Art Group Day 4

Print making with watercolor stamp pads and leaves. We've used flowers before and it worked well but the leaves didn't work quite as well.

My Babies

My cousin took these cute pics of my girls. Having cousin E here a few weeks ago reminded me of having my cousin stay at our house when I was little. I LOVED it!

EEG

Red Fish had a test done today while she napped and she was a champ. She let them put stickers all over her head and she got a new teddy bear. So far we are going with the "no news is good news" theory.

park

Weekend

Stuff

I have a big jar that I've been wanting to make into a monthly centerpiece. Unfortunately, I have Christmas ornaments and Easter eggs that pretty much sit in it year round. It's not pretty. I'm working on it. These pictures look disturbingly like the jar is full of beef jerky but they are actually hand made flower petals. Then the three sets of blocks I made with my sister in law A. We plan to have a monthly crafting date. It's craft therapy.

May

June

9 Months

(This picture is from 7.5 months but it's still stinking cute.)

My little baby is nine months old now. She weighs 17.12 lbs (30th percentile) and is 27 inches tall (50th percentile.) She eats like crazy and has the sweetest little smile. She is cruising a little around the edges of the furniture and standing up a lot. She crawls like a pro now. She can say "hi" and "mama." She has two little teeth. She is a chubster from her cheeks right down to her cankles. I can't imagine life without this little sweetie!

A Beautiful Mess

The face of a happy girl

Red Fish's string painting. She soaked yarn in finger paints and then splattered the strings on her paper.

New Fish's finger painting. She also used a sponge.

Red Fish's painting using scrapers, sponges, and a rubber ball.

We've been doing a lot of painting outside. Summer is good for messy art. We rolled balls through paint, used sponges, strings and scrapers and, of course, fingers. Then we play with the hose to clean up. It's great.
I thought New Fish was too little for sidewalk chalk but she found a few chunks of it sitting out and went absolutely crazy over it.

Catch Up

Life's been crazy around here. I've been working a lot of extra design projects and we've been out and about a lot. We've had swimming lessons, picnics, concerts, and Toy Story 3 (which I LOVED LOVED LOVED.) We've also had some sick kids. It's beginning to all make me feel a little insane.

All dressed to go to cousin E's violin concert. They were very excited when E came out on stage.

New Fish's first drawing.

Red Fish doing her daily artwork. She's very into colored pencils and paint right now. The pots of watercolor aren't nearly as satisfying to work with as liquid watercolors but sometimes I just can't handle the mess.

A tutu I've been working on for Red Fish's next pictures. I'm very excited about it. It is pretty wild. She isn't allowed to see it or try it on until she has her picture taken in it because I'm pretty sure it is going to become a favorite item of clothing.

Cousin E

Cousin E is staying with us for a week and we are all enjoying it! She plays with the girls (who both ADORE her.) We make hair accessories. I help her practice violin. She went to my girls night with me last night.

The little girls and I went went to one of the concerts at Cousin E's violin camp tonight. It was fiddle music and the girls both went nuts over it. They loved all the clapping and hollering. Red Fish was doing a little jig in the aisle and New Fish was bouncing up and down the whole time. It was fun.

Art Group Day 3

We tried Shaving Cream marbling today in art group. As far as process goes, the kids had a blast. The product was a bit of flop (which really doesn't matter that much to me.) The kids were more interested in smearing the shaving cream with their hands and playing with the texture than marbling. I probably should have prepared a better explanation and demonstration before we started. In the end, they had a blast creatingand that is the point of art group. I think if I did this project with a group again we would just paint with the shaving cream and watercolor instead of trying to do a print.

Red Fish dressed herself this morning. Backwards tshirt, tutu, non matching skirt, and it included snow boots and a princess crown earlier in the day.

The babies are little upset at being left out of the mess.

Drying in the sun, ready to be scraped.

Sam's

Red Fish's

Miss Independence

Red Fish has been known to get herself a bowl of cereal (with milk) make herself a sandwich or a bowl of cottage cheese. She has toasted her own waffle and I've caught her putting a burrito in the microwave. She wants to do EVERYTHING herself whether I want her to or not. Sometimes she pours water on the floor just so she can use the towel to wipe it up. If I close her door at naptime, she gets out of bed to reopen the door and close it herself. She dressed herself in the morning and if I help her with any of it she has to remove the offending item of clothing and start again. She is the self appointed boss of New Fish and instructs her on a minute by minute basis. I can't count how many times I hear "no baby no" during the day. (Although I like that a lot better than I like "no mom no.") Good thing she also likes to make New Fish laugh endlessly and makes sure she has plenty of kisses. It makes New Fish very forgiving and she doesn't seem to mind being bossed around. Red Fish also enjoys trying to boss Blue Fish (the dog) around although he doesn't seem to notice for the most part. We just can't help but love our bossy baby.

Bryce Canyon

We've been working on visiting all of the national parks on the Colorado Plateau. We went to Bryce Canyon this weekend with our friends A and M again. (We went to arches with them in April.) They are wonderful travel buddies. I think our girls are going to be a little sad when M and A have a baby of their own in November, because my girls like to have the undivided attention.

We arrived Friday night but ended up staying in Panguitch for the night because it was late and it was pouring outside. We got a motel room. In the morning we went straight into the park. We went to Bryce Point to get a great view of the whole ampitheatre and then headed over to Sunset Point to do the Navajo loop. Unfortunately, the wall street part of the loop was closed so we took another route and our 1.3 mile hike turned into 5. It was a beautiful hike though and we got to see a lot more that we. We went down the Queen's garden trail, to Sunrise point and then walked the rim trail back to Sunset. After that we set up camp at the Sunset campground. We made tinfoil dinners, smores, and attempted some dutch oven.

You would think that in June it would be warm, but it was COLD and it actually snowed a little on us. I was completely freaked that we would all freeze but Two Fish promised that if we got cold we would jump in the car, find a hotel and come back for our tent in the morning. We decided to set up our little two man tent we bought before the girls were born and stuff the four of us inside. It was actually completely toasty in there and we had a great night all snuggled together. New Fish still doesn't think much of sleeping anywhere outside of her crib but she did pretty well.

Sunday morning we drove to several look out points including inspiration, agua canyon, natural bridge and rainbow point. It rained off and on all day but every time we got out of the car it would stop. We did a few short walks and just had a relaxing day. It was a fabulous trip. Great memories and quality family time.

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

by Ruth Reichl
A comic tour through the epicurean world of New York CIty. It makes me hungry just thinking about it. I suddenly want to tour big cities and do nothing but eat in fancy restaurants all day long (except for the nasty ones Ruth describes.) Ruth Reichl's writing is witty and charismatic. The book is a fun, quick read. I enjoyed it much more than "Not Becoming My Mother." I'm looking forward to reading "Tender At The Bone" at some point in the future.

When Reichl becomes the new food critic at the New York Times, she finds that the entire city has her picture posted with rewards for sightings. In order to obtain some anonymity Reichl decides to develop alternate personas and disguises. Her adventures and her insights are very self revealing. Each chapter describes a new disguise followed by the original review and a recipe for inspiration. Her recipes are almost tempting enough for me to want to cook (if only I didn't hate it so much.) Reichl definitely has a gift for writing about cuisine and describes the tastes and textures in a tantalizing way. I could almost taste the food.