Warm Weather

 It has been a day of summer fun with bubbles, side walk chalk, liquid watercolors, books in the sun, running through the sprinklers and swings.  I forsee us going through a ton of sun screen this summer.  It's impossible for us to stay indoors.

I am trying to put together a wall of family pictures and other fun things to go above our staircase so I decided to let the girls paint on a canvas for the first time.  It was pretty fun.  We used liquid watercolors with brushes, spray bottles and eye droppers.  The girls prefer the eye droppers to anything else. 

Colorations Liquid Watercolor Paint 8 oz.

Red Fish/New Fish

New Fish/Red Fish

Life

"Hello Pop Pops?  It's time to come home from your trip."

 My little Bubs is growing up.  We started potty training last week and thus far it is going really well and she has only had a few accidents.  She refuses to sit on our toilet so she has been using a little plastic potty.  I have take the potty places with us, which is extremely inconvenient but it's a step in the right direction. 

New Fish has been my little snuggle buddy lately and usually wakes up before I do and comes to sneak in bed with me for extra snuggles in the morning.  I love it. When I pick her up she still puts her head on my shoulder and cuddles.  I'm going to be really sad when she stops doing that.

New Fish has a huge vocabulary and often uses words she doesn't quite know the meaning of.  A few weeks ago, she said she didn't want to do something and I told her that was obvious.  She immediately became enraged and yelled: "Don't you call me Obvious!  I not obvious!  I think she thought I was calling her a name.  She was furious when I couldn't help but laugh.

 Recently, we've been swimming with my Mom, sister in law Lee Lee and Butterball.  New Fish has recently become a total fish in the water and I have to keep her life jacket on her because she won't allow me to help her at all.  She can swim a little bit but isn't to be trusted in water over her head.  Obviously I would never leave either of my kids unattended in the water- I'm just saying I can't be more than an arms distance from her without her jacket.  It's more fun for both of us if she wears her jacket so she can propell herself around the pool, jump off the side and generally be a maniac.

 Red Fish has been able to swim around the pool unaided for awhile now.  Often when I ask her to do something lately, she will say I'm just....some other thing she is doing.  I have frequently told her that if she has to say: "I'm just" it means she isn't listening to Mommy.  Today she asked for something and when I said "No" she told me: "Mommy, when you say no to me it means you haven't been listening."  Nice try kid. 

Last time I got her something in a drive thru, the restaurant accidentally gave her juice instead of milk.  When we went to the drive thru the next time Red Fish told me: "Okay Mommy.  This time I want to get juice.  So I need you to say- 'Hello.  My daugher [Red Fish] would like to have milk with her meal.'  Should we practice it a few times Mommy?"  If you can't tell- we practice saying polite things in the car sometimes. 

When my clients from Japan were in town last week, Red Fish met them during a meeting I couldn't find a sitter for and asked me why everyone was speaking Spanish.  When I told her it was Japanese she told me: "No, I'm pretty sure it's Spanish."  She is a crack up.

Butterball

I'm often tempted to steal him- he is so cute.

Art Group Day 3- Masks

 Today for art group we collaged masks.  It was only a few kids because of the holiday so they also spent awhile spraying eachother with the hose and playing in the mud. 

Red Fish's

 My girls spent most of their time painting
Colorations Glitter Glue - Set of 6 onto their masks.  They can turn just about anything into a painting project.

Red Fish modeling the masks

New FIsh

Day In The Life Of A Rockstar

 Sometimes, my job can be pretty random.  I can be designing posters, trade show booths, CDs and marketing materials on my computer.  I might be picking out music styles that would fit in with our music library or figuring out a new way to market music.  Lately I've been planning a huge party, customizing one of a kind advertising pieces with wax and a custom branding iron.  The list could go on... it's a random life.  Things have been especially crazy lately and I will be relieved when this month is over.  One huge project came to a close yesterday.

After many phone calls, emails and planning meetings, a crew from Panasonic in Japan flew to shoot a music video of one of our songs written by a good friend of mine.  I was one of the violinists in the band.  The crew rented out a club downtown and we filmed all day.  It was a blast!  This Fall, every electronic store with Panasonic TVs, around the world, will play our music video. 

We had our hair and makeup done before the shoot.

 All of the band members were supposed to bring three outfits for the director to pick from.  I had one dress (shown in all of the pictures) that he liked but he told me to do more shopping.  I had to run to the mall before it closed for the night and desperately search for a new outfit.  My friend L and I found ourselves an extra fabulous, rock and roll looking drag queen to shop with us.  She picked me out some short leather overalls to wear.  Luckily, the director had me go with my original outfit, so I was able to still look somewhat like myself in the video.  It was still a fun adventure.  In case you are wondering, yes, I did own and wear those shoes and tights before the video shoot.

Rocking out!

I kind of want the red streaks in my hair to be permanent now.  Maybe feel a little more rockstar in daily life.

 Unfortunately, most of the string parts in the piece were cut due to time restraints so the director asked us to dance and rock out on stage.  It was SO FAR out of my comfort zone.  "Backup dancer #2" isn't exactly a role I ever saw myself playing so that was pretty mortifying but I tried to tell myself that the more I could get into it and the more embarrassing it felt, hopefully the more comfortable I would look.  Hopefully I was right. 

 Our band and the crew from Panasonic

My friend, the song writer and lead singer

 All in all it was a blast!  Definitely something to check off of the bucket list! 

Scratch Boards

Painting

My kids love painting more than just about anything else. I prefer wet paints to paint pots but sometimes the pots are just so much easier to deal with.  Red Fish has gotten very adept at using the watercolor pots but the tempera cakes are so much easier for New Fish still. The tempera's pigment is easier to pick up.  New Fish still ends up with a lot of brown when we use caked paint because she hasn't quite mastered the art of rinsing her brush between the desired colors and they end up mixed more than she probably intends.  She doesn't care though.  It's amazing what a girl can do with shades of brown.

Red Fish

Red Fish

New Fish

Park Day

 It's a busy work week for me this week with clients coming into town.  My most important job is my kids.  Being a Mom is always my number one priority (except for being a wife) and so I have to be extra careful to set aside several hours every day to bond with my kids and do something fun.  Today we went to the park and later we read a pile of good books and spent some time drawing together.  Even though I was just watching them run around with their friends for a good part of the time, they know I am there, with them.  There is also something so much more fun about having their Mom push them on the swings at the park than swinging themselves in our back yard.  The park swings are always a hit.

Art Group Day 2- Air Dry Putty Sculptures

 Today we didn't have a real lesson other than demonstrating different ways to use our
Super Lightweight Air-Dry Putty.  We tried pinching it, rolling it in balls, coiling it and stretching it to make different shapes.  Mostly the kids just loved playing with the putty.  It has a fabulous texture.  It's all about the process.  This is a great project for large groups and little kids.  Any age child could work with this.  Even the Mothers wanted to play with it!

*we did unfortunately discover that this putty is not friendly to little girls' hair.  New Fish mashed some into her hair and after trying several methods of extraction it had to be cut out.  :(

Eclipse Fail

 There was a solar eclipse today.  I guess this type of eclipse only occurs approximately every 18 years.  I had the girls watch videos on eclipses and we talked about it and prepared a pinhole projector.  The internet instructions told us the longer our boxes were, the better. 

And this is what we saw... fail.  The left side is the tiny projection of the eclipse and the right is the sun totally covered in clouds.  Super lame.  Below is what we were hoping to see.  I guess we will try and catch it next time?  Or tell the girls that we saw it when they were really little and they just don't remember how awesome it was? As Red Fish would say: "That is not a truth,"  The good news is my kids keep talking about how we built a robot today.  Apparently they thought it was cooler than we did.

Sunday Afternoon