It has been a busy week, especially for my sister Jessie and her husband Hector who welcomed their first child into the world on Wednesday, April 2nd, Hector Arthur.  This little nephew of mine was born in Birmingham England, so unfortunatley I won't be seeing him in person any time soon...but I do wish I was there to give him some kisses and hugs!  So Crongratulations Jessie and Hector!!

Other things going on have included a ski trip to Northern California with the family.  We put our kids on ski's for the second time last Monday, and they both had a good time, and for the hour and half that we got to ski by ourselves without kids we had a BLAST!!  I do miss that skiing everyday type of lifestyle that I enjoyed in college...sometimes its hard to grow up!  We also enjoyed some sledding and a lot of eating out, and what isn't there to like about that. 

I also read some good books in the past two weeks including:  Beautiful Boy which is essentially a memior about addiction told from the father's point of view and was incredibly well written.  It ought to be required reading for parents, as it was interesting, sad, introspective, and educational.   Next I read Garden Spells, by a new author, Sarah Addison Allen.  This was an enjoyable, light read, especially after Beautiful Boy.  It did remind me a little bit of a Alice Hoffman book, because the plot revolves around sisters, and their family who have a little bit of witch craft in their blood.  Still it was entertaining and I was actually sorry to finish the book as fast as I did.  Then almost by accident I read a teen-age girl book (yes, I did judge the book by its cover) called Bounce by Natasha Friend.  This was cute, and full of teen angst, and all about a step family.  This would be a great book for any young/teen girl ( and truthfully, I really did enjoy it)!  Last, I plowed through Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.  This is somewhat of a Brave New World type of book, which I did not expect.  This would be a terrific book group type of novel to read because it really is full of a lot of moral and scientific, possibly religious conflict that made it fairly interesting.  The writer writes in a non-judgemental way, so at the end of the novel I kept thinking "why didn't they do this?  why didn't they think that"?  It would have been nice to discuss this book.

Last, it was great to do some painting up at the cabin.  This has been a beautiful spring, and I loved the landscape as we were driving with all of the rolling hills dusted with wild flowers.  The scenery was very inspiring. Then to get home and jump back into several paintings I had been working on before the trip was also exciting.  For me, it is always great to see a painting with fresh eyes, especially when they are in progress.  I usually have two to four paintings in the works at anyone time, because they do become somewhat of a puzzle that I find I have to solve. 
Happy April!