Mama On The Move

I love to try new things!  I don't know why I've never handled molten glass before, but I'm definitely going to do it again! The girls and I signed up to take a glassblowing class at the Chrysler Museum of Art.  The project was to make a glass egg.  We actually did this on Easter so of course I made an Easter egg.   The girls made DRAGON eggs! The hardest part was picking out what colors to use! The oven was over 2000 degrees! You have to continuously turn the pipe or the molten glass will just drip off.   We had to roll it in the colored chips on a metal table to get the colors in it. The lady who was teaching the course did a lot of the shaping.   They didn't want any terrible accidents with us getting too close to the magma. We didn't get to blow directly into the pipe, we had to blow into a tube connected to the pipe. Once it was ready, another teacher would smooth the egg out with a blowtorch! Katie was up next!

 We don't dye eggs every year for Easter any more.  Since the kids are older, it's not something they always want to do. This year however, Emily had seen a tutorial about how to dye eggs using common materials instead of a kit.  We thought it would be a good project because if there's ever a zombie apocalypse, we'll still be able to dye eggs for Easter even without electric stoves and mass produced dye-kits. We scoured the neighborhood looking for small flowers and leaves.  We wet them and held them to raw eggs.  Then we wrapped them in pantyhose and rubber bands.  We boiled three eggs in a pot of water filled with onion skins.  And we boiled the others in a pot of water with red cabbage leaves.  The eggs that had been boiled with the onion skins came out very brown.  The shapes of the flowers and leaves weren't clear but we were still pleased.  The eggs that were boiled with the purple cabbage came out the color of putty despite

 All dressed up for church!

 Ringo is sad when Emily is away at college.  He likes to sleep in her room with her when she is home.  When she's away, he goes up to her room every day to see if she is there, then he comes back downstairs and sleeps on the sofa. When she comes home from college, he cries and rubs all over her as if she's been gone a year.  He even did it when she'd only been gone two days ! Emily came home today and Ringo was wailing joyfully that she was home.  Once he calmed down, Emily tried to take a selfie with him to commemorate their reunion. Ringo was having none of it. No selfie for you! On a side note, isn't Emily gorgeous?!?!

Katie has been taking Archery lessons this school year.  She really seems to enjoy it and has improved bunches. This past week we had a random cold spell and during archery, it started to rain.  I told Katie we could leave early if she wanted (I was freezing, I would gladly have left). But she stood out in the freezing rain  and continued shooting anyway. Her hands were beet red by the time she finished.  I took her to Starbucks on the way home to get her a hot chocolate to help warm her up.  The employee behind the counter took one look at her and pulled a space heater out from behind the counter and set it out for her to hold her hands up to. That girl is not a quitter!

Poor Emily.   Now that she's away at college, I have to schedule all her medical appointments for when she's home.   Spring break was an ideal time to catch up on everything that needs to be done.   She had her cleaning scheduled with the dentist.  They found some cavities. She had her wisdom teeth out. She had the cavities filled. We took her for a checkup.  They decided she had too much wax in her ears (she gets that from my father) and had to flush it out.  They also decided they needed some blood samples to check her iron level and her thyroid.  Also like my father, she has small veins that are hard to find.  The phlebotomist stuck the needle in her arm and had to wiggle it around trying to find some blood.  He got a little, but the blood just stopped flowing before he got all he needed so he had to go for the other arm.  Luckily, there was a more experienced phlebotomist who took over and jabbed her perfectly on the first try. Despi