Potted!

I 'sold' my first piece of pottery! The price was steep - a single blurry photo. ;)

Get your cat toys here!

The kids opened what may well be the first ever roadside cat toy store this weekend. Using nothing but Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners, they made an assortment of toys that they assure buyers their cat plays with. Midi is not particularly discriminate when selecting toys, but... Here Ave shows off some of their wares and a lot of enthusiasm.

Here Max shows how the cross shaped toys can double as ninja stars.

It was an astoundingly successful venture - they made $4.50! That is $4.00 more than they made selling lemonade in Greeley.

In related news, Ave has aslo started her own blog, which is entirely devoted to her cat, Midi.

http://www.midithecat.blogspot.com/

blogging as a family adventure

Max has started his very own blog, called Turtle Town, nd you can find his first post here:

www.megaturtletown.blogspot.com

Max types part of it, and didctated part of it to me. I'm hoping as he gets more comfortable with keyboarding, he'll type more and I'll type less. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Jeff!

Happy Birthday to Jeff!!! Given that I never ever remember his birthday on the right day, it's probably really tomorrow. How lame is that! I know my birth date, mom's, the kids', and Bryan's. That, my friends, is it. Being a perfectly intelligent sort of person, you'd think I'd put together one of those birthday calenders. Nope. I'd just lose it.

Baseball

As promised, baseball photos:

Max is on the left end, standing.

So sleepy...

Sorry - no interesting, entertaining, or otherwise useful posts today. I'm insanely tired - haven't had a decent night's sleep in months.



Here is a totally silly picture - I have no idea why Ave made that face but she wanted me to take a picture of her, so I did. I'm taking the baseball team photos tonight, so perhaps tomorrow, there will be something from that.

Pottery

I've been taking a pottery class with my friend Loelle, and I absolutely love it.

The photo above is everything I've made to date... strike that... it is everything completed to date. It takes at least 4 weeks from when I put a hunk of clay on the wheel until it comes home. I have 3 pots going into the kiln for glaze this week, and 3 pots slow drying on the shelf. The latter will get trimmed and finished this week, then fired, then glazed, then fired. It is always fun to go into the studio and search the shelves to see what came out of the kiln during the week. Sometimes it is really hard to find your stuff - you forget what it was you did last week, and lots of other people's stuff is there too.

This is one of my favorites to date, and the largest of what's photographed above. The stuff still at the studio is larger - I'm using bigger lumps of clay to start with, and losing less of it during throwing. Although I did run into some problems last night. The instructor, after 13 classes, noticed I'm throwing left handed with the wheel spinning for right handed. And I'm holding my outside hand wrong. And the wrong hand is doing the pulling. I can't really change to right handed - I do a lot of things left handed and I haven't had problems because of this, but I changed the other 2 hand position things last night, and it was like being back in the first class - couldn't keep the clay under control at all! I suspect there is going to be a lull in the creation of larger pots while I retrain my hands and brain. I was trying to throw a tall cylinder last night, but after struggling with the hands and all, I finally stopped the wheel and smooshed the pot. Wow - what a gratifying, fun thing to do! I've previously just struggled on with a pot that was going south on me, with varying results. This time I let it go, with high hopes for next time. :)