jumpropes and rocks

"Hey everyone! I just wanted to tell you about when I found the coolest stuff the other day, right outside our house!"







"I was minding my own business, when there it was right in front of me! A pile of rocks! In the grass! Wow was I excited. (PS sorry ladies, I usually wear a shirt, but mine had been taken off a few minutes earlier because I spilled. You know how it goes.)"






"I showed mommy the cool rocks, because I knew she'd be excited too."






"Then I tried to eat one."






"Mommy told me, "no", so then I gave her a few to try. They really are quite delectable. "






"I ran back and forth a few times, moving rocks all over. It was great!"





"Then I saw my favorite sister, Elora!"






"Hi, Elora! She wanted to help me put the rocks back in a pile, since she and Josh had so carefully created it a few days earlier. "





"Hooray! I love when people want to play with me. What a great day!"



"And now here's Elora, to tell you another story."
..................




"Hello. I am almost five. Don't I look so big?"





"My grandma sent me and Joshua jump ropes. I've always wanted a jump rope! Josh and I wanted to practice right away."





"I can jump pretty good, and every once in a while, I get both feet over the rope!





I don't think Josh jumps very good. And he dragged his around on the ground, and one handle got crunched by the rocking chair later. But he didn't care because he only wants to drag it anyway.





Oh yeah. One time I fell down. The End."

Examples I love from Watercolor Artists

So, I decided I wanted to show you some of the watercolors I've seen that I really love, just so you can better understand what exactly I admire and aspire to in this medium. I think I did a post like this once before, but that was several years ago, and its high time for another one!

Again, I admire all forms of watercolor, and am amazed at the ultra realism I've seen in places like the Artist's Magazine. For instance, pieces like this are beyond my skill for sure, and I love looking at this type of thing too.



But those aren't really what I'd like to do with my own work. I like the paintings with lots of color, random looking brush strokes that end up looking fabulous, and...oh here, let me show you.

This is the cover of one of our kids books that I bought just because I loved the illustrations. They are truly breathtaking! This is one of the best paintings in the book, but if you look inside, you will find many more that are just as amazing! The artist is Sibyl Graber Gerig.



Another book I bought for the artwork (which Elora loves) is this poetry laden story, The Tale I Told Sasha. The artist is David Christiana, and everything is so fanciful and random in his paintings. Here is a link to more of his work.


I was able to find an example of two of the inside illustrations:




This month, our Children's Friend magazine came from church, and it has the perfect example of an ink and watercolor painting. In fact, it is what inspired this post! I tried to find examples of the artist's work online, but couldn't find her anywhere, so she must be new to the scene or something. So I hope I don't get in trouble for scanning this...the artist is Karen Sorenson. I love how lyrical her pen lines are, and how fresh and beautiful her painting is!

Oh yeah. I love anything to do with Autumn, and I'm dying to see some trees with leaves around here, so I might like it for that aspect as well.

Watercolor stuff

This is from my art blog, which I rarely update, but I thought I'd share it here too.

Watercolor is definitely not my forte! I love watercolors by other artists and am always impressed by them, probably because I don't have that much skill in this category yet!
Maybe once a year, I'll try to do a small one, and occasionally I'll like it. These all scanned lighter than life, and measure approximately 5x7 ".

This first painting is the main reason for this post...I promised Elora we could do watercolors together the other day, and this is what I did, based on a photo of her from a few weeks ago. The grass looks better than I've done in the past, but this still turned out very heavy-handed.
She thought I was going to do a seascape, because I said "watercolor", and she was confused that my picture didn't match her painting of a ship on the sea!





I love how the cat and grass turned out here. I did this in 2005 , and think its one of the best I have done, though I would change the composition a bit if I were to do it over.



I like watercolor with ink; this was one of my most recent attempts, so I could have a picture to fill a frame we made at a church activity. It turned out okay, except for the black lipstick look on the man! I need to get more practice combining the ink and watercolor, because I love how it looks when I've seen other artists utilize this technique.



In the photo reference for this, the people were very backlit and dark. I wasn't sure how to render the skin to reflect that lighting, and I wasn't patient enough to figure it out and try again! I think this was five or six years ago. The photo is from the staircase down to Golden Gardens Beach in Seattle, from the bus stop.




I love the left-hand half of this painting, how it is fresh and light. If I were to frame this, I would consider cropping the right half off completely. Thats how I wish all my watercolors would turn out!



This is from a cruise I went on in 2003. Eh. The messed up perspective on the deck lines kind of brings this one down. Unless you pretend it was on purpose. Then it looks cool. Right?



This would have turned out better if I'd have spent more time on it. I didn't even bother to sign this one. This is the 'worse grass' to which I was comparing the first painting.This view was from Anacortes, I think.



Finally, this is one of my favorites; I made a postcard for a friend and liked it so much I made another cop for myself! This has been on my wall since about 2002 or 2003. It is from a photo I took on Whidbey Island a few years before that. I love the colors on the wood in the foreground. Again, I wish I could do more watercolors like this one! I guess I should practice more.

Adventures on the Prairie

Maybe I should change my blog's name to "Little House on the Prairie", since there are no trees here. Or not.


This week's excitement: a cool green tractor! Maybe I was more excited about it than the kids. I took this picture of Elora before she knew I was taking it. Does she look bored, or pensive? Or, "whatsgoingon-ish"? At least her hair is blowing in a cool way.



Jonah didn't want his picture taken, he wanted to go play! Darn it. I wish I could've got him to smile for more pictures, because I really need a one-year old photo of him for my wall. We kind of forgot it in all the craziness of moving! I would love to go to one of the sunflower fields to take pictures, but I have a feeling it will probably snow within the next few weeks, so that might not happen.





The one smiling shot I got is slightly out of focus. Hmmm. Maybe I'll still use it.



The ones with Elora and Josh turned out great! Too bad I couldn't fit Jonah up there too without him falling, or it would be a great pic of all of them. Plus, I keep wondering if there was something on my lens, because several have that weird smudge in the middle, by Josh's face.



I decided I needed to get in on all the country tractor action too, so I set up my tripod. It took several tries before I was completely in the shot...and where I could find a pose where I wasn't totally dumpy looking.



Confession: I edited all the sitting poses of myself to disguise my somewhat muffin-y top. Don't tell.



And there are several I just cut off the whole bottom half to make it easier. Still looks good, right?



Then came the biggest fun of the day. Using an old wood pallet as a teeter totter! Awesome! At least for five minutes.



Even this serious guy had some fun!

Curtains

You may recall my talent (or lack thereof) when it comes to the sewing department. Remember my awesome shorts I made last summer ? ( I tried to make a link, but my computer doesn't want to. So, sorry.)
Shortly after moving here, I decided I needed to make curtains for our new house. Mostly because the majority of the windows were uncovered, and the rest had ratty broken mini-blinds covering them. Sure, we could have just bought curtains, but they are supposed to be one of the easiest things to make on a sewing machine, right?
Besides, I needed something to distract me from the task of unpacking all of our boxes (there are just a few left.) Lucky me, the easy part turned out to be true, and I love my new curtains! Sadly, the magnetic curtain rod we bought for the back door won't stick (wrong kind of metal) and we forgot one of the windows in the living room, so we have to wait till the end of the month when we drive to the city again before I can take care of those.
So, I took some pictures, and for the life of me I don't know why I didn't use the flash, or possibly clear the space in front of the windows so you could see them better. But you get the idea.

These are in Jonah's room. I love them the best I think! They are perfect for a baby room.





For Elora and Joshua's room, I was looking for something gender neutral, possibly some red or yellow gingham like that in Jonah's room. But Elora didn't like the yellow I liked, Josh didn't like the red she liked, and I wasn't going to get the princess material Elora wanted but Josh would hate. Finally, Elora picked this material, which is the same material as that of an apron my mom made for her last year!
At first I thought it was too girly, but Joshua actually liked it too. So, this was it:





The living room has the biggest window in the house. All of the windows are 60" tall, but this one is also 50" wide! When the curtain is closed it isn't as gathered as I would like it to be, but when they're open it looks okay. We wanted a light and airy material for the living room, as our carpet throughout the house is blue, and we didn't want it any darker than it was! At first I was hesitant over this material, because it looked a little too much like bedsheets, but now that they're hanging up, I really like them!





Finally, we have two more tall windows in our bedroom that really needed to be covered, as people walk right past them on the way to the school in the morning. We had boxes stacked near them at first, but as we've been unpacking, that obviously wasn't going to work anymore. Besides, I wanted some light in my room!
When I first saw this material, I adored it. But when I got it home, I wondered if it would be too gaudy for a curtain, that perhaps it might work better as a bed cover or something. But once it was hanging up, I decided I loved it again! And maybe someday if we move and I don't need them anymore, I might make a cool skirt out of them. Assuming my seamstress skills have improved by that point.
Again, using the flash on my camera would have been sooo helpful for these pictures. Duh.




So what do you think?

This is where we live

Last weekend, we went to Mount Rushmore. It is only about 20 minutes away from Rapid City, which is where we will be going for major shopping trips maybe once a month; at least that's what everyone else here does. I had been to the Monument before, but Joseph and the kids hadn't and they were pretty excited. When Josh first saw the carved Presidents, he laughed right out loud and said they were "silly". He hadn't believed us when we told us we were going to go see some faces carved in the side of a mountain!





This is the part of South Dakota that most people think of when they ruminate about this state: the lovely Black Hills where this national monument resides.


At least, I assume this is the part everyone thinks of, since people kept talking about how beautiful South Dakota is when we said we were moving here.


The Black Hills are indeed beautiful, covered with pine trees, moderate climate, etc. And we enjoyed our hike around Mount Rushmore (well, Elora and I did, Joseph had to take Josh back to the Visitor's Center to use the facilities, not to mention that the path didn't support strollers after about half-way, where all the stairs began.) Anyway, I say we enjoyed our hike because this was the first we had been surrounded by green and trees in the last month!



Don't get me wrong, I believe the rest of the state to be beautiful too, its just a different kind of beauty. And there are literally NO trees where we live. Oh wait, there might be a handful planted in front of the school, but we can't see them from our house. As you may know, we live in a community of about 25-30 houses behind the school that Joseph teaches at, on the Cheyenne Indian Reservation. The "town" where our mailing address says we live, is actually just a gas station and small store at a junction of two rural highways!

There are two sections to the community where we live. In this first section, there are only Native American families. They have to apply to the Tribal Council to get one of these nice houses, and it may take up to a year or more to be approved.



This second area is where many of the school employees live, both Native American and White. If you look at the larger copy of this picture, you may see that most of the homes need some outward repair, and may not be the highest quality... I wasn't happy with our place when we first moved in, but upon looking around I realized I didn't have much to complain about, and we actually have one of the better places to live!


Many of these homes and trailers are shared by single teachers who only come during the week then drive home on the weekends. Those teachers who do appear to have children are generally single parents, and their kids either attend the school or are shipped off to another town for all day Headstart during the day.

While the Native American section of the community has more families with small children, we never see them outside except in the evenings. In fact, it is rare for us to see any people at all during the day, except the occasional maintenance man. Sometimes it feels like we live in a ghost town!

Not that we're ever bored. There is plenty to do. For instance, Elora found this big pile of dirt the other day:



Then of course there is always all this grass to explore.




We see a lot of grasshoppers, crickets, and butterflies on our way to the mailboxes each day (our big excitement of the afternoon).


And hey, once Jonah found a stick!




Not to mention the dogs and cats that are all over the place. But at least the cats catch mice (which I'm pretty sure all the houses are infested with!) Unfortunately, while Josh likes the dogs from a distance, he is a little scared of them up close, ever since a very excited dog knocked him down twice a few weeks ago. Poor Josh.



Okay, I guess there is also the school playground. We went there once the week before school started. I thought it was a little ghetto, but the kids liked it. Unfortunately, now that school is in session we can't really go over there during the day, and in the later afternoon Jonah naps. This is the kindergarten area:


And this is the bigger kid playground. Look, you can see one of the trees at the school behind us! How exciting.




The nearby (40 minutes) town of Faith is where we get things like milk maybe once a week, and go to church on Sundays. Did you know it is the "T-Rex Capital of the World"? I guess the most complete T-Rex dinosaur, dubbed "Sue" was found near here, so there are a lot of dinosaur related things around this small town of 450 people. There is also a cute little park that my kids keep asking to go to, but we discovered after our first two weeks here that we can't afford to go driving to town all the time! Our rent is very cheap, but we more than make up for it in all the gas we have to buy.



Oh yeah, and there are occasionally Pow wows. We missed the big one over Labor Day weekend because of crummy weather, but we attended a smaller one the weekend before, in a nearby town called Cherry Creek. Joseph had told a boy in his class that he’d come, and the boy told him to show up between 1 and 2 to see him dance. We got there around 1:30 but nothing much was going on. The announcer kept saying they had so much time before they started, but the times he was giving kept panning out ever longer. They finally got started around 3:15! (The boy from class never came.)


It was very unorganized and not that exciting, but Elora really liked it. She loved all of the costumes and wanted to dance too.



Unexpectedly, an older lady came over and gave Elora a dress with bells to wear so she could dance too, which was pretty cool.


She was pretty excited and ran around a bit, but she was sad that I wouldn’t let her run out into the middle of the circle with everyone else.

Later, people seemed more and more annoyed at our kids. I decided that maybe it stemmed from the moment Josh shrieked at some little girl for picking up his water bottle. We had immediately told him to calm down, but the parents got their kids away from us, and people seemed to be avoiding us and turning their shoulder to us the rest of the day. Maybe it was my imagination.

Around the time we were ready to leave, about 5:00, Josh and Elora went and stood by a little boy and girl, the same girl Josh had yelled at. The kids had toys, and I was watching my two kids to see if they did anything, but they were just standing there. The other mom gave me a look, but I didn’t know what she wanted, then she leaned down to Josh and Elora and said, “ You need to go back over by your parents now.” That’s when I told Joseph it was time to go! I still don’t know what the deal was, but I was feeling a little singled out at that point. There were maybe four other white people there by the time we left.

Still, we saw some beautiful vistas on the way to the pow wow. While the grasslands look flat from a distance, they are really quite hilly:

And did you know there are vast fields of sunflowers in South Dakota? Along with many accompanying bee farmers.


Yup. This is where we live.