test garvin wordpress

My mother was in town recently and sent us some lovely photos she took.

Here are Arthur and Lewis in their 'fancy clothes' at Amy and Paul 's wedding last weekend.

google just came out with some slick ways to display blogs. I'm gonna try some. Since our blog is so picture heavy this might be a way for it to load faster and only display the photos that you click on rather than everything by default. I think you, as a viewer, can switch between the different views. If you have time please see what you think works best for our blog and let us know!

I couldn't help myself, I bought Art a pogo stick. He's having a great deal of fun. So much, in fact, that I just bought myself one, too!

Today we took a trip to the apple orchard . Two huge 10-lb bags of honeycrisp are sitting on our back porch right now. And will be eaten I'm guessing within a week. Art and Lewis devour them, Papa does, Mama does and Netta and Bailey happily gnaw at them. It's hard to see here but Lewis is atop Jessica shoulders reaching for a fruit. For the past couple months Art has been unable to eat an apple without it first being cut up (he has a couple loose teeth up front). But today Art told me with great confidence that he could eat an apple regular. Here's a photo of him biting into it (he did this only once, since small amounts of blood and pain quickly followed). And, about an hour later, the thing fell out (see his bloody smile below). Bloody, toothless smile (small to lessen grossness...) Success. Netta and Bailey immediately crawled under a tree and grabbed a couple apples. They just make little tooth marks and require a pre-bitten piece to really go at it. Feeding chicke...

I found a bird feeder for free the other day, put it up and within twelves hours had a whole slew of birds (downy woodpecker, brown creeper, white breasted nut hatch, house finch, chickadee and yes, eventually a squirrel). Although it's hard to see here Arthur and Lewis each got a bird book and ran outside like little ornithologists watching and looking at whatever random page their book was opened to.

I was really proud that this bird came out looking like a magazine. Here's the recipe , it is divine.

Lewis, a few months ago, was playing with some trucks in the living room. "Papa?" he said "What is your favorite truck." I was not really paying attention to him. He asked again, so to please him I blurted, "garbage truck." Those two words immediately burned into his developing brain. And now, whenever we pass a garbage truck he says "Papa! There's your favorite truck!" as if he's discovered something wonderful, just for me. Lewis' big bright eyes look at me, seeming to say "Doesn't that make you super happy? To see your favorite truck?!" I realize now that when Lewis asks me a question, he really is doing just that. He wants to know something. So I am careful to give a truthful answer. I'm starting to like garbage trucks more and more as Lewis points them out, and by the time I tell him the truth about how they're not my favorite, they might actually be.

Lewis now goes to preschool three times a week (at Willow, the same one Art did for the past two years). Ms. Jen just posted this lovely photo on her preschool blog (Lewis is the one laying down with the shaggy blond hair). and here's a fun group photo she took after an Autumn walk:

I just helped Art with one of his first homework assignments.  Yes, he had to finish tracing some 2's last week, and work on coloring in a picture with lots of small parts, but today was the first time I really had to do the parent/child "Don't want to do my homework" struggle. The assignment was to finish a picture that he started at school.  He told me that his teacher, Gloria, said he was supposed to add "more details" to the picture.  I think it's a fine motor/writing readiness activity.  He said he was not supposed to use crayons and asked if I had colored pencils and colored pencils with "no color", aka regular pencils.  The paper was only about 6x6 inches square.  Fine motor, indeed! Since he was totally intimidated by trying to decide what to draw and because i thought the purpose was not artistic authenticity but rather just practice using a pencil I drew some small things on a separate piece of paper for him to imitate in ...

Today was Art's scheduled day to share something in kindergarten. And lucky for us, he chose Netta and Bailey. Jessica and I were of course rooting for this, and had mentioned it in passing as something he could share. "Well, think about what you'd like to share. It could be a story, something you made, the babies, whatever you want." So, we did put the idea in his mind, but he's the one who woke up and decided with confidence what he'd like to share. He took a number of 'questions.' Including, "um...um...um...um...um...I forgot." And another, "They're cute." then Arthur answering the question, "I know." Someone also asked who was oldest, and Art said Bailey. WRONG! And then, as you can see in the video below, someone asked what do they like to play with. "People," he said. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDaggWez6uU?rel=0] I think it's fun to see what the other kids' names are.

Here is a lovely piece from Art's first weeks in Kindergarten.  I really like the art teacher there.  I happen to know that the grid was one day's project as an exploration of pencil and dark/light lines and that the next week they used paint, apparently revisiting the paper they started with the previous week. I'm not sure what this project was about but Art kept saying, "And see how I filled this in?" Here's his name!  And his self portrait hanging on the wall at school. Can you tell which is his? Art was very proud to have written the word "Stop" on this bus, which he cut out himself (following the lines drawn by the teacher).  He also drew all the kids in the back of the bus, sitting vertically of course, and the bus driver in the front.  "See, it says STOP.  S - T - O - P." This is Lewis' wet on wet watercolor painting. He called it 'Big' because he had filled in all the white space. The paint was big even though the paper ...

I made some photographs for a two-part series that ran today and yesterday about Worthington, a small town full of new life and people in southern Minnesota. The headline: " Worthington was dying. Then, enter the immigrants. " Below are some photos for part one. Go here for photos and story for part two. Headline: "Worthington schools' growth defies rural trends, but its struggle to help minority students succeed does not." http://photo.twincities.com/ssp/m/embed.js SlideShowPro({ attributes: { id: "album-4373", width: 800, height: 600 }, mobile: { auto: false }, params: { bgcolor: "#000000", allowfullscreen: true }, flashvars: { xmlFilePath: "http://photo.twincities.com/ssp/images.php?album=4373", displayMode: "Manual", videoAutoStart: "Off" } }); and here's today's front page, which was selected as one of the Newsuem's daily top 10. Designer tip: U...

This picture seems to really capture me as a mother in a way I'm not used to seeing, but that I really cherish. My kids clearly love, trust and need me in this picture and I am there sharing my love, trust and care with them. Cheesy, I know, but I could stare at this all day. Look at Art, posing there like a Strong Man. And Lewis, leaning on his Momma, hanging on to three-years-old with all his might. I just love this picture. The boys and I were making peanut butter cookies, something we hadn't done in months. You just can't bake with your kids when there are babies crawling around. The kids take extra attention and time to measure and mix and don't have the patience for multiple baby interruptions. No, we needed a grandma to tend to the babies so we could bake together and Nan was on the job. She also took the picture. Thanks, Nan. Thanks again.

[I wrote this a while back after our trip to Indiana but forgot to post.] When I was a kid our family visited my grandparents in Wabash, Indiana at least once a year. And the highlight of that trip for Josh and I was always the cabin and pond. My grandpa build a cabin, dug out a pond, stocked it with fish and created a sanctuary of sorts everyone to swim and play. Get a hook, throw some liver on it and WHAM BAM you had yourself a huge catfish. I remember seeing grandpa bang it's slimy head with a log and then watch it twitch in the grass. Mmm, catfish stew. Bass fishing was amazing, too. And bluegills. There was a raft in the middle of the pond and we spent hours and hours swimming and diving and drinking soda. I still often think of the cabin when I taste a coke. I hope to dig up some old photos to post here some day. Well, it's different out there now. The kids have grown, Grandpa died a few years ago and the weeds have grown over. When I took the boys out there a couple mon...

As local folks know, the Minnesota Lynx are en route to winning their first WNBA championship. Jess and I went to our second game last night, the first in a three game playoff series with San Antonio (Jessica's sister Emily watched the kid--thanks, em!). My friend John Autey from work (who was shooting the game) took these highly entertaining photos of us in the stands.

Netta is aggressive and full bodied. She doesn't hesitate or consider, she just does does does. And it's pretty fun to see. Here she is helping with the laundry in a photo and video . [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxrVWhPf4Ak]

Look what I just pulled out of Art's back pack. EAT IT BITCHES!!! not a turtle colored wrong!!! BOOYA!!!!

Last year I spent the better part of a day capturing video at Art's preschool, Willow. Recently I finally had time to edit the thing. Art and his friends are in kindergarten now, but in this video they'll forever be building with blocks and dancing across the room hugging. Baby Nora, Ms. Jen's daughter, makes an appearance in this video (she's now a toddler...), as does her older son Will. Now Lewis goes to Willow, playing and learning and growing. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc4Tbb81MNs?rel=0&w=640&h=390]

Ben is out of town for a couple nighst shooting the Vikings in San Diego.  While he is enjoying the hotel and the expenses-paid dining I am holding down the fort solo.  I'm actually not complaining here.  I'm boasting.  I have lost my cool a couple times, both times were around 5pm, but mostly we have had a lovely go at it putzing around the house and yard, visiting the Farmer's Market for apples and mini donuts, meeting up with friends for a neighborhood butterfly festival and enjoying tea and scones each afternoon.  Basically, both Ben and I are having a love affair with our children and I feel especially fortunate to be able to spend so much time watching them live their lives.  Here is an email from Ben last night that sweetly sums up why I'm not complaining: --------------- Subject: How did the butterflies go?   you know, I was thinking about it on the airplane, I love each one of our kids so much. They're all so wonderful. Each one. 1-4. I love art, his though...

Just had to jot this down - Lewis has been playing with the string from his crane for the past thirty minutes.  It broke off the truck and so he is enjoying tying the string to many things and using the hook at the other end.  He walked up to me while I was rocking a baby and whispered, eyes bulging and wide,"I want to make a pulley with you!" and then left the room. Later he found a place to loop his string over and made the superman sound, "Dun da da duuuunnn!  This is a job for ME!" Moments like these make me just want to eat him up!!

The state fair is way to expensive and entirely overwhelming. That said, we did have fun today. here are some photos: tilt-a-whirl. They have that stick-to-the-wall look, don't they? Aloft in the Ferris wheel. Art clung to me glue but Lewis was entirely fearless. Sometimes Jessica and I turn around and Arthur and Lewis are hugging and dancing and enjoying a love fest of sorts. It's a wonderful thing to witness. Here's one: And another: