Plein air paintings, studio art and lessons
On Saturday, a trip to the music store to get strings turned into a trip to get 6 more: Ford asked for his own guitar and we flat out bought him one. And do you know what? He’s picked it up like a natural. Here he is playing Mozart’s Minuet in G. Minus the Mozart. And the minuet part. But the G–he’s got that,, and I can’t believe how his fingers are already able to wrap themselves around the fretboard to play a chord. It’s amazing.
Austin awoke and fell back to sleep again tonight under the clouds; it was invigorating. It was the first noticeable cold front of the season. Please do not notice that I was taking this picture while driving.
Ford has a new piece of jewelry, the hydroxide molecule ring. Actually, it’s a small keyring with, oh, I don’t know, some sort of ball attached to it. Something like that. And I wasn’t driving when I took this picture, I was at a stoplight. Anyway, he removed it from a little chotchkie that Damon brought home, put it on his finger, and asked me what kind of molecule it looked like. Ford is into molecular models, atomic models, skeletal models. I can thank Bill Nye. Thank you, Bill Nye! You rock! Except when Ford is bouncing off the furniture at 4pm, when I am so very tired in the afternoon, proclaiming (no, shouting) that he is an electron. But it was very cute when he dissected his birthday balloons into protons and neutrons. Of course, the whole bunch of them was the nucleus. Thank you, Bill Nye!
The last of the Gayfeather is in bloom, but most has gone to seed and left to drape the new stars:… 
the grasses.
The Muscadines are ripe,
and the Beautyberries are shouting.
Today was Ford’s blue+green+robot+fish+Fourth Birthday Party. All of the pre-party freaking out was worth the post-party glow, as you can see:
Oh, I was fit to be tied until the guests actually arrived. From there, it was, well cake. But even the cake-decorating stressed me out.
However, it was a success, measured in burps.
And blurs.
