Online Art Show

William took an art class through our city this summer. He had his first art show as culmination of the classes. He wanted to have and "online art-show" to share this with our family and friends who couldn't be here. The remainder of this post will be him narrating. I will type things as he says them. He is excited to hear everyone's comments so here we go:

Welcome to my first ART-SHOW! The picture that is right to the side of my head is my self-portrait. Does it look the same as me a little but not all ways? I glued tissue paper around it to decorate it.

The one on black paper is my mosaic snake hiding in the grass. It has orange diamonds on it. If you look carefully, you can see dandelions in the grass too.


This is my snake. I scuplted him out of my clay. I took my time to paint him. He is painted in 3 different colors of green. This way he will camoflauge in the grass. He is half rattle snake and half normal snake. His tongue is red. He has one yellow eye and one green eye. I made him that way so he would look spooky.

This is my oil painting. It is fishies with seaweed. It was fun to paint. I accidentally used too much turpentine and I got my canvas board soaking wet. It dried ok though it took longer.



I hope you had fun at my art show!

Davey uses the potty

Now that Davey is almost 2 and a half I realized that it is high time he is potty trained and he really should be reading too. I decided to do it all at once. I will be writing a book. You can pre-order it soon. I think I will call it: "The Daycare Alternative." Because if your kids could read and use the bathroom all you would have to do is write a note in the morning before you leave and leave a recipe out for them to use for lunch and they could even get dinner started. I anticipate making a lot of money with this idea. I am looking for sponsor so let me know if you would like to get in on the ground level.

Quilts

I also worked on some quilts since the last time I posted anything. I made a quilt for Aaron on our anniversary in July. I wanted to help this quilt look all homey and whatever so I even staged clutter on BOTH night stands... I know, my attention to detail is amazing.

My favorite one is the quilt I did for my nephew in Louisiana. I though it was hilarious in a very tough sort of a way. I was hoping to get a picture of the quilt in Foster's room but my sister is "getting it to me right away"... Here it is on my bed.

Nothing says macho like cozy skulls and crossbones right? Now that canning is done I have big plans for my boys' quilts too. (can you say rocket ships?)

Happy Autumn

I love Autumn here... crisp breeze, sweaters, pumpkins, snow. Err, wait... Yup it is autumn. I guess that mother nature got all excited for Christmas and wanted to skip Halloween, and Thanksgiving like all of the stores do now too. Before you know it they'll do away with Columbus day too. (oh they already have? so much for my scale sized models of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria that I bought for next year)

Well, in the first week of October we woke up to a Winter Wonderland. One day it was in the low 80's and literally the next day this:

Funny how the first snow kept my boys outside and interested for almost 2 entire hours... Soon they will cry when there is snow in the forecast. I already am.

Yellowstone

Sometimes, other than can this summer, we would let some stuff spoil and went to Yellowstone. On this day there was some bison migration (say that 10 times fast). There had to be at least 100 of the (huge and scary) animals crossing the road. We just sat there very quietly and let them pass around our car. nice bison... that's a good boy... don't mind us ...

The Yellowstone Grand Canyon. Not as large as the real Grand Canyon but I guess that it is much colder here. The water is glacial runoff and apparently cold water is bright bluish green. Very pretty but also very cold. Davey wouldn't let the coat come off even for a picture.

William and Davey liked to watch the little pools and geysers. They got used to the sulfur smell but in the beginning William kept asking me if I had brushed my teeth. Ha!

The big blob behind Will's head is a bison. I was thinking of using this as a Christmas card from our family. I think it says "hey, we are active and do fun things with our kids." But then I realized something was missing... see if you can spot it..........
Eyelashes! I didn't wear makeup (no there was no horrible canning accident rendering me

eye-bald) and my blonde eyelashes are apparently invisible. So I guess we will go another year without christmas cards. I tried.

What I did last summer

What I did this summer? Certainly not blog. I canned. Well that and gardened. But mostly I just canned,

and canned,
and canned.

I am almost done. I have 2 more batches of tomatoes to do. I am at a loss though. If anyone has ideas please let me know. We have salsa, tomato sauce, tomato ketchup, tomato preserves (green, yellow and red), tomato soup, tomato juice, stewed tomatoes, and tomato paste. I was thinking maybe tomato compost with the last 40 pounds unless something better presents itself?

I have learned a lot about canning (especially that your children can be amazingly resourceful when left to their own devices). William and Davey played together really well. Will sort of took charge. He made sandwiches (bread, cheese, bread) for lunch one day when I kept putting it off... oops. He is only allowed to use a butter knife though so the cheese was more massacred than sliced. I was right in the kitchen with him and I had no idea that he was working on sandwiches... I won't be getting "mother of the year" this year.

We are all happy that it is done but more happy that we have a lot of (hopefully) good food. Now whenever William sees me cutting or freezing something he says :"Oh look we are going to have bananas (or whatever I am working on) ALL winter long."

We were at a friend's house last Wednesday (the 20th) and Will was playing on their zip-line.  After about a dozen rides, the weld broke and William and the handle to the zip line hit the cement floor about 8 feet down.  William had a double skull fracture.  We were life-flighted to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake.  They did some detailed cat scans and decided not to operate.  We went home on the following Friday (the 22nd).  He is doing fine but is under strict orders to be careful not to hit his head again.  His attending doctor said: "No jumping, running, swinging, sliding, swimming... etc.  He must keep 2 feet on the ground at all times until after the 4th of July... (laugh to herself) good luck with that." 

We were expecting him to have to wear the collar home and for the next few weeks but on Friday before they discharged, they decided that it wasn't necassary.  This is probably good since he kept doing headstands because the collar made his neck so strong.  I am not sure that I could have survived that extra stress.   

He is doing fine now.  He had a check up yesterday with his regular pediatrician and he said that everything is really good.  There is no more fluid/blood behind his eardrum so they expect the hearing test that we will be doing in a few more weeks to be normal.  

It was all very scary but Will seemed not to mind too much.  On Thursday, his attending doctor was asking him about the accident to see what he remembered.  He finished a detailed story of the fall with and excited: "and then I got to ride in 1 airplaine and 2 ambulances and I don't want to ride a zip line anymore."  

 

Starting in the upper right hand corner and going left to right: 

William just after he got his i.v. in place... not the highlight of the hospitalization

William sleeping in his bed (tough with a collar)

Grandma Betty helping Will with an art project

William being tackled by Barry the Bear

Uncle Jason righting Will after the attack

David with Uncle Jason and his new cow 

The Comeau cousins pose with William for a picture

William pretending he is a dinosaur with his new dinosaur toy

Waiting for Dad to pull the car around after discharge

The only way you would suspect that anything was wrong with him is if you saw/heard me behind him. (imagine lots of "no William," "Be Careful William," "No Running William," "Don't bump your head William." He has gotten quite tired of it and tells me often that it hurts his feelings when I tell him those things.  We are working on it.