April 04 2009 Springing Out, Crayon Style

With work to be done by the photographer at the office, the rest of the family accompanied him, because that's one of the joys of everyone working and going to school from home. I put together about two hours worth of schoolwork to do with the kids topically about spring, Earth Day, and Arbor Day, and curricularly about writing, cutting, construction, problem solving, drawing, tracing, counting, number formation and sequencing... The fabulous nature of my job as independent teacher is that I don't have to write down every projected concept a project is supposed to cover and I can change and adapt any topic to the needs of my student at any given time. My 6 year-old and my 4 year-old did the same lessons today, getting exactly what they needed to from each lesson. Freedom, served and consumed as necessary.


I stood across the office and shot this for composition more than anything else, tickled to death that the office is in an old school building with the kid's homeschooled work was taped to the wall. I just love the juxtoposition.

April 03 2009 Looking Through A Lens

Played around this morning from my chair with my uber zoom on my little camera. I like that it has a digital zoom and I just aimed and shot around the living room at things with words. I really like this picture of our pinboard of ticket stubs. You can read all the cool stuff I have done with my family or with other people or just by myself or that I have sent other people to do, though that information is only held in my head and not in the photo. Looking at the photo, I discover how many movies I had seen in a theater. I don't remember them any differently than I remember watching a movie at home, so it was a surprise to see some of the stubs on the wall. On the other hand, it is great fun remembering all the live performances that I remember looking forward to, preparing for, sitting through, and talking about afterwards. Furthermore, to see all the little pieces of paper in one shot, well, that's a memory in itself.

About twelve, maybe fifteen feet away, I was not at full 24x zoom but greater than 14x, because I was experimenting with the digital zoom capacity of the little machine.

April 02 2009 Discovering Odd Things

We bought our house nearly two years ago. The inspector took a look in our attic, some normal reviews. We finally tore out the bad closet solution and had practical access to the attic, so we went up and look, and wouldn't you know, we have a mobster house. There is a full two feet of dropped ceiling all across the original portion of the house. Seriously, someone went to the trouble of making a fake ceiling. We never knew. Now I'm really psyched about the concept design I had for making the living area seem larger, with exposed rafters and lofted ceiling, kind of like a chapel. Anyway, notice the old-fashioned wall paper.



This photo was taken by the homeowner-photographer-husband with my camera. Whatever setting it was on.

April 01 2009 Drinking Dessert

Fools are in the air, but I had no tricks today. It was a long, serious day filled with trying to make sure everything I have planned for April will actually fit into April. The numbers boil down to 16 days of this 30 day month at home with my husband. The other days one of us will be gone. There will be much missing happening, so I am determined to make the days we have together be good days, with fun, laughter, and nice things. Tonight we were gifted a bottle of tasty wine. We started it a bit for dessert; not enough for tipsy, just enough to remember sweet things.


I did not like the flash on auto, so I tried portrait. Surprisingly, it was a different kind of flash. Good to know, though I must have suspected enough to try it.

March 31 2009 Eat In

a: "What should we do for dinner?"
k2: "It would be cool if we went out."
a: "What would you order if you were out?"
k2:"Oh, I think a hamburger if they had one."
a: "We can make hamburgers."
e: "I hate hamburgers."
a: "How about if we made your hamburger into a pizza? We can use pizza sauce and cheese and put your hamburger on top. We don't have pepperoni, but we do have pineapple. We can make a good hamburger pizza."
k2: "I think I would like a hamburger with no cheese."
k: "How about you?"
a: "Oh, maybe a hot sauce hamburger."
k: "How about a buffalo sauce hamburger?"
a: "You know how to make buffalo sauce?"
k: "I'm not afraid."
Everyone was so patient while I plated everyone's food and set it in front of them. I distracted them from eating with Rocky and Bullwinkle, then took the picture of all our foods. It's hard to take a good picture of food, especially several plates at once. So, there's my best shot.

March 30 2009 Stop Still

Awoke to snow, not the big remarkable piles of snow they're having on the eastern slope of the Rockies; no, just enough snow to make things really interesting. Just enough to highlight the oddity of Colorado spring weather. I parked my car in the sunshine so the snow would melt off during class this morning, leaving a puddle dripping down the driveway, but it was snowing again by the time class ended. I drove around with the snow fluttering into the open windows of my car; it wasn't too cold for that. On the way home I saw daffodils and snow. Cherry blossoms and snow. Motorcycles and snow. T-shirts and snow. Forsythia blossoms and snow. Bicyclists and snow.


I pulled into the bank parking lot, looping back around the block, and left my car running in a parking space. My camera on the mini tripod, zoomed to further down the sidewalk as I lay in the middle of the walkway by the corner of a busy street. I love being odd. It was an odd day.

March 29 2009 Grow Up

The kids grow so fast, and we went through their clothes weeding out the small stuff. My daughter gets so attached to her clothes she tried everything on to make sure it was too small before tossing it on the pile. My niece already went through all my clothes; she's taller than me at twelve already, so I guess she'll wear it and hand it down to someone else because she'll grow out of it. Kind of a sad thought, a grown woman handing her clothes down to a teenager who will grow out of them. Thus, today was a pile of clothes day, clothes unworn, clothes too small to wear.

There really isn't a good way to take a picture of a pile of laundry. I mean, I suppose there might be, but I don't know it. Auto auto, auto.