Last day of school, 2024
Every lake has its monster
Just for fun we rode over to her school.
New art!
Flashback to when Chloe was the littlest Viking.
Foreshadowing
Nature!
Chloe painted this owl for a friend at school.
The artist at work.
Competing at the track meet.
Chloe playing recorder for the 8th grade graduation ceremony.
Use this in case of trouble with the help.
Chloe and her friend Sophia having fun.
Trying on a more formal look
Origami
Origami
The Dark Side of the Easter Bunny
Kitty?
What’s in that hand?
What is that, anyway?
First making comics, then tacos!
Un Sombrero y una niña
Everyone needs two watches when cooking.
Shady Cat
A kitty on a cupcake!
OMSI – The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.
Fun place! It starts with a dinosaur…
Includes a submarine…
Launch torpedoes!
Chloe’s not ready to dive!
Many mysterious dials…
So, I started this for Chloe by drawing the first panel with the chicken with a hot dog…
The order of the panels is a little hard to figure out, but let the epic battle begin!
Chloe has one more year at her current school, and we’re planning on getting her into the Arts High School the year after! A few days earlier we did a comic jam with a friend of mine who is a professional illustrator and animator.
We haven’t figured out an end for our Cat and Snail story. If you’re wondering, the first cat is by S. W. Conser, the second by the 13 yr old, and the childish scrawl is mine.
What’s this? Steve didn’t totally forget Fastnacht Day this year? Nope!
But he did forget until the day-of, so we went with this recipe which doesn’t need to raise overnight.
This year I was smart enough to halve the recipe so that we only have too many delicious donut-like pastries around instead of way, way too many.
And they sure are good!
For the second dance of the year, the theme was “Black and White” in hopes the kids would make an attempt at dressing more formally.
Chloe went with white dress shirt, black skirt, stompy-boots and of course, a black tie.
This is the “Before” shot.
Here’s the “during” shot…
…and pooped-out afterwards!
Our cold snap is coming to an end, much to the relief of the people out there who lost power. Ice storm last night and today we went out in a light drizzle to see if we could sled.
Icicle nose!
Setting up the tube…
Introduction to ice on hills.
And another victory walk home.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, especially in the lower elevations, snow is pretty rare. It also often turns to rain quickly and opportunities for sledding here in the Willamette Valley are few and far between. When it does snow, it tends to be pretty wet but during this cold snap it’s been very dry and produced a very good sledding field around the corner and it stuck around a second day! So we went back for more!
Belly flop!
Victory!
And here Chloe gets covered in snow…
Hey Joe, whaddaya know? A long cold snap brought several inches of snow.
Dry snow, like we never get!
Let’s go sledding Dad!
Another good run.
And a victorious walk home.
When 13-yr-olds take their holiday gift cards shopping…
These boots are made for… ?
And below Chloe models her new baggie pants, stomp-y boots and T-shirt.
