A Visit to the Aquarium

Some images from our trip to the aquarium:

It is always good to know where you are.


A friendly face? The girls are not really sure...


Slow and steady, this guy freaked me out a bit. He kept following us and giving us the eye.


Esme loved watching all the fish. And I loved watching her see these for the first time.


I love this shot of the girls being peaceful and sharing. Glad I caught it when I did, as the slurpee spilled, and the crying ensued seconds after I took this photo.

All in all, it was a great trip, with swimming in the hotel pool (always a favorite!), and some side visits to Chinatown, where we had lovely noodles and pork, and found some great things for decorating the studio.

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Renegade Snail

Sarah the snail has a itchy foot...and she was on the move Monday night. Someone (ahem, Esme!) left the lid off the terrarium. We caught Miss Sarah near the ceiling on Tuesday morning, but not until everyone including the cat had a chance to ooh and ahh over how high she got on the window casing. I must say, Sarah does sort of match the color scheme in the kitchen.


I still can't believe these snails are around. Ada started collecting them in May, and I was skeptical at best about their "petness." I figured the first one would last a week at best. But both girls love them, and Ada tends to them well. Apparently. Now the snail census has increased to nine (nine!), I have to say they are sort of growing on me. Well, not growing on me! But creeping, sometimes, yes. No, really, they aren't that gross, I promise. But I do prefer the rabbit, if I have to play favorites.

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I've been Blogged!

Check out the link here. My blog was reviewed and judged, and well, let's say it's pretty good--or great, as the folks at blogged said. Far be it from me to toot my own horn, but there are actually moments when I think so too. And so does my mom. Does that count?

What would really count would be your review there on blogged's site. Feel free to add one--I'd love your feedback.

On blogged's list of personal blogs, mine comes in at 120th. It's not the highest, but still. Martha Stewart's blog comes in at 28. And Dooce's is number 5. Good company, for certain. Browsing the list, I found a few other great blogs to check out--Table for Five, and knittering.

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Surrey with the fringe on top

The grandparents were here this past week, and look what project Morfar helped us complete!


This shiny little surrey was one I had as a kid. Originally yellow and red, it was called the Gym-Dandy surrey, and apparently there were quite a few of them made in the 1950s. When I got it as a little girl in the 1970s, it was pretty beat up, but my parents restored it, painted it, put a new canopy on it, and I rode it for years, including in the bicentennial parade. (Bicentennial--if that doesn't make me sound old, I don't know what does!)

Anyway, I loved it then, and I love it now. It was, after 30 years of neglect in a warehouse, dirty and in need of sprucing up. So, with a family team effort, we once again sanded, painted, etc, and now....here she is.



We found a horn that was exactly the same as the one I had as a girl, and you can tell by the looks on their faces how much they love it. So does Morfar. Thanks, Daddy, for bringing the surrey back to life!




Just so cute--makes you want to sing, "Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry, when I take you out in the surrey..."

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How much do I love the web?

I've been away on break, and do you know what? I realized I am REALLY dependent on the web. Yes, I might be a girl of contradiction. I'm a Laura-Ingalls-Wilder wannabe on one hand, but when it comes down to it, I like the immediate gratification of modern life, from flipping a switch to turn on the lights, to getting instant information online.

During my two weeks of playing outside, finishing projects, and hanging out with our extended family, I had many thoughts of "oh, I'd better google that!" Things like, "What does a snail eat?" "What is the best way to kill black ants?" "Are there such things as clamp-on-sprockets for bike wheels?" "Who has the best price for Quinacridone gold watercolor in a tube?" "Does anyone make a Pip costume (Pip, as in the chipmunk in Enchanted)?" "When is Asa Larsson's new book being published?"

I could go on and on. In fact, if you are still reading, I commend you. These are just a few of the varied and mundane little questions that pop up for me during the course of a week. And thanks to my computer, I usually can get answers to this sort of thing. It makes me wonder, though, what it was like before...I mean, would I still even try to figure out how to fix that antique bike wheel? Or would I take it to an "expert" at a shop? Would I just play trial and error with Snailey Grey and let Ada feed him whatever she wanted until he went to that great tomato leaf in the sky? I don't know.

What I do know is that it wasn't until I was in college that I started using a computer for more than creating rudimentary patterns of my name running across the screen. I was lucky enough to go to a school that was running a prototype of mosaic in 1994, and I had a windows version of email and a named account before many people I knew. There were newsgroups then, but I don't really recall using search engines until much, much later.

And now--well, I love, LOVE!! the different connections I can make, the depth of searches I can do online now. Look at Addictomatic, for instance. How great an engine is that? Or


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Birthday season

I've been away from the blog and the computer for awhile--it's high summer and birthday season around here. Between visits from grandparents and lots of making and eating of cakes, it's been a great few weeks. More on our adventures coming soon...

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