Watching Paint Dry

We've been getting a lot of use out of the kids' craft book that Barb sent us. Kate loves looking through it and telling us what she'd like to make. The brad-jointed paper animals especially are a big hit. Lately she's been wanting to paint them herself. This requires a bit of supervision, of course, but she does pretty well. The hard part is waiting for the paint to dry before she can play with them. Mostly we've been going outside to play "kickety-kick ball." (That's from Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! Thank you Wubbzy for giving us kickety-kick ball and hippity-hopscotch.) Sometimes she lays the paint on rather thickly, and then we have to wait longer. Waiting is hard when you're three.



(Excuse the messy hair!)

I've been managing to get a rest most days, after lunch. Here's a cute little Sculpey dragon that Doug made for Kate while I was napping. Its tail got singed in the oven. (It looks deliberate, no? Like Siamese points. Shhhh!)



We had a couple of miserably hot days this last week, but things seem to be back to normal now (rather gray and rainy). We took Kate to the splash park on Friday, which she did not like. Well, she enjoyed watching the fountains, but didn't want to get in the water. We did get her to step on a couple of the fountains. (Baby steps, baby steps.) I got a little sunburned.

Mom stuff

Three years ago, Doug made this flash movie for his mom for Mother's Day. I just dug it up today and thought I'd share it here. Kate sure was a cute little squidgit.

We are excited about the new little one! The official due date at this point is Christmas, but I'm thinking it'll be a bit after that. We'll have to see what the measurements say when I get an ultrasound in a few weeks. If it's a girl we'll be able to use all the same clothes again, since the seasons will match.

I'm doing okay, mostly, so far--a little queasy, a little more tired than usual, and my appetite is doing weird things. Kate's not feeling well today so we had a nap together.

Mother's Day, and a sweater

Happy Mother's Day!

Today was Kate's first time singing with the Primary kids in Sacrament Meeting. When I say "singing" I use the term loosely--singing in this case consisted of standing up there grinning, holding a yellow tulip and waving it up and down in time to the music. She didn't know either of the songs. (I told Doug we'll have to start teaching her "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home.") She was pretty cute, though.

Here's our traditional Mother's Day photo:



Kate has a bruise on her cheek. We went out to eat this last week, and she kept sliding down under the table, and then bonked her face on the table leg. Ouch! It's looking rather greenish now.

I just finished crocheting this little sweater for Kate. I did most of it during General Conference at the beginning of April, and just got all the ends worked in this week. I found a picture of the scalloped flower stitch online (I can't remember where, now. Edit: found it!), and then made up the rest of the pattern.




I wasn't sure if it was really going to fit, but it seems to work okay! Here it is on Kate.

Children's Day

We did the Korean thing for Children's Day (yesterday) and went down to the park to take pictures in front of the flowers. The Japanese garden makes a great backdrop. (And they do Children's Day in Japan, too, so that's appropriate.) It was a lovely day--warm enough to run around in our shirtsleeves, but with a nice high bright overcast that made for good photo lighting.



Kate enjoyed going across these stepping stones with a little help from Daddy.



The obligatory flower shot.



We played Pooh Sticks (Pooh Cones?) on the bridge with cedar cones and fir cones and various other cones. (Doug's picky about his cone identification--his dad was in the forest service.)




We went over by the playground where there were tons of these little daisies growing all over. While Doug and Kate played on the slides I made a quick daisy chain and adorned Kate with it.



I think she liked it but I couldn't really get her to smile. When it fell off she tried to replace it by herself, with amusing results. (And then it broke.)



This is not a standard Children's Day activity. In Korea, if you put flowers in your hair it means you're crazy. Shhhhh!



We went down to the beach and played in the sand for a bit, and met some cute kids who shared Kate's sand toys. (And the little boy didn't even complain when Kate dumped a shovelful of sand on his head.)



And here's our special surprise for Children's Day! :)

Fun with Disaster Simulations

I've been the secretary of the Stake Emergency Management Team (at church) for about four years now. Scott recently asked for Doug to be on the team, as well, so it's become a family affair. They just completed running another Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) class, and finished up with a disaster simulation down at the port this last Saturday. There seems to be no shortage of disused buildings at the port, and Scott has previously run these simulations in an old bank, a gym, and a kite factory. I don't even know what this building was.




I was there to take pictures of the simulation, but I ended up taking a lot of pictures of Kate, too. Since Doug and I both had to be there we just took her along with us. She did very well. (Right at the end her patience ran out, and she kept asking, "Are you ready?")



Tom put these sunglasses on her. Har har.



This seems to be Kate's new "smile for the camera" face.



Asking her to say "Wheeee!" works sometimes.



Here Doug gets to practice putting out a fire. (Kate thought this was very cool.)



And here's the "victim" from the cribbing exercise, Headless Harry.



Doug and Kate share a doughnut.



After the simulation we went to Chevys for lunch (yum!) and then I took a long nap. That was lovely.

Goat Girls

This last Saturday we went out to Ross and Cathryn's house in Gig Harbor to take pictures. Their oldest daughter was visiting with her husband, so they wanted to get some family pictures while they had everyone together. They were also going to a wedding later that day, so the three younger girls were all wearing their Easter dresses. I got some really cute pictures of the girls with the goats.



I thought the lighting was neat, but the processing was kind of tricky. I'm still not really sure on the color.

I only got a few pictures of the three girls together here, because right after this the goat stepped backward and very nearly pushed Cathryne into the pond. I was so sure she was going to fall in. Whew!



Kate got to help feed the fish...



...and the chickens!



It was very sunny and probably the warmest day we'd had so far. (Doug ended up on sweater duty, as you can see here.) It was also our first time going across the new bridge. It's been open for almost a year, but we just haven't had any reason to go over that way. Kate thought it was pretty cool.

The Bouncy Place

I took these pictures about a month ago, right before my camera died, and hadn't gotten around to processing and posting them yet. We went up to The Bouncy Place in Kent with some friends from church (the Carters, who have a little girl just a little younger than Kate) and I took along the camera. I don't think this had anything to do with the camera dying. I wasn't actually bouncing with it or anything.



Kate's favorite thing at The Bouncy Place is "Baby Dino Lake" with the animals. She always has to go see the animals first thing, and say goodbye to them when we leave.



Tuesday night is "Family Night": $5 per kid for an hour and a half. Adults are welcome to bounce too, though not many do. I don't know why--it's great fun, and quite the workout. (And it's easier on the knees than crawling around in the tunnels at Odyssey.)



(Nice expression there, Doug!)



Here are Kate and Daddy on one of the slides. Motion blur!



Here's one of all three of us at the top of a big slide. Wheee!



And here's Kate climbing all by herself! It's been so fun to see her do more and more each time we go. The first couple of times she was pretty cautious. When we went down the big slides she would sit on my lap and cover her eyes (which was awfully cute). Now she's just bouncing and climbing and sliding all over the place.

There's a hazard to working on photos like this--Kate looking over my shoulder, and saying, "Look! It's me! At the Bouncy Place! We can go to the Bouncy Place tomorrow?" We told her we can go on Tuesday. It's hard to explain what "Tuesday" means at this point. Heck, I'm not sure if she really understands what "tomorrow" means. She's pretty clear on "today" and "not today." I have a feeling we'll be hearing about The Bouncy Place a lot for a while.

It's back!

I just went and picked up my camera! Hooray! It was away for just under a month. I wrote down the serial number, just out of curiosity, to see if they would send me the same one back. They did. Happy dance!

Blessed are the Easily Amused

I have this ability to burst out laughing at odd moments because I've thought of something funny that happened earlier. One of my mission companions thought it was very strange. I think Doug's pretty much gotten used to it. He'll hear me snicker, apropos of nothing, and say, "What?" and I'll tell him what I was thinking of. Yesterday my mom mentioned that our friends the Van Hoose family have a van with a license plate that says "Hoose." I thought that was just the best thing I'd heard all day and kept giggling about it. But then, I'm easily amused. This is no secret.

My family in general has a pretty low amusement threshold. We regard this as a good thing. I remember once, at BYU, expressing appreciation for a low amusement threshold, and one of my roommates reacted rather strongly to the contrary. I'm thinking either she liked being bored or she didn't understand what I was saying.

So if you ever hear me burst out laughing at nothing, just ask me what's so funny. I won't mind. ;)

Kate is doing a lot better but still coughing a bit. Every time she coughs she says, "I don't need cough medicine!" She just wants to make sure we know. In case we might think she's changed her mind or something.

At NDISB we're working on a collab kit of fasteners for this next month. As I still don't have my camera, I borrowed the Bishop's 40D (thanks!) and took pictures of a few things to use. I shot in RAW, like I usually do. Then after I returned the camera, I had a brief moment of panic when I discovered I couldn't open the 40D's RAW files in any of my software. I was eventually able to find an update for Canon's Digital Photo Pro, which is what I usually use for RAW conversion, but I wasted a good part of the morning looking for a solution. I miss my camera.

Updating

Yes, we're still here! Doug and Kate both had a viral thing. Doug picked it up somewhere and spent two days in bed. Kate was crawling in with him to comfort him. I just figured we'd all get it anyway, so I wasn't really trying to keep her away from him, but I never came down with it, so maybe I could have kept her from getting sick. She had a fever and threw up a couple times and was just generally miserable for a while. She's much improved but has a lingering cough and still isn't quite back to her perky cheerful self.

This is the season of job applications. There are quite a few schools posting full-time positions right now, so Doug's busy applying. Some of the applications are quite a bit more complicated and time-consuming than others. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

I've been taking Kate out places to give Doug some time to work on things uninterrupted. Yesterday we went to the zoo. (I figured some fresh air would do her good.) She was the one who suggested the zoo. She said she wanted to go see the animals, but nooooo, what she really wanted to do was spend an hour in the gift shop. Later, we were over at the Kids Zone playing on the otter slide when she decided she wanted her apple juice, which we had left in the car. I explained that if she wanted her juice we would have to go to the car to get it.

"You go get it, Mama," she said. "I'll stay here."

"You can't stay here by yourself," I said. "We can go get it together."

"No! You get it. I'll stay here."

"You're too little to stay here by yourself."

"I'm big now!"

"Yes, you're very big, but you can't stay by yourself."

"You go get it, Mama! I'll stay here and be bigger."

I eventually convinced her that I was not going to leave her there, and we hiked back up to the car and retrieved the apple juice. She's definitely got an independent streak.

My camera is at Canon now. I got an estimate and gave them the go-ahead to fix it, and I hope to have it back in a couple of weeks. It's been rough being camera-less, with the weather getting warmer and the trees blooming. Alas!

I just found out that an old friend from BYU has cancer. He's a year younger than I am and has six kids. Dang.

Little Wossnames

Kate is obsessed with Little Einsteins these days. This ostensibly-educational program features four kids who fly around in a sentient rocket having musical adventures.

Doug and I often complain that they shouldn't be called Little Einsteins. I've seen several episodes now and they really haven't had any physics in them. Mostly music, with a little art and geography thrown in. June dances, Annie sings, Quincy plays any musical instrument that he happens across, and Leo conducts. Not much in there on general relativity. They could call them Little Mozarts. Or the Little Philharmonics, or something. Little Liberal Arts Majors. ("Would you like fries with that?")

Of course, the real point is that Little Einsteins are made by the company (Disney) that does Baby Einstein--the idea being that listening to classical music makes your child smarter. Unless you're Jack Jack Parr, in which case listening to classical music makes you burst into flame and metamorphose.

The end of the race

Challenge #11 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to make a layout with wings in it. A lot of people did altered-art style creations where they put wings on their kids. I decided to just use my chickadee drawing.



(Credits here)

Challenge #12 was another "Intersection" (like the collaboration in #2). One partner provided the photos and journaling, and the other partner did the scrapping. The topic was "a major accomplishment." Since I lost my first partner I teamed up with Lukasmummy (Crystal) and sent her some of my Cupboard Under the Stairs pictures. Here's the layout she created:



I like the sparkles!

The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is known as ADSR for short. Doug tells me that this also stands for "Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release." Apparently it's a musical term. Who knew?

That's the end of this race! If you're a digi scrapper, and interested, I would definitely recommend getting in on the next race. It's a lot of fun, and there are cool prizes for each challenge.

Playing at the Art Museum

On Friday we went down to the art museum and played in the Open Studio. We'd been there once, years ago, before Kate was born. (You can check out a card from the library that gives you free admission--is that cool or what?) Kate had a wonderful time painting, playing with clay, and stringing beads. Doug and I played with some ink and brayers (cool texture! I brought some home). There are a few easels set up in front of the big wall of windows. I loved the image of Kate in her cute little apron, standing at the easel painting, with the sunlight flooding in. (We'll definitely have to do that again, when I've got my camera back.) It reminded me of a phrase that my mom ran across once--"a hothouse of creativity." I think it might have been in an article on the Wyeth family. I told Doug, "This is what I want--a room with lots of windows, and a big table, and a sink." (Doug agreed that the sink was important.) Yep, that's what I want. I could spend a whole lot of time there.

They have these cases with supplies for different projects. Kate and I checked out the jewelry making case, and she quickly figured out how to string the beads on the wire. She was sitting stringing for quite a while, singing "Twinkle twinkle little star" quietly to herself. The next day she and I ran up to Artco and picked up a bead set. We got a Melissa and Doug set with brightly colored wooden beads and letters (this one). The wooden tray is cool but not really useful because there's no lid. We put the beads in a yogurt container. When we were playing with the beads together, Doug made a string with D-O-G. He showed it to Kate and asked her, "What's this word?" Kate looked at it and said "Dog!" Whoa. She can sort-of-sound-out some simple three-letter words with help (she does know all the sounds, very well), but this was pretty instantaneous, so she must have just recognized it. Either way, we were impressed.

I have a feeling it might not be butter

Youtube link.

A couple of years ago Rebecca got The Vicar of Dibley out of the library. We watched this part over and over. Ha!  (It's the first couple minutes of the episode.)

Little Artist

Last week Kate saw me working with some paint and wanted to do it too, so I popped my painting shirt on her and let her have some fun. She went through a few sheets of paper and then started making finger-dots on the cardboard that I'd put underneath. She was having a great time and I just had to get some pictures. It's amazing how her eyes look just the same color as the shirt here. I think her eyes are a lot like Doug's--kind of blue-gray, but they change in the light.

Challenge #9 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to do a page in the "altered art" style. That's pretty broad, so I had a little trouble choosing a topic, but then I decided that one of these painting pictures would be perfect.



The watercolor splatters in the background are some that I was playing with a while back and then never really did anything with. (One ended up in my blog border.) They worked so well here that I decided to make a few more and put them up in the store.



(link)

Since my camera is kaput, I'm going to be looking for things I can do with the scanner for a while. Actually I'm lusting after a 40D now, and I think I can probably swing it, but I have to wait and see what Canon says about my camera first.

Uh-oh...

I picked up my camera to get a picture of the snow today (yes, snow) and it wouldn't turn on. I swapped out the battery and did get it to power on, but it wouldn't do anything else. I took it down to Abolins (local camera shop), and the guy there said he'd never seen anything like it. He's going to pull the back off and see if anything's loose, and if not he'll send it in to Canon and get an estimate. So I am camera-less. This will definitely limit my designing options for a while.

And we just found out a couple of days ago that Doug only has one class this quarter. He had two lined up, and was trying to pick up a third somewhere else, but not having any luck. (I guess enrollment is down?) Then we learned that they'd had to give one of his classes to somebody else, since one of the full-time faculty had a class canceled, so they made it up from the part-time pool. So Doug will be looking for some other kind of work. If anyone knows of anything in the area, we'd appreciate any suggestions!