Marine Biology Camp

This was the first of Leia’s three weeks of summer camp - spread over two months - and it was a definite winner. 

She couldn’t wait to tell us what she’d done each day - and also could barely keep her eyes open, so tired was she from all the activities.

 Leia and her new friend 

Monday she dissected a squid - “I got the trachea, where the ink is, and it was SO COOL.”

Tuesday was octopus day, 

with an air-dry clay sculpture

and examination of what Leia said was an “old” specimen. 

Wednesday was dissect a fish with a plastic knife day and Leia brought the backbone (vertebrae?) and tail home in a baggie. (interesting but also, ewwww.)

Thursday was shark day

and diving for fish (gummy fish in whipped cream). 

I’m not sure what they studied today. All Leia talked about was the fake ice they made with water and what looks like the stuffing from disposable diapers. 

It definitely looked like ice but the texture was pretty icky, especially when you’re visually expecting cold and wet. Great base for her clay sculpture, which I forgot to photograph. Such a bad grandma.

Yard Art

I love yard art, so when Leia and I spotted this on sale at a deep discount, I had to have it. 

What makes it even better funnier is that hubby recently told me how much he dislikes flamingos. Biiiiiiiig mistake. How many do I need to acquire before we have a flamboyance of flamingos???

Kid’s Day

It was a divide and conquer have fun kind of day. 

Leanne went with her mom and Pop to the LA Natural History Museum to see the Antarctica exhibit. They thought it was great, with lots of hands-on experiences for kids.

Leia and I had lunch after her marine biology camp (they dissected a squid yesterday!),

 

then did a bit of sewing on her Fair quilt 

before we picked up Jac 

and headed into Ventura to meet up with Donovan 

 Peregrine Falcon 

for a kid-friendly presentation by the Ojai Raptor Center. 

 Full-grown burrowing owl

The talk was great for the adults and bigger kids in the audience 

but Jackie and Donovan were quickly bored. Thank goodness for phones with cameras! 

The presentation was really interesting - I learned it’s probably a screech owl I keep hearing at night in the trees behind our house; burrowing owls mimic the sound of a rattlesnake to scare away predators; kestrels are the fastest animal in the world, faster even than a cheetah, when they dive to catch their prey. So cool. 

Quilts, Cars and Snapchat

Leia wants to enter a small quilt in the Fair this year. 

 “Movies”

We settled on a string design, with an original goal of 9 10” blocks in a 3x3 grid.

 The big reveal after I trimmed the block to size.

Now we’re crossing our fingers and hoping to finish four. She’s at her mom’s the rest of this week, which means no sewing, so we have a lot to do next week once she’s back from morning camp. Entry deadline is the following Sunday, so the pressure is on.

 “Night”

Leia has a theme for each block - the first one was “night” and today’s was “movies”. “Flowers” and “light’ are next up. 

Whenever Donovan comes to visit, he’s always been a Grandma’s boy.

Until this week. 

All he wanted to do was play cars with PopPop. So sweet.

He was ok with me being there, but really Grandma, this is man stuff. 

Gary is trying to teach me to use Snapchat.

It has possibilities . . .

Future Scientists

We took Leia and Leanne to see “Apollo 11 - the Immersive Live Show” at the Rose Bowl tonight. 

We knew this was the story of the moon-landing but we weren’t sure how, exactly, it was going to be told. 

I was expecting more documentary than the live play with historical pictures projected on the 360 degree screen and actual sound clips from the mission. 

Overall, it was very well done, especially the rocket “launch” (Leia loved the seat vibrations) and the lunar lander dropping down to the moon’s surface. 

Leanne was a little bored and fidgety in the beginning but by the end she was all in. Someday, maybe the girls will look back on this as the start of their space careers. Or as just a fun time with Grandma and PopPop. I’m good either way. 

No Regrets. I Hope.

Before the avocado incident, I had big plans for this long weekend. Quilting and sewing and finishing so many things! I took it easy yesterday (my finger gave me no choice) but I was determined to get back on track today.

I got pretty good at flipping everyone off holding the bandaged middle digit up and out of the way while I: finished 5 pillowcases - most are gifts so no photos yet; layered and pinned a wallhanging so it’s ready for quilting (the blue thing above);

and started this quilt for an August birthday present. It’s from a Missouri Star tutorial called “All Stars”. The stars - using this batik roll I bought at the SLO quilt show - will be more prominent once I sew the blocks together.

Not bad for one day’s work. I’m hoping to finish the blocks tomorrow, sew them together on Monday and have it ready for the long-armer by Saturday. I go Thursday to have my stitches removed and I’m really hoping all this activity doesn’t impact the healing process. No not much pain = no problem, right? I’d cross my fingers but . . .

String Block

Fair time is rapidly approaching and Leia doesn’t have many entries this year. 

So we sat down after watching the new SpiderMan movie (excellent!) and started a string quilt. Or maybe a wallhanging. Or could be a pillow . . . 

She wants to do a series of theme blocks. This one is Night, using blues, purples and some galaxy scraps left over from Addy’s astronaut quilt.

The next one will be either Music or Light. She decided to do a same width but different color center strip so they will match up - but not be matchy-matchy - when the blocks are sewn together.

We made a giant mess had fun going through my multiple bags of scraps, sorting them into colors/themes.

 No peeking!

Most are bigger chunks of fabric that need to be cut down before they can be used. I think Leia would have more fun if she could just grab a strip and sew it on. Less thinking and planning, more doing and sewing. 

And admiring. 

Patriotic ER

I got to celebrate the 4th with three blue stitches, a white bandage and lots of red. So patriotic! 

My new, very sharp paring knife slipped as I was *carefully* cutting an avocado. The PA gave me so much lidocaine my whole hand went numb - and is still numb hours later - but when . . . if . . . it wears off I think this is going to hurt. Fortunately, they weren’t busy and we made it home from the ER in time for fireworks with the grandkids. 

Donovan liked his first fireworks, 

Jackie preferred playing with her bubble wand,

and Gary and Shelly celebrated in Simi 

where Thomas’ band performed in the fireworks show. Hope all y’all had a fun, safe holiday. 

Power Troubles

About 3 weeks ago, I plugged in my hair dryer and blew the electrical in a couple of rooms - the most important (to me, anyway) being my craft room. Resetting the fuse(s) and replacing the something-or-other ground fault thingee (technical term - good thing hubby knows more about electricity than I do!) didn’t solve the issue, so we got on the waiting list for an electrician friend of Gary’s. (Apparently summers are very busy for electricians; some we contacted never even returned our phone call.)

We also left that circuit turned off, which turned out to be a Very Good Thing. See the red arrow above? That’s supposed to be a white wire. It’s black and singed from the contacts sparking in this 40ish-year-old plug from our master bathroom. Needless to say, Jeremy replaced every electrical outlet on that circuit and will be back in the fall to replace ALL the old outlets. 

He also found/fixed a rats-nest of miswiring in another room and added several new outlets, including a high-power 220v receptacle in the garage for hubby’s latest toy tool.

 Stick welder

After 5 hours work and a very reasonable final bill, we have ourselves a new electrician. Crossing fingers we won’t need him often but it’s reassuring to know we have someone to call when things go wrong.