my first swim of the year

It wasn't the first time the kids got to go this year. Sadly, I had to work the first time they went, but I got to go on Saturday. We weren't able to stay too long, but we were there long enough to eat some ice cream and the kids had plenty of time to do some diving and jumping off the diving board. Thankfully, it's just the beginning of summer so there will be lots more pictures coming!

Front Flip! That's our boy!


Getting ready for something!


It was a little chilly in the shade!


Hazel came with us!


Lucy was there doing front flips too Tim in the background shooting water on everyone if they wanted him to when they came off the board.


and austin!


Shannon doing an awesome back dive! (this mama rocks)


Jane getting her breath to touch the bottom!


Aaron was there with his mama!


Eating ice cream!


Floating on someone's float, but not ours!


Grace was with us too and Luke, but somehow I managed to not get a single picture of Luke! I don't know how I missed him! Next time I promise!

My newest quilt

I recently finished my last commission for a while. I'm not taking anymore so that I can work on some ideas I have and let my own creations fully come forth. This one is of the god/goddess Shiva Nataraj. This one was such a joy to make. So much self exploration came out of me making this quilt and it pushed the limits of my abilities which is one of the aspects of quilting I appreciate most. I almost always try something completely new to me in each quilt and my skills not only grow, but I also grow with whatever the piece is. I spend a lot of time in quiet contemplation while putting pieces together and when they are tied so heavily to symbolism and ideology I find myself really exploring what that means for me in my life and what I can take from it.

I put a face on Shiva which is something I have tried to steer clear of since I started working on the goddess series. I have always appreciated the self interpretation of what the faces should look like, but the challenge of making his face look right and normal and not scary was a big challenge, but it would not have been complete with out a face. I also put a face on the ego and now, I feel like I have overcome a big obstacle and I will really put thought into faces when working on future pieces. Something else I did within this piece is use this stuff called Angelina Fibers. It is a heat bonded tensile like stuff that I used to create the flames in his hands to make them really stand out. I have been wanting to use them, but I was intimidated by them based on things I have heard about them, but now that I have used them and like how they turned out, I will be using more of them in future quilts. I love embellishment. I think it adds another dimension to a quilt. You can of course over embellish, but just the right amount will make a quilt just shine!


Our good friend Chad shot the photos for me. As always he did a great job!

We're moving out...

You know that Billy Joel song, "I'm moving out?" I've been singing it for days now, every time I think of the chickens... "you ought to know by now..." "I'm moving out..." It is stuck in my head.

The time has come for our girls to move out of the house! As much as we have enjoyed their songs, they are getting too big for the box they have lived in the first few weeks of their lives. They are growing so fast and they are well on their way to being fully feathered. A couple more weeks and our girls won't look like babies anymore except in size. We have a large coop they are going to move into once they are full sized, but since they are still so small, we fixed up the old rabbit hutch for them and they love it. Jason put it a couple of roosts in and we built a small fence out of chicken wire for them so they can run around the yard. We are still staying outside with them when they are loose in the yard because the cats are really interested in them right now. Our cats are pretty lazy, so once the birds get a little bigger and there is real work in hunting them, the cats will loose interest, but for now, the chickens are still little and make for easy prey. When we open the door of the hutch, they all come running now because we have been feeding them bugs - they especially seem to love grubs and caterpillars (not good caterpillars - the kind that eat our greens from the garden - another reason we wanted chickens). I need to make a video of the girls with a grub or worm, they run around after one another like they are playing chase or something squeaking the whole time. They are so funny to watch. Or maybe they are just funny to me! Who cares! I'm loving them!

This one we call sofia. She's not a very friendly bird (by that I mean she runs when a person comes around and makes a whole lot of noise when you pick her up), but she is interested in what happens beyond the door of the coop.

This one is Hamlet trying to figure out how to get back in!

Now, heading back out with some of her sisters.

We are still bringing them in at night, but they are living on the back porch at night under the heat lamp. We are slowly weaning them from the lamp and as the nights get warmer and they get more feathers they won't need it anymore anyhow.

alapaca farm

Yesterday the kids homeschool group ACE (Athens Cooperative Experience) went to an ALPACA Farm. It was really cool, though I think the poor alpacas were a little overwhelmed with all the kids and weren't so into letting the kids pet them, but we learned a lot and everyone who wanted to got to feed a baby and the kids all got to make a bookmark out of alpaca rovings (shavings off an alpaca before it is spun into yarn. It has been washed and combed and dyed and ready to be felted into something). We are definitely going to go back out there - maybe just the four of us - and buy some rovings. I've been wanting to do some felting with my kids, but I haven't bought anything to do it with and now, I'm feeling motivated - especially now that summer is here.

Here are a few of the photos from the day.

this is an alpaca - I didn't really realize before yesterday that they are not the same as a llama. They have been bread with llamas a lot, so they overlap and do look similar, but they are a lot smaller than a llama.


Who would have thought homeschooled students could form such a nice line. Guess there's incentive when you get to feed something as cool as an alpaca to stand in line.


India feeding a baby


Kalib feeding the baby






This one is a male llama.




The girls making their felted projects. I didn't get to make one, so Nancy let me bring home a kit. I think I'll be making mine a little later.

If you also want to visit the alpaca farm, here is the link... I'm sure Nancy would be happy to tell you all about them.

herty

On Thursday night, May 14th, we went over to UGA's Herty Field to check out some of the flower beds Jason had designed. It is always a treat to go over to campus and let the kids run around and climb trees. We really don't do it often enough. We went to Baskin Robbins before heading over for an extra special treat! Last year the fountain at Herty had to be turned off due to the drought, but thankfully, we have had lots of rain and UGA now has water reservoirs to hold enough water to keep Herty Fountain up and running, hopefully all summer.

Here are the kids debating whether the water is too cold to stick their feet in. It's funny to me to think about how small they were when Herty Field was brought back to life. I should go back and see if I can find those pictures of the first few times the kids played at this fountain. I know I have tons of pictures of them and this fountain, but I never get tired of them growing and the fountain is really beautiful - especially at night.



I really love this one of India laughing from how cold the water was when she put her feet in!



After we go to the fountain we always wind our way over to the north quad in front of the library for the kids to climb the trees.



I like this one because he looks like he is actually waling on the limb.



Kalib is a born monkey hanging from the tree



And the whole reason we went over there in the first place... Jason's gardens. My photos of the beds are not all that good because the light was beginning to fade and my camera couldn't figure out what to capture, so we will just have to go back over there on a prettier day when the flowers really begin to fill in better so I can take some more. Maybe next time we go, we'll carry our Frisbee.

more baby chickens

No, I don't mean we got more baby chickens, just more pictures... They are super cute and growing like crazy.

These are from day 3 with the babies.

Always the curious little chicken, meet Hazel...
Yes, we did name a chicken after India's best friend Hazel, it just suited the chicken,. She's curious and fun to watch... and obviously, not camera shy...Hazel is a Rhode Island Red.

The kids built a little fort to hang out with the babies in on the floor, but they weren't interested in hanging with the kids, all these birds are interested in is eating, but man are they cute!

peck, peck, peck, eat, eat, eat...

These are from today only a few days later and notice how big the birds are getting and that their wings are really starting to come in. I was checking on them this morning changing the water and giving them more food (because they eat a lot of food) and they are trying hard to fly. One of them managed to get up on one of the feeders while I was watching them. I guess we are going to have to try to figure out how to raise the feeders up to discourage that - don't want them pooping in their food if we can help it.

This one we have named Prunelly (which is my mom's nickname), whenever we reach over into the brooder, she's always the first to stick her head up and see what's going on. She gets right up to you and then makes all kinds of noise when you pick her up. She is a silver laced wyandotte - we have 3 of these and it hard to tell them apart, but we are also starting to learn the personalities of our birds and that is helping us distinguish who is who.

This one we call Henny Penny. She is also a Rhode Island Red, but she has a yellow head for some reason more like the Buff Rocks (who are all yellow). We have 3 Rhode Island Reds and Henny Penny is my favorite bird of them all. She doesn't mind being held and when she is out of the Brooder she is happy to go wherever you go as long as she can run behind.


This is Hazel again with Hamlet in the background. See how much of their wings have come in? It's only been 7 days today that we have had them and they have really grown so much.
Last, but not least, our mystery bird, Hamlet. We don't know whether Hamlet is a girl or a boy or what kind of chicken he/she is. The Hatchery we ordered the birds from sent a few extras and this was the one we brought home with us because Kalib loved it. He/she doesn't look like any of the other birds and Hamlet has a distinctively different song than all the others, but she/he is a very sweet bird and more than willing to let you cuddle it.
All together we started out with 12 baby chicks. 4 Rhode Island Reds, 3 silver laced wyandottes, 2 black austrolorps, 2 buff rocks, and 1 mystery bird. Unfortunately, 1 of our buff rocks didn't make it, so we are now down to 11 birds and loving them all.

More pictures to come as they grow!

photos of the kids

Last night Jason and I were at the Lyndon House having some photos taken of our latest works (photos to come on those) and our good friend Chad took some really great photos of the kids for us too. Now, I'm not one for formal pictures at all, so how he captured the personalities of both kids is just great! And you will see what I mean as you scroll down, they didn't hold back AT ALL. Formal photos tend to overlook the kids personalities, so in this setting they just got to be themselves. It's funny to me how great these came out with both kids initially saying they didn't want to have their pictures taken and when they saw them they liked them. How lucky we are to have a friend to take photos for us. Thank you so much Chad...

This one is my favorite! They were obviously having so much fun and Chad did a great job capturing that!
Our kids really are so wonderful and they really do smile and laugh and act just like these pictures. We are lucky parents to have such happy children in our lives!