Holden Turtles

Well, I'm back from a week at Holden Beach, North Carolina with the kids (and Oma, Grandpa, and my sister's whole family of 7). It was loads of fun. This was the first year that my sons took a real liking to the waves, either jumping them or riding them on boogie boards. Lil Mis "L" was scared to death of the water for the first half of the week. Granted the waves were pretty ginormous, but even after she was OK with wading in knee deep, she'd completely freak out if she saw me out there swimming.

The most exciting part of our stay this year (no we weren't evacuated this time) was the nest of sea turtle eggs right near the dunes by "our" place. Not only that, but it was the week that they were expected to hatch! Now I didn't see the nest "boil" as they say. (That's when the sand bubbles up because the baby turtles are pushing their way up and out.) But I did see the most adorable little tracks in the sand one morning. Sea turtles are heavily protected on Holden Beach. They've got a Turtle Patrol specially equipped with red t-shirts and ball caps monitoring the whole process. They had the nest taped off and they dug a trench out to the water to give the hatchlings a better chance of making it to the sea. Two days after the hatch, the Turtle Patrol noticed a crab hole down in the nest, so they carefully hand dug up any remaining eggs or hatchlings. There were five babies left. I asked if I could touch one of the broken pieces of shell. Would you believe it's ILLEGAL to touch a piece of shell? I can understand why touching the endangered turtles would be a problem, but a discarded piece of turtle eggshell? C'mon. I wasn't asking to keep it. Oh well. We all got to watch them walk the trench, some much faster than others. We placed our bets and named them, but since they all looked the same it was hard to be sure who really "won". They didn't crawl into the ocean either, they were collected at the end of the trench and then placed in the water. A thunderstorm was approaching and the Patrollers wanted to speed things along a bit. Still pretty amazing. Most likely a once in a lifetime experience.

*Because the turtles are attracted to light, we weren't allowed to use flash photography, so I didn't bother taking any pictures since it was dusky when they made their way down the beach. The one I found online, however is pretty good and shows the cute little tracks they make, like the ones I saw.

Ren Fest, Races, and Rides

Last weekend, as in just over a week ago, I took my three darling children to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Huzzah! It happened to be the hottest day in August, but we went anyway, and I think we had fun. Sometimes, when it's very hot and humid, and I can feel sweat sliding down the valleys of my body, it's hard to feel anything other than hot and perhaps a little irritable. I made some cloaks for the kids to wear, but guess what? I forgot to bring a camera, so a whole day of photo ops was lost. I tried to make a conscious effort to store up some vivid memories, though. Let's see, we started out by spending nine bucks for three snow balls, and then walked over to the playground area. On our way over there, I noticed a sign a for free pony rides, and L wanted one, so she got to ride around the ring once on a little brown pony. She wanted the white pony, but didn't make a fuss. (That's my girl.) Our quest for the day was to enjoy as much shade as possible, and the playground was mostly shady, but unfortunately the jousting was not. We stood off to the side in a small patch of shadow cast by a small spindly tree and saw two jousts. The boys wanted to know why no one was knocked off his horse. We watched two plays. The first was Robin Hood, the children's theater version where volunteers from the audience act out the story. We sat still and watched. The shade shifted and we got a little baked in the sun. Then we walked around a bit, bought some wooden swords and then watched most of the Hack and Slash show, we were late and the best shady seats we could find were behind some posts and trees so we had to lean to get a good view. Oddly enough, even though it was so hot, and we were sweating quite a bit, I guess the kids were well hydrated because it seemed like each time we visited the "privies", five minutes later someone else had to "go" again. I was losing most all my water through my skin... After about 4 hours of wandering around peering in shops, and spending too much money on beverages and food, we all agreed it was time to leave. It would have been much more enjoyable on a cooler weekend, but this was the one when kids were free!

Friday "Grandma" took all of us to the Maryland State Fair. I usually don't like the fair. You see, I have lived for 30 years only about a half mile away from the fair, and it gets old. I also get annoyed with all the increased traffic and lack of parking at the shops, but actually this year it wasn't so bad. Maybe I just stayed home more this past week. Anyway, we went to the fair on Friday and had a really fun time. We saw lots of cows, horses- part of a pony show, pigs- with 4 day old piglets, chickens-and just hatched chicks, and other farm animals, prized vegetables and local honeybees, but L was disappointed that the cows babies weren't being born as scheduled. Grandma also bought us tickets for rides. I took the boys on a little caterpillar roller coaster, L on a merry-go-round (and tried not to get sick), and we all went through a mirror maze fun house. We got to look through a telescope and see the sun. It just looked like a bright yellow circle, no spots or flares, probably because it was a little overcast. D won a stuffed animal for popping three balloons (for $5) by throwing darts at them, and then the man gave L a little blue bear just for smiling at him with her big blue eyes. Then, since I have never once been to the races here in town, we watched two horse races as well. Grandma placed a two dollar bet on number 6, her first bet ever, but he came in 4th place. Oh well, at least the parking was free. It turned out to be a much more educational "field trip" than I had expected too. We learned a good bit about erosion and global warming and how it would effect our wildlife and streams in the Chesapeake Bay watershed area. Overall a rollicking good time. Experienced through the eyes of my children, it was like being a kid again myself. Thanks again Grandma M!

Poke-a-what?

I thought I'd finally post something! I started school with the boys two weeks ago, we are following a pretty structured schedule now and so far so good. Last week's impromptu art lesson, jumping off from something the boys were already "into," was to create their own Pokemon character in a crayon/watercolor resist. They had already been busy making (rather crudely) some of their very own Pokemon cards drawn out in colored pencil on index cards and then roughly cut to size. My idea was to make a larger painting of one of their favorites. It took very little to motivate them, in fact they were busy before I finished giving them some basic instructions. Today, after fiddling around with the scanner and changing some preexisting cards, at K's request, I thought, we should actually make their paintings into cards. This became an all day project of figuring out the software and remembering once learned, and soon forgotten, computer graphics skills I picked up in high school.

The paintings:



As you can see, K already added some of the card info to his painting.








OK, now their cards. I had to squish D's "Spiraly" to get him to fit our format, and they aren't perfect, but certainly satisfactory for a first time effort, I think.



Twice this week I received emails from different friends with a link to this ebay item. There's a very funny story that goes along with the Pokemon theme here, about shopping with lots of children, and how sometimes we buy things we never even meant to. She is a kindred "mommy blogger" check out her other funny writings here.

Guess who?

OK, you probably guessed who easy enough, but can you guess when?

Today I've been organizing and tidying and throwing out bunches of junk that has been cluttering up my desk and making room for the scanner. I found this old first grade (possibly kindergarden) picture in the heaps. I discovered this cool program on my computer that will organize pictures into photo album pages. I haven't actually tried it out yet, but what a neat-o concept, eh?

Last night I saw Harry Potter 5. It was super good, I had forgotten much of the plot in that one. In fact when I started reading HP7, I had to go back and skim through HP6 because I had forgotten some really important events. I read #6 while pregnant with L and pregnancy clouds my memory. So I absolutely positively LOVED Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was superb! Even fundamentalist-witch-hating-Christians who dare to read it will see how beautiful the story is.

*MK at Ganap! clued me in to a great review of HP7 from Christianity Today. Read it here.

Scan On!

I just installed a scanner (no longer wanted by my pop) and was finally able to scan in the boys' Chinese scroll paintings they made in May. They used water color paints and then I made a "chop" from a potato so they could stamp their initial on the painting. K's is a panda and D's is a fox in a mountain cave.

Now that I've got scanner powers... I hope to be able to put up a lot more fun stuff.

Summer on the hill

The hill on which I am blessed to live.

L and D in the coop holding "their" chicks.

The playset. (Action figures sold separately.)

Cherry picking

A birthday dress-up "no boys" tea party. (The bunny is mine.)

I'm still not in the mood to write much at length here but I thought I put up a few pictures from when all the family was gathered together.

*Still waiting on the Greek wedding pictures.

Blessing

I'm still waiting for the pictures so I can post them with my Greek wedding entry....thanks for your patience. (Notice the new profile pic? That's me in the car coming home from the wedding. I stopped by the bride's condo and saw some of the wedding pics her photographer took, they look promising, I hope she emails me some soon.)

Other reasons for not posting, well, I've just not really felt like it. Sometimes this happens to bloggers, and it happens to me, usually when the weather warms. A little seasonal depression I think. You see the anniversaries of my wedding and divorce are less than a week apart. This year I realized that not only is my divorce day 6-6-06, but it's also "D-Day"...that's kind of a strange coincidence, don't you think? Anyhow, I think it's beginning to lift. I'll know better after things calm down around here.

I'm sorry to say the baby bunnies have eaten all our sugar snap peas (planted twice!) and strawberries this spring...This is because Jasmine, our cat, passed away earlier this year. She was almost 17 years old and the best darned cat I've ever had. But my mom is also tired of all the baby bunnies, chipmunks and other varmints running wild here (spreading ticks and eating everything), so she finally agreed to get a kitten and brought one home on Friday. Mom named her "Segen", which means "blessing" in German. She's a sprightly little tabby cat with a white chin. We absolutely love her!

Both my brother and sister's families are here this week, so it's kinda busy round here. Just this afternoon I had 11 of the 13 children in my living room watching Charlotte's Web. It seems the days are filled with making food, cleaning up dishes and providing entertaining ideas to keep kids busy. There is a lot for kids to enjoy up here. Just this year we were given a swing/play set and I also got a horsey tire swing for my kids with some gifted Christmas money. My dad (still recovering from Lyme's) also put up another tire swing which hangs on a very long rope from a very tall tree and provides a very satisfying ride. There are cherries to pick, bikes to ride, scooters to scoot.... a sandbox, wading pool, and lots of driveway for chalk drawings. Yesterday I organized some water balloon volley ball, and a water balloon fight. Great fun! My kids aren't going to know what to do with themselves when all their cousins leave.

A to Z

Another one of those meme thingies... this one was sent to me on myspace, and instead of sending it to everyone there , I thought I'd post it here.

ALL ABOUT ME FROM “A” TO “Z”
A - AVAILABLE?: -- very

B - BEST SPORT?: -- frisbee

C - CRUSH?: -- Adrian Grenier (in Devil Wears Prada)

D- DREAMS?: -- often and weird

E - EASIEST PERSON TO TALK TO?: -- MK

F - FAVORITE COLOR?: -- cerulean (because I like to say it, but I'm fond of lots of colors, especially purple)

G - GUMMY BEARS OR GUMMY WORMS?: -- bears

H - HOME STATE?: -- MD

I - INSTRUMENT?: --kazoo or tambourine

J - JUICE?: -- cran-anything

K - KIND OF MUSIC?:-- it depends on the mood

L - LONGEST CAR RIDE?: -- Baltimore to Colorado

O - ONE WISH?: -- a helpmate

P - PHOBIA/FEARS?: -- spiders

Q - FAVORITE QUOTE?: --" Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intellegently." Albert Einstein

R - REASON TO SMILE?: -- the 3 munchkins

S - LAST SONG YOU HEARD?: -- "Lead me Lord" (I just sang it to the kiddos)

T - TIME YOU WOKE UP TODAY?: -- 6:55 am

U - UNKNOWN FACT ABOUT ME?: -- I curl my toes under when I'm nervous

V - VEGETABLE YOU DON'T LIKE?: -- eggplant

W - WORST HABIT?: -- staying up too late, cracking my neck

X - X-RAYS YOU'VE HAD?: -- teeth, chest

Y - YUMMY FOOD?: -- dark chocolate

Z - ZOO ANIMAL?: -- polar bears, otters and prairie dogs

The six year old just said:

"Hey L, do you want to play forces of good and evil? Do you want to be the good guy or the girl?"

Out Skirts (and "Project" Friday)

Another shot from the alpaca farm, taken by MK. Here I'm petting the ginormous Anatolian shepherd (I think he liked me) in my moss colored paisley skirt. I whipped up several of these skirts last year (or was it the year before?) and varied each slightly. Based on a simple 7 panel skirt that I custom designed at a pattern making workshop three years ago, I inserted godets into each seam to give the skirt a little flippy swing. The fabric was a great deal, it was given to me free in a pile of remnants donated to a thrift shop my sister's mother-in-law runs. I prefer skirts over shorts in the warm weather because they are more flattering and easier to fit. I generally pair them with a basic t-shirt and flip-flops or sandals for a casual, everyday look. Thursday night I just put together this little A-line skirt from only 1 yd of fabric. The yardage dictated the length of the skirt so to preserve some modesty, I bound the hem with self bias so more length wouldn't be lost. (Left: fabric view close up. I love the butterflies and silver outlines. Right: whole skirt view, t-shirt is tucked under so you can see the whole garment.)
















Last Friday the children and I made fuzzy felt balls with our alpaca fiber. Some of the wool I dyed with food coloring and silly me, I didn't wear rubber gloves. Fortunately, most of the color washed off before the big fat Greek wedding I was proud to serve in as a bridesmaid the next day. (More on the Greek wedding when I've got some pics to show.)

Yesterday, Chinese scroll painting was our project, and the results were beautiful. I will see if I can scan them in on dad's scanner to post.

Cloudy with a chance of alpacas

DAFI alpaca farm field trip, planned and arranged by yours truly, was today. The only day in the ten day forecast with rain expected (at the time I checked yesterday), but thanks be to God, the clouds didn't burst until well after our picnic lunch at Oregon Ridge after the trip. I'm not sure it was a good thing for me to go there or not, because now I really, really want to raise alpacas more than ever. I invited my mom along, since she shares this interest and she asked lots of good questions and took notes. The children absolutely loved this trip, and not just mine, but all of the 23 children who came from our home school group! We even got to take home some fiber to make into felt (that will be our project for Friday). Enjoy the pics of my munchkins feeding some of the animals.

Oh happy day

Yay, I'm about 99% recovered from the gunky ickiness and I'm starting to get things back in order. I'm extremely pleased with the weather, something people take for granted when it's nice like this, I suppose, but thanks be to God, for the month of May! I love the pink flowering trees and green foliage. K planted sugar snap peas, L sowed pink and purple flower seeds and a few lettuces from last year's that went to seed have come up in just the right spot in our garden this week. I finished the first of several summer sun dresses for a new client and she was ecstatic to see how well it fit and felt on her. I'm making at least two more for her!

Tomorrow, mom and I will visit the BSO symphony show house. It's been an annual tradition for us since about 1990, I think. I may post my reactions or inspirations on that later. This weekend is also the big annual Sheep and Wool Festival. I'll be missing it this year, but I've got friends going who will surely tell me all about it and let me pet the gorgeous yarns they purchase there.

Oh, and girlfriends, thanks for the long chats this week it helped a lot. (You know who you are.)

5-17-2007 A word about the showhouse.

This year's showhouse was the most cohesive of all the ones I remember having gone to. There were several rooms using a black and white color scheme, Asian influences, and soothing palette . I would say my most favorite room was The Master Bedroom, flooded with sunlight from it's many windows and decorated in colors of celedon, chocolate and accents of red, which was unexpected yet just right for this room. A close second was the Family Game Room. It was filled with so many fun ideas, I can't begin to list them here. My least favorite was the "Out of Africa" office for her. It lacked pizazz and the designer was in there defending her design and "color" choices to all who entered and would listen. There were some interesting aspects to the design but overall I found it dull and uninspired.

Every year I come away with a few practical ideas that may or may not be incorporated into my life. Sometimes it takes me years to actually carry out an inspiration. For instance, several years ago I saw a table treatment I liked and it gave me an idea for one I could use on my outside table with an umbrella. I cut out the fabric, but didn't sew it up until a week ago. This year's innovative idea that I liked, but probably won't use, was wood panel covered with faux embossed leather leaned against the walls of a covered porch. Beautiful wall sconces were then installed to the panels which hid the cords and wires. A great lighting solution for a temporary living arrangement or for those who don't want to mess with wiring inside the walls.

bread and butter

I'm still not 100% better from the upper respiratory infection I came down with on Easter. My voice is still hoarse, and I sound like I smoke 3 packs a day. By days end, I summon my energies to read to my children but I haven't been able to sing to them in three weeks. We recently finished reading the Hobbit, and are now beginning the Fellowship of the Rings.

Today at Church, while retrieving the boys from musical rehearsal, a fellow mother said, "Joyella, I don't know how you do it. I've been 'single mom' for the past six Saturdays while my husband is taking classes, and it's really hard." Whenever someone tells me they don't know how I do it, my response is always, "I don't know how I do it either." I often feel like Bilbo when he said he felt like "butter scraped over too much bread." Especially these days. Work has been picking up a little, which is a blessing in a time of need, but I'm getting overwhelmed. If you think of it, pray for me.

On top of it all, something has recently been brought to my attention that I'm very disturbed about, and I'm not sure how I need to go about dealing with it, but it definitely needs to be addressed. Add to that, a semi-dead beat.... and you've got a recipe for stress with a capital S.

Philly fun

I trekked up to Philadelphia on Saturday. I had a yummy brunch at Ida Mae's, the opportunity to meet lots of interesting individuals at a cookout (and other brunch) and did a little shopping at Circle Thrift, in Fishtown. Tif found a great faux wrap 100% silk dress in a gorgeous print (above), but lucky for me, it was not her size. It only cost $2 folks! It will need a few minor alterations, but TWO DOLLARS! And it still had tags on it! I also got another dress (which I will dye) and a pink t-shirt (for the chocolate bunnies decal below) for a grand total of six bucks. I love thrift shopping.

Also pictured (bottom), some fun cotton prints I'm looking forward to working some magic with this spring. For some reason pink keeps attracting my attention. I'm also happy to report I've gotten a few new clients recently, who actually want new dresses made, (not old ratty bedsheets mended.) Yay!




From Top to bottom: Warm pink/coral cotton batiste with Morroccan print in red and pink flowers, Pink and White floral (alternates pink on white to white on pink), two of the same print in slightly different color families --florals with butterflies and silver accents, Lipstick print (for a handbag), and last, Purse print (also for a handbag, I think).

Listening to the Smith's "How Soon is Now" and reading MK's excellent post "Numb," I thought I'd post a reaction or reflection of the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech.

I don't watch the news on T.V. very much, or read the newspaper, and even though I once listened to NPR almost religiously, I've slipped from that habit as well. The morning of 911 I was reupholstering my dining room chairs and thought, "It's been a while since I've heard what's going on in the world." So I turned on the radio and immediately heard about what had happened only minutes before in NYC. I had the same thought this past Monday afternoon and proceeded to turn on the news and heard about the shootings. The next day I heard about bombings in Iraq where hundreds were killed. I thought of all the hype over here about a senseless shooting rampage, and of those places where bombings are a part of daily survival and reported on almost casually now. I was thinking of the children who have been orphaned because their parents were killed because of "civil unrest"...we don't hear about them. It seems to me that Americans think we are immune to violence since we have so many laws protecting us. We seem more enraged when something horrible happens on our turf, because that kind of thing isn't supposed to happen here.

I don't like to watch or listen or read the news often because it depresses me. Not that I want to stick my head in the sand and pretend that all is well in the world. I know quite certainly that it is not. I just don't have any idea what I can do to make a difference. I pray for the victims' families and the orphans that they may experience the hope and grace of Jesus' sacrifice.

On top of Stone Mountain

My three children hamming it up on the top.

My kids and four of their cousins.

At the top, the skyride thingy we came up on.

In the "town," enjoying the little stream. Miss L (right and below) got completely soaked.

Too sick to blog

I came down with a nasty flu virus on Easter and have felt pretty wretched ever since. The symptoms are changing over now from fever, malaise and cough to sneezing,runny nose and stuffiness. It's the sinus pressure all around my eyes that makes me look and feel like going back to bed indefinitely.

Pictures from Atlanta's Stone Mountain are forthcoming.

Which Care Bear are you? I am...

	Funshine Bear You are filled with unlimited energy and extremely resourceful. You like to tackle problems and tasks head-on and you gladly accept any jobs that come along the way. However, you often take on too much and your stubbornness won't allow you to accept help from others. But you're always willing to have a good time!
Take the Which Care Bear Are You? Quiz!

Manifold difference

I've been auto-less this week in Lilburn while visiting sister Julie because of the afformentioned noisiness from my exhaust manifold. Originally we thought it just needed new bolts to tighten it. The old bolts had snapped off and needed to be drilled out. (How does that happen?) Once the mechanic got in there to see what the trouble was, it was discovered there was a hole in the manifold (go figure) and so needed replacement. This is a very expensive repair...one I don't have the funds to cover. But the Lord provided, through the means of my church, and I am so thankful for their generosity and care. I'm also grateful that I won't have to listen to the grumbling engine for 13 hours on Monday when I head home. The Green Machine now purrs like a kitten.

Hotlanta

I spent all day Thursday driving from Baltimore to Lilburn, a suburb of Atlanta to spend ten days with my sister and her family. I am happy to say the trip went just as well as last year, mostly uneventful. The only thing about this trip that made it "interesting" were some minor annoyances such as, even though I spent $406 the day before the trip to have the squeaking taken out of the brake pads, the car decided it needed to make another even more annoying sound. Apparently a hole erupted in the exhaust somewhere close to the engine and the Green Machine sounded like a pack of Harleys everytime I accelerated. Also the little thingy that goes into the tape deck to play cds from the portable cd player over the car speakers wasn't working right. So twenty minutes into listening to "Prince Caspian" the sound cut off. I guess my heads are dirty or the tape thingy is busted, and Little Miss peed her pants and annouced it one second too late for me to pull off at the rest stop (which was the last one for the next 37 miles). So I had to do a roadside changing, but I'm extremely thankful no one got carsick.

Anyway, the children and I are really enjoying the warmth (80's) and the sunshine and the blooming trees everywhere. It's a nice change after that snow and ice storm just last weekend!