This & That

The Professor is In

With AP Boy's family here for the last part of this month, The Girl has been very fortunate to have her own personal math tutor. AP Boy has a real affinity for the subject and claims that he uses obscure mathmatical formulas all the time....for recreational purposes.

I'm not sure about that, but I do know that we're grateful that he loves it so much and is willing to try to pass that knowledge along. His comment? "I can hardly wait until the girls (and he's talking about the grandgirls here) need help with their math homework!" I know The Girl thinks she's the luckiest person in the world....I just know it. Actually her comment about end of the year schoolwork has been pretty consistent. "Everything is stupid!!"

Photos I Love

Part of the 12 class assignment is to pick one favorite photo every month. We are also supposed to save squares of paper from the layouts we do each month. Then we combine them on a layout. I was very behind on this part of things, so I used the retreat as a time to get caught up on this. I am maintaining a very consistent looke for all the layouts....the squares, the photo, a little stamping, the month in a calendar form, our initial, a heart, a phrase and some other embellishment that has to do with the month/season.

January: DD jumping in a huge puddle outside our door.

February: The Valentine AP Boy's family sent to us.

March: The SGB on our visit to their house.

April: SD Boy as a carrot.

And the last couple of category layouts for the month. The Places category layout documents my favorite grocery store. The design is an 8/2010 Page Map.

Birthday

It's this boy's birthday today. He's such a good kid. 

Something you may not know about him is that I was very, very pregnant with him as I sat through DH's grad school commencement....in labor.....really wanting them to hurry up and be done so I could go to the hospital and have an epidural.

Here he is at a year. Who could resist this cute smile?? It was a good thing that he had that cute smile, because he was a really ornery baby, but he had that smile....and the red hair.

Happy Birthday, Kiddo! Love you!

Give That Puppy a Pancake

With the grandbabies here this week, Ollie has had plenty of people to play with.

But my youngest granddaughter, Caroline, has just fallen in love with this dog.

She will crawl right up to him, grab his rabies tag on his collar and start to shake it. She will grab his ears. She will put her hands right in his mouth and giggle hysterically when he licks them. Notice, however, the slightly shell-shocked look on his face.

She will work her way backwards to  get as close as possible to him. 

And he is totally and completely gentle with her. But all the while he's looking at us with this slightly puzzled and half-way pleading look in his eyes. "Please....make her stop."

Patience like that deserves a pancake.

It's Amazing What You Can See

It's pretty amazing some of the more unconventional sights you can see on the rim walk.

Duct tape shoes.

The occasional movie star.

Some lovely statuary. This one is know as "The Twins".

And these fools. If you look closely you can see the parachute of a BASE jumper that's just gone off the bridge. The Perrine Bridge is the only man made structure in the US that permits BASE jumping year round without a permit and we have loads of strange people who love to take advantage of that, which I just don't get.

They land in the river, assuming their chutes open....and that's no guarantee. We have usually at least one death a year or so. Anyway, they land in the river and get picked up by a boat, like the one you can see in the water here. Dummies.

 

Rim Walking

I live very close to the Snake River Canyon. In fact, there's nothing between my back patio and the canyon but a couple of fences, Evil Knievel's jump and a bunch of cows. 

Fairly recently the city has developed a walking trail along the canyon rim for the enjoyment of anybody who wants to walk there, so since I had my whole brood, minus PB home for Mother's Day, we decided to make use of it.

So we walked one way.

And some of us ran.

And we took in some of the sights at that end. This is an area called Pillar Falls. It's further down river from Shoshone Falls that I've shown you before. You can see that the canyon...and in truth a lot of the area around where I live is very rugged and wild...kind of like my boys, lol.

 Then we turned and walked the other direction toward the Perrine Bridge. 

The Perrine Bridge was named for an early businessman in the area here.

The trail will actually take you right under the bridge where you can hear the cars going over.

And then you can look back the other way at the bridge. It's a pretty walk I'd never taken before. Amazing what you can find in your own town.

Some More 12 Crop Stuff

For the People category. LS Boy was in charge of a fundraiser for the law school. One of the items auctioned off was a date with him for the Barrister's Ball. Four of his friends pooled their money to buy him. The design is a sketch support sketch.

My Inspiration category layout based on an ad. The ad is below.

The Traditions layout. Just the tradition of the brothers  bugging, but also helping The Girl. When she got home from church girl's camp, they went next door and dragged all her stuff home for her.

The Personality layout documenting getting photos for the missionary plaque that hangs in the church foyer. Sketch Support sketch here.

This one is for the Seasons category and uses the Becky Fleck 12/2011 Project 12 sketch.

The Things category layout. This is lifted from a layout that appeared in the M/A 2008 Simple Scrapbooks. 

In Living Color

The Girl and some of her friends attended something called a Color Festival here in town. Apparently, it's an east Indian tradition when people throw colored chalk at each other.

This was the result. And she posed for it willingly. Three days later there's still a little purple in her hair.

Mother's Day

So let me tell you about my Mother's Day.

I was awakened on Sunday morning by my 4 grown sons actually dancing into my bedroom to Mr. T's "Mother Rap" going on the iapd, with breakfast....that they had actually made themselves. They'd gotten up early and everything, which if you knew my sons, would amaze and delight you. It was just so darn fun. 

This were the toppings for the crepes they'd made. Yes, you heard me right....they made crepes....and parfaits.

My Eldest dishing up the batter.

And trying to flip the crepes up in the air. Being boys, they tried this feat multiple times...with varying results.

SD Boy dishing up breakfast for his wife, who I believe provided technical support for the whole process, along with the other DIL's who gave menu advice beforehand.

LS Boy on childcare duty while others were cooking.

The one photo I did not get on my Mother's day was PB Skyping with us. It was wonderful. He didn't know everyone was going to be there for the phone call so that was a really great surprise for him.

 

Before and After

Julie and I flew from our respective homes to Denver, where Lynne picked us up so we were there before the retreat and after it. We stayed with her mother, who lives right across the street and she was so gracious to let us invade her space. 

When we arrived, it was quite warm. When we drove back from NM, it was raining and there was even a little snow. Right off the deck of the house was a spectacular view of Pike's Peak with fresh snow on it.

We also traveled to Garden of the Gods, which is an interesting collection of sort-of random red rocks just happily sticking up in the foothills. 

You can see just the tip of Pike's Peak through the clouds. Such an interesting and beautiful place.