Catching up on non-trip happenings

Gah!  I got distracted and stopped blogging.  Again.  Let's see if I can do a photo dump and catch up a little.  

Presents for the grandkids from our road trip.  

The girls attended a week of Hand Camp again this summer.  

Such a blessing!  They had a great time, and it does my heart good to have them in an environment where limb differences are totally normal.  

They came home tired, of course.

Grumman, impersonating a normal cat.  He doesn't usually do boxes.  

Oh, those pinterest ideas.  Sigh.  

I thought I'd try one of those pretty melted crayon canvases.  I kept seeing them in my feed and thinking how easy it looked to get great results.  

It was set to be 106*, so I put it out before we went to church and left it alone all day.  

The result was... disappointing.  

Hannah designs weapons in her spare time.  Rolled paper and paper clips became nunchucks.  She was contemplating adding marbles inside the tubes to give them more weight.  

Grumman was fascinated.  

He's a pretty boy.  

I love my first bulletin board this school year.  We have lots of paper book covers, and it was fun to get to use them creatively.  

Fiona, hiding in the shelves.

First day of school!  

Is it a bad sign when you go in for an office "procedure" and they give you a stress ball to squeeze if you feel any "discomfort"?

Hannah needed a pet photo for the yearbook, and Grumman grudgingly obliged.  He really does like her.  They have a whole routine where they play after her bath, and he claws her wet hair.  

We're on a hard boiled egg kick here.  One batch, I forgot to crayon them while they were hot (when they crayon melts against the shell, leaving a vivid THIS IS HARD BOILED! warning to anyone reaching for eggs) and my later attempts were faint Asian character looking lines.  

Oh Fiona.  That's not your most flattering pose, sweetheart.  

I saw this bus while I was out, and it mentioned free student passes.  I looked it up, and it's a pretty cool program.  On demand, corner to corner (as opposed to door to door) service.  We got Hannah a free pass at the library.  I think it would be good for her to learn to navigate public transport, I just haven't figured out where to have her go yet.  

Katie fell.  I admire her toughness.  She's a trooper.  

Hey, look, we've hit September!  We're really rolling along now!  My 9/11 book display.  

I had my 4th grade class make book cats inspired by my bulletin board.  It was a fun project.  I left them up for a couple weeks as library decor before sending them home.  

Whew!  I'll break this here.  

Mission Santa Barbara

This was the last mission we visited, but far from our last stop.  The mission was hosting the Michelangelo Sistine Chapel Exhibition while we were there.   Various artworks had been reproduced on a large scale so we could walk around and enjoy them up close.  

Standing before this panel, I was focused on the book, but Katie wanted to know when her arms would get bigger.  She obsessed about arm size for most of this visit, and has brought it up a few times since.  

"Mom!  Look!  A caduceus!"  I may have been a little proud at the eyebrows that raised from such an obscure vocabulary word.  

This panel was quite moving.  I was absorbing the horror of those outside the ark at the start of the flood.  The girls were disquieted by the nudity.

After the exhibition rooms, we focused on the mission itself.

I really am glad these spaces have been preserved; although it's a complicated story, they're very tranquil.  

There's a nice mix of indoor and outdoor areas to wander.

Katie and I took a moment to appreciate the California poppies.  

The interior of the church

I don't think I got pictures of the little "nooks" off to the left and right in the back of the church.  Inside those archways were some beautiful, poignant sculptures.  

 

There's a fountain out front, and there seems to have been a chalk event there shortly before our visit.

Kicking myself for not walking a bit further to get this shot straight on.  You can see how large the church is from how small the person on the steps is.  

One of the chalk drawings.  I thought Jack might appreciate it.  

Checking for fish in the fountain.  

I bought this cross in the gift shop.  When the cashier was ringing it up, she showed me that it was reversible.  

Maybe I'm easily amused, but that fun bonus made me silly happy.  Actually, I wore it to work yesterday.  

By the time I finish blogging about our JULY road trip, we'll have gone somewhere else.  

Mission San Miguel Archangel

The next day of our trip we visited two missions.  First, San Miguel Archangel, to the east of Hearst Castle.  

Even though it's a complicated part of California's history, I'm glad the missions were preserved (or rebuilt).  

There's a tranquility about them that belies the suffering that occurred long ago.  

I think with the 3 we saw on this trip, I've now been to 10 of the 21 missions.  

Hannah took this picture for me.  Notice I happen to be wearing a skirt that day.  We took a walk outside the mission, and my mom wanted a picture in front of the bell tower.  

Note we're laughing hilariously.  This is because, to get to the front of the bell tower, we had to climb over a wall.  (feeling grateful for slip shorts) 

See the tiny gap between the bell tower and the brick wall on the left?  Yeah, that's what we passed through.  I should have had the girls stand in front of the tower so you get a better idea of how high it was.  

Speaking of a lack of visual perspective, we saw 2 huge bellows on this trip.  The first was at Hearst Castle, in one of the outbuildings.  This one was big, too.  The model mission on the right gives you an idea of the size.  It was bigger than a guitar.  

I watch a lot of history documentaries.  One tidbit that struck me recently was that religious artists in the Dark Ages drew inspiration for the "Madonna & Child" paintings from the statues of the Egyptian goddess, Isis with her son, Horus.  

Old music with square notes

A fountain

The back of the chapel

Many of the missions have these peculiar cupolas.  

Front of the church

This was interesting.  It was different natural pigments that were used to paint the mission.  

Smaller bells