Running

I started running again - with the intention of seeing whether or not my body would be agreeable to do it for another Beaver Freezer.  A friend from Life Works (that seminar I just finished) told me she'd come and race with me if I did it (she has a goal of competing in a race of some kind in each of the 50 states).

So, I'm spending January figuring it out.

My body isn't crazy about running, but I think it will be ok with me doing the Freezer.

Yesterday's run was in the mist, and the streams were flowing high.  I took a couple of crummy photos with my iPhone.

At the end, my knees complained a little bit (I resorted to more walking than running), but was happy to be outdoors.

Self-Made Coloring Book Pages

Just the other day, Simone decided to draw some pages to color in.  We've had a couple of different coloring books, and she likes them well enough.  Lately she's paid a fair amount of attention to coloring in the lines and choosing very specific colors.  I've always preferred her free-hand drawings, but some of the colorings have been very pretty.

This, however, was a new twist.  She drew two pictures with black pen and we colored one in together.  I had artistic reign over the fairies (well, one had to be a rainbow fairy, oh, and they needed blue eyes and gold hair, but I did the coloring), and I colored in the brown roof, the chimney, and the tree.  But I just love her drawing, with the wings and the tu-tu.

And then she drew another page, which we didn't get to color.  It's a drawing of Jade (the larger one) and Juptier.

Simone Book

Simone loves creating things.  Last fall (Sept 2011) she wrote a book.  Well, she wrote many books, but one in particular stood apart.  I just scanned the images in, and here it is.

Of course it has a title page, which is her name:

Mary got some watercolor pencils, which are way cool.  You draw with the pencils, using whatever colors you want, and then you come back with a water brush and apply the water and you get a water color painting.

Simone loves using them.  She draws with a pen for the outline, and then colors it in.

I can't remember if the next drawing was a boat, or just the clay birdhouse we have in the back yard.  Ah, that's probably it, the birdhouse was sitting in one of the clay pots that have soil.

I knew I should have kept notes, I'm pretty sure this is a picture of Hazel.  She was really missing Hazel last fall.

 Flowers are a big part of her drawing.  Though this one actually reminds me of a duck.  This one is a black-eyed susan.

 I believe the next one is a self portrait, note the blue eyes and blonde hair.  She is wearing her Hawaii dress.

Rainbows were probably the first concrete thing Simone started drawing, and they make frequent appearances.  Edit: Simone informed me this is a sunset - which makes sense, there's no green.

From another picture she drew about the same time, I think this is a picture of the horse named "Red."

After creating all the pages, Simone ripped them out of the notebook and stapled them together.  She's made a number of books, some are full-blown stories, and some are more abstract.  This is certainly one of my favorites.

Edit: This morning I showed Simone the pictures and she read the file names and corrected me on several accounts.  So, she recognizes the words rainbow, clifford (I'd incorrectly named the in the filename).

Three Weeks In

We're in the new year, and what's happened?

I had LASIK (at PCLI) and it went really well, though I'm itching to get back to mountain biking (I took a week off as a precaution, then had other things get in the way - including the flooding of Corvallis which has closed down the forest b/c of landslides).

I finished up the Life Works seminar, which was  a great experience.

The last weekend of LW, Simone caught a bit of a stomach flu and was puking all weekend, I returned from my weekend away to help out as Mary got winged by it, and then I took a day off because it laid me low for a day.  I think it's our first illness that got all three of us.

Simone is drawing lots (I really want to scan them in... maybe that'll be tonight's project), and speaking more and more complicated - I wonder where my little girl has gone.

This weekend is a papa weekend as Mary is at a conference.  Simone and I played outside in the brief patch of  sun, we made mustard and kimchi, we read lots of books, and then more books, and we've been eating lots - including rice pudding for dessert.

Mary hung up some paper lamps in the bedrooms, and the fairies turn them on and off for us.  The three in our bedroom are remote-controlled, so the mystery might still be holding there.  It's hard to tell if Simone is just playing along or if she still believes.

Tonight I read "A Fairy Went A-Marketing" to Simone while she took a bath.  Cute book, great illustrations.  How geeky of me was it that when the fairy gave a coat to a frog my first thought was, "That's not right!  Frogs are cold-blooded!  What is this book teaching?!"

The year has started off well - looking forward to the remaining 49 weeks!

New Year

Well, it's a new year.

The highlights so far - a lovely 3+ hour walk with Mary through the woods (Lewisburg Saddle to the top of Dimple Hill, down Dan's and back) while Simone was at school, then lunch at Vietnamese food, then a 2 hour mountain bike ride up to the top of McCulloch Peak (taking nearly 3 minutes off my PR, yay!), and coming home to see Mary and Simone, both happy to see me.

The lowlights so far: Spending nearly 8 hours re-installing all the software on my laptop from scratch (yes, I could buy a new one, but facing 8 hours versus $1K, I went with the time I had).