Lanie's first sleepover

Again - just wanted to share this... Lanie and her cousin, Noelle, had a sleepover. This was when we were in Long Island for Pop's funeral. We came home from the calling hours, and the girls were in bed - poor Noelle though - Lanie is a real mover in her sleep, so eventually, Noelle was kicked out of her bed, and went to sleep with mommy & daddy...

Lithography (my artwork)

I thought I would share this with whoever reads this... I am taking a lithography class now (last class for my degree). I had other plans on what I would use as my images, but as we all know, things change sometimes. When my Pop Pop died, I wanted to do something special for my family, because he was so special to all of us. I chose one of my Fav. photos of Pop when he was young, and drew it rather largely with litho crayons (can't erase, so you can't make mistakes) on limestone. From that, I used gum arabic and nitric acid to etch the stone. From that, I printed 12 prints of my Pop Pop, one for each of my sisters, one for my Dad, one for Auntie, and one for my cousins, Kristen and Danielle (each). Today is father's day, so I gave Dad his, and one for my sister Shawna. I rarely draw, and drawing people is particularly difficult, since you lose their likeness if you don't catch the most important details. You learn a great deal from drawing too - I learned that Pop and I had the same teeth (shape). I never knew that, since he had aged, and his teeth were replaced with dentures. Even my dentist could tell we were related (I had to show her the print... I am particularly proud of this one).

I hope you enjoy. If you are one of my sisters (or auntie or cousins), I will be sending you a print soon!

Love,
Catherine

PS - these are some of the different stages the stone went through... I thought I would share the process a little with you all.

Isn't she lovely?

Of course she is. This was at brunch the other weekend in the middle of our bike ride - she was very huggy with mommy, which I always love!

"If yer happy in your nose, cwap your hands"

Just a little something cute - Lanie likes to sing - a lot. So, she really enjoys the book that Aunt Barb & Uncle Chris gave her last year - "Clap Your Hands"

Though, the other day I heard her singing it - she was singing "If yer happy in your nose, cwap your hands"...

I thought that was funny.

"It's a standing bottom!"

This is what Lanie said last night as we walked by a few nude bottom-halves of mannequins...

Damn plumbing...

So, um, last night our kitchen sink stopped draining. We tried the plunger - it didn't work. Tried liquid drainer, didn't work. Tried an auger that we bought last night from the home of pot (home depot), didn't work. Oh crap.. time to call the plumber. That is something that luckily, we have never had to do, until last night. I left a message with the answering service at Roto Rooter to have someone call me back. They called first thing this morningand were able to come out on a non-emergency call at 10am. Not too bad of a turn around time anyhow, right? So, Joe from Roto Rooter showed up and quoted us a charge of $257.95 to unclog the drain. Ugh, that seems like a lot for what was to be a 5 minute job. So, we said ok, and off he went to clear the drain. Two hours later, he is still here, and the clog was way the hell down the pipes, through the basement...

All in all, it took 2 1/2 hours to clear this thing up! He advised us to remove our garbage disposal all together, and not to use one again. Apparently in older houses with older pipes, garbage disposals are very bad. Wonderful, since we JUST bought the thing...

Nonetheless, the problem is fixed, thanks to Joe at Roto Rooter, and to be honest, that was a decent experience. He was very friendly, seemed really honest, and should we need a plumber again, I will ask to have him back out. He was really fantastic and pleasant to deal with. So much so, that I think I will call Roto Rooter to compliment his work and his great attitude.

THANKS!

Link to some photos

Occasionally I will upload photos to the web to share with y'all... this is one of those times. If you want to take a look at the graduation photos from this past May, here they are!

PS - just click on where it says "LINK tO SOME PHOTOS" to get to the pics...

Love you all!

The feeding of the giant birds

'Twas a nice day today, so we decided it would be fun to take some old bread to the bay and feed the ducks - apparently it is a nuclear bay... look at the size of those beasts!! Honestly, the swans were rather intimidating, size-wise, but other than the one that thought Lanie's hand looked like a tasty snack, all of them were really quite docile. There were some babies there too, whch are always so nice to see.

You can't see it from this photo, but the swans were actually much larger than Lanie!!