Children's Day

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

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

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

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

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

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!