Milestone Minutiae

I've been furiously working on Halloween stuff all month (sorry for the neglect, Henry!), and I've got more to work on before tomorrow! This is basically what the yard looks like now, though.  

I just went through (lots!) of race photos from Henry's mountain biking season. I found some good ones! The team pretty much has a photographer, and parents will share pictures, too. The thing I've noticed most this season is that anytime I see Henry on a bike, he's working HARD. Not that he was slacking in the past, but he's focused and pushing a lot this year.

This workshop was intense. More intense than I expected, and especially taxing on my *brain*! As we eased back into carving on day one, it was deceptively simple. Then when we moved from easier things like defining the tree to harder things like carving the rocks and matterhorn, it got more mentally taxing. But there is SO much information and guidance contained in the shape of the CNC blank that the carving, while time consuming to get it done (it's a huge piece!) wasn't *that* difficult.  The "Next Level" in "Next Level Retreat" really came on strong in days 3 and 4 with the painting. SO many layers. SO much depth created. SO many new ideas about how to look at an object, think about light, and create additional shaping with the paint *in addition to* the shaping that was already present in the carving. Ray's guidance and expert eye was really crucial to keeping everyone on track and getting the results we did.  I learned SO MUCH at this retreat. I can...

The Museum of Illusions was fun and mind-bending. Be forewarned - SO many of the exhibits feature static pictures that your brain interprets as moving or spinning things that I was *almost* motion sick by the end! Who knew? I asked, and it's not that uncommon. 🤣 When I saw we were at the end I was relieved.

This is one of the months that reminds me to take photos of the "everyday" more often. I always take pics at karaoke, but I forget to get pics of what the kids are doing. And they resist, so ... that's not necessarily easy anyway.  In Other News: Drak finished his first training class. He's slow to get used to new places so he wasn't really accepting treats from me until the 3rd of 6 classes. We're going to repeat the class - it'll be kind of boring for me, but now that he's settled in at the location we can do more actual training. And getting him out of the house at least once a week is a good thing, too. I'm determined for him to not be scared of the whole world!