Origami Dogs from Around the World

Yay! The powers of the internet! Magnolia was very excited to have friends and family sent in pictures of their origami dogs after her instructional video.

Sent in by our friend Jemma in New Zealand

 Sent in by Maggie's Nana in Washington

Art Show and Auction

Every year, Catlin Gabel has an auction fundraiser. Each class creates an art project to contribute as an auction item. There is a corresponding art show in one of our galleries to display the pieces to be auctioned along with other art created this year. 

Click to see more about Magnolia and Kaleia's pieces

Dolphin Carpool

Party Planning

"Mama, we're planners," Magnolia says to me with a proud grin on her face. She's right. So one night as I'm looking for things to do to occupy the girls until bedtime, I decide to brainstorm with her how to celebrate her birthday. After assuring her that Brian and I would have the final say...

10 on 10/10/10

I've always wanted to participate in the 10 on 10 photo project:

Take a photo every hour for ten consecutive hours on the tenth of each month. Document a day of your life and find beauty among the ordinary moments. Then share your beauty with us!

10/10/10 seemed like a must. They are not the best pictures in the world, but they capture our day, even if the posting is almost two weeks late.

8:00 am - Breakfast

9:00 am - Waking Up Papa

10:00 am - Sisters Playing

11:00 am - Greek Orthodox Church

12:00 pm - Lunch!

1:00 pm - Everyone was Napping...so no pictures

2:00 pm - Grading Pre-Calculus Midterms...Blahk!

3:00 pm - Maggie Waking from Her Nap...Why does she bounce like that? 

4:00 pm - Entertaining Maggie While Driving

5:00 pm - Finding a Cricket with Papa

6:00 pm - Blowing Dandilions

8:00 pm - Getting Creamed by Brian for the 9th time...Next Week We are Switching to Cribbage

9:00 pm - At least we are together, right?

10:10 on 10/10/10

I'm a Gardener! I Garden!

When Brian brought in this zucchini from my garden today I swelled with pride.

"That came from my garden," I thought. "I grew something! We need to celebrate! This deserves a blog post!

Then I remembered:

a) the only plant in our house that has survived 7 years of marriage has done so because Brian waters it. When he goes away, plants die.

b) my mom helped me plant my garden this spring. In fact, I'm pretty sure she planted that zucchini plant. I just told her where to put it.

c) my mom also did all the weeding in my garden because I was pregnant.

d) Brian watered the garden probably more than I did.

e) Brian "harvested" the zucchini in question.

And after I remembered these things I felt a little like Bob in What About Bob? You know the scene where he goes sailing. He's tied to the mast and can't possibly contribute anything to the process of moving a boat through water, yet he's ecstatic.

You and me Bob. I'm a gardener!

An End and Two Beginnings

Shannon and I really love blogging. It was one of the best developments of last year, finding this hobby. But over time, sharing this cyberspace has caused a lot of tension .

I am an absolute stickler for good grammar so over the past year or so I have proofread and edited every one of Shannon's posts, and while Shannon often appreciates the end results in hindsight, the process isn't usually very fun. More times than not, it ends in tears.

So, prompted by some recent posts and after a lot of discussion, we have decided to go our separate blogging ways. Rushcapades is finished. Shannon will continue posting all the Magnolia news on her new blog called Maggie's Mama's Musings and I will be free to write about nonsense and whatever else I want at Brain's Brain Farts.

Thanks for reading Rushcapades. I hope you'll continue to be our readers.

PS - I promised that I'd post part two of Magnolia's birth story, and I will. It'll just be on my new blog.

Bunny Beanie

"cast on 3 sts, cast off 1 st, slip stitch now on right needle back onto left needle...

k2tog, k5 8 times (48 sts)...
purl 2tog, purl 6, purl 2tog, k2tog, k8, k2tog,..."

Those were excerpts from the knitting pattern of my first project. I recently saw this really cute baby hat in a pregnancy magazine, and thought it would be great if my sister made it for our baby. She had another idea: "You should make it, and I will help you."

My sister, Alli has taught me the basics before, but it was definitely like starting from scratch. I had to learn how to cast on, knit, purl, work with two colors, and join stitches! Fortunately, I didn't have to do any "character building" (undoing your work to fix a mistake), mostly because Alli was there to save the day. I did have to finish the last ear on my own at home though, a little scary, but it worked out ok.

If you walked past me while I was working you would see how hard I was concentrating, and might mistakenly think I wasn't having much fun. On the contrary, it was a blast to do a project again (I haven't had much time for my sewing hobby lately), especially one for our baby!

"I'm knitting, I'm a knitter, way far away from the Alli" -- in the voice of Bill Murray in What About Bob?