Ohio Evening

Our last night in Ohio (June 23rd), with Betsey on my camera.

See, my hair looks exactly the same, just shorter.




"Look, I made a sand ball!"



Grandma joins the fun.






Angie the Chiwhatwhat.



It's all fun and games till somebody loses a nose.




"I love you, Mom! I want to hug your head!"



Cute Andy!



Cute Betsey! (who, hopefully, will not hurt me too much for posting this picture.)

That's the end of our Ohio visit! (And I have so many other things to catch up on!) My mom has a really nice blog post about everyone's contributions to our get-together.

And--I don't think I got any pictures of it, but Barb was working on a quilt while we were there--she just found out that she won Best in Show for machine-quilted baby quilts at the Weber County Fair. Yay, Barb!

Fireflies!

While in Ohio we developed a nighttime ritual: we'd get Kate into her pajamas, then put her shoes back on and run around in the front yard catching fireflies for a while before bed. She didn't actually manage to catch any herself till our second-to-last night there, but she had a great time chasing them around.



Aren't those watermelon pajamas cute?





There are a lot of things to learn about catching fireflies--like, the best time is right as it's getting dark, so you can still see them between blinks. And the way they always seem to go straight up and hover for a second, and then zoom off sideways.



Doug shows one to Andy.



It takes off...



... and lights up! (Lucky shot!)



Here's another lucky shot that I got of one in flight. I think it was either just starting to glow or had just finished. You could go through a lot of pixels, chasing these little guys around with a camera!

Engineer Haircuts

During our Ohio visit I thought I'd take advantage of my dad's mad engineering skills and have him cut my hair. I was just going to take off a few inches, but Betsey was cutting hers to donate, so I decided to do it too. (I was kind of surprised that it had grown enough to donate again in just two years--must be those prenatal vitamins!)



Here's the "before" picture (Betsey's on the left--she's not really taller than me; she's standing a bit uphill).





(Lovely shot of the top of Dad's head.) Betsey was wearing this shirt with horizontal stripes, and as Dad measured and started cutting, he said, "Hey, this is easy!" Ha. So when it was my turn I put on the shirt too. (When Kate saw me in Betsey's shirt, she said, "Who is that? Are you Mama?")

You're supposed to have at least ten inches to donate, so I told Dad eleven inches, thinking that would take care of the uneven ends. He measured it at eleven inches from the shortest part, so it ended up a little shorter than I was expecting. It's not long enough to stay put behind my shoulders, but just long enough to get in the way.

I didn't really get an "after" shot, but you'll see it in future posts. (Soon!)

watercolor and stuff

This is what I've been working on for the past few days. I haven't been able to contribute to the monthly collaboration kit at NDISB for a few months, so I thought I'd better do something this time. The theme is "From Dusk to Dawn," in blues and greens.



I've been drawing, painting (and supervising Kate painting at the same time), cutting, photographing, extracting, and making shadows. Whew! Finally done. I made the frog first and was going to make the snail cartoony too, but it didn't quite turn out that way. So the frog doesn't really match the other pieces.

It's hard to get anything done with two kids! Andy is managing to get into all sorts of things, and he can't even lift his tummy off the floor yet.

Kings Island

While we were in Ohio, we got to take Kate to Kings Island amusement park. (Andy came too, of course.) We kept talking it up and she was so excited. Our day did not start out as planned because the stroller broke when Doug was loading it into the car, so he had to go out and get a new one. That put us back a couple of hours, which was not a big deal since we weren't planning on being there all day long, anyway.

I hadn't been to Kings Island for almost twenty years. A lot of things have changed. Some of the rides are the same, but have different names. Some are gone altogether. What used to be Hanna-Barbera land is now Nickelodeon Universe, with all the characters that Kate's familiar with.





Kate drives!




Azul (Dora's blue train). Doug was going to take Andy on this one, too, but they wouldn't let him on because he wasn't wearing shoes. Poor deprived child. He doesn't even own any shoes.



Kate after getting wet on the Wild Thornberrys River Adventure--that which we used to call "the little log ride." I always liked this one, so I went on it with Kate while Doug sat with Andy. Kate was right in the front of the boat, and we came down a little dip, hit one of those places where the water kind of mounds up (a hydraulic jump?), and got thoroughly splooshed. She was not happy about that. We were both wearing jeans, too, which I realized was not the best choice. So we walked around with wet pants for a few hours.



Andy was pretty content to sit in the stroller and look around at everything.



Up at the top of the Eiffel Tower. (It's a 1/3 scale replica.)



Andy conked out on Daddy's shoulder.



On the carousel. Kate rode this three times in a row.



Kate watches the fountains. We sat in the shade here and had some pizza.



Andy finds his own entertainment.



Riding the train. It goes right under the new Diamondback coaster.





The Backyardigans Swing-Along. I think she was having a good time.

We left around 7:30, so we could get the kids home before it got too terribly late. They'll have to experience Kings Island at night some other time. All in all it was fun, but probably not really worth that much money. I told Doug we should go again when the kids are six and ten years old.



On the way home I snapped a shot of this surprising landmark, subject of a Heywood Banks song (which I am not going to link to, since it's entirely too catchy and a bit too far on the wrong side of irreverent, but you can find it on youtube).