Archives for August 2009

I’ve created a short (<4 min) slide show of highlight photos from our recent trip. Enjoy! (Just click play…)

If for some reason this video doesn’t work or you want to see a larger version, use this link.

In Slovenia, they are. This is my current favorite pic from our trip. I took it in Ljubljana, the capital city in Slovenia. It’s one of the dragons on the Dragon Bridge in the old part of the city. I just loved these dragons! They were so full of life and energy. I have never seen a mythical creature look so lifelike, they looked like they were ready to launch into the air. For some reason, they just make me smile.

I’m sure I’ll have more favorites when I eventually sort through pics, but I wanted to share this one.

This morning I painted, getting back to my painting started before the last trip. I love seeing what emerges after a session of painting. I step back and look after I’ve washed my brushes and its like I can see the picture emerging, gaining life. I’ve figured out it’s all in the light and shadows. When I used to paint, way back in high school, I used to stay very light all of the time, afraid of ruining something by going to dark. What I see now is that it’s the dark, the shadows, that make you see the light. It’s what makes something pop out at you. With only light you never get any depth or dimension.

I think this has parallels with our life, without the dark we can’t really see what we have in the light, we would be dimensionless. Both are needed for truth.

Brandon woke up this morning with a plan to make a stop-motion movie of his cats. So I helped him figure out how and here it is, the first movie by Brandon:

And here’s the sequel:

There are no limits to what you can do when you are 8 years old. It’s fantastic.

Brandon woke up this morning with a plan to make a stop-motion movie of his cats. So I helped him figure out how and here it is, the first movie by Brandon:

And here’s the sequel:

There are no limits to what you can do when you are 8 years old. It’s fantastic.

Pictures from our second day in Amsterdam are uploaded and available for viewing! Let me know which ones you like, I’m always interesting in seeing what people like and don’t like. Everyone has such different and personal tastes in art!

I’ve created a monster.

You see, I brought a few Harry Potter books with us to Italy. I’ve thought for a long time that when Brandon turned 8 years old we would start reading Harry Potter together. So a few weeks ago, I started reading it to him at bedtime. It was so much fun to see how spellbound he became as the story progressed.

Turns out it’s been a bit busy and we haven’t read enough at bedtime, so Brandon took matters into his own hands and finished reading book 1 this weekend. And then book 2 this week. He’s partway through book 3 – but yikes! I only have the first four here. We will have a Harry Potter crisis if I don’t do some planning ahead…

So all this week, we planned for tonight as Movie Night since we had no work, no commitments. Brandon had it all planned out… he cleaned all of the cat hair off of the couch pillows, arranged everything just so, set up the snack bar and we were good to go.

I must say, it was fun to see his excitement and planning as much as it was to see the movie again. It was fun to see Brandon’s reaction as the story was brought to life. “That’s just how I imagined it!” or “That’s not like the book.”

Aaaah, my little voracious reader. Love it!

(Pretty darn good looking snack bar, huh?)