They say it's your birthday...

I can't believe the original knothead is turning four tomorrow. Yeah, Iwalani Morgan will be four years old tomorrow.

People tell you when you have kids to cherish every moment. Actually, last time someone said this to me I was in Kroger with all three kids and no other adults right before dinner time. The only thing I was cherishing at that moment was the thought of throwing something heavy in that person's direction.

It's true, though. You're so eager for the first steps, the first words but before you know it, you've practically got a real person on your hands. I realize she's just four, but if you think about how far a person comes in four years, it's amazing. Especially in our family.

Four years ago this day, it was just the two of us and now we're a family of five. Iwa's was the first diaper I had ever changed, now I can do it in my sleep. She was one of the first babies I had ever held, now my arms feel empty without one. I had no idea how much I could love, not just my children, but everyone, four years ago today.

It is truly amazing to think of how much a human infant accomplishes in just four years- from walking to eating to talking and counting, etc... but it's nothing compared to how changed that infant's parents are in that same amount of time. The saying is so true that when a child is born, so is a mother. I guess in a way, it's my birthday too.

Happy birthday, Iwalani and thanks for making me "Mommy".

Long post. Lotsa photos.

I've really been slow about blogging things lately. I can't believe it's been so many days since I've done this last, but I must say that I've been too busy living life to write about it at the moment. Here's a recap of the highlights of the last ten days:

Valentine's day was good. John and I don't do a whole lot for February 14th, but I guess we're making a new tradition. This year and last we celebrated John and Priscilla's birthdays as well as Valentine's day by going to Texas de Brazil for dinner with Tim and P. The restaurant sends free meal coupons to you on your birthday if you sign up for their e-club. This has become pretty much the only time all year I eat red meat but good golly it's good!

I would have taken pictures of this, but the camera added an extra few ounces that, if I had carried, would have made it impossible for them to roll me back to the car when we were done. This was definitely an occasion for stretchy clothing.

The actual day of the 14th was full of big plans. I had gotten a few of my friends together and their families, to go to an African Drum concert for kids. It was going to be awesome, but in true Friskillo style, we were a few minutes late and it was sold out. My friends got to enjoy the concert, my kids got to climb on this horse statue and then we all went to McAlister's. Luckily I hadn't really told the kids what I had planned, so they had no idea that our reason for driving all the way to Germantown was not to climb on this colorful horse and go to lunch. It was great.

After the excitement of all of that, John and I dragged the kids around some furniture stores in search of a new bed. We were still using the furniture I got in middle school (?) and a family of five on Saturday morning just doesn't belong in a wrought-iron queen size bed. It's all fun and games until someone impales themselves on mommy's headboard. We ended up finding a beast of a bed and going back to get it the next day.

The bed was delivered earlier in the week and we promised the big kids that we'd watch their new movie (Madagascar 2) in our new bed. I think we all watched about 15 minutes of it before we were all asleep. Good times.

Monday and Tuesday were no teaching days for me. Monday I took the kids to the zoo in the morning with Grandma Lorna, Keoki, Nani, and Jaxon. It was pretty cold but really fun. I didn't have working batteries in my camera so there's no photos of that.

Tuesday was inservice day for the teachers. I always look forward to this inservice because it's when everyone gets together with their same teachers. Like math teachers meet with math teachers, science with science... It's really the only time all year that I get to go to a meeting where everything pertains to teaching art. It's good to be with other people who do what you do and can relate to your stories.

The best part about this day is that it's at the Memphis College of Art and we have studio workshops. Each year we get to pick one that interests us. One year I picked bookmaking and it introduced me to a whole new world that I have come to love and am still exploring. This year, I took a workshop called "small metals". Sounds cool, right?

It was. We did sand casting. We had little boxes with a sand/oil/silica mixture (mostly felt like really fine sand and smelled *to my disgust* like brake fluid). We made impressions of various toys and stamps and random objects in the sand by pressing them in. We then poured molten pewter into the sand, let it harden, quenched it in water and trimmed it.

It was a pretty straightforward process and very interesting because it's not something you get to do every day (even though due to the low melting point of this pewter the guy said you could do this at home----- he obviously lives in a world I've never known). It was difficult, however, to anticipate the outcome. The sand picked up really small details of whatever you made an impression with- even a fingerprint- but you couldn't really see anything of it until you cast it.

So, I'm looking around the room, gathering things I find interesting and mushing them into the sand and here's what I got:

Yeah, a little creepy. Now I have 6oz of pure pewter creepiness. It made me wonder... and it might be a little morbid, but when I am old and pass away my kids and grandkids are going to be going through my things and find this somewhere in the bottom of a box. Then again, they'll probably know me well enough to think nothing of it.

Sorry for such a long post, but to wrap it up, here are a few pictures from Saturday morning that I just couldn't NOT share.

When in Rome...

... or Shelby Forrest...

Here are some photos from a recent visit to Grandpa Tony's house (also referred to in past posts as "the compound"). It was an absolutely beautiful day! John and I found these cars in a shed out there and the kids really loved them.


John and I also took a ride around the pasture .
I took some photos of pretty sights in the pasture. Of course the novelty of a warm beautiful day in the middle of February made even the freshest manure pile inspiring but I think the way the trees looked was beautiful. I can't wait for Spring.

He's already planning his mid-life crisis.

This weekend I helped celebrate the birthday of one of the three sweetest guys I have ever known. The other two are the one we made (Kawika) and the one who made me (dad).

The saying goes that you can't pick who you fall in love with, but if I could have he would have definitely been in the top ten... at least. Happy birthday, John.