Eclipsed!

OK, I know you have been waiting for these and I apologize for the wait. Blame it on Blogger and it's finickiness right now. Above is a picture of the girls snuggling on the trampoline under the just beginning to be eclipsed moon. I learned that if I left the shutter open for a long time to expose all of the scenery you could not see much of the detail of the moon. In the pictures below, the best ones are 2:51 and 2:52 am. You can even see the craters on the moon. I had to crop waaaaay in to get these shots, so the detail and pixels are much reduced, but good enough for a blog post. Enjoy!

1:59am

2:16am

2:28am

2:39am

2: 45 am

2:51 am

2:52am

3:15 am

3:47 am

And then I went to bed.... It was just going to be the same thing but in the reverse order anyway, right?

Girl's Night Out

Tonight the girls and I were going solo with Daddy out of town, so I planned a little outing for us. We are going to C's cousin's wedding this coming weekend on our way to the conference. The bride asked me if we could buy her some M&M's for the reception from M&M World on the strip and I agreed. So, we had to get it done this week. No time like the present! I knew I did not want to go out in the heat of day, so we waited until after dinner. The full moon was gorgeous (come back later for a post on our middle of the night eclipse event) and I caught this picture of the moon and the MGM lion. A little out of focus, but still pretty cool.

We parked at the MGM and walked through the casino and over to M&M, so we had to stop by the lions to say hello. Luckily they were about to do feeding time when we arrived. Here the girls happened to be right by the glass when the keeper put a blob of ground meat on the glass for the lion to lick off. You can see the blob right above his head. Pretty freaky to have the lion come over and look as if he is going to bite your head off!
This lion was going for the meat as well, but it kinda looks like she is looking right at A and regally sizing her up.

Here are the girls helping me to bag up all the requested colors. Twelve pounds of M&Ms is HEAVY! We pretty much decided to head home once we had those heavy bags to carry. But we had to stop and say hello to the Coca Cola Bear, of course. I love his sweet smile. My kids aren't too shabby in the grin department, either.
As we walked back to the car, we decided to go the longer, but hopefully shorter seeming, outside route to the parking garage. E was getting tired and whiny and I wasn't sure that I would get to avoid carrying her and the hundred pounds of M&M's. Then, we ran across this ramp thingy. E perked up right away and ran up it like she was on a skate board. So, we stopped and played for a while. One of the cars in the stop and go traffic right by us had some young men in it who called out something about finding a fun place to play. I was telling the girls that they should run all the way up and grab on to the bars, like E is doing in the picture. They didn't, so I showed them how it was done. I got a shout from the guys in the car, "GO, Mom!" The girls couldn't be shown up by their mother, so they had to try it! They found that sliding down was even more fun than running up.

After our little play break we made our way back to the car and drove home. The girls settled in on the couches to fall asleep, anticipating my wakeup call when the moon goes into eclipse a little before 3am. Our trip tonight helped to wipe them out so that they could actually fall asleep, even with the excitement over the eclipse. So, here I am blogging away in order to stay awake. I already have my camera with tripod set up for taking pictures. I just wish I had a decent telephoto lens. Oh well, one can always crop in close. See you soon with hopefully some cool photos!

Tattooed

Today in the mail, we received the temporary tattoo kit I had ordered as a birthday gift to myself (I have only wanted this thing for four years now...) and had to give it a spin. E's tattoo above is of her own design, not one of the transfers that came with the kit. This is typical for her. Nothing prepackaged or laid out for the masses is good enough for my fashion artist.

Even though it is out of focus, I love this picture of A. She looks like a tattoo would be right up her alley, doesn't she? Gotta love that little lizard! Here is a close up so you can see the colors better:And here is my sweet little butterfly:

I love it!! It almost makes me think I could get a real one...but not quite! I like to change things up too much for something that permanent. I label this one unschooling in action because there were lots of discussions about tattoos and types of paints and design and why someone would want something on their body for all time, and, and, and the list goes on.

I'm bringing the kit to Live and Learn so that those of us who want to share in the tattoo spirit, but not the commitment, can do so!

She Knits!!

A couple of days ago, A asked me to teach her to knit. I had previously shown her how to crochet a chain, and she was confident she could handle two needles and multiple rows. Okaaay.

I am learning how to show her the process and my way of accomplishing it, and then letting her figure out her way of doing it. It looks soooo different from what I do, but it works, by god! And it looks really good and is even. She only dropped one stitch so far, but caught it early enough for me to fix easily.

My baby can make her own clothes! Ok, a scarf, and along with the round loom, a hat, but still! She's growing up too fast, I tell you. Sooo exciting for this mama and yet bittersweet. Such is life.

Sp-sp-spiiiider!!!

Yesterday afternoon while pulling up some kale plants in the garden that had gotten too big for eating, I uncovered a little friend:
Ok, she was not little and really not what I would call a friend. This is the biggest black widow spider I have ever seen. Her abdomen was the size of a medium sized blueberry, say 1/2 inch in diameter. I say "her" with confidence because she was sitting on a pile of eggsacs. Yes, more than one! I could not bear to squish the mama spider - I mean, you can hear the 'pop!' her belly would make if I squashed her, can't you? Eeeewwww-but I had no problem dealing swiftly with her babies, after we opened and examined the eggs, of course. Gotsta edumacate them kiddos somehow, right?

One big mama spider to eat any pests in my garden is ok, but three eggsacs full of black widow spider babies unleashed on my pesticide free yard? Um, no.

Poor A was tormented between a deep facscination and desire to look and a real fear of spiders that keeps her awake at night. She, in fact, had to have Daddy sleep with her last night. E, on the other hand, was beside herself with excitement. Everybody's different, I guess. I was proud of A for overcoming her fear enough to look.

Procrastination

I am the queen of the eleventh hour! Here I am, a mere three weeks from the day I am to speak at the Live and Learn Conference and I still have a ton of work to do on my speech. And am I working on it now? Nooooooo, I'm blogging, silly. And making new blogs. And sleeping in really late. And staying up really late and reading blogs and such on the internet. And planning other elaborate projects to do -which I know better than to actually start-instead of writing my speech. Ok, I do have 5, count 'em, five, pages of notes typed into Word and have begun fleshing said notes out a bit. And, yes-Flo-I will be tweaking and polishing my speech on the drive into Asheville, just days prior to the big day. BUT. But. But, I will have it done enough that if the laptop crashed I could go on without any tweaking. Oh, yes. The queen of procrastination has spoken. It will be done. Um, after I clean the oven really good, and make a bunch of jewelry to sell at the conference, and put away ALL the Christmas decorations from last year that are in boxes on my dining room sideboard, in time for this Christmas, of course, and pack for the trip, and wrap my stepmom's birthday gift, and, and, and.......

p.s.Help!!

A New Blog!!!

Hey, I just created a new blog for my photographs. All photos, all the time! I'm so excited; finally, a place for all the flower close ups, nature portraits, Photoshop experiments, and who knows what else pictures! Check out the link in my sidebar.

Shameless Plug

Ok, so you know how we went to visit my friend Flo last weekend? Well, something happened while we were there that I had to share with you all. See, Flo has this Etsy shop where she sells these gorgeous blankets. We got to see the fruits of her labor and the fabrics and prototypes and even sleep in the room where she sews them. A took a liking to the blankets and wanted me to ask Flo how much they were, because she wanted to buy one. So, knowing the answer already, I told Flo that she had a potential customer. A had quite a lot of money from her allowance saved up and was ready to do the deal. We looked at all the available options, and A found her blanket. The colors, the soft furry/velvety minky fabric, the pocket where she can tuck her feet in, it was perfectly A. When Flo told her what she normally charges for the blanket, A did not even blink, "I'll take it!" Flo laughed and told her she was going to give her a deal and didn't she even want to hear the offer? So, they came to an agreement and the transaction was completed. A had her blanket and she is loving it as you can see from above. And I am so proud of my daughter. She just keeps growing up and surprising me with her confidence. So, this is a plug for my amazing kid AND a plug for Flo's Wrapsberry shop. Check it out, they are beautiful!

Wild Weekend

We had a wonderful visit to my friend Flo and her family this past weekend. We drove down Friday without C. Just us girls. When we arrived, the girls needed to get reacquainted. That took about 4 nanoseconds. Flo and I needed to catch up. That took all weekend.

The San Diego Wild Animal Park was one of the fun things we did together Saturday, after picking C up from the airport, as he flew in with his own plane.


One of the first things we did there was feed the Lorikeets. Soooo cool! A declined to have them hop on her arm, stating that she did not want to be scratched. I tried it and their feet were remarkably soft!

E and Flo's daughter C are the best of buddies. They rarely got more than this distance apart all weekend!
See what I mean?

The conservation carousel was too cool to pass up. All the animals on it were endangered or threatened species.E was excited to try on C's dance outfits and learn some dance moves from her talented buddy.

Sunday, after Daddy flew back home, the rest of us went to the beach. This view greeted us on the walk down to the sand. I love this picture of A. Here the girls are trying to ride the boogie board like a surf board. They insisted that the surf really moved them, even though it looked like they were standing pretty still. They had fun trying!
Monday, before we drove home, we walked to the park and the town square and the girls took a spin around the fountain. Luckily no one fell in!
This picture tells a sad story. E was soo sad to have to leave she could not bear to join A and C in a last picture together before we left. So, the two other girls left a space in the picture for her.

We had a wild and fun weekend that was over far too soon. But we will be apart for only a short time. They are joining us at the Live and Learn Conference next month. Oh, joy of joys! Now, to work on my speech....Yikes!

Rain!

For the past few days we have actually had enough water fall from the sky and get the ground wet to call it rain. Today I asked the girls if they wanted to go out and get me the mail in the rain, with their new umbrellas from the WWF. They, of course, jumped at the chance to use the umbrellas.E waiting for her sister to open her umbrella. She managed to get it open by herself, which is not a big feat until you remember that, unlike a lot of kids, she can count on her digits how many times she has seen rain in the last four years!

The girls walking across to the mailbox. Notice the shiny wet landscape. It's WATER! No, I'm not excited or happy about this, really, I'm not.

Heading back in with the mail. Ever watch a couple kids try to hold umbrellas, use a key to open a little door, and extract the mail from the tiny box inside, all while trying not to get wet? It's pretty funny. Luckily the pieces of mail E dropped on the ground, not once but three times, were just junk mail!



All the rain and clouds have made for some beautiful atmospheric displays. Here is a shot of a sunset seen from our upstairs bathroom the other night: