Temple lights

We went to Oakland to see the lights on Temple Hill.  We got there before dark.  It reminded me of the day we were married there, wintery, slightly overcast, late afternoon.  We checked out the visitor's center and went up on top of the temple.  This is the only temple that I am aware of that has a roof garden.  It's beautiful.

I told the kids that on the day we were married we sat on this bench and had our picture taken.  Buddy Boy took this photo.

Have we changed much in the past nine years?

Us...

Them... You can see where they get it.

It was a fun afternoon.

After a nearby dinner we headed back to see the lights...

...and run around the fountain some more.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas Eve and Christmas day.  We celebrated Christmas Eve at Grammie and GrandDad's house with cousins, the traditional chioppino, and presents.  Always good.  Always fun.  My Girl got a new hair accessory that looks like a fashionable fascinator.  She thought I should wear it.

We didn't set up the Santa-cam.  Buddy Boy is suspicious about the whole Santa thing, but still wants to believe.  On his own he has written letters to Santa and a list that fills both sides of an 11x17 piece of paper.  We warned him that he wouldn't get everything on the list, but he did get something. 

Buddy Boy wants to fly.  He REALLY wants to fly.  Every night he wishes on a star for the ability to fly.  He falls asleep by imagining himself flying.  He puts a lot of thought in to his repeated flying efforts, but none have paid off yet.  Dad puts it well when he says that Buddy Boy feels smitten by God for not having wings and being able to fly.  I don't think you can get your pilot license until you are 16.  This was the best we could do for now. 

My Girl's list was much shorter, only two thing.  She got one, a cousin for Buddy Boy's much loved Teddy Panda.  The other thing was a Spiderman costume.
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Rika, the bear, got a couple of dresses.  When My Girl and I go to the fabric store we occasionally come home with an extra fat quarter in one of her many favorite colors.  You can get a little bear dress out of a fat quarter.  There is also a little trim from the Grandma A. stash.  I think she would be pleased to see it used for little bear dresses.

We went to church in the afternoon and then had a quiet dinner with Grammie and GrandDad.  My Girl was very happy to be able to sing for the congregation with the other kids.  Buddy Boy was happy it was shorter than the usual set of meetings.  It was a great day.  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!
May your days be merry and bright and...
May all the action be caught on your secret Santa-cam.

Buddy boy has gone from a kid who wouldn't put pen to paper to a writing and drawing machine.  There are lots of secret plans sketched out, lists made, and notes and letters written.  It is a lot of fun to see him expressing his ideas this way.  He is also spelling out words as he talks.  I've always thought that part of his reluctance to write was his desire to spell words correctly rather than use the kid spelling they encourage at school.  The teachers just want the kids to get the ideas on paper without worrying about the spelling conventions at this point.  He reads very well and knows that words are supposed to be spelled a certain way.  Now he is figuring it out and all the ideas are flowing. 

More news

I've been waiting for the pathology results from my surgery last week.  I thought that I would get the news next week at my follow up appointment.  Last evening the surgeon called.  That isn't necessarily a good thing.  There was good news and not so good news.  The good news is that the margins were clear, meaning that the surgeon had removed all of the affected tissues with an acceptable margin of healthy tissue all the way around.  The not so good news was that there was a small area of invasive cancer.  The whole affected area was about 4 cm.  The invasive area was 0.9 cm and grade 2 instead of grade 1.  This means a bit of a change in plans.  I'll be going in for a bit more surgery to check the sentinel lymph node.  This will determine if the cancer has spread.  If it is clear that is obviously good news.  So more waiting.  This second surgery hasn't been scheduled yet, but will probably be in the next week or two.  Now that I've been through this once I'm not as worried about a second surgery and I'd rather get it over with and find out what we're dealing with.

More nativity

A couple weeks ago we went to Palo Alto to see the Christmas Creche exhibit at a local church there.  The family favorite was made of Legos, a 3D mosaic of sorts.  A main focus of the exhibit is folk art creches from around the world.  It is so interesting to see how people have interpreted the same story and scene in their own craft tradition.  The African creche made of mud and dung certainly got Buddy Boy's attention.  I really liked the various paper and wooden versions.  There was some incredibly artistry on display.  We watched the marionette show put on by the youth group.  It was fun.  Dancing marionettes are always a good time.  My Girl slept through most of the evening, but sometimes you just have to enjoy it in your own way. 

I thought I'd show you some of the nativity sets I've collected.

This one is from the province of Imbaburra in Ecuador.  I'm not sure if the figure on the left is a shepherd or a wise man.  It looks like a shepherd carrying a torch to me, but if it is then I'm missing a wise man.  Each village in the area specializes in something.  In the leather good town I bought a jacket and in the wood working town I bought this and another wooden sculpture that I have on the mantel year round.

This one is pretty cute.  It is carved from a white stone and is only about two inches tall.  It was given to me by a friend and co-worker when I left Bolivia.

This is also from Bolivia.  In La Paz there is a particular style of miniatures made for the Alasitas festival.  This festival happens each year.  You buy miniatures of what you want for the coming year and keep them in your home, cars, diplomas, animals, absolutely anything.  I wasn't there during the festival, but you can get these all year.

This isn't a nativity, but it is a wooden angel that I got in Guatemala.  Most of the carvings are very brightly painted, but I liked this unpainted one better. 

You can see we've been busy cutting paper snowflakes as well.

This also isn't really a nativity.  It reminds me of Bethlehem even though it is really a colonial pueblo.  I bought this the summer I was in Guatemala, but I don't remember if I got it in Guatemala on the whirlwind weekend trip we took to Honduras.

There you have it.  I'll probably collect more through the years when the mood strikes.  Who knows what I'll end up with.

Clock tower cafe

Here's the latest in my watercolor efforts.  I am learning a lot as I play around with the online tutorial that I've been following.  I thought I'd show the photo we were given to start with.  As you can see I changed it up a bit.

I wanted to see what would happen if I painted a picture of the clock tower where the tower wasn't the center of interest.  So the trick became how to hide the elephant (or clock tower) in the room.  Making the tower the same color as the sky helped.  (Or was it the sky the same color as the tower?)  In the original photo both are pretty grey.  Obscure it with trees.  Make another building neon orange. and add human interest to draw the eye to the new center of interest.  By using chairs and an umbrella I avoided having to actually paint people.

I like the way the blue sort of swoops from the bottom right up through the shutters.  Yellow sky?  Sure, why not.  I like yellow.  The orange is repeated in the awning and the building in the background to give depth and make it a little more cohesive.  Split complementary again.  Blue, red-orange, and yellow orange.  For some reason I seem to like this combination.  The trees are OK, but  I need practice on my tree technique.  I think I need to look at more trees more carefully.  I also need to remember to do the foliage first and add the branches and trunks in after.

I might have finished this a few days ago, but naps got in the way.  Thanks to my husband and friends who have made that possible.  (both the painting and the naps)  I am now officially three weeks behind in a six week tutorial.  It's ending this week, but I may try to do a couple more from the photos that have already been posted.  It's been fun to see what others do with the same photos.

Nativity

Last year I did a papercut nativity that was about 11 inches tall.  This year I wanted it bigger so that I could put it in the front window kind of like the haunted house thing I did.  So a couple weeks ago I gave it a try.  To enlarge it I put the original in a plastic sheet protector and set a light behind it.  I had to get the right angle for the light so that the lines would come out straight.  I taped the paper to the wall and traced it.  The paper I have is black on one side and white on the other.  That made it easier to see in the lines I was drawing in the dark.

I traced and cut and had a pretty good looking piece at the end.  It's about 2 1/2 feet tall now.  I thought that I would laminate it so that I could use it again another year.  That was a mistake.  The paper didn't go through straight so it ended up a little squished together at the top.  I didn't want to start over so I just put black tape over anything that looked funny and called it good.  There isn't a star anymore, which is unfortunate, but it's good enough for now.  Maybe I'll redo it for next year, maybe.

It looks good from the street at night, but I enjoy it most in the morning when the sun casts a shadow on the curtains.

Tommy

This is Tommy the gun totin' Lego snail who has come to live in our Christmas tree.

Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's the pain meds, but I find him pretty funny.

P.S.  My surgery yesterday went well.  I was home the same day with no complications.  I'm still a little sore and a little loopy from the pain medication.  Right now I'm just taking it easy, but I should be much better in a few days.  The next big thing is the results of the pathology report from the tissue removed.  Hopefully it will be good news.  Thanks for all of your help and prayers and kind thoughts.

P.P.S  Buddy Boy informs me that Tommy is really Jackie and that he isn't funny.  He is really serious.

Night light

Here'e my latest homework from the watercolor tutorial I've been working on.  At this point I'm a couple weeks late even though we had an extra week in there at Thanksgiving.  Oh well, I'm doing more than I would have otherwise and I'm really enjoying it.

This is more of a color sketch than a finished painting.  So the perspective is off and the windows are crooked, but that is OK for this.  It is only 4.5 x 5.5 inches.  I like the colors.  It is kind of a split complementary scheme with blue, red-orange and yellow-orange.  The browns are really just dark versions of the yellow and orange.  That gives the contrast and bold color but it doesn't go rainbow crazy circus. 

I was going for an almost dark late evening effect with the last bit of sun light coming between the houses from the right.  It isn't quite right.  It looks like there is a Walmart parking lot around the corner.  The instructor suggested softer shadow lines to indicate a softer glowing light.  I think the color on the back buildings could also be a bit richer to make it seem less bright and washed out, but still warm.  I'm learning a lot, but still have so much to learn.

I checked out a stack of watercolor books from the library last week.  It's been fun to read them.  Some are really great and others not so much, but I am learning a lot along the way.

It's my party...

It's my party... and I'll dress like a pink ninja if I want to.  
My Girl turned four and we invited a few friends and some family over for a fancy dress party.  Everyone dressed in their fancy finest, except the birthday girl.  She wanted to be a pink ninja again.  So we pulled out the impromptu ninja outfit from Halloween and went with it.  I couldn't argue, looks comfy.

The kids played with the big Legos while everyone arrived.

Then we made party hats and streamer wands. 

This is one of my favorite photos of the day.

One little friend came with his own very dapper hat.

The streamers were for the dancing.  They loved the dancing.  We played songs from the Wiggles and Laurie Berkner Band.

Then it was lunch time so each kid made their own pizza.  The crusts were premade so they got to spread a little sauce, cheese, and olives if they wanted them.  Pop them under the broiler for about 2-3 minutes and you have pizza.  The kids thought that was fun.

Then the cake.  But the candles were missing so we went on a little treasure hunt to find them.  I just used pictures as the clues since at this age they aren't really reading much yet.  They loved it and found the candles and some M&Ms hanging in the lemon tree.

We sang and blew out candles...

and called it a day.

I think everyone had a good time.  I'm so glad.  It's amazing how much throwing a birthday party for a four year old can stress me out.  I'm just not a party planner.

As soon as the party was over and the guests had gone.  Out came the party dress.  But by this time she was done with photos.

Thank you GrandDad for being the event photographer.  I love to have pictures but can't do it all.