Lily turned 19 on July 23!

There's my baby and her boyfriend Andrew. The pesky bunny ears there above her head are Jeff's, he's up to his usual mischief. It doesn't look like he will EVER get tired of doing that. >sigh< See last photo in this post where he is at it again. Oh, and please ignore the messy desk & office behind Lily, I was in the middle of re-organizing everything. It looks way better now, I swear.

Lily is enjoying wielding that knife far too much! She had a Baskin Robbins chocolate and mint chocolate chip icecream cake. It was yummy!

See?

It was plate-licking good! Hah! Lily loves to wear goofy hats. She has a large collection of them. She wore her penquin hat for this special day.

This picture was taken a week before her birthday when we attended the outdoor concert for Justin Caldwell's new CD release. SEE? What did I tell you, there is Jeff with the bunny ears again. I've been married to him for nearly 25 years now, and he has never gotten tired of doing this. I guess it has become a tradition of sorts now.

SMILE.

Lily and Leonidas

Here is a picture of Lily with Leonidas, her cat that she named after the great Spartan king and warrior. We took this photo two days ago.

Lily then went to clean Ophelia's cage. Ophelia is our dwarf rabbit. Lily put the top portion on the floor with the door open. I guess Leonidas was feeling curious, perhaps wondering what it was like to live in a cage, so he crawled in and spent a good long while hanging out in it.

Sniffing at the bars...mmmm...smells like bunny!

Wow! Look at how the ceiling looks with lines running along it. KEWL! So this is what it's like for that pesky little fur ball and attention stealer. Hhhmmm, most interesting.

My DMA summer camp classes. Two down and one to go!

This is picture was taken during the grand finale performance of "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" summer camp at the Dallas Museum of Art. We are telling a Japanese Kamishibai story called, "The Two Tengu's". We had a wildly busy, active week together sharing stories inspired by artwork in the galleries and the students studio art. One of the main activities was learning about Japanese paper theater called Kamishibai. Between 1920 & 1953, bicycling Japanese storytellers would sell candy and tell stories using picture cards as illustrations. With the advent of TV, Kamishibai lost popularity. The people who worked in this artform then created manga art and then anime.

Good grief what made me decide to wear Pepto-bismal pink pants! After I saw these photos, I got rid of them. Now where was I...

Oh yes, the next two photos are from my ArtCycle! Summer Camp. Students created art using non-traditional and recycled materials. This was a FUN class to teach, especially because this is how I create art at home. Also, the museum has a current exhibit called Private Universes that supplied lots of ideas and inspiration for the class projects. I created several art pieces myself for the camp that illustrated how the exhibited art had inspired me.

Here is a picture of the students as they each take a turn to talk about a favorite piece of artwork they created during their week at camp.

I feel VERY fortunate to have the opportunity to teach summer camp classes at the Dallas Museum of Art. It is awesome to have art from all over the world, created by master artists no less, right there on site for the students to observe and learn about. I found in my ArtCycle camp that nearly all the kids were fans of contemporary artists like Jackson Pollack for instance. How cool is that? These youngsters were aged 9 to 12 and already had a great deal of knowledge about many, many master artists. They were eager and excited to be there everyday and took on the task of creating unique works of art with relish!

It was an honor & a blessing to get to work with the students of both camps. That dear readers is the honest to God TRUTH!

Playing with lighting and photography at the DMA

These photos were taken during a special event at the Dallas Museum of Art. The summer 2009 theme is "Summer Spotlight: Experience the Romance, Drama, Action and Mystery of our Collections". They had a cinamatographer in to do lighting for photos. Here are a few of mine.

It was fun to do these.

Went to a great concert!

Hi everyone, I'm back. Work and life got super intense for several weeks again. It sure has been a struggle to balance both these days. I never, ever feel like I get everything DONE that needs to be done on any given day. Frustrating.

That doesn't mean that I don't have time for fun now & then. Take last night for instance. Jeff, Lily, her boyfriend Andrew and I went to my friend's son, Justin Caldwell's CD release party. He's a gifted, multi-talented musician. Here is more about Justin: http://justincaldwell.com/ I have both of his CD's and they are GOOD! No, they are more than good, they're excellent. He has also been enjoying a good bit of success lately. This is from his website: In addition to his prolific onstage presence, Caldwell engineers and produces his own recordings; a skill developed from years of writing music for film and TV. Most recently, his original music has been featured in national ad campaigns for Nike, Visa, Honda, Tylenol, in the primetime network pilot Dear God, It's Me Traci, and the Australian film Out of Space.

I took a few pictures, but they were blurry. Sheesh. Justin's mom is my friend Gwen. She is a professional storyteller and 1/4 of Once Upon A Times Four, and so am I. The other two members are Genie Hammel and Jiaan Powers. We are four professional storytellers who began meeting once a month for support, coaching and guidance, but it blossomed into much more than that. We have become great friends who now also lead workshops together for librarians and others storytellers who want to enhance their own storytelling skills.

In May we went on a retreat together to Pagosa Springs, CO. Here are a few photos.

Left to right are me, Genie and Jiaan outside a gallery in Sante Fe, NM. We stopped there to stretch our legs and view lovely art during our drive up to Colorado.

Gwen (mom to Justin), Genie and Jiaan who are happy, happy, happy!

Here we are at the house we stayed at in Pagosa Springs. We had been traveling all day and were exhausted, but happy and ready to enjoy a meal together.

I had such a wonderful trip with my friends and feel so blessed to have them in my life. I have the complete photo album of the trip on my Facebook page if you are curious to see more photos.