Project 64: Yellow Orange

The color this week at Project 64 was yellow orange:

It's been crazy busy this week, with end of the school year activities. I didn't start looking for the color until the end of the week, and even then, I knew I wasn't hitting it.

Today I figured I'd hit the kids' toys, because I've been lucky with them before. They didn't fail me this time, either.

This is the set up, so the actual photo I'm going to submit will have some context:

This is my son's dinosaur set. I saw some yellow orange in the cloud and the lava coming out of the volcano that is imprinted on the mat.

However, when the dinosaur keeled over, I realized that his entire underside fit the bill as well. So, this is my entry for the week:

I Heart Faces: Best Face in May

This week's theme at I Heart Faces is the best face of May.  I like this picture a lot:

 This was Mother's Day at the zoo.  I love how she is completely oblivious to everything around her, and just enjoying her own style of hula hooping.

Frame-A-Day: Week 21: 5/21-5/27

May 21--Take a Flying Leap--One of the favorite activities during our weekend in Vermont was swimming, especially in the (heated) outdoor pool. The leader created a game where the girls had to try to jump over the noodle. Here we see Trust's best effort. I had so much fun practicing freezing the action and am pleased with this effort.

May 22--Spring--We hurried home from Vermont this morning to get to the Spring Demonstration on time. Trust's selection was entitled "Spring", and between the colors and the May Day-like dance here, it definitely fits. I sat in the first row of the balcony and took these verboten photos, since we missed the rehearsal on Saturday where photos were actually allowed.

May 23--He's Got the Whole World in His Hands--That is, if the 'world' is another planet, like Mars or Neptune...What Earnest actually has is one of those old-fashioned punching balls that he won at the school fair last week. Ir's amazing that we still have one of the prizes intact more than an entire week after the fair, especially one that can be as fragile as a balloon.

May 24--Tenure!--After 6 years and 4 months, I officially received tenure tonight.  I had to attend the Board of Trustees meeting tonight, where the trustees voted positively on the six of us recommended.  This photo was staged in honor of the occasion.  This is the current biology text that we use, and the very first semester I taught at school, I taught one section of Bio 1 and two of Bio 2 and have taught at least one section of Bio 1 every academic year since then. 

May 25--Fun with Froggy--We brought this grow-frog back with us from our trip with the Brownies for Imp.  The frog has been immersed in water for about 72 hours, and has grown quite a bit from its original size. 

*May 26--Pride Night--Tonight was the annual Pride Night at Trust's school.  Families and friends can visit the various classrooms and take a peek at the students' work.  This is a substitute photo; the real photo has Trust posing near her specific segment of the caterpillar where her name is prominently displayed along with her interests of ballet, playing outside, reading and coloring.  The night also gives kids a preview of the next year as well.  Earnest took a real interest in the kindergarten classrooms, and we visited all four.  

 May 27--Brotherly Bonding...over Kipper, the British cartoon dog shown on PBS.  The boys were waiting for breakfast and watching a quick bit of the show.  Surprisingly, we sometimes branch out from Thomas!

Project 64: Asparagus

The color this week at Project 64 this week is asparagus.

 

My daughter and I were away with her Brownie troop this weekend.   This is one of the places we visited.

I'd say there is a lot of the asparagus color in the trees there.

I Heart Faces: Yellow

The theme for I Heart Faces this week is yellow.  When I saw the theme, I knew the perfect photo to enter.

Every routine in my daughter's ice show this year was skated to a song with a color in its title. Her group skated to "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini". Here she and a friend congratulate each other on a job well done.

Frame-A-Day: Week 20: 5/14-5/20

May 14--You Spin Me Round and Round--Trust and Earnest have started riding the 'big kid' rides without Chretien or me. Look at how much fun they are having on this ride.

May 15--The Strong Men--Trust's school fair was held today. Imp is getting advice from Chretien on the best way to ring the bell and win a prize (ticket). The kids enjoyed all sorts of games as well as bounce houses and getting their faces painted.

May 16--An Oldie but a Goody--Ahhhh...Mr. Brown Can Moo.  One night in September 2007, I came home from teaching and Chretien told me about how cute the kids had been when he read the book, complete with all the noises, to them.  I was distracted, because I knew I had to take a pregnancy test, and broke the big news to him by asking him if he'd still like to read the book in two years (which would be when the new baby would be Earnest's age).  Evidently, almost four years later, it still enchants.

May 17--Eleven Years--Miney and Moe were our first 'kids'; they are brothers. We adopted them from their first owner, Chretien's former supervisor way back in July 2001. We were told they were born in May 2000, which, ironically, is the month we met. I always likes to think they were born on this anniversary, which is in five days, but we'll never know for sure. Today they were sleeping on Imp's bean bag chair when I struck with a photo. She managed to disturb Moe in the process, but he returned to sleep soon after. To this day, we always wonder whatever happened to Eeny and Meany?

May 18--Never Too Old for Thomas--Sure, he espouses Spidey, Ironman and other superheroes these days, but Earnest will still play with the train table every few days or so.  I'm sure that someday both he and Imp will age out of their love affairs with Thomas, but we're not quite there yet.  I wish the first engine, Hero was in focus as well as the others.

May 19--Now That's Italian--...or just a big mess!  Imp really enjoyed his dinner tonight.  Can't you tell?

 

May 20--Slumber Party--Trust and I left after work today for a weekend with some of the Brownies and their moms. Trust decided to help her friend out with her pigtails. Doesn't the photo scream "slumber party", even though the moms were going to be there as well?

Project 64: Cerulean

The color at Project 64 this past week was cerulean.

To be honest, I didn't see a whole lot of difference between cerulean and pacific blue when I scribbled on white paper. I almost feel like Crayola could have left one out and selected a very different color to vary up the hues in the box, but no one asked me. ;-)

I try to make the color prominent in my shot for the week.  This would have been great, except the generator in the background ruins the photo for me.

My daughter's teachers do a 'school store' once a month, where the kids spend (fake) money that they earn when they are well-behaved or do a great job on homework.  The stuff they buy is similar to what they get in birthday party goody bags.  Anyway, she came home with these colorful mice on Friday, and they work well.

So, I'll go with the mouse photo for my submission.

Frame-A-Day: Week 19: 5/7-5/13

May 7--First Holy Communion--Today was Trust's First Holy Communion.

May 8--Hula Hoopin' Mama--Not too many mothers of any age can make the claim that they hula-hooped with their daughter on Mothers' Day, let alone one who's forty-three.  We had breakfast with my parents, went to the zoo for the better part of the day, and then hit the surrounding park for kite-flying fun.  All-in-all, a great day.

 

May 9--'Nimbing a Tree--Imp told me that he wanted to "'nimb a tree"; that's current Imp-speak for "climb a tree", of course. He didn't make it any further than what is shown here tonight, but I have a feeling it won't be long before he gets a lot further, so help us all.

May 10--Happy Birthday, Big Boy--For weeks now, Imp would remind us that "My birfday is coming up."  Today, the big day finally arrived, with Imp turning three and leaving toddlerhood behind him.  I made whoopie pies with my new pan for his 'cake', which we all enjoyed after we had pizza with Nana and Grampy.  Imp's presents included two "airpanes", "more books", Thomas gear and a piggy bank complete with quarters which he added himself, one at a time.

*May 11 --I have a photo for this day but in the interest of privacy, I cannot share it here.

*May 12--Alternate photo--again, for privacy's sake, I am choosing a different photo than what is going in my book.   Here we see Imp and Trust playing with a new Thomas set that Imp received for his birthday.

May 13--Blowing Bubbles for Hudson--Hudson Lily Hitchcock Chaney is a little girl who died a year ago today at seventeen months old from bacterial meningitis.  Mommy has been reading her mother Mandy's blog "One Good Thing" since last summer.  Today Mandy and Hudson's father, Ed, held a service for Hudson in the Arboretum in Washington DC and asked anyone who would like to remember Hudson who could not attend to blow bubbles in her honor and share the photos.  So that is what we did.  This photo of Imp is my favorite; it looks like he's sending a special bubble to Hudson in heaven.

And where was Earnest this week?  He was definitely around, but due to the nature of some of the events each day, he didn't wind up in the selected photo.  I figure he'll be back next week.

I Heart Faces: Motherhood

The theme at I Heart Faces this week is motherhood.  This was difficult, since I'm the mom and I take most of the family photos. 

So I went back and found this photo, which was taken three years ago today.  This is my mom with my older son, who was meeting his little brother, born the day before Mothers' Day in 2008.

Project 64: Tumbleweed

How I wish this color had been a few weeks ago, when we still had the browns of winter. It's almost too bad that now that we have spring and I've captured some lovely pinks, that those colors are past.

However, we had a busy weekend where there were plenty of possibles for tumbleweed.

First we had my daughter's First Communion:

although I don't think those lighter colored stripes in the woodwork quite hit the mark, the overall cast of this photo seems brown.

And then we had this photo, which I love for itself and the fact that it was her First Communion and it's got the cross in the photo, but I don't think the cross is brown enough.

 Today for Mothers' Day we went to a zoo, and there was a lot of possible tumbleweed.

And there was even this greeting, which was fitting for Mothers' Day:

 

But I'm going to go with the giraffe, whose overall colors are brown, but I think his nose matches tumbleweed pretty darn well.

Frame-A-Day: Week 18: 4/30-5/6

April 30--Yellow Polka Dot Bikini--Today was Trust's ice skating show. The theme this year was colors; each routine had a color in its song title or lyrics. Trust's group skated to "(Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny) Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" and did a great job. Here we see all thirteen (!) girls skating across the iceand having a lot of fun.

Just for fun, here are a few more:

And a cute one with a school friend:

 

May 1--Thrill Seekers--Think Earnest likes coasters? He loves, loves, love them. He is fascinated by the big ones and a good day at an amusement park to him is being able to watch the biggest ones for a good long time. Of course, he isn't tall enough to ride too many so he'll probably have to wait another year or two to ride anything that requires 48" (he's probably about 44" now). Meanwhile, we'll all ride the kiddie coaster and have fun there. In this photo, you can see my entire family (Imp and Chretien in the front and Trust and Earnest in the back).

May 2--More Thomas and Friends--There are already a few other train table photos in this 2011 collection, but what can we say?  The boy loves him some Thomas and Friends.  I especially love his thoughtful expression here.

May 3--For You, Mommy--Earnest presented me with these flowers, and said, "I have a surprise for you, Mommy."  These are the prototypical moments that mothers live for.  Who cares if it's been played out in thousands of yards, parks or schools all over the word?  It still turns a mom's heart to mush.  At least, it did this mommy.

*May 4--Block-A-Thon--Today was the daycare's Block-A-Thon to raise money for youth activities in the community. Each child had fifty-two blocks and were encouraged to build towers to see how many blocks they could balance within a fifteen minute time limit. Earnest chose another approach and built a "Star Wars" ship and consequently, built outward and used up all of his blocks.

May 5--A Present for Elysa--Tomorrow will be Imp's last meeting with his gross motor and speech therapist through Early Intervention, as he's turning 3 (3?!) next week and will be released to services through our town.  Elysa has been his therapist since September and it's actually good timing that he's done as she will be having a baby girl in a few weeks and be off on maternity leave anyway.  Imp helped me wrap gifts for Elysa tonight, and he practiced saying, "'Leesa, I have a present for you."  The word "for" was difficult, but he did say it.

May 6--Peek-A-Boo--Look at who's popped up in the kitchen window.  The boys were standing on the storage trunk that we have on the deck and surprised me, who ran and got the camera and managed to capture them.