Pre-Vacation Anxiety

Here is Karen, week before last at the twilight camp overnight. The girls made rain sticks. Now, look below:

That is Karen minus about 9 inches of hair! She donated her locks to Lock of Love through Great Clips. I think she looks awesome! If it wasn't for that thumb in her mouth half the time, I might think she was almost 11 or even 12 (she really is almost 11...I just have to harp on the thumb thing as often as possible.

Now, here are some interesting people that I just met last week: my friend Carolyn's parents. Okay, not really. I've known them for about fifteen years, but at Carolyn's birthday party I was introduced to her dad about three or four times. It was really nice to meet him each and every time!
This is a picture of our lot at Camp Turn A Bout the same weekend--pretty, isn't it? As you can see, we were a little under water there! Poor Tom has had to move the trailer out three times this spring, which is a little more often than usual--usually once we move in in May, we are good for the season. A couple of times we've had to move out in May, but never in June! Next thing, the four horsemen will be galloping through!

It's not like I don't have enough to do to stay busy right now, but I am finding that I am worried about which craft project I am going to take with me on vacation. I have half a dozen UFO quilts that need quilting, but I really don't feel like taking the machine and all the crap--batting and such--to put those together. But on the other hand, I do want to take my machine and start a new quilt of some sort. Or start a new hand-piecing project. Or a new knitting project. I have plenty of knitting UFO's that I can do, so maybe I'll just take those with me and quit whining about wanting the perfect project to do while I sit and do nothing else!

only two weeks behind schedule!

Okay, I took these pictures week before last at Camp Michaels during our ill fated stormy evening of twilight camp. I was playing around with when to use flash and when not to. I like the colors that I get without the flash, but I can't get the clarity. I am sure there is some sort of manual shutter speed thing that I could do and then lighten the pictures up in photoshop, but I am not that sophisticated at the moment.

This one, above, is a rotten stump, very fuzzy, without the flash. The shot below is the same thing with the flash...more sharpness, but I think I lost a good bit of the contrast...the dark icky rotten parts of the wood are all washed out.

Down here is a little creek. I love to take pictures of water and get the motion. There is just something cool about a mossy creek. It makes me think of King Arthur and Robin Hood stories for some reason...that middle ages fantasy thing. I expect to see little fairies flitting around.

Moving Week

The Pixley Lab is moving down a floor this week. I have been in a bit of denial, I think, not getting too worked up about things. This really is a big job...or maybe I'm just getting sucked into the chaos in other people's minds...I am trying to be laid back and "in the moment" if I can be all recovery-ish about it. But now that the moving guys are coming in the morning, I realize I'm not all that organized about things. Well, I will be or I won't. Sitting here updating my blog might be a tiny bit of a procrastinating mechanism, but hey...at this point, fifteen minutes isn't going to make things much different!

here are more pictures...Dan got a haircut last week in preparation for his new job at Goodyear Tire and Auto Service...he looks really good! I loved the long haired rock and roll look thing he had going on, but I think I like clean Dan even better. Poor baby got braces put on yesterday, so his next picture probably isn't going to be so smiley...he's pretty miserable right now.

Karen is planning to get her mane removed next and donate the ponytail to Locks of Love...we'll do pics of that next!

Last day of School, belated edition

Dan, Philip and Sam, the last day of school!

Well, the kids all got done with school on May 30th, but I was a slug and didn't get pictures up until now (I've been celebrating the end of homework too hard!). On that day, I picked the boys up after finals and took them to Newport on the Levee where we had lunch with my mom and dad at Johnny Rockets. Then, the boys were feeling so big and strong that they went out in the parking lot and posed with the various architectural elements available. After that they came to work with me and donated snot for our human mucus study (I love being a scientist!)

Here is Sam, holding up the actual Newport on the Levee building. The Purple People bridge is in the back ground.

This is Philip Dunn, with whom we carpool to Latin School. His mom and dad have become great friends of ours, and we also are all in the same scout troops and their girls go to St. Paul with Karen. I am not sure he was thrilled with having to balance the Big Mac Bridge on his finger, but once he got to my work and had to watch Dan and Sam donate snot, I bet he was wishing he could go back there and balance that bridge some more!

Daniel just decided to lean on the purple people bridge (do other cities have such goofy names for their bridges?), he worked pretty hard to grow that hair, so he was pretty wiped out.

Meet Alex

This is Alex. He's the son of my best friend from college, Robin. They live in Dayton, Ohio, which means I get to see them once every six months or so. Robin and Alex came to visit us a couple of weeks ago, and here he is coming down the stairs.
Behind him is the quilt I made from leftover millenium quilt squares. It's covering a hole in the wall that we didn't fix really nicely.