Should we apply for the Julliard dance scholarship now, or later?

 

Happy Friday. 🙂

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Wordless Wednesday: Creative Little Minds

I love being home with Lotte. Love it, and I feel really fortunate that I’m able to be around for every adorable moment. Even the freak-out, face-down tantrums: those just make me laugh. I do miss the hell out of teaching, though. Being an art teacher is quite possibly the greatest job in the universe. Everything about it is the absolute best: from unpacking new supplies at the beginning of the year and setting up your classroom, to the joy in seeing kids look at their work with pride. This morning I came across a folder of some of the elementary student artwork that I had photographed a few years ago and I thought I’d share some of the awesomeness (from K to 5th grade).

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Wordless Wednesday: We love Art, #2

Dreary morning art projects

*All taken with my iphone: hence the fuzz.

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Look at my kid do this! Look at my kid do that!

(This is not an advertisement. Nobody is paying me. Trust me.)

Have you heard of Pummelvision? If you give them access to your pictures: whether on flickr, facebook, instagram (or others) they’ll make them into an awesome video within an hour. Sure, sure, we all know how to make our own slideshows: but sometimes it’s fun to see what someone else comes up with. Oh, and did I mention it’s totally FREE!

I will admit, though, I was a little bummed about something. I have about a thousand images on flickr, dating pre-kid and pre-marriage. Pictures of trips, student artwork, my old classrooms, my wedding, the neighborhood and other pre-LJ moments. For some reason the folks (cyber-magical picture selecting robots?) only chose pictures of LJ between the ages of 6 months and now, making it seem like I never had a life before I squeezed out a kid, but that’s ok. I’m a Park Slope mommy now, right? Look at my baby! Look at my baby!

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My parents vacationed in Crazytown.

So, I was sifting through some old photos, thinking about starting some new craft project that will likely never happen, when I came across two of my favorite childhood pictures. They were both taken while on Griswold-style family vacations, and depict totally normal snapshots of our typical, sunny holidays of fun in the sun.

Wait, you mean everyone’s parents DIDN’T take them to the CREEPIEST F*CKING PLACE ON EARTH? It was the late 70s: didn’t everybody frolic in some depressing wooded area straight out of Friday the 13th, and get stalked by some horrifying, filthy gingerbread man? Is that not the most terrifying picture EVER?! I’m all like, “What? He’s my boy.”.

That was taken during one of our annual summer trips to the Pick Point Lodge on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Here’s what I remember about those two (or maybe three) summers:

• daddy-long-legs in our cabin
• birds flying into the lake-front cabin window full-speed and dying
• shuffleboard
• daddy-long-legs on me
• some old lady who would always give me those cheese and peanut butter sandwich crackers that came in plastic wrappers
• stepping on daddy-long-legs everywhere we went
• some guy would throw handfuls of shiny pennies into the lake for us to wade around and find
• my mom loved the blueberry muffins at Bailey’s in Wolfboro, NH
• Falling out of the very high bed onto the hardwoods every night and daddy-long-legs crawling in my mouth (probably)
• the brown 1976 Plymouth Volare station wagon we drove to get there
• At the start of one trip up I whined that I desperately needed oj from Mcdonalds. I was positively dying of thirst. We stopped, I had one sip and happily called out, “I’m all done!”. My father pulled the car over, turned around and screamed “YOU WILL DRINK THAT GOD DAMN JUICE!!!”.  I cried, chugged it, and had to pee 20 minutes later.
•  three awesome dogs (the lodge owner’s?) that milled around: one Newfoundland, one Samoyed, and an Irish Setter.
• daddy-long-legs in my mouth

The place doesn’t exist anymore, which is a shame, because I know you’re all dying to take your kids there now. I swear it was fun, though. Cross my heart. I loved it.

Here’s another picture from a vacation to Disney? Bush Gardens? I’m not sure. I’m in about 5th grade. My sister’s in high school.

Yep. This one always renders me speechless. There are no words, I think, that can accurately describe the insanity of this family photo, so I’ll just leave it alone.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who vacationed in Crazytown as a child…

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