On Thursday morning I leave for Durango, CO for an art show.  Raindance Gallery has a great body of paintings and I am really looking forward to getting out to Colorado for a few days and then on to New Mexico to see some of my family.  I will make sure to post how the show goes, but I think it should be fun.

Happy Mother's Day! 

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!

As I mentioned in a previous blog, my family and many of our great friends are heading down to San Diego on Saturday the 29th to participate in the San Diego Walk for Autism.  This is our fourth year doing the walk, and fourth year as Team Tobey.  As mentioned in my bio, my oldest child, Tobey, was diagnosed with autism at 2 1/2.  He is now 6 years old and we have found that early intervention has been a real blessing.  Although he has a ways to go, he has improved SO MUCH in the past few years, and we are so proud of him!   We are also very blessed by the support we have been given from our family and friends and through Tobey's school district.  Doing the walk every year is just another great way to say thanks, give back, and have a little party in San Diego with some friends and family who love Tobey too!  Hopefully I will figure out how to up-load pictures to this blog and display Team Tobey for all to see (like I said before blogging has a real "learning curve").  For more information about the walk go to www.sandiegowalkforautism.com or www.nfar.org.

March 25th

March so far has been particularly busy with the kids being on spring break, and me getting ready for my May 9th Durango show.  Right now I am working on Mountain Range paintings and am using photos and sketches from my trip to Ouray, Colorado two years ago.  The paintings so far are turning out to be really exciting with deep greens being the prevalent color.  Before the show I will send out an e-mail alert to check out the portfolio page with Colorado paintings.   I do love Colorado and am really looking forward to getting back out there in May, even though I won’t get back home to my kids till the end of the day on Mother’s Day (sigh). 

The other big thing my family has going this weekend is our Fourth Annual Walk for Autism down in San Diego.  Every year we get a large group together down in Balboa Park and do a 3 mile walk and then afterwards head over to my husband’s dad’s house for Beth’s Infamous Chips.  Beth, (Mitch’s step-mom) makes amazing tortilla chips, which she says are very easy, but no one really believes her.  The Autism Walk is really awesome because we have a terrific group of friends who really go above and beyond to get out there and support our family and Team Tobey.  We look forward to it every year, and always love a good excuse to get together with friends.  I would like to thank our good friend Duane from HomeTown Financial for supporting Team Tobey by providing t-shirts.  They always look awesome.

In the next week my family is going up North for a last week of spring skiing and some outdoor painting time.  I am really looking forward to spending some time outside, reading my pile of novels that are currently stacked by the door, and I think that my kids are looking forward to trying out their scooters in new terrain. 
In the meantime, new work is in progress.  Paintings of various degrees of completion are propped up all over the house, and the creative juices are flowing…I better get back to work!

Baseball Season-Opening Day is Almost Here!

Perhaps this will come as a surprise to some, but I have to admit that I really like Baseball.  And by like I don’t mean watching it on T.V. or listening to baseball on the radio…I don’t like that.  I mean that I enjoy going to baseball games. 

My husband enjoys listening to games, in fact while we were going to school in Colorado, it was nearly impossible to hear a Padre game on the radio, but somehow he managed to find a spot that he could drive to atop a certain hill to hear the fuzzy radio broadcast…a little quirky…but I still find that sort of charming because it shows he is devoted.

Anyway, back to baseball.   It isn’t so much the crack of the bat or the roar of the crowd; for me it’s the food and the atmosphere that keep me going back for more.  It all started when we moved to San Diego after college and I began going to many games and slowly caught on to the world of baseball.  I probably asked many very dumb questions in the beginning, and I have to admit I didn’t get it for awhile.  What happened though was that the Padres ended up going to the World Series during my second year as a Padre fan, and somewhere in the midst of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire hitting homeruns and the Padres having one exciting game after another baseball seemed to click for me and I was hooked. 

 It wasn’t always smooth sailing though.  I was nearly banned from baseball for life during the 98 series for commenting that more people were wearing white than any other color (in my defense I am visual person and that was interesting to me)!  I also foolishly tossed my commemorative World Series towel after the fourth game (now I know we save those things).   The thing I have learned about baseball in the last decade is that baseball suits me.  I like baseball because for 9 innings I have to sit still, and that is good for a hyper person like me. There is something almost therapeutic about sitting in the stands watching the game and zoning out-so to speak.  I like that my husband buys me food and drinks at baseball games.  I love to bring my good friend with me because over the course of the game we solve all of our problems and everyone else’s too, and by the 9th inning are better friends.   I like it when her husband comes to the games because he and my husband watch the game and drink beer and by the end of the 9th inning are better friends too.  I like that even the world’s best hitter sometimes strikes out, and that sometimes the rookie makes the play of the game. I like that someone can pitch a no hitter and become a king, and that there are stats for every single tiny thing that happens over the course of the game.  There is probably even a stat somewhere that says more people wore white to the 98 series than any other color.   I like that baseball is a game of failure, as a sport it probably most mirrors life.  I mean who really makes it on base every time?  Who always makes the perfect play?  It doesn’t happen that often, so when it does it is all the sweeter.  Happy Opening Day!

An Inconvenient Truth—Its Time to Make Our Yards look Nice

Spring time in California is really the best season.  You have those beautiful days where everyone can’t wait to go outside, and stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot become crowded with do-it yourselfers who want to try and make their yards prettier.  Now I would never claim to be much of a gardener.  In fact my last attempt at growing something can be referred to at the great tomato massacre of 06’.  But I try to be helpful and supportive of my husband, and his efforts to beautify our yard.

Our home, maybe unfortunately, has a hill next to it that faces the street.  This hill is our responsibility to make nice looking.  I think that it’s safe to say the hill has become the bane of my husband’s existence.  For reasons unknown to us, nothing really grows on the hill-except weeds.  We are not creative landscape people, so the hill is this canvas that we aren’t sure how to paint.  But I’ll give credit where credit is due; my husband will most likely spend the better part of a weekend attempting to make the hill look nice for the next few months until one hot day when everything he has so carefully planted dies in about one hour. 

The other thing spring always makes me think of is Earth Day.  Earth Day in New Mexico and Colorado are big deals.  College towns have parades, live bands, and booths featuring things like potato chips made out of some composted material.  When I lived those states I always suspected Earth Day celebrations were more about playing hacky sack and listening to the Grateful Dead then actually about saving the melting glaciers.
Now I live in California, where it seems like people want to be environmental, but we all really like our SUV’s.  And we would bring our own canvas bags to the store, but we know that teen-agers would laugh at us.  I haven’t met anyone in California, who has actually seen the movie, An Inconvenient Truth.  I wouldn’t mind hearing about it, but I know my ADD would kick in after about 20 minutes.  Someone just needs to tell me what I have to do to stop global warming.  Plant more trees on our hill, okay we can do that.  Turn out lights when were not in a room. check that one off too.  Build a windmill in our backyard; I don’t think that is going to happen.   I think that the best way to save the environment is to stop wrapping toys in ten tons of plastic.  Anyone with a child under 10 knows what I am talking about.  It’s ridiculous that you have spend 10 minutes cutting a Barbie out of the box, when its hair will be ruined in less than five.  Toys should be sold in reusable Tupperware, or old school style, with no box at all.
 In the meantime, I am doing what I can, and that means making my small children walk to school, even when it’s cold outside.  I am doing my part by not driving 2 blocks to drop them off.  Besides, they need the exercise, and so does my dog for that matter.  Plus, it’s good for them to get a little Southern California fresh air.  Doing my part for the environment also means recycling the beer bottles after a long weekend of do-it yourself hillside landscaping.  Every little bit helps.  Happy Spring!

So if you are reading this on-line it means that Fara (my graphic designer) and I have finally figured out how to find our way into the blog section of this site!!!  Of course I am not entirely sure what I really need to say in a blog, I just knew that when I wanted to have a web-site that I insisted on having a blog too.  Needless to say, once the blog was set up, and in place two things happened;  number 1, I had no idea how to work the blog, and two, I had a horrible case of writers block that lasted for several days until about 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning when I woke up and knew exactly what I wanted to say about my new web-site.  After that I could not sleep, and in a nutshell that is how the creative process seems to work for me!

In the mean time I am really excited about my new site and it has been really fun hearing the feed back regarding it.  I have to thank Fara for doing such an awesome job,  for putting up with me changing my mind numerous times, and for not wacking me repeatedly for singing Dust in the Wind over and over  while we worked together on the site.  I guess she is used to me now.  So please enjoy, and add comments (I have no idea how that works) but if you can figure it out that would be awesome, and in the meantime, check back often and spread the word as I hope to add to this blog often!
thanks,
Jami