Vashon Island ferry landing, and saw lots of cormorants, and another bird that looked an awful lot like some kind of puffin. I'm not sure what those were. (Anybody know?)

I decided not to take my camera (it would have been rather awkward, anyway, with the way I ended up holding Andy) but we did get the video. It was a nice little ride. I'm glad we got to go out and enjoy the sunshine!

Autumn Leaves and Pumpkin Hats (2011 edition)

2011-10-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

(Crochet pumpkin hat directions here)

We've had a very rainy fall. Lots of chilly overcast and drizzle. (It's hard to appreciate that crisp autumn weather without the "crisp" part.) When we finally got a nice sunny day, I figured we'd better seize the moment and get some pictures of the kids in their pumpkin hats. Andy was not too keen on the hat at first and kept pulling his off.

"Help!" says Andy.

Kate had to bring along a dinosaur.

Poser!

Andy finally decided he was okay with keeping his hat on. (Yay!)

Aren't my little pumpkins cute?

Our apartment complex, magically transformed into a golden wonderland!

discovery painting

2011-10-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

I've been enjoying listening to the Writing Excuses podcast (with Brandon Sanderson and company). One of the things that they talk about is the difference between outline writers and "discovery writers." I've come to realize that part of the reason this train table backdrop is taking so long is that it's basically an exercise in discovery painting.

I started out with a general idea of the lay of the land, but that was about it. I'm not always so good at coming up with things out of my head. If I have a picture I can make this look like that, but for most of this I've been flying pretty blind. (I did have a photo of Mt. Rainier which I put to good use, as well as some crepuscular rays for reference.) So mostly I just mess around with it and see how it turns out. It's been fun but it's quite different from the way I usually work. I put in some hills in the background, then decide they need to be lighter and bluer. I spend a couple of hours dropping in hundreds of little trees on a hillside, and then realize that it's too detailed for how far away it's supposed to be. I've been putting in some rocky bits to match the hills on the train table, but I've discovered that "rocky" is not really my strong suit. Keeping the color and perspective consistent across eighteen feet has proved a little tricky, as well.

This little section has been keeping me busy for the past few days.

It doesn't look much like I'd imagined it, but it works. It's still not quite done. (The tree is going to have a swing in it, too.)

I wasn't entirely happy with the landscape in Scott's mural, and I was hoping I could make this one work better. I think for the most part it's come together nicely. I do have some good ideas about what I would do differently next time--more detailed sketches to start with, and possibly a small scale painting, to try things out. (More pre-mixed-up colors in larger amounts would be helpful, too.) I've started keeping a mural reference board on pinterest, with some ideas that I hope I might be able to use later. I especially like the misty lighting effects.

This has been a long project! I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like all put together on the train table. That should be very cool.

Speaking of Writing Excuses, a recent episode featured my brother Peter (Brandon's assistant), and Patrick Rothfuss's assistant Valerie, talking about what their jobs are like. I'm probably biased but I thought it was great fun.

Taken for Granite

2011-10-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

I was doing some knife work and couldn't find the piece of glass that I usually cut on. I was trying to figure out what else I could use, (upside-down pie dish?) and then I remembered Doug's slab of granite. He uses it for his leatherwork, to pound on. I remember when he brought it home--he rang the doorbell, because he had his arms full, so I opened the door and he was standing there with this chunk of granite in his arms. He looked at me and said, "It was free!" Heh. (He got a scrap from a countertop place.)

The surface has tiny knicks in it, so the cutting wasn't quite as smooth, but it worked fine for what I was doing. I still want to find my glass.

Dragons, Monsters, and a Cookie Spider

2011-10-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

Kate brought this home from school. She named it Licorice, and then ate it for her after-homework snack. (I was relieved that she did decide to eat it, rather than keeping it as a friend. I could see her wanting to do that.)

We were over at the Tracys' recently to practice a song for a special musical number at church. Kate treats the Tracys' house as something like a toy library. This time she borrowed a little Fisher Price dragon that she calls Golden. When we got home, she told me she wanted to write some things about Golden (like she did with her starfish.) She had me draw a picture of Golden which she colored in, and then she wrote this:

by Kate and Mom
note (my mom that is)

We discovered that Golden eats presls [that's pretzels] and cheddar cheese cheese cheese.
Golden is a treasure finder.

(She did ask me how to spell a few words.)

And here's a little "Things I Like" book that Kate made at school.

Written and Illustrated by: Kate AKA Randall (that's Randall from Monsters Inc.)

I like dragins
I like bugs

I like my cornr (this is something about a spot in her classroom. Kate tells me that the bit above that says "Note, how long is this book")
I like giyint squids (I love her spelling. The squid is cute too.)

I like Spore (computer game)
I like zoos

I like me to

I love seeing what she comes up with.

Playground by the Sound--Open!

2011-09-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

The playground is done! We took the kids over on Tuesday (the 27th). There were still a few things that were unfinished, but they had their ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sunday as planned, and opened to the public.

I found my fish on the fence. You may notice that it doesn't look like the picture I posted. This is actually the back of the fish. I was told that we were supposed to paint the backs, too, since they were going to be mounted on the slats of the fence and would be partially visible from the other side. The back of my fish was deformed (you can see where the edge cut at a slant, on the belly) but I went ahead and did a slap-dash job on it. (Which still took 20-30 minutes, but it didn't look nearly as good as the other side.) I was kind of worried about this at the time, and hoped that whoever put it up would look at it carefully enough to figure out which was the right side. They didn't. (And the fish weren't mounted on the slats anyway--I should have just left that side unpainted!) Apparently they were in a big hurry and just threw stuff up on the fence. And my fish somehow got a smear of green paint on it, too. Don't know how that happened.

I like the pine cone details and the roofs. It was really cool to see things in progress and then the finished product.

Bright sun!

Andy goes up the slide...

...and down!

Kate hangin' around.

I was kind of bummed about my fish, but I got to go back on Wednesday and paint a couple of orcas (not pictures--they're three-dimensional orcas), which was a lot of fun, and then I felt better. I haven't made it back to get pictures of those. I need to do that soon!

Sockeye!

2011-09-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

I went back to volunteer at the playground this morning and painted a sockeye salmon! I didn't have my camera this time, but a girl there took a picture for me and emailed it to me. (Thanks!)

When we were there on Wednesday, one of the girls at the child care center mentioned that they were going to have somebody come in and paint a mural at the playground, so I wanted to see if I could help out with that. No muraling today, but I did get to paint sea life! And I left my contact information so hopefully I'll be able to help out with the mural too. I think that would be a blast.

I'm pretty sure this is my first fish. (My sister Betsey got to paint four fish on the wall of our high school.)

I should have Kate name it, and then we can say hi to it whenever we go to the park. She'll probably want to call it Bob. Everything is Bob these days. (Or Sally.)

The End of the Strike

2011-09-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

The teachers and school board finally reached an agreement and went back to work on Friday. We ended up missing eight days of school all together--four last week and four this week. I'm afraid we weren't very consistent with our homeschooling program (or lack of program), but we did fill up Kate's book log--ten books that she read all by herself. We did some addition practice and some language arts (online Mad Libs!) and talked a little about counting money but didn't get very far into that. A lot of it was just feeding her random information--not like real school where you have a plan and things building logically on each other. We are not that organized.

Kate was enjoying staying home, so I wasn't sure how she going to take the news that school was back in session. I didn't have any trouble getting her ready in the morning, but she did seem kind of subdued going into the building. When I picked her up she was happy and smiling, and excitedly asked me, "Mom, did you know that everything in our world is made of matter?" (Science is fun!)

Doug went back to work this week (after a three-month break--they didn't give him any classes for summer. We are glad that he's going to be getting paid again!). This means that now when I take Kate to school in the mornings, Andy gets to come along in the stroller. He enjoys the walk but always cries when Kate goes into the building. I'm not sure if it's because he wants to go to school too, or if he's just sad that she's leaving. He likes to be with his family.

Playground by the Sound

2011-09-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

Wednesday evening we got to volunteer at the building of a new playground over at Chambers Bay. They passed around a sign-up sheet at church, and we thought it sounded like fun.

It was all very well organized. They even had dinner for the volunteers--pizza from Papa John's and salad from Olive Garden. Papa John's sent along a dancing mascot with their pizza. (Kate found the pizza guy amusing.)

They also had child care, at a place across the street from the park. After we ate we took the kids over and got them signed in. Andy wouldn't keep his name tag on so they put it on his back.

We lined up with the other volunteers and got our assignment. Doug and I got to pick up garbage. (Wheee!)

"If we only had a wheelbarrow that would be something."

Sister missionaries helping out.

Doug trims a cardboard cement mold.

Sunset! It's a gorgeous area.

The playground is supposed to be finished this Sunday! It was pretty cool to see everything in progress. We'll have to go back when it's done and check it out!

Experiments in Knitting

2011-09-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

Something very odd happened recently--I was seized with the urge to knit. I figured it would happen at some point. I have mentioned before, "I'd like to learn to knit, too, more than a basic rectangle, but I don't see that happening any time soon."

The "basic rectangle" that I learned to knit before was back when I was 12 or so--I think it was for Young Women's at church, or possibly younger than that. I remember making a cover for a wooden hanger. It wasn't particularly exciting. By that point I was already crocheting doll clothes, so I couldn't really see any point in knitting rectangles. I do remember fiddling around with it again at various times, for one thing or another, but it was all a very long time ago!

I'm not sure where this desire to pick up the needles came from. Perhaps it was the appeal of focusing on something else for a while, without any expectations of how it was going to turn out. Just playing. Trying something new. (Or perhaps it was just an avoidance technique--like my roommate at BYU who used to go on cleaning binges when she had a lot of homework.)

So I got online and found some videos--long tail cast on (which I love), basic knit and purl stitches, and more... how to yarn over and knit two together, how to do a slip-slip-knit, and even cables. I don't have a cable needle so I just used one of my crochet hooks, slipping the stitches onto one end and off the other. (Not ideal, but it worked.) And everything turned out great! (Except that bit in the middle where I was trying out the yarn overs and decreases in no particular pattern--that looks a little weird.)

There are two styles of knitting--English, or "throwing," holding the yarn in the right hand; and Continental, or "picking," holding the yarn in the left hand. I'm definitely a picker. In fact I've found that I hold the yarn exactly the same way that I do when I'm crocheting.

After practicing the yarn overs and decreases, I found a few basic lace patterns and had a go at those. Nice! At this point I find it takes a lot more concentration than following a crochet pattern, but that will come with practice. I suppose the next step will be to try stranded colorwork. That should be exciting.

This is some Red Heart yarn left over from Kate's octopus. Not my ideal choice to work with. I'll have to try with something nicer, and maybe some different needles.

At this point I don't have any particular thing that I'm planning to knit. (I already have another crochet sweater that I've started.) I'll probably just keep learning and practicing a little at a time, and maybe some day I'll knit Andy a sweater or something.

Home School

2011-09-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

When we got home from the fair on Monday night, we had a message that the teachers had met for another vote and decided to strike after all, so school the next day was canceled.

We got Kate up at her regular time and had her put on her school clothes, and we had our own school at home. She did have some homework, so she did that, and then we came up with some other things. (We tried some apostrophe exercises, but I'm not sure if she was really ready for that, despite having read The Girl's Like Spaghetti numerous times.)

Kate thought having school at home was pretty cool, and she kept talking about the different things that we would do. We had Math Time and Reading Time and Lunch Time, and Kate said that when it was P.E. Time she would be the teacher and tell us what to do. (We ended up not doing that, since she just went out to play with her friends and had P. E. Time that way.)

We've had a little trouble lately with Kate not wanting to go to school--weeping and wailing "NOOOOO! I never want to go to school again! It's boring!" and then we'd have to physically stuff her into her clothes and get her out the door. Twice I ended up actually carrying her to school, sobbing. We put it down to general anxiety (and stubbornness), but now I wonder if maybe she was picking up on some vibes that things were not quite right at school. I hope that they can get everything resolved quickly and be a happy school again!

Fair Play

2011-09-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

My cream pineapple sweater won a blue ribbon at the Puyallup fair!

And the little yellow sweater that I made for Kate got a red ribbon.

This is my third year entering. (Some day I'd like to try a drawing or painting. So far it's just been crochet.)

We went to the fair on Monday evening, after Kate got home from school. I picked Monday because the rides were half price that day. Kate brought home a ticket from school, and I got two adult tickets at half price as a Groupon deal. (Andy was free.) We took along our own food. We do the fair cheap!

We've usually gone in the Blue Gate, but this time we found a place to park for $5 that was about three blocks from the Green Gate, so we went in that way. (That's Green Gate One, for any Three Investigator fans.) It's kind of the back entrance. All the horse trailers are parked over there. So we had to walk all the way across the fair to get to the Art Hall to see how my sweaters did, and then the kids were all antsy and I didn't really get to look at anything else. Next time I'll just go without the kids on opening day so I can check out all the other creations!

I spotted this dragon at the chainsaw carver.

Kate on the little dragon roller coaster. I reminded her that she hadn't enjoyed it last time, but she insisted that she wanted to ride it. She didn't enjoy it this time either.

The canoe ride was well received by both kids.

This was a fun house for smaller kids, and they let parents accompany the really little ones.

Big long slide!

Andy had such a great time he wanted to go again. I took him through the second time, while Kate sat in Andy's stroller and groused about wanting a toy.

We didn't really want to spend any money on a toy for Kate, but we did spot this game that had cute dolphin-hammer prizes. This being a special kids' game, you got a prize whether or not you managed to ring the bell, so we used some of our ride tickets on that.

Kate had a little trouble with the heavy hammer, and got some help from Daddy.

Ding!

This car ride was also a big hit. (They only had four cars going and the line was pretty long--Doug took Andy on something else while Kate and I held a spot.)

The last ride of the day was this Wally Gator thing that just went around in a circle and over some gentle bumps.

Waiting for the ride to start.

Andy seemed quite fascinated by all the rides. He likes watching roller coaster videos, but I don't think he'd ever been on any kind of ride before.

Kate with her dolphin-hammer thingy. (It's pink!) It squeaks when you whack things with it. She has named it Kissy.

Kate wanted to get a slushie at a particular place that was back on the other side of the fair, so Doug took her to do that while Andy and I went to get the car. (At this point we were expecting it to be a school night, so we wanted to get home at a reasonable time.)

We were only there for a couple of hours, but we had a good time. I realized--it's not so much the crowds, it's the noise. Makes it hard to carry on any kind of conversation. "Do you want to go on this ride?" "WHAT?" "WHAT?" And then I walked out the gate into the quiet cool evening and just kind of went "Ahhhhhh!"

I knew that Monday was Chuseok but I didn't really think of it till Andy and I were walking back up the hill toward the lot where we parked, and we saw the moon all huge and round on the horizon. Not particularly bright, right then, as it was still getting dark and it was also pretty hazy on the horizon, but still impressive. A fall harvest moon and family fun! A good day.

15 years

2011-09-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

September 6th (Tuesday) was our anniversary. Our fifteenth anniversary, in fact. Seems like an auspicious number.

Catharine Tracy came over on Wednesday and took some pictures for us with my camera. (We were going to do it on Monday, but Kate was in the middle of a major screaming fit, so we had to reschedule.) We went over to the field behind our apartments at about 7:00 and got some nice evening light.

"Look at the camera, Andy!"

Of course, we had to take some goofy shots too.

Andy loves being upside-down. (Sensory disorientation is fun!)

My family called and sang Happy Anniversary to us, and Barb and Kyle regaled us with their version (to the William Tell Overture). Doug's mom sent us this card that she made:

Fifteen years--how time flies! For our tenth anniversary, Doug wrote something for me about what it's like to choose to spend your life with someone. Five years later, here we are. In some ways it seems like we're still in the same place, but there have been changes, too. We work together to find the best path for our little family.

Wright Park Sprayground

2011-09-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

We had a lovely warm sunny day for the Labor Day holiday, so we took the kids down to the sprayground at Wright Park.

This park has some great details. And there's something about the setting and the sound of the pentatonic wooden xylophone nearby that gives it kind of an urban vibe. The first time we brought the kids to the sprayground, I thought, "I must come back here with my camera!"

One two-hundredth of a second is not fast enough to freeze water drops.

I love the effect of the light in the water here.

As we were leaving we ran into this guy who was taking his snake for a walk (a slither) in the park--an albino Python named Missy. Kate thought it was very cool. I think this was the first time she's touched a snake.

The First Day of First Grade

2011-09-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

... for our first first grader, on September first!

There's nothing like that first day of Kindergarten. I'd say the excitement level wasn't quite as high this time. Perhaps Kate considers herself an old hand at this school thing by now. (Compare last year's picture--she looks so big!)

She made cards the night before for her new teacher and for the gym teacher (she loves P.E.). She does have a lot of friends in her class from last year. Her teacher seems nice. (I've barely been able to talk to her, since the meet-the-teacher night was canceled.) So far so good. I asked Kate "How does it seem different from Kindergarten?" and she said, "Just the room." (Okay, it's only been two days so far!)

We had a little mix-up at the end of the day when Kate came out one door and we were waiting for her at a different door, but we got that sorted out. And then we had a storm of tearful theatrics that night (and the next night) about her wanting to spend every waking minute with her friend Riley. A bit overtired and overstimulated, perhaps. We'll get the hang of things soon.

Anticipation (and octopoda)

2011-08-31T21:38:00.000-07:00

We spent the last day of summer vacation wondering if was really the last day of summer vacation. The school district and the teacher's union have been in labor negotiations--I don't know all the details, but they didn't come to an agreement before their contract expired. There was supposed to be a meet-the-teacher-and-bring-in-school-supplies night on Wednesday evening, but it was canceled because they were having a meeting to vote on whether they were going to start the new school year without a contract, or go on strike. So we didn't get to meet Kate's teacher, and we didn't know even whether she would be starting school on Thursday or not. They were keeping parents informed via robo-calls and emails, but couldn't really give us anything definite beyond "We'll let you know as soon as we can."

At about 4:00 we finally got everybody out of the house and went to the zoo for a while. There's a Giant Pacific Octopus that doesn't usually do much--most of the time it's just hiding squished under a rock, but this time it was out and moving around. It's amazing to see how loose and fluid their skin is, and how thin. It just ripples constantly as they move. There was also a little octopus that I hadn't seen there before. We were just fascinated watching it moving around in its tank, and we even got to see it change color a couple of times. (Nothing as impressive as this video but pretty cool nonetheless.) They are amazing animals.

Octopus is another one of those pesky plurals. "Octopi" is apparently out of favor (since the word isn't actually Latin). "Octopuses" is acceptable but kind of makes it sound like you have a stutter. (Octopoda, which I used above, is the order. Phylum Mollusca, class Cephalopoda.) Maybe we will just avoid talking about more than one octopus at a time.

In the evening, when I was supposed to be getting the kids' bath ready, I found a reporter tweeting on the strike vote and camped out on his feed, waiting to see what would happen. We finally got the word just before 7:30--no strike! School is on!

Cream Pineapple Crochet Sweater

2011-08-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

I got my sweater all blocked and dry in time to enter it in the fair! I took it down to Puyallup today, along with Kate's little yellow sweater. It's kind of fun to drive onto the fairgrounds while they're getting things set up. And the ladies at the Home Arts section are always so nice. I took Andy along with me and he got to flirt with everybody.

The pattern is from Let's Knit #16 (one of the Japanese books that I got). It works up quickly but I would definitely call it an advanced pattern. It only shows half of each piece, so you have to extrapolate the turns on the other side.

I used DMC Senso (cotton/wool blend) and a G hook with pretty loose tension. I think it's just a teeny bit too big. But it'll work.

Update: I got a blue ribbon! Woo hoo!

I get a lot of hits on this post from people looking for crochet sweaters... if you have any questions feel free to email me! helenajole at netscape dot net

All Summer in a Day

2011-08-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

We are finally having our Pacific Northwest summer. It's been very cool this year, but the past couple of weeks have been warm and sunny (just in time for the ripening blackberries!) Not uncomfortably hot like that record-breaking heat wave we had a couple of years ago (that was just miserable), but great swimming weather. Most days start out a little overcast in the morning and then it clears up. It's been very nice.

Kate got to go swimming with her friend Molly's family. They have some family-in-law with a pool, and invited us to go over with them. It was the first time Kate had ever used a raft float like this and she thought it was just the coolest thing ever.

Kate isn't much of a swimmer yet but she rocks those arm floaties.

The other kids (not Kate) had fun on the slide, and I had fun taking action sequence shots.

We had a sky full of interesting clouds that day. I had to take a picture of this one because it had dragon spikes.

After swimming we went over to Molly's house and hung out for a while.

Molly in a tree.

Every back yard should have a swing!

Kate meets the cat. (Molly says, "Let her sniff your hand.")

"Aaaaaaaah!"

What a great day--swimming, swinging, and running around barefoot in the back yard. I feel like we're packing in as much summer as we can before school starts!

귀환 기념 날

2011-08-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

I got home from my mission 18 years ago today. (18 years on the 18th--it's like the golden birthday of my return!)

We've been trying to save money, since Doug doesn't get paid again till October, but I had some money in my PayPal account and I really wanted some naeng myun (or maybe some kimchi jjigae) so we went down to Chung Ki Wa in Lakewood. In the end the naeng myun won out. As Doug pointed out, you can get kimchi jjigae any time, but naeng myun is pretty much only available in the summer. I had some for coming-home-from-mission-day a couple of years ago (when I got a much better picture) but I don't think I've had it since then. Did I really go two years without naeng myun? It was so good. Cold and tangy, and it even had a piece of bae (Asian pear) in it, which I'm pretty sure I didn't get last time. Yum.

Everything was fabulous. My tummy is happy. I really enjoyed talking to the two ladies who served us (one was from Busan and one was from Mokpo). We should go there more often.

UFO (unfinished object)

2011-08-17T20:32:00.000-07:00

I started this sweater a couple of years ago. (At least I think it was a couple... the details are hazy.) I got it almost finished, and then I hit a snag and left it to languish in the yarn bin next to my computer desk. (Fortunately this has a lid on it, or it would have gotten very dusty in that amount of time.) Poor neglected sweater.

One of my friends recently commented that the finishing-up details always seem to be the parts that are the least fun. In this case I had one sleeve that turned out bigger than the other, so I needed to re-do one of them. And there was one other problem--I'd stopped right in the middle of that picot edging, and when I picked it back up later, I couldn't remember exactly how I'd done it. ("Let's see... like this? No, that doesn't look the same. Oh bother. I'll figure it out later." Much later.)

The Puyallup Fair is fast approaching. I do have one little thing that I can enter, but I started thinking about this sweater and wondering if I could finish it up in time to submit. Grandma Mary left on Monday, and that afternoon while Andy was napping I pulled out the sweater and took a good look at it. I spent a while contemplating the mismatched sleeves and decided that, yes, I really did need to do one over. So I got to work.

This pattern uses a medium-gauge yarn and works up pretty quickly. We took the kids over to the Tot Lot (which has a fence around it!) and I sat in the shade and crocheted while Doug kept Andy from plummeting off the equipment. I got the sleeve almost done, and then decided that my tension was too tight and ripped out almost the whole thing.

The next day was Movie Day. While I sat on the couch and crocheted, we watched Monsters, Inc, then watched it again with the commentary, then Tangled, then The Incredibles with commentary. (I'm still ticked that our Ratatouille didn't come with commentary... apparently there's one on the Blu-Ray.) I got the sweater almost finished, but the kids didn't get out of the house all day and were pretty cranky by dinner time. (I did manage to take Andy out for a while--Kate was too cranky.) Nothing like suffering for Mom's art.

I finished up the last bit of edging the next morning, got all the loose ends worked in (that's one of those "least fun" bits) and then started blocking. I spread the sweater out on a towel laid over my big masonite board, got everything smoothed and flattened and aligned just so, and then sprayed it all with water. Now I just have to hope that it dries in time for fair entries next weekend. My red sweater took more than a week to dry. (Ha! Yes--at the end of that post I said "I have another sweater that's about 80% finished." See, it was two years ago.) I tried to go a little lighter on the water this time, so maybe it won't take quite as long.

My sister Barb just had some big wins at their county fair. Go, Barb!

Incidentally, I hear there's a Monsters, Inc. 2 in the works. I was saying it should be about Boo after she's grown up and gone through years of therapy, but apparently it's going to be a prequel.

Forest Park (and a cool mosaic)

2011-08-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

We went up to Everett to see Aunt Erika and Cousin Sabin, and we all went to Forest Park for a picnic lunch. After eating we saw the animals (this section was called the Animal Farm so Doug had to make some "House of Pain" jokes) and then let the kids play on the playground.

Andy was happy--he found some letters!

Andy high-fives Daddy on the swing.

There was also this big planter with a mosaic all around the outside. I thought it was very cool and had to get some pictures. (I like all the little details like the birds and bugs, and there's even a lizard in there. Or perhaps it's a newt.)

Erika took pictures too! Cool park!

Point Defiance Flowers

2011-08-10T19:42:00.000-07:00

The rose garden at Point Defiance has this gorgeous archway. I dream of taking pictures here some day with perfect lighting and cooperative children. I take what I can get.

Rocks!

Kate in the Dahlia garden.

Are all kids this fascinated with grates?

Hooray--a nice picture with Grandma! (My camera battery ran out right after this.)

Wright Park

2011-08-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Grandma Mary is here! She was with Melody's family for a while, and then stopped to visit Brian in Portland, and now we have her for a few days. She got here on Monday and we all went down to Wright Park.

Wright Park has changed a lot! We hadn't been there in about three years, and then a couple of weeks ago Doug was supposed to do some fencing with his SCA group for the Ethnic Fest. It ended up getting canceled (not the Ethnic Fest, just the fencing) but we didn't get the word in time, so we went to the park and enjoyed some of the festival (free bouncy houses! The kids liked that). There's a big playground that's all new, and a water (spray ground) area too. So this time we thought it would be nice to go back again and enjoy the park with fewer people around. It was still pretty busy. Wright Park is the place to be!

This wooden xylophone thing is tuned pentatonically. This means that I can play Arirang on it. (Though the lowest note is a bit flat.)

Swinging with Grandma.

He really does enjoy this. He just looks worried.

The sun kept coming and going. Makes for awkward photography.

Andy says, "Dad, you're cramping my style! I want to get down and throw rocks in the water!"

Andy was also quite put out that we wouldn't let him go play in the spray ground. We kept having to pull him away from the water every time he made a break for it. That's what he likes--water and rocks.

Our First Letterbox

2011-08-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

We went out yesterday for our first letterboxing excursion. (Right before lunch, which may not have been the best time.) We got on Atlas Quest to find a box that was marked as active, and chose the "Hoppy Easter" series at Titlow. (So much for exploring new places--but I thought it would be good to start with one that we could actually find!)

At the site of our first box! It was under a log and fairly easy to find. I did take some pictures before this, and then realized that I didn't have a card in the camera. (Doh!)

We put our stamp in the box's book...

... and put their stamp in our book. (It occurs to me that when you're out in the woods, it might be difficult to find a hard surface to stamp on.)

"Hoppy Easter" is a series of six boxes, so we set off to find some more.

We couldn't find the second one, but the third and fourth boxes were pretty easy.

Kate puts a box back in its hiding place.

We had to get home for lunch, so we didn't have time to look for the other two right then. (Maybe next time we should pack some sandwiches.) The kids got a few minutes at the playground before we left.

Doug's mom is coming next week. Maybe we can do some letterboxing with Grandma!

In which we consider taking up letterboxing, and make a stamp

2011-08-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

I've had the thought that perhaps we should try geocaching. We went with some friends once, when Kate was really little. It seems like it would be a good way to get out and explore new places. Doug and I are perfectly happy to just explore for the sake of exploring, but I thought Kate might get more into it if there was some sort of goal and payoff. But we don't have a GPS, so that does present a bit of a problem.

We had a ward activity not long ago which included a brief presentation on fun (and cheap) summer activities, and one friend mentioned that her family has been enjoying letterboxing. "Oh yeah, " I thought, "We could do that!" Letterboxing is like geocaching before geocaching was invented. (Sort of... the two exist concurrently now.)

The two things you need for letterboxing are some kind of little notebook and a stamp. The book was easy--I have several little books from my bookbinding class at BYU that I've never done anything with. I thought it would be fun to have Kate draw a dragon and then turn that into a stamp.

We decided to use the one in the middle (that's Toothless!)

I got a block of this rubber stuff called "Moo Carve" at Artco, and did a graphite transfer to trace the dragon onto it.

Carving! Doug and I had the idea we were going to do some linoleum block carving, several years ago, and got a set of tools. They've only been used on potatoes and they're rather rusty.

All done! I need to get some kind of wood to mount on the back, but it works fine for now.

Kate added a scene to this one.

After this she wanted to make more stamps! I suppose we'll have to do that.

"All Over the World" (multi-stake Broadway Revue)

2011-07-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

We took the kids to the matinee on Saturday. Originally I was thinking I would just take Kate, but Andy had an early nap so we decided to make it a family outing and all go together. They both did really well. Kate was not quite as engaged with some numbers, and Andy seemed a bit freaked out by the Phantom of the Opera, but they were both very good. It was cute to see Andy clapping after every song.

My backdrop! This is a really cute number.

"Trouble" from The Music Man. I was impressed with Harold Hill. He just nailed it. (And it's not an easy song!)

"Shy" from Once Upon a Mattress. I loved this number too. Very well done!

Doug had a contribution as well--he made this doublet and hose for his SCA fencing. That's Patrick Watson (the director) wearing them as Don Quixote, singing "The Impossible Dream."

"There is Nothing Like a Dame"

The final number--"One Day More" from Les Mis.

I really enjoyed all the full-cast numbers. Powerful sound!

The whole thing was over two hours long, with more than twenty songs. Everyone did such a great job. The kids' favorite part was the "All Over the World" number (from Xanadu) at the end of the first act. The cast ran out and made a circle around the audience, singing and tossing inflatable-globe beach balls. Kate and Andy each got to throw the balls back a couple of times. (Audience participation!)

There are four more performances this next weekend! I'm going to try to go again and get some video of Fiona's song and maybe a couple others. If I do I'll add them here.

Painting Fiona's Library

2011-07-27T21:54:00.001-07:00

This is what I've been working on for the past week and a half! I got a call from Helen Christensen, who I helped with the Mod Prom decorations, asking if I'd like to do some set painting for the upcoming Broadway Revue at the church.

We met JoLee and Patrick Watson at the church on Monday morning and went over the planned sets. Castle walls for Once Upon a Mattress, River City store fronts for The Music Man, vaguely Middle-Eastern-looking buildings for Aladdin. There was also a library set for Fiona's song "I Know It's Today" from Shrek the Musical. JoLee had printed off a screen shot from this video. When I saw it I said, "Ooh! Can I just do the whole library by myself?" and they said, "Sure!" So I got to focus on the library while Helen did everything else. (Helen is good at getting things done.)

After Day 1 of painting. Helen had some electric pink acrylic paint. Very bright!

The end of Day 2.

On Day 3 I did the bricks--I stippled them with one of those sponge tools that looks like a sea urchin on a stick, and then scrubbed a thin layer of light blue back over the top.

"Still Life With Painting Shirt." I've been wearing this shirt since Bruno's. It has memories of all my projects on its sleeves.

Day 4. We had some metallic gold paint, but didn't think it would show up very well, so I did the book spines in white first, and then went over them with a couple of coats of gold.

Books before outlining...

...and after. Helen found some great (and cheap) markers at the dollar store that worked really well.

Beginning the chalk shading. I used Helen's pan pastels. They're just perfect for this sort of thing. Much faster than shading with paint.

The end of Day 5. You can see which books have been shaded and which haven't.

Day 7 and all finished! I added some chalk shading to the bricks and the window frame, too. (And then I gave it all a good spraying!)

There are 27 books on each side. This was not planned at all.

All together it took almost 40 hours. Which is way too much work for a set painting, I know. But I thought, hey, if I get to do something like this, and take pictures, I might as well do a good job. Who knows--maybe I'll get some work out of it.

When I've been working on the train table backdrop at home, I really can't paint for more than an hour or two a day. It was nice to be able to go somewhere else and work. I never would have been able to do this if Doug hadn't been available to stay home with the kids. He was very patient and supportive through the whole thing. (It did end up taking a bit longer than I'd anticipated!) He made lunch every day and called me when it was ready so I could run home and eat. What a great guy.

At this point we don't know if they'll be able to use this piece again for anything else later (or even where they'll keep it--it's too tall to put out in the storage container or down in the basement). But they're doing seven performances, so it'll be used seven times, at least! I'm planning to take Kate to the matinee this Saturday. Should be a great show.

Going and Coming

2011-07-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

We flew out of SeaTac at 11:10 on the morning of June 25th. Dayton is the closest airport to my parents, but they were able to find everybody direct flights into Cincinnati (over an hour away), so my dad did a lot of driving back and forth. After our unpleasant adventure going through Chicago two years ago, we were glad to not have a layover this time.

Preparations for the flight included lots of food and some new toys. Kate got some new Zoobles, which she was very excited about. Those kept her occupied for a good long while. (She knew from experience that plane flights mean new toys, and kept asking, "When do I get my surprise?")

Dad and Andy check out some letters while waiting to board the plane.

Andy and I were seated in one row and Doug and Kate were right behind us. We decided that would be better than having three of us together and one person across the aisle. It worked out pretty well. The kids each had a window seat.

Looking toward Tacoma--you can see the Narrows Bridges(es) in the background.

Mt. Rainier peeking up over the clouds.

Peter's family and Barb's family came out from Utah. Everyone's visits were kind of staggered, but we had an overlap of about three days with everyone there. Chaos! There are sixteen people in the family now. Six grand kids, with Kate being the oldest. It was great to see everyone again, and spend some time with the new little ones.

We were in Ohio for eleven days. and came home on July 6th. We had a 9:20 flight out of Cincinnati, so in order to get down there in time I got up at 4:15. That was a very long day. (As it turned out, the airport wasn't busy at all, and we got to our gate with more than an hour to spare. Oh well. You can't plan these things.)

Andy fell asleep early on but only slept for about an hour, and spent the rest of the time trying to climb over the back of the seat, or over me. I had my Kindle and MP3 player to keep myself occupied, but didn't really get to do much with them, with Andy acting up. (I did let him type the alphabet on my Kindle over and over, but that only lasted so long.) A five hour flight with an active two-year-old is a loooong five hours.

It is good to be home! We got a pizza from Cerello's and then took the kids to the Fircrest wading pool for a while. Everyone was talking about how hot it was, but after Ohio it really didn't feel hot. We've been enjoying the cooler weather. The air feels lighter, somehow.

We didn't have much trouble adjusting to the time change on the way out, but jet lag seems to have hit hard coming home. Andy and I did a lot of sleeping this afternoon.

The weary travelers return....

2011-07-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

We are back from Ohio! We had a good visit and we are happy to be home. It's only 2:30 here but feels like it should be a lot later (probably because I've been up since 4:15 Ohio time). Long day!

I think I have about ten gigs of photos to go through.

Left Behind

2011-07-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

I found this in the recesses of the oven. It used to be a tater tot.

Andy's Alphabet

2011-06-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

Andy's fascination with letters continues. We have these wooden letters (from a Melissa and Doug set) that Andy likes to line up on the floor, over and over and over. He's been spending quite a lot of time lining up letters. He'll complete the alphabet, then come and get me and I sing it for him while he points to the letters, and then he starts over again.

I'm impressed that he never gets the b,d,p, and q mixed up.

He also picked up the sign language alphabet from watching videos on youtube. We got this video of him finger-spelling himself to sleep on Daddy's lap.

Saying Goodbye

2011-06-29T06:34:00.000-07:00

Our neighbors the Kim family are moving. We are sad! They moved in when Andy was just five months old, and we've enjoyed having them in the complex.

I made them this little book for a going-away present. I've made four photo books now, all printed at different places. I got this one done at WHCC.

It was a quick job. I didn't think I had enough time to design the pages scrapbook-style, so I just arranged the photos on a black background. I had some that included other kids from the complex, and some that were just our kids--memories of things we've done together over two years.

I didn't see an option to choose endpapers. They came black. (That's one thing that I like better about sharedink--they have lots of endpaper choices.) The printing isn't quite photo quality but it's very good. It did seem to print a little cooler than the colors on my monitor. I'll have to remember that.

I had the book less than a week after placing the order. Very quick! I was impressed. The Kims loved it.

The girls brought over some kim bap for us. After I convinced Kate that there was nothing in there she didn't like (except the cucumber, which I picked out for her) she agreed to try it. She said, "This is good! I want to make this some time!" Andy wouldn't even look at it. (This was surprising--Kate's usually the picky one.)

We will miss our friends! Kate will especially miss having Glory and Hanuri around to play with.

It just needs tidying up a little

2011-06-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

Becky Higgins posted a challenge to take a picture of how your desk looks right now. So I did. And then I started cleaning it up a bit.

So, why was there a Playmobil tree stump next to my keyboard?

I really couldn't say.

a girl and her feather boa

2011-06-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

We went to "Junk in Your Trunk" in the church parking lot. Didn't get rid of any of our own stuff, but came home with a few articles of clothing and a green feather boa. Kate was just thrilled when she saw it. ("It's so fluffy!")

Feather boas shed. I've been picking up green feathers everywhere.

March of the Penguins

2011-06-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

Summer Solstice

2011-06-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

We celebrated summer with a little picnic at Snake Lake. It was a bright sunny day with not a cloud in the sky (okay, maybe a few around the edges), which is definitely not the best conditions for taking pictures.

I thought at first that we could eat our lunch by the play area (Discovery Pond), but it quickly became apparent that this would not work, so we relocated to the picnic area and found a table in a nice shady spot.

Andy enjoys his sandwich. (Almond butter!)

At the picnic area we ran into Liberty, who reads my blog. (Hi Liberty!) That was pretty cool. (I know she wasn't stalking me because she was there first... perhaps I was stalking her!)

After eating we headed back over to Discover Pond and turned the kids loose.

(Well, for a certain value of "loose.")

There was a big stand of clover with hugely long stems, so I made a clover chain crown for Kate.

Squinting in the sun.

We had "corn and the cob" (that's what Kate calls it) for dinner. Very summery. The next day it was all cool and cloudy again. Isn't it nice to have variety in weather?

Kate's Dragons

2011-06-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

I had this idea a while ago. We gave it a try yesterday, and it worked out really well!

Kate and I went outside and took some pictures, and then we uploaded them onto the computer and Kate added dragons (and other things) in Photoshop.

I love the teeth and tongue on this one.

I showed her how to paint on a new layer and how to undo. She's going to be proficient in Photoshop before she hits middle school. She used my graphics tablet and pen part of the time, and just drew with the mouse for the other part. She's pretty good with both!

Kate really had a blast doing this. We've already taken more pictures that she's going to work on.

Kate sings for Daddy

2011-06-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

A song for Father's Day!

This thing called Summer Vacation

2011-06-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

This is our first summer as parents of a school child who is out of school. The sudden transition is rather jarring. Suddenly every day feels like Saturday.

Wednesday was the last day of school. Thursday morning Kate went to a birthday party for a boy from her class. As we were leaving, one of the moms said, "This totally doesn't feel like a Thursday." It didn't. Friday we went down to Titlow Beach at low tide (12:42), hunted little scuttling crabs and threw rocks in the water. Later, back home, I had the thought pop into my head, "Oh yeah, tomorrow's not Sunday!" One more Saturday to go. Today Kate and I went and saw "Captain Jack Presents 'Bugs of the World'" at the library. That was pretty cool--we got to hold a giant cockroach from Madagascar, a wood scorpion (which is not a scorpion) from Tanzania, and a violin mantis from India.

Kate was always pretty good at self-entertaining before. Coming out of school, though, she's used to more structure and busy-ness. I guess we'll be looking for lots of fun things to do.

We got some video down at Titlow Beach. Andy got bored with throwing rocks and moved on to throwing seaweed. This was just as messy as it sounds. He had to have a bath before his nap.

Fridge Magnets

2011-06-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

Our letter "O" is missing.

School's out!

2011-06-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

We're all done with Kindergarten! Here's Kate coming out of school on her last day, dragon costume flapping. (She's been wearing her dragon costume to school quite a lot lately.) They had a half day today, with a special assembly in the morning. I went for the end-of-the-year slide show. (They used a few of the photos that I took.) It was funny to hear the kids' reactions throughout the show, as each photo got some kind of response--a murmur of recognition or a roar of laughter. And at the one photo that was sideways, everyone in the auditorium tipped their heads simultaneously.

Kate has loved school. She seemed to have mixed feelings about her last day--excited for summer but sad that her Kindergarten year was over. She really loved her teacher and made some good friends in her class. We got a few phone numbers so hopefully we'll be able to arrange some play dates. (Kate is already planning a "Summer Party" at our house. She'll have to clean her room first.)

The Kindergarten classes had a day at the park on Monday, where I got a nice picture of Kate with her teacher.

I ran into her teacher the next day at Fred Meyer, and she told me how much she's going to miss Kate and her imagination. It's been a fun year.

Waily Waily Waily

2011-06-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

Andy sure has been emotional lately. I hope it's just a phase. Maybe he's feeling the impact of not being able to express himself.

and still more painting

2011-06-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

I painted five days a week for the past three weeks. Yay! Making progress.

A few details:

I finished listening to The Name of the Wind today. Next up will probably be White Cat, by Holly Black. My brother Peter said he enjoyed it a lot, despite a rather egregious plot hole.

Angler Fish Ice Cube

2011-06-05T08:04:00.000-07:00

You know those weird stalagmites that you get on ice cubes sometimes? Or maybe you don't, I don't know--this site says that they form best with distilled water, which is definitely not what we're using, but we do seem to get them fairly frequently. It's just some freak thing.

Anyway, we went to IKEA yesterday and picked up this little tray for making fish-shaped ice cubes. Later we found this in our freezer. Angler Fish!

(It was already melting a little at this point.)

There's a video here of a huge ice spike that formed on somebody's deck.

Playing at the Art Museum (again!)

2011-05-31T20:06:00.000-07:00

Isn't this a great picture? The lighting in the art museum's Open Studio is just perfect. We went there about three years ago but I didn't have my camera with me (it was out getting fixed), so I was excited to go back and get some pictures.

The Norman Rockwell exhibit was ending on Monday (Memorial Day), which we figured would be pretty crowded, so we decided to go on Saturday. The library has free art museum passes that you can check out, but only a limited number. I called our local branch to see if they had any available, and the guy said they had one that was just getting ready to go back on the shelf, so Doug went and picked it up. Yay! Free admission! And we didn't have to wait in line to get tickets (a nice plus).

We went downtown and parked by Freighthouse Square, and then rode the Link over to the museum. Andy loved the Link and complained loudly when the ride was over.

We got to spend just a little time in the exhibit (as much as the kids' patience could stand) and then we took them up to the studio to play.

This was a new addition--a big cylindrical block covered with chalkboard paint. (That "Oliver" was already there--no relation to the new cousin.)

I got Andy set up at an easel and he went to work right away.

Adding some chalk for a mixed-media experience.

We couldn't find the bigger sheets of paper. When Andy ran out of room, he just moved on to painting the easel.

Doesn't he look cute in his apron? He didn't like it when I first put it on, but didn't complain while he was busy painting.

I don't know if Kate remembered her bead-stringing adventures last time, but she quickly gravitated to the jewelry making case and spent the time happily making a necklace.

She kept Doug busy rolling Mod Podge cut paper beads.

Pretty cool!

I wish we could have spent a little longer with the Rockwell paintings, but it was neat to get to see them, however briefly. They were interesting enough to keep Kate's attention for a little while. She was amused by the boy's expression in "The Discovery." I think my favorite part was discovering that "The Art Critic" has real blobs of paint on the palette.

I told Kate that these are famous paintings, and she'll probably see pictures of them in a lot of places as she's growing up. Maybe she'll remember that we took her to see the originals when she was little.

Sunday Afternoon

2011-05-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

Doug does leatherwork; Andy's been lining up Play-Doh cans.

Kate's Starfish

2011-05-20T20:58:00.001-07:00

We were down at Owen Beach and found this little dead starfish. Kate's been keeping a science notebook at school, so when we got home she wanted to write some observations about her starfish. She asked me how to spell a few words, but she wrote most of it herself.

Kate
My Starfish.

Mine is dead
and wet. it has some
pointy tentacles
and it's red.
it has circles on its
side. the end.

(I took out Kate's grocer's apostrophes... we'll have to work on that.)

We also found this little shell, which is now sitting on the kitchen windowsill along with some interesting rocks.

painting painting painting

2011-05-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

I've been able to paint every day this week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I think working on the Mod Prom decorations got me back in the mood. I want to get this done soon and I feel like I can. My goal at this point is Father's Day.

Doug is home in the afternoon this quarter, so he can get Andy down for a nap. That helps! After lunch I clear off the table, set up my painting stuff, turn on my audio book of The Name of the Wind, and get in the zone. At least for a little while. Mostly I've only been able to work for about an hour and a half at a time, but if I can do that every day, I should be done in a few weeks. I feel like it's going well!

Introducing Cousin Oliver!

2011-05-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

My sister Barb and her husband Kyle welcomed their second child into the world: Oliver James, born May 16 at at 2:31 PM MDT. 8 lbs. 7 oz, 20 inches long.

(Doesn't he look like such a little peanut? I should mention that Barb has very long hands.)

Kyle mentioned that they had a hard time agreeing on a name, especially since Barb has been teaching for seven years, so pretty much any name already has associations for her. (I've heard this is a common difficulty for teachers.) Oliver was the only one on their list that they both liked, and James is the name of both grandfathers.

Among my parents and siblings, my brother Peter is the only one who has a birthday on an even-numbered day. The rest of us are all odd numbers. The funny thing is that, up to till now, this has held true for spouses and children as well. Peter's wife and their two girls both have even-numbered birthdays; my family's are all odd-numbered. Barb's family was not only all odd, but all prime numbers. Barb was the one who noticed this. (She mentioned some years ago that she had realized she's more like our engineer dad than she thought. Which apparently comes in handy when designing quilts.)

Well, little Oliver decided to buck this trend and come on an even-numbered day. (Perhaps an early indication of rebelliousness... or an independent streak!)

Welcome to the world!

Kate encounters the Bard.

2011-05-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

Some friends of ours were in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream over at the Stadium Ward church building, so I took Kate to see it. Her first Shakespeare play!

They used the arch backdrops from Mod Prom. I thought it was fun that they got used again so quickly.

This is the way Shakespeare is meant to be experienced. I've never had any personal affection for this particular play, but I think it was a great choice for an introduction. It's visually interesting, and also one of the shortest of Shakespeare's plays. (This wasn't quite the whole text--edited for length, I guess.) I don't think Kate followed the language that well, but she enjoyed the costumes and the emoting, and I filled her in on what was going on.

Though perhaps I should have a personal affection for it, since it has not only a Helena but also the word Jole. ("I'll go with thee, cheek by jole.") You have to admit that's pretty cool.

When I asked Kate what she liked about the play, she said "The girl in the blue dress." That's our friend Marley, as Hermia.

The player presenting Wall.

"I can hear my Thisby's face!"

The Players were hilarious, and the girl playing Puck was excellent. All the kids did a great job of projecting. I was impressed!

With a couple of language geeks for parents, I'm sure our kids will have plenty of exposure to Shakespeare. Daddy can tell them all about Chaucer and Beowulf.

A pertinent thought

2011-05-14T20:53:00.001-07:00

It's great when kids are old enough to
(A) tell you when they're going to throw up, and
(B) aim.

Mother's Day gifts

2011-05-08T21:09:00.000-07:00

Kate made this for me at school. Isn't it sweet? I love the way she wrote on the fingers, too.

The decorated envelope, Kate-style.

She also gave me this pot that she painted, along with a peat pellet and three cosmos seeds. (Yay! I love cosmos. Maybe I can get them to actually grow.)

Many years ago, one of my siblings made a card at church with a bunch of dots, and this verse:

I love you Mother
I love you lots
I love you more
Than all these dots

We decided to this with the Nursery kids. Becki Foutz wrote out Andy's card, and he enthusiastically added his own dots.

(This was fairly unusual, as normally when he gets ahold of a crayon or pencil, he just wants us to write letters for him.)

Last year, Kate didn't go up and sing with the Primary kids in Sacrament Meeting. I was kindof disappointed. So this year I mentioned to her (more than once) that I was looking forward to hearing her sing. She went up with everyone else and sang "I Often Go Walking," and when she got to "remind me of you," she pointed at me and grinned.

Life with these kids is never boring!

I know Mother's Day is difficult for some people. Not everyone has a great relationship with their own mother. (I have a friend whose mom died on Mother's Day--it's not a happy day for her.) For some it seems to bring up their own feelings of inadequacy. I imagine my own mom probably has some things that she wishes she had done differently, but I like to think I turned out okay. Doug and I both called our moms after church, as is customary. Thanks for everything, Moms! We wouldn't be here without you!

Mod Prom Decorations

2011-05-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

After helping out with all the painting for Modest Prom, I definitely wanted to see what it looked like all put together. After Kate got home from school we drove out to Sumner to check it out.

Italian signage reminds guests that they are entering Venice.

Outside the main entrance.

Registration desk.

Inside the gym, where setup was nearing completion.

The DJ's table.

These window boxes were a great touch.

Refreshment table.

The backdrop on the stage.

I love the twisty topiaries. They just look so cool.

The evening started with dinner at another church building in Puyallup, and then moved to Sumner for the dance. We heard that everyone loved the decorations. It was sure a big project! Lots of work but a lot of fun, too.

Children's Day

2011-05-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

May 5th is Children's Day in Korea--time for the annual pictures in the park. We got some great shots this year.

We headed down to Point Defiance as soon as Kate got home from school. It was really a lovely day and the lighting was great.

"Hey look, this plant is called Dinosaur Food!"

This one's a little blurry (I seem to have pegged the focus on the bench rather than on the kids) but Andy's face is just so cute.

We've taken lots of pictures on this bridge, over the years. I think this one is particularly sweet.

"Here, Mom, I'll pose for you!"

Pink petal snow.

Pretty Kate.

Squish! (Giggle)

After pictures in the Japanese garden, we headed over to the playground. (This is what the kids were waiting for, of course!)

This thing is fun--it can be a car, a trolley, a train, or even a blimp.

Andy helps turn the crank bar to make the trolley go. He seemed quite fascinated by the mechanics.

I love this tree. It's so cool and knobbly, and covered with moss and ferns.

Kate checks out the irises. Pretty!

It occurred to me that this was Andy's third Children's Day, in a way, since it's three years since the day we found out we were expecting him. We sure do love being a family of four.

Outtake!

Andy's Nest

2011-05-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

Andy often likes to wrap blankets around himself when we're reading a book together, or just when he's playing. Here he's on the bed just after waking up from a nap, listening to Daddy play the fiddle. Awww.

Painting Venice on cardboard

2011-05-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

This is what I've been working on lately. I was asked to help out on the decorating committee for the Modest Prom (popularly known as "Mod Prom"), a five-stake dance (it's a church thing) for the sixteen and seventeen year-olds. Helen Christensen, who has done a lot of the painting for the Festival of the Nativity, has been the driving force, and we've had 6-9 other ladies helping out throughout the process.

We started out with forty 4' x 8' sheets of cardboard. On the first day we laid them all out on tables in the gym and painted them white. Then we used opaque projectors to trace scenes of Venice onto the cardboard with black marker, and painted them in.

This is our painting table and color chart. A very handy method! This way you don't have to keep opening containers to find the right color. I'll have to remember that for my future projects.

Helen shows off her plastic-wrap stuccoing technique.

Mostly I helped out with water reflections, and then ended up designing some arches and filling in some other details as needed.

After painting, we added shading with pan pastels (and then took them outside to spray them with fixative). Really quick and easy.

It's all been a big group effort. On this one I just did the water lines.

We also made some arches with vaguely Italian-looking scenery (not Venice, obviously) to go along the back of the stage and behind the DJ.

Sponge-stamped cobblestones. This thing is about 90 feet long. Talk about back-breaking work.

These trees were painted black and then Helen added the greenery with big brush strokes. They look great! The black really makes the color pop.

I've been trying to do the same thing with these pots.

The dance is this Friday at the chapel in Sumner. I'm going to try to get some pictures of it all set up. Should be very cool.

It's been fun, working on a project like this with a group of people, and also a good experience for me in figuring out ways to do things quickly and not sweat the details. I haven't been there for all the painting--generally people get to the church around 10:00 and I don't make it there till after Doug gets home and we have lunch, so there have been several times when I was working on something one day and then I come in the next day and discover that someone else has finished it. And maybe they didn't do it exactly the way I would have, but it's done and it looks great. "Good enough for church work" has become a common mantra.

Kate's Concert

2011-04-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

The Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade concert was tonight. I got really close with the video camera for this song, and it just brought out Kate's inner ham.

What do you do when your child starts extemporizing her own motions? Do you look stern and shake your head, hoping that she'll shape up and just sing it straight like everyone else? Well no, you just try to hold the camera as still as you can while laughing, and capture the moment for posterity.

(When she holds up her crooked finger for "I think to myself," she says that's a question mark. It's so funny to see what she comes up with.)

Easter

2011-04-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

Joseph, a friend in Kate's class, invited us to their neighborhood East egg hunt on Saturday morning. It turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day and everyone had a great time. Kate collected quite the haul. (We're rationing the candy--think we can make it last till Halloween?)

By Sunday our sun was gone, and it was a little chilly and windy. One hopes that, having Easter later in the year, it might actually be warm enough for those Easter clothes. Not quite, but we braved the temperatures long enough to get some quick pictures outside after church.

Kate wore this dress that Scott got for her in Mexico. I made the little sweater to go with it.

Andy has a bit of black jelly bean schmutz on his face.

I put together a little Easter box and sent it to a friend in Korea (안상희 in 포항) with representatives of the three Easter candy fauna--eggs, bunnies, and chicks (marshmallow peeps, of course). She called to tell me how much they enjoyed it. They don't really celebrate Easter in Korea, so it was something interesting and different for the kids.

Parks Appreciation Day

2011-04-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

We appreciate parks! Saturday (the 16th) was Parks Appreciation Day. Our ward was assigned Titlow Park as usual. (Kate has been calling it "Tiplow"). Doug was in charge of signing people in and passing out equipment. Some people picked up trash and others planted trees.

Kate went down with Doug at the beginning and did help pick up some trash with the nifty trash-grabber, but by the time I showed up with Andy I guess the novelty had worn off, so we just spent the rest of the time playing.

It was a nice day, but windy. And the sunshine kept coming and going, which makes for uneven photography.

There was another group that was having an Easter egg hunt around the playground. They put out the eggs ahead of time and then had a group breakfast in the picnic shelter, leaving all the eggs lying around unattended. Since trying to keep the kids from touching the eggs at all was obviously a losing battle, I figured it would be okay as long as the eggs stayed in the general area.

Andy discovered that some of the eggs rattled, and was having fun just walking around shaking them.

Honk!

sidewalk chalk layout

2011-04-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Challenge #3 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to do a page about something our family likes to do, and design the layout to represent the activity (say, if you enjoy playing Monopoly together, you could make a page to look like the Monopoly board). I had a hard time picking something. What do we all like to do? LEGO? Reading? I suppose I could take pictures of everyone playing on the computer.

I decided to go with sidewalk chalk. We have been doing that a lot lately.

I thought doing the title in chalk would probably fit the requirement of the referential design. I wrote the titles on the sidewalk but then discovered that they were too big to fit in the frame (with my lack of wide angle lens), so I had to bring out a chair to stand on while I took the pictures.

I also made a border with my crayon line, which you can get here.

Two Little Dragons

2011-04-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

Kate's green dragon costume has been passed down to Andy, and Aunt Karen made her a larger pink one. We had some nice weather today so we went out and took pictures.

"Aaaaaaaah!"

Andy sure makes a cute little dragon. He seems to enjoy running around with the costume on.

Grandpa Al (inspiration layout)

2011-04-04T16:13:00.001-07:00

Challenge #2 of The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race. We were supposed to layer one paper on top of another, and then cut out shapes in the top layer so the bottom one showed through. Then add a picture about a family member who inspires you, with 25-50 words of journaling. I decided to do a page about Doug's dad, and got him to do the journaling. (Keeping it under the 50-word limit was tricky!)

Suede Lacing tie
frame from The Paper Drawer,
cantaloupe tracks from Potato Prints

Bottom paper by Megan Farrow (Flergs), top paper by me. Leaf by Anne deJong. Michelle Coleman's stamped alpha. Worn overlay from Something Blue Studios.

(Thanks for your help with this one, Doug!)

Chalk Dragon

2011-04-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

On Friday it was finally not raining, so we went out and drew on the sidewalk with our neighbors Glory and Sky. Last year's chalk was all worn down to itty-bitty nubbins, so Doug had gotten us some new chalk the day before.

I drew this big dragon and the girls colored it in. Now some of our new chalk is worn down to itty-bitty nubbins too.

Kate finishes up the tail.

We discovered that Andy knows his colors. Or at least some of them. I asked him to bring me the yellow chalk, and he did!

our family in...

2011-04-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

Challenge #1 of The Amazing Digi-Scrapping Race was to create a layout with six facts about our family. That was the hard part for me--deciding on six things.

See how I have my head tipped almost exactly the same way in both pictures? I didn't do that on purpose. You may also notice that Doug is wearing the same shirt. That was deliberate. I love that shirt.

frames: Paper Bag Frames and The Paper Drawer.
flower: The Paper Drawer
stamped dot: Potato Prints
white paper: Masks and Mats
other papers by Megan Farrow (Flergs), Michelle Coleman, and Loretta Labarca.

Spring Break

2011-04-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

Kate was off school this week. Doug's break (between quarters) was the week before that. Alas, that they did not coincide. I was hoping we could go out and enjoy some parks, but it ended up raining almost the whole week. Kate did get to go over to her friend Maddy's house a couple of times, so that was nice. Let them entertain each other for a while.

We had a coupon for $15 off a Mattel product, so Doug and Kate went to Toys R Us and came home with the game Snorta.It's hilarious. Good fun for the whole family.

27 (the sequel)

2011-03-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

(A follow-up to this post from four years ago.)

It's March 27th and Andy is 27 months old!

Andy is starting to talk a little bit more. He seems to like to learn things in a systematic way. He's started adding words to his alphabet sounds. He'll say, "A, apple! Buh, ball! Kuh, cat! Duh, dog!" (Apple and ball were some of his first words, so that worked out well.)

When we have out the crayons (or sidewalk chalk) he doesn't want to do much with it himself--he wants us to write letters or numbers for him. And he's started a new thing now where each letter has to be a different color. He's very persistent. (Today in church I was trying to sing and he kept pushing crayons into my hand.)

We've also been reading Chicka Chicka 123 a lot. That seems to be the book of choice right now.

Could it be... Scrapping?

2011-03-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

Seems like a looong time since I've done any scrapbooking. A little designing, here and there, but I can't remember the last time I made a layout.

Season 6 of The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is starting at NDISB. I did it a few years ago and had a blast, but haven't felt like I had time to join any of the seasons since then. This time I thought, what the heck--I do have a lot of things going on, but hey, it'll be fun, and I'll get some scrapping done. So I'm signed up for the race. This time the lovely and talented CheleOh is my partner. Our team name is "Chelena." (Heh.)

The designers at NDISB have been putting together a prize kit. Bernadette (the coordinator) asked me if I might have one of my cool layered templates that I could contribute. As it happened, I did have one that I'd made a couple of years ago that was used in the store design, but I'd never done anything else with it. Since Theresa just recently did a site re-design, it seemed like a good time to put this template to some other use.

It needed a little cleanup. And then I had to make some instructions with screen shots, and while I was at it I made a layout with it.

Ta da! The race hasn't even started and I've already done a layout. More to come!