Our Menagerie...

Currently the animals outnumber the humans in our household!

Naomi has enjoyed her two guinea pigs, Sweet Pea and Sapphire, for almost 3 years now. She is a very devoted "mommy" to her piggies - giving them lots of love and attention. In fact she has trained Sapphire to raise a small flag on a flagpole. It is very cute! I will try to upload a video soon and post it.

Recently she adopted 2 more guinea pigs into her "piggy" household. These are two sisters about 1 1/2 years old. Their owner needed to find a new home for them. On the left is Butterscotch and on the right is Oreo. Those are the names they came with and Naomi thought they were cute and well suited! The guinea pigs are still getting used to each other and have had a few "squabbles"!
Below is a picture of all four of them together... on our kitchen floor! (when did I agree to have guinea pigs loose in the house?)

On top of doubling our guinea pig population, we are puppy-sitting for Angela and Crandon who are on vacation. "Hank" is a very adorable puppy that they adopted from the local animal shelter. He was one of nine pups that lost their mother at a very young age. He is currently about 11 weeks old. They believe him to be a mix of Lab and Catahoula Leopard dog; he has some spotting on his back and rump, which you can't see in the photo. He is super sweet... but having a puppy is a little like having a baby again... night time whining and mopping up of puddles! Actually he is doing very well and Naomi has done 90% of the work, so I can't complain.

Stay tuned... I haven't forgotten about the "graduation post".

A Whirlwind Catch-up...

It's been more than 2 months since my last post and I won't even attempt to make excuses! Suffice it to say that sometimes the journey gets so busy that there is little time to record it!

Perhaps my readers have given up... but I will attempt to hit on a few of the many activities that have taken place in the past few months.

Naomi and I spent a day at the Children's Museum with these two little guys while their Mom and Dad were getting the family moved.

Miss M. hosted a lovely Valentine's Tea that Naomi and I were invited to. She was quite the little hostess and had helped prepare all the food and made the decorations and set a lovely table!

February's costume dance at Nordquist was a "Disco Night". Here are my two dancers in costume.

I had the fun of taking my daughter and my granddaughter on a great field trip to the Shulz Museum.

A short trip to Canada in March included a one day reunion with my long time high school friend and maid of honor, whom I had not seen in more than 30 years! We spent 6 hours together, which hardly did justice to 30 years, but it was a great blessing to catch up and see how God had been faithful in each of our lives!

We had a family brunch on the Resurrection Weekend and tried hard to get a photo of all the grandkids. Seven kids age 5 and under... this was one of the better shots!

My 3 handsome sons... taken at the same brunch! (They were more cooperative to photograph!)

Late March we attended a 3 day speech tournament in Modesto. Here Lucas and Naomi are on their way to compete the first morning.

Bob and his brother. We enjoyed an overnight visit last month from Bob's brother and sister-in-law; it had been too long since our last visit!

Lucas is coming up on his high school graduation and has been busy with lots of "graduate activities". He will participate in a graduation ceremony with 8 other home educated graduates, all fellow speech classmates. They are a great bunch of kids! Here they are being goofy together...

... and here they are in their caps and gowns!

 

Another recent outing was two days in San Francisco for Lucas to take some aptitude tests. It was a great experience and we all enjoyed the outing in the city. These are a couple photos of the many unique and unusual skyscrapers in the financial district.

This was a heated bench in an outdoor shopping center. I had a hard time getting Naomi and Bob off of it!

There were many beautiful planted flower pots in the Embarcadero Center.

 

On our way out of San Francisco we stopped at the Northern Vista Point to enjoy the beautiful views.

Jordan and Becky recently spent a fun day with Lucas taking some senior photos in several locations and in a few different outfits. Becky did an amazing job! I will do a blog post soon (maybe!) featuring some of the great pictures she took!

Well, that was a hit and miss blog post... but it makes me feel better and now I can attempt to stay a little more current! =)

Fused Glass...

A few weekends ago, Naomi and I enjoyed a Saturday morning fused-glass workshop. There is a studio not far from us and I had been intriqued by the interesting projects you can make with fused glass. It is a process of adding cut glass pieces onto a glass base. It then goes into a kiln which melds the glass all together. It can then be fired again and slumped into a functional shape like a bowl or plate. Naomi and I both chose to make display plates. The class we took focused on cutting glass into triangular pieces and then assembling a mosaic style design. We chose to do a class, but the studio is such that you can just go in and work on a project with available help from the staff.

When my oldest kids were younger it seems I made time for a lot more arts and crafts and creative endeavors... and every once in a while I feel a bit guilty about the younger ones missing out on some of that... so this was a fun opportunity!

Naomi chose to create a likeness of our former dog, Dixie, and I created a more random, abstract floral design. Below are the plates before going into the kiln...

... and here are the finished projects back at home!

Hopefully we will make time for some more creativity soon!

California Winters...

While much of the country is under a blanket of snow, it definitely feels like spring is on it's way here in Northern California. Having grown up in the Canadian prairies where spring can't be counted on until at least April, I have become quite spoiled after 30+ years in California. We often have comfortable temperatures well into November and by the last week of January or the beginning of February we are seeing signs of spring; that makes for a pretty short "winter".

These are some pictures I snapped in our yard last week.

 A clump of daffodils with the first flower almost open

 Quince

 This geranium has been flowering all winter, I guess it's in a protected corner.

 Purple wallflower at the front of our house

 Fringe flowers just starting to bloom

 We have large areas of Rosemary which are all in blossom with their purple-blue flowers.

Well, I trust you are seeing some signs of winter's end, wherever you are!

Happy Birthday, Mom...

Today my mom celebrates 87 years! She is an amazing woman for many reasons...but let me share some of the things I most admire about her:

She has lived the past 20 years of her life with almost total blindness, not a choice any of us would make for ourselves, but she has done it graciously and without bitterness. She holds the record in her library system for "reading" the most audiobooks of any user... She is an amazing speller and knows all the answers to the crossword puzzle clues (without the ability to cheat with a dictionary or the internet)... She has an amazing memory, whether she's navigating directions for my dad or keeping her clothing organized by color in her closet. She has hand knit dozens of beautiful sweaters, several even after the loss of much of her sight...She is always dressed beautifully with a taste for well coordinated outfits...

But probably the virtue I am most in awe of, is her ability to savor a single piece of chocolate with her cup of coffee and make a whole bar last for days... I did not inherit that virtue of self restraint ... and haven't managed to cultivate it yet!

Well, Mom, I wish you a happy birthday and pray that there will be several more to celebrate!

All my love,

Galaxy Slime...

Every Friday Miss M and her brother, Mr. B spend the day at our house so that their mom can help their dad with some of the administrative work of his business. Naomi has taken it upon herself to plan some kind of "learning activity" to do with them each week.
On the most recent Friday, their mom brought the ingredients and sent a link to Naomi for making "Galaxy Slime", a sensory play activity.

 

The simple ingredients of Elmer's clear school glue, liquid starch and colored glitter, created a product that was slimy and oozy and kind of rubbery... a substance with both the qualities of "icky" and "very cool"! You could let it run through your fingers or shape it into a ball. I must say that it was substantially cleaner than playing in a mud hole but probably provided that same sensory experience.

Naomi mixed 3 different colored batches, which eventually ended up all mixed together, creating a sort of silvery gray color.

It was fun to watch the kids as they experienced and explored the unique substance. They probably spent more than an hour playing with their "slime". The looks on their faces capture it well!

 

 

 

Oh the joy of squishing slime through your fingers!