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).

Retail Therapy

Let's say you know it's supposed to get really hot, and you've gotten a notice that your power is going to be turned off for a few hours in the afternoon, so you won't be able to use your fans. The obvious solution is to find a nice, air-conditioned place to escape to.

So, where do you choose to go?

Let me guess...

...did you pick...

Ikea?

No?

That apparently was not the choice of most of the local populace, since Ikea was pleasantly un-crowded. We had dinner in the cafeteria, and picked up a few little things. Kate likes the play room, the stuffed animals, and the yellow kid's computer kiosk.

We had a little trouble getting home, as the car was overheating (Doug will be dealing with that today) but everything worked out okay. We saw no signs of the power actually having been off.

Seeing the model apartment setups at Ikea makes me want to clean up and organize. They're so neat and free of clutter, and nary a cardboard box to be seen. I suppose there may be people who actually live that way. They probably don't have kids. Or projects.

It's lovely and cool right now! Ahhhhhh!

We're breaking records

... and it's not a good thing!



How do you like that steaming thermometer icon? I notice that now the forecast says 98, so perhaps it won't be quite that bad. But it reportedly did hit 103 yesterday. This in a place where we think the high 80's are sweltering, and hardly anyone has air conditioning at home.

We've been airing the house out in the morning, then buttoning everything up--drapes closed, bedroom and bathroom doors closed, kitchen windows covered, lights off, fans running, cooking kept to an absolute minimum. It doesn't get really unbearable till about 4:00.

We've had to put a moratorium on tag games, but we do have four Tinkertoy windmills spinning away in front of the fan. Wheee!

We were just in Portland this past weekend for Doug's brother Brian's wedding. It was hot there too!

Happy birthday to my blog! (Here's a present!)

My blog is four years old today! This particular blogiversary is significant, of course, because Andy is the same age now that Kate was when I started blogging. These pictures of her sitting were taken on July 25th. Andy's still not sitting, but he's got the Carpet Commando thing down and is rolling and worming his way all over the place.

Here's a little digi-gift for my blog birthday!



Click here to download the zip file. ("Save as," and then you'll have to unzip the file before you can use it.)

These frames were previously part of my contribution to the March 2009 megakit "Fresh" at NDISB.

I also got this up in the store a few days ago:



Super-realistic tears with a cool edge that lets your paper color peek through in places. It looks especially good with dark colors.

My brain has been more in crocheting than digi design lately, but I do have a lot of things that I want to do. So many projects, so little time!

(Update: Since NDISB has closed, this template is available here.)

Say Cheese!

*click*!

Fountain

My mom had been wanting some sort of water feature out in the yard, for the soothing sound. She found this fountain at a garden center and put it on the deck. Elizabeth and Kate were both drawn to it. "Oooh, water! Moving water!"




The fountain has since been moved because it was splashing too much, which would have been bad for the deck.

the cure for the common pack rat

As their kids have grown up, moved out, and started their own families, my parents may have found that they have a little more room in the house, but the detritus of years lingers. We all managed to leave quite a bit of flotsam behind. (I'm sure this is not an uncommon phenomenon.) While we had everyone there, my mom wanted us to go through some of the stuff in the basement and figure out what we wanted to take and what could be gotten rid of. Karen, who's good at organizing, hauled a bunch of boxes out onto the deck and helped to sort through it all.

Most of these things have only been kept around for sentimental value. The clear solution is to take pictures--preserve the memory without the bulk! We ended up with "to keep" piles, "trash/donate" piles, and "to photograph" piles. The photographing fell to me. All the trophies, school art projects, and odder items were lined up and made to say cheese in turn.



Goodbye, frog basket! (Elizabeth thought the frog basket was cool.)




A paper-mache bug. (Or papier-mâché, for snoot value.)



Peter's creatively-spelled Star Trek character mahjong tiles.



I'm told that these are dessicated limes that Peter learned to juggle with. I'm still not clear on whether the dessication happened before or after the juggling. ("We can't throw away those limes! I learned to juggle with those limes!" "It's okay, we'll take a picture of them.") I should add here that I don't recall ever seeing Peter actually juggle.



Mollie helped.



Still helping.



Calling in reinforcements. (Petercat was happy to help too.)



Helping is hard work!



Collectively, we purged a huge pile of stuff. I picked out a very few things to bring home. We just don't have room. But I did take lots of pictures.