Frosty Paintings

New Fish

Red Fish

Things have been rather chilly around here so we did our first wintery project.  Oil pastel resists with blues, silver and white liquid watercolors.  Then we sprinkled salt on them to create snowflakes.

Turkies

Birthday

Smooching on her baby cousin

Birthday girls- One Fish, Red Fish & M.E.

I had a nice birthday.  Someone hacked my blog and Facebook and got people to write some really nice memories.  Pretty sneaky.  Two Fish and some friends took me to dinner and my family had a party for the November birthdays. 

One Fish

One Fish's blog has been hijacked.  She is 30 today.  Please leave a comment with your favorite memory with her or just write something you really like about her.  If you are just a random blogstalker- feel free to join in and comment anyway.

First Slumber Party

 I've decided to have friend birthday parties every other year for the girls.  Red Fish decided she wanted to have a slumber party with her cousin RiRi this year.  I was a little nervous since we have never done a sleepover before but it went perfectly.  The girls had an absolute blast and they slept just fine together snuggled up in Red Fish's bed.  We picked RiRi up yesterday afternoon and the girls chatted the whole way home in the car.  We had pizza and cookies for dinner.

 We painted the girls' finger nails in rainbows.

 They played dress up and house and had a tea party together.  They watched a couple of episodes of Red Fish's new favorite show Sean The Sheep (Thanks for the suggestions LovelyN.)  They were in bed by 9:30 and the whispering stopped just after 10:00pm.  Much better than I expected!

They had so much fun just spending time the three of them.  I loved watching how well they get a long and seeing how much they love eachother!  Cousins are the best.  We will definitely plan another slumber party in the future!

Red Fish's 4th Birthday!

 My cute friend "Buddy Mommy" pretty much planned the day for us.  She gets all the credit for planning Red Fish's birthday.  We had a fish day (with extra rainbows.)  We got together this morning and played with fish puzzles and read a fish story.  We did a little fish art project and made paper plate fish. We ate fish crackers, fish sticks and Swedish fish.  I took the girls over to the school for lunch while I judged a little art contest.  Then we all headed over to the aquarium to see more fish. 

 Last night I made rainbow cupcakes for Red Fish with 6 colors of batter.  She adores rainbows and even insisted on wearing a rainbow outfit today.  She blew her candles out with her best buddies.  It took several tries but she got them all out.

 
We of course decorated the house for her birthday and had Red Fish's favorite meal for dinner fettuccine alfredo, peas and sour dough rolls.  We gave her a small kids digital camera for her birthday.  It is kind of a gift to both of us because hopefully she will stop using mine!  She ran all over the house taking pictures all night.

I cannot believe Red Fish is four.  I swear we just barely brought her home.  She is growing up too fast.  I want to shrink her down and do it again because being her Mother is so delightful.  She is so tender hearted and sweet.  She always hugs and snuggles me.  She is best friends with her little sister and I adore listening to their little games and hearing them run all over the house playing together.

Red Fish stopped napping a couple of months ago and now she has "quiet time."  She plays in the toy room or reads books to herself and gives me time to work.  She has played more with her toys than ever before and her imagination has really blossomed.  I think maybe she just didn't have a lot of time to play with toys before.  Her improved sense of make believe is really fun to watch.

She recently told me that I need to step it up in my hair-fixing abilities.  She told me I am making her look like "the funny kid." I am admittedly not talented with hair.  I can make cute hair accessories but her wild, curly, sweated on all night and played hard in all day hair is a mystery to me.  I didn't think I was doing too badly but I have been trying to pick up my game.

Asia absolutely LOVES to swim. She can swim all the way across an Olympic size pool without any help and she is getting really good at most of her strokes. It's pretty amazing. She has absolutely no fear.

Asia's true loves in life right now are riding her bike, swimming, art, reading & music. She loves her family and extended family and adores her friends.  She is really looking forward to skiing again this winter and she is loving preschool right now.

Most of all, I cannot imagine life without her.  My beautiful daughter who made me a mother.  She was meant for our family, an answer to so many prayers.

Red Fish's Room

Red Fish is thrilled with her new bed and wall things.  The room is rainbow colored with mostly pink and purple- just the way she likes it. The bed was an awesome hand me down that just needed some TLC and paint.  I just need the matching dresser so I can put her cute aquarium (her grandma gave her last year) lamp on it and everything will be finished.  The wall above her bed has metal letters spelling out her name.  The mobile in the corner has paintings by favorite artists clipped on it.  The pink circle in the frame is a bulletin board for some of her numerous creations.  I am in love with this room because it actually has everything the way I want it, as opposed to most of the rooms in my house.  I used to think I would have a fully decorated house when I grew up but that doesn't look realistic anytime in the near future.  For now I will settle for having really cute children's rooms.

Cute Sisters

We are in the process of working on Red Fish's room a little more.  I finished painting her new bed and we set it up for her and put on the new sheets etc.  She is also getting a little dresser that I have to go pick up and paint and we have some cute things to hang on the wall.  I will take pictures when it is all finished.  New Fish really wants to sleep in the bed with her.  They were snuggling tonight and I had to sneak in and take a picture.

Stained Glass Windows

We have been hanging these transparent paintings in the windows the last few days.  We used Colorations Fingerpaint (because it isn't opaque) in between layers of wax paper.  I put a few splotches of paint on wax paper, fold the piece in half and then the girls push the paint around with their fingers.  It's great because it is totally non-messy.  They get the satisfaction of pushing paint around with their fingers without actually touching the paint.  Plus it is a great experiment in color mixing.  It ends up looking a lot like crayon melts without having to break out the iron.

First Snow

Trees & Libraries

Today we made trees with fingerprint leaves.  Masking tape tress have been all over the internet but we only had painters tape so we decided to tear up pieces to make it look more organic.  The girls loved talking about the branches of the trees and sticking the pieces on.  We pressed their little fingers onto ink pads to make the leaves. A fun little project.

For the past few months we have been going to different parks on Thursdays.  Now that it is cold we decided to switch it to library day.  Sounds simple enough, but it's a big step for me.  I've been on a library strike for years.  I love libraries but keeping track of children's books and getting them in on time sounded like added stress in my life.  I took the girls to the library a couple of times right after New Fish was born and it went so badly that I swore it off.  We went back last week and the girls have had so much fun reading their "special" books of the week that I've decided to re-embrace the library.  Wish me luck.

CCR Cave Diving by Two Fish

Ginnie Springs

Last week I went to Fort White, Florida to take a CCR Cave Diving course.  I went with my father-in-law and brother-in-law who were training to be instructors for the course.  We left on Friday afternoon and got there that night.  Our instructor for the class was Phil Short who is an instructor trainer from the UK.  The course was pretty stressful especially at the beginning, but towards the end of it I really started enjoying the dives. 

Maddison Blue

Peacock Springs

I missed my wife and daughters while there.  I wish they would have been able to come with us.  We were able to video chat almost everyday.


Unfortunately, since we were in a course we didn't get any pictures or video of us while we were diving.  I did get some pictures of the outside of two of the caves we dove.  The first couple of days I was concentrating so much on getting my gear set up, trying to remember all of the skills we were going to be doing and remembering where we were supposed to go in the in the caves that I didn't think to take any pictures.

On Saturday we did some lectures and line drills.

On Sunday, we went to Ginnie Springs and dove in the Ballroom which is a cavern where a lot of people do their cavern training.  We did a few drills like following line with a covered mask, finding the line with a covered mask, and swimming for 50 feet with out any regulator supplied air.  On Sunday afternoon, we went to a different part of Ginnie Springs to dive in the Devils Ear/Eye Cave System.  However, I wasn't able to dive because my dive computer on my rebreather had a small leak and wasn't working correctly.

The main line through the cave is called the gold line.  When going down the gold line you encounter plastic cave arrows every 50 to 100 feet that point towards the cave's exit.  You will also come across to cave arrows that are with in a couple inches of each other.  This means that there is another line close by that goes to another part of the cave.  When you want to go down the other line you attach a line to the gold line between the arrows and then swim to the other line and attach it so that you always have a continuous ways out of the cave.  Connecting the two lines is called a jump.   

On Monday morning we went back to Ginnie Springs and dove in the Devil's Eye.  We entered the cave and once we made it to the gold line I attached a reel to it and practiced using a reel through the Catacombs.  When we were done in the Catacombs we attached the reel back to the main line.  Then we continued into the cave and went about 950 feet into the cave to the Maple Leaf and made a jump to another line and then turned the dive.  On the second dive we went a little ways into the cave and made a jump to another line that went through the Big Room and Bone room and the came back where we had put in a jump on the previous dive by the Maple Leaf.  Since I was the last person on the team I removed the jump and we exited the cave.  While exiting the cave I removed all of the jumps that we had put in and we again went through the Catacombs where we practiced a no visibility exit and I removed the primary line back to the surface.

On the first dive I was really nervous since it was the first time I had been in a cave in over a year and the first time I had been in one on a rebreather.   I had to keep reminding myself to slow down and take slow deep breaths.  Also on the way in you are going against the flow of the cave so you have to pull yourself along.  The nice thing about exiting was that you could usually just float out with minimal effort.  Also on the first dive we went farther into the cave than I did in my entire open circuit cave course.  That is one of the benefits of CCR cave diving.  I think it really hit me on one dive where I looked at my computer and noticed that I had been in the cave for over 80 minutes and I didn't have to worry about running out of air.

On day 3 we went to Little River Spring where we did 2 more dives and went through the Mud Tunnel and the Merry Go Round.  I did most of the line laying and jumps again and removed them on the way out on the second dive.  Laying line and jumps seemed to be a common thing for me to do through out the week.

On day 4 we went to Peacock Springs.  Peacock is a little different from the other caves because there is no flow in the cave so you have to swim everywhere you go.  Unfortunately I made the mistake of not wearing the pair of socks that came with my dry suit under garments on the first dive and I got blisters on the back of my heels.  That made the rest of the dives that week somewhat painful.  We entered through the Peacock 1 entrance and and made our way through Olson Sink where you almost surface. Before you get to the Olson sink the gold line ends and you have to put in a line connecting it to the gold line on the other side.  From there we went all the way to the exit of the Peanut Restriction where we put a jump into it and then turned around and exited.  On the second dive we entered the Peanut Restriction from the other side near the Peacock 1 entrance and swam all the way to the jump we put in on the first dive at it's end.  We then removed that jump and exited the cave the same way we exited it on the first dive.   The total for the day was about 8000 feet.  Everyone was very tired after this.

On day 5 we went back to Ginnie Springs and did the Hill 400 circuit and the Rollercoaster circuit.  There was a lot more people at Ginnie diving that day than we saw the rest of the week.  On the second dive my father-in-law and brother-in-law took the dive off for various reasons but the dive was pretty awesome.

On day 6 we went to Madison Blue Springs.  When we first got there a couple of other divers had just finished.  They said that it was a boring dive.  They must have been crazy.  We went into the cave and did the Godzilla room Circuit and then continued farther into the cave and surfaced in Martz sink for about 10 minutes.  Then we went back into the cave until Half Hitch and turned around.  On the way out we practiced the lost diver drill and then with about 300 feet left I was told I was out of air and I switched to my bailout for the remainder of the dive.  Thankfully this was the last dive of the trip, because I was worn out.  For the week I accumulated 820+ minutes of cave bottom time and over 1000 minutes total which includs deco and safety drills.

On Saturday we had a few short lectures and a test.  Then we went to Gainsville for the evening and watched The Three Musketeers.  On Sunday we came back home.

Note from One Fish: This was the culmination of a lot of training for Two Fish.  He was certified with his open water course in 2004 when we were newly weds.  He started his Advanced when we were in Fiji in 2004, his rescue (not required for CCR but helpful) in Little Cayman in 2006, his Decompression Procedures and Advanced Nitrox in 2006 , Cavern and Basic Cave in 2009, Full Cave last summer, and his CCR course this last summer.  I never would have believed that he would get this into scuba diving!