the 3 wise men

You may be wondering just how they came from the East. I have the answer!

A 1970 Nova, a Volvo V70 and a PT Cruiser!!

If they had just come by Fisher Price minivan, they could have carpooled. Really... how wise was it to waste all that gas driving separately? Really?

right up their alley

The kids got to go bowling for the first time last Saturday night... and they both really enjoyed themselves! It was a classmates birthday party, so there were a lot of their friends there to be silly with, too. That always helps, right? And cake... can't be a bad evening with birthday cake around. Well, unless you are Carl. He won't eat cake. He even said to K's mom, "I don't like cake. I want ice cream." Poor kid. He won't eat pizza either - which was dinner. Lew did go buy him a cheeseburger at the snack counter about the time all the other kids had some cake. And he was happy as a clam. (he wouldn't eat those either, for the record) That child could live on cheeseburgers.

Here's the birthday boy, obviously, not his first time on the alleys!

So, with 13 kids bowling, we had 3 lanes. I think of everyone, Carl was one of the most focused at staying near the lanes for his next turn. And he was on the team with 5 players. Of course, they had bumpers in place and they also had a metal ramp/rack thing available to help the kids direct their balls in the right direction.

Gretchen returning after picking up a spare!!

This poor goofy child! You can see the Big Ken in him, right? Every time I turned around he was playing with the air blower. I missed getting a shot when he was standing there with his shirt pulled up while cooling down his belly! I did get one of him backwards, though. And a few forward ones. He may have even once used it for his hand like you are supposed to. Here he is drying out his tonsils...

Bowling with 5 year olds is fun. And slow. They roll that ball and you can actually hear the finger holes thunk-thunk-thunk slowly down the alley as it rolls along, close to stopping at any second. Actually, by the end of the night, one kid did manage to strand a ball at the end of the alley, but before the pin reset bar. Lew and Gretchen were able to hit it and knock it into place again. Actually, they hit it directly and both balls shot to the sides - each landing in the gutter - even with the bumpers! I don't think you could do that if you tried. I mean really, you oughta be able to strike out with 2 balls headed at the pins, right? Not get a 0!

A couple times, the kids would throw their second ball before the pin bar was reset from their first ball. But, it was OK. The ball went slowly enough that the bar had plenty of time to raise before the ball reached it. Eventually, Carl learned to choose the 11 pound ball for the ramp to really get the ball down the alley fast!

K opened his gifts at the party which seems to be the exception these days. he loved all 3 parts of our gift!!! The Barenaked Ladies children's CD, Snacktime, a Matchbox car garage playset and one of those color shifters matchbox cars. All things my kids would love - and they enjoyed seeing K smile when he opened them as well!! K's cake had Lightning McQueen and Mater toys on it and Carl has not stopped talking about his next birthday cake ever since. "I'm going to have a cake at my party with Lightning McQueen and Mater on it"... poor kid... he doesn't even like cake, he just loves toy cars. I told him I would make him a big bowl or pan of vanilla ice cream and we could put cars on that for decoration. In 9 months when his birthday rolls around and he has changed his mind 942, 000 times.I don't know if you bowl, or come from a long lineage of bowlers (I fall into the latter. Nanny & Poppy bowled, my mom still bowls every week, Kenny bowled for along time - his only 300 game was day our grandfather passed away) but one big rule in bowling is no street shoes on the alleys! Well, apparently, this rule can be broken at kids' parties. Ack! It was driving me nuts - there was something sticky on the floor right by one of the scoring machines and everyone just kept tracking it all over the alleys!

(Look at the sock/shoe combo in this shot... these people were not part of our party. She is obviously not wearing bowling shoes, so those are truly the socks and shoes she chose to wear out in public. To a bowling alley, mind you, but still... in public. Bless her heart.)

Carl hit an 83 and Gretchen rolled an 86. Not bad for their first time ever!

January 2011 family photo... and pics from today

Might as well continue my monthly get-us-all-in-one-photo challenge. It worked out great last year. Have you challenged yourself?

January 2011

And here are a few shots from today. I think I figured out what settings weren't correct in my new camera. So, we headed outside today for a few test shots. I know some of you reading this were in the 20-30* range today, but many of my friend readers are also southern. Anyway... we were at 60* when the kids and I headed out to snap pictures of each other without coats on.

They are wild shooters! As you can see, both of them would prefer a view finder on their cameras - just like their mother! Carl has been asking begging for a "big Sony" since he saw the DSLR version at Mimi Joanne's in December.

Here they are checking out the shots they have taken. This is why I knew I couldn't go with the Fisher Price cameras for two 5 year olds. They would not have been satisfied with a 1" display screen (which is what those kid drop proof cameras have. And maybe 2 megapixels. Gretchen's camera has 14! Carl's is 8.)

In the above picture, you can see his missing teeth. If you ask him if he has a loose tooth, he gets bugged with you. "No! I have a space!" I have wiggled the others - nothing else loose yet. But, the first two permanent teeth are coming in nicely, aren't they?

I didn't upload their pictures yet. I had a phlebotomy yesterday and I am tired still. Get this, my appointment was at 9:00 am. Nine. I arrived on time. I was not taken into the phlebotomy until 11:30 am. yes, eleven thirty. Two and a half hours waiting for them to locate my orders. Once I got in the chair, I filled that bag in only 11 minutes. They make you sit another 15 to recheck your blood pressure (how could it possibly be worse than it was when they took it prior to the phlebotomy? After a 2.5 hour wait??) Then, it took the appointment girl 20 minutes to figure out how to schedule my return appt in 3 months. Twenty minutes. Wait, there is more... the check out girl took 5 minutes on the phone finding out if I needed to pay a co-pay or not. I was just like, "Bill me" but they wanted to be sure. (I don't have a co-pay on phlebotomies.) So, I dropped the kids off at school too early, got scolded for being early just so I could race to the office for my 9:00 appointment. I then had to race back to school directly from the office to be able to pick them up on time and not get scolded (and fined) for being late. A fun Tuesday morning without kids, eh? And to think, I get to do it all again in 3 months. Let's hope they have their act together in April.

Gretchen has graduated

to a new car seat booster, too. We even found the pink heart scribbles pattern she wanted right here in town at Sears! We lucked out since we showed her all the patterns online and then discovered, you cannot order them all online!!

Here she is in her old seat for the very last time....

This is her sitting in it for the very first time back on Sept 27, 2006. Ten months old.

Oh! Here is Carl sneaking into Gretchen's post...

And here she is in the new seat....

Yes, the van is ridiculously clean. So much so that I bought 6 tan towels to use as floor mats until Lew will buy the expensive all weather ones for me. Plus, I am covering the seats where their feet hit. Ridiculously clean is more of an understatement. This van looks brand new. It's a 2005, but there is not one spot on any piece of upholstery in the whole thing.

photo Friday

I am still not in love with my new camera. I was used to my old one. The manual on this new one is an inch thick. I'm still wading through it and checking all the settings to determine if the default ones are what I want the camera to be doing.

One I found that was giving me a lot of trouble was "dynamic range" focusing. I did not know that was the choice they defaulted to. It lets you choose where you are focusing, but the "range" part is that if your subject moves a little bit, the camera will refocus for you. Hmmm.. no thank you. Let me be in charge of that. I focus and lock in all on my own. Trust me and don't be second guessing. Don't get me wrong, I do not want to fully manually focus (all the time), but having the camera thinking on it's own when my subject may or may not have moved out of focus isn't what I want.

Here's a really good example of what was frustrating me before I changed it off this setting. With people, you always focus on the eyes. Well, I was taking shots of the kids (my main models, of course) and getting things like this:It might be hard to tell here... but her eyes are definitely not in focus. However, her coat below her shoulders is tack sharp.

I switched off that setting and think I am back to being able to focus the way I was used to on my old camera. Well, the cool new difference is that I only had 5 focal point choices on the D50 and now I have 11! Here is Gretchen with tack sharp eyes!
But, these next photos are from before I made this change... oh well. It's just Photo Friday. Plus, on the blog, the pictures are so tiny you can't really see a difference.

Here's one final photo. I am holding the 2 pictures I have on display downtown in a small gallery. They are displaying the 30 photos that won ribbons at the end of year competition last year. Our final competition always consists of all the ribbon winners from previous competitions. But, I was fortunate to have more than one win at that event! The gallery owner required all of us to have the photos available for sale if we were going to have this club display. And, they wanted all or nothing with the 30 photos. So, I felt I did not have a choice to not show my works. But, I did put my foot down and refuse to sell the shot of the kids. I really don't want anyone buying the water drop either because I think that is weird that someone I do not know would hang my photo in their home, but I put $150 on it. The gallery commission is 40%. Like I said, I hope I get the photo back at the end of the showing and not a check for my part of the sale, but if for some strange reason it does sell, I will be putting the money into my Tripod Fund. Now, I know some (or at least one) of you are (is) studying everything in the background of this photo. So, I will tell you more.... I took that waterfall shot in Letchworth State Park years ago. The other visible artwork is Gretchen's Earth painting. The doll house is sitting in the formal living room because the Christmas tree is currently in the spot where the doll house resides. Yes, the tree is still up. Tomorrow is going to be very busy around here, I can tell you... it ain't comin' down tomorrow. Yup, those are Hess trucks under the picture of the kids. The table is from my mother in law and the pink and red kitchen towel on it is Nanny's. It is not decorated with knick knacks.. it is being used my Gretchen for her Princess magic Rise Oven, hence the towel table cloth. We bought that big wooden bookcase from an Amish furniture place in Buffalo back when we were first married. That shiny travel coffee mug is a work related gift item and not used - we do not place our coffee travel mugs on the bookshelf otherwise. The water drop is framed 16x20 and the canvas is from Costco and is a 20x30! And I love it!!! I can't wait to hang it here at home.

I drove past the gallery on my way downtown the other night and you can see it from the street - it is so big!

how bad did I look?

In mid December, I finally saw a dermatologist for what I knew was rosacea. My mother and aunt have it, so I figured that was what I had, too. The doctor gave me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory pill and also for a topical cream. The oral med she said was very expensive, so I was going to check with insurance to see what they would cover and with the holiday... got sidetracked. Plus, the cream seemed to really be helping.

Apparently even better than I thought. In the past 3 days, 2 different people have commented on how good my complexion looks. Seriously, how bad did I look before?

this....

just makes me laugh... every time I see it.

Don't take yourself too seriously today!

Corning Museum of Glass

CMOG for short. Have you ever been there? It's a really neat place. The first time Lew & I went (long before we had kids and lived there) we spent 8 hours in the museum part on the first day we were there!! And we didn't even know about the Studio/Walk In Workshop and making your own project back then. We spent our whole visit in the museum half. Of course, we're geeks and Lew is a glass geek. So, OK, maybe you won't find double digit hours of fun there, but if you get a chance, you oughta check it out. There is a lot of glass history there! And, kids under 19 are free. Can't beat that!

taken Dec 2010, age 5... Carl loved this... he keeps asking to see the picture where "you are holding us like babies"

The "babies" he is referring to are shown in this shot from November 2006, 1 yr old. He loves seeing both pictures together. I haven't been in the museum part since the kids were 1, but I have been over to the Walk in Workshop area a few times since then. You can make things out of glass there. The gaffers help you make an ornament or a paper weight at the glass blowing station. Or wind chimes or a night light or frames or a sun catcher at the fusing station. Or a bead over an open flame. It's cool. Or I think so. My husband plays with glass for a living, so glass is considered pretty darn cool around our house.

Here is Carl standing by a big ol' glass cheeseburger! No one loves cheeseburgers more than Carl does. Well, except maybe the artist who sculpted a pillow-sized one out of glass!

We had been making ornaments there for several years before the kids were born. Then, once they arrived, we started a tradition of making them each a glass blown ornament annually. The first year, we made round ones that were red and green glass swirled together. They were the ugliest things ever! Well, they still are! The red & green together was a horrid combo that gave a brownish look. I believe, a few years later, they switched to a different style of red. Now you can use those 2 colors in combination with stunning results. But, I never re-did the ornaments. Those ugly ones were the first ornaments I made for them after they were born. Oh, I will dig around for a photo. I was still using film then, so I may not find one. And I did not unpack all those glass ornaments this year to snap a picture. I'll add a pic here if I can find one, though. (still looking - not one here on any digital files.)

The next year, we did another swirl pattern. Pink and white for Gretchen, blue and white for Carl. That was 2006. Let's see if I can remember the 2007 ones - oh yeah, Joey made Carl's and Claire made Gretchen's!! Colors are escaping me right now. Then, in 2008, Mom made a pink and green speckled tear drop for Gretchen and Daddy made a blue round one with ridges in it for Carl. In 2009, we commissioned Mom, Aunt Joanne and Aunt Lila to make ornaments for us on a fall visit to CMOG.

This brings us to 2010. And, it got to be the end of the year and we had not gotten ornaments done. That's when it dawned on us... they were now old enough to listen, sit long enough and follow directions! Why not go and make them ourselves??? So, we planned a day trip - with the new van, we could take Mom along and not need 2 cars. Loving that feature on the van!

Random woman in the parking lot who offered to take our photo did a nice job!

The kids were very good there. Phew. All the workers remembered us even though it had been almost 4 years since they saw us! They could not get over how big the kids were! Jackie told Gretchen, "I remember when you were still in Mommy's tummy!" I remember her once smiling at me as I rubbed my belly and she commented on how she missed that part of pregnancy.

The twins did great picking their own colors with zero coaching from me. They also chose the shape of their ornaments and whether or not they wanted ridges on them. Then we waited a little bit before it was our turn to get creative!

You sit on this wooden box and the gaffer gathers the hot glass on the end of a long metal pole. Then, when instructed to, you blow into the end of the tube. They tell you how hard or soft to blow and when to stop. Gretchen was a natural. The guy showed her her ornament and asked if she wanted it to be bigger or if it was all done. "Bigger, please!" so she got to blow into it even more. She chose a round, red ornament with white dots on it.

Carl struggled a bit more with actually blowing into the tube, but he did some. Jackie simply kept reheating it and letting him try again. When he was done, she asked me if I wanted to blow into it to make it big and I said, "No. I want it to be his ornament!" It is smaller than Gretchen's and mine, but it is so beautiful. He chose a tear drop shaped ornament with yellow and orange swirled on it. They ought to coach people to make tiny ones more often. They really look nice on the tree!

I made a round ornament with the ridges in it and a mosaic coloring pattern. Here are all three on our tree.

After they finish your ornament, they take it to the annealing oven where it cools down slowly overnight. There is time for a quick picture on the trip over. Here, Jackie is pausing with Mom's long enough to snap a picture. Hot glass colors do not show true, so you cannot see that this ornament is a dark green background with red and white dots on it. The colors come out when the glass cools. So, you don't get to take your work home with you, but they safely mail it for you if you wish. We got to see Mom's ornament and nightlight before we headed back to NC - it came that fast!

Here is her ornament hanging on her tree....

When we finished our ornaments, we had a chance to each do a fusing. That means, you lay pieces of cut glass onto something flat and glass. You use some glue to hold them in place while you are working and while they move it to the cooling oven. The pieces spend the night in the oven while the top pieces of glass melt (fuse) onto the lower piece. The glue burns off in this process. We each made something. Mom and Gretchen choose night lights, Carl made a black frame and I made a white frame for Kris's birthday present. Now, I have to part with it. That is always the hardest part when you make something cool out of glass for someone. Don't worry, I will mail it to her. Honest.

Gretchen did an awesome job on her night light. I wish we could go more often because she was really into it. Carl, not so much. He picked a black frame and since he loves yellow, he picked up 3 pieces of yellow glass. He placed those on the frame (I added glue to ensure they stayed right where he placed them) and added 2 long pieces of glass called "stringers". Then, he announced he was done. Minimalist. The frame is really cool, though!! I love it!!!!! the one I made for Kris has a collage look made with various blues and greens. She lives in MA near the ocean, so I wanted to give her a frame she could use for a beach shot of her kids.

I could have spent hours looking over this tree of ornaments in the museum building, but the kdis were pretty sick of glass by then. At this point, we headed over to Wegmans for lunch and then headed back to Albany after a quick drive through our old neighborhood to see our old house.

All of the fun opportunities that CMOG has to offer - and still, Carl's favorite thing is the ball and marble machine. I have photos of them as babies in the stroller enjoying this as their favorite part of the visit, too. I can say, although their interest has not changed... my photography skills have!

It was a lot of fun getting to make things there again. I can't wait for whatever move brings us back to Corning. It is such a neat little artsy community. I like that in a hometown. I would love to take some classes and maybe even be able to join the staff there someday.