Valentines For My Sweeties

Happy Valentines Day. The top picture is W's from church Sunday. The bottom is goodies for my family Valentines. We also had the big kids over for  meals-J, S and A on Sun., D and M on Mon.

Gaylord Palms Sights

These are a few of the great sights at the motel we stayed at in Florida. I enjoyed taking pictures while Husband was in meetings.

What We Did-Biodiesel Conf. II

We attended the trade show and saw cool biodiesel vehicles. The red pickup holds the land speed record for diesel pickups.

We saw the new, custom Orange County Chopper motorcycle gifted to National Biodiesel for promotion, and had a front-row seat to see Paul Teutel, Sr. present it at the trade show. Look for the Biodiesel episode on TV in the future.

Sara, Louis, Husband, Gerry from SD

We went on an Orlando Biodiesel tour and saw the million dollar biodiesel fuel blending facility the city uses for its transit buses. Then we went to Universal Studios and heard about their biodiesel program used throughout the property while riding in one of their biodiesel powered boats.

What We Did-Biodiesel Conference

We traveled to the Biodiesel conference on Super Bowl Sunday, so there was an evening supper and reception in the on-property sports bar with tons of large (and huge) television screens.

 I had lots of time to do nothing, which is what I mostly like to do when I'm gone. This fruit tart is what I had for breakfast the first morning. And tea, of course.

I did get out to the pool in the 80 degrees. Husband dropped by for a few minutes between conference meetings.

Gaylord Palms, Orlando

The atrium from our room balcony

Our room



Attached conference center

Husband had a National Biodiesel Conference in FL this week and again made me go with him. Oh, the difficulties of the submissive wife. We stayed at the lovely Gaylord Palms near Disney. These hotels are really neat-they are huge and include enclosed atriums, plant and animal life, resturants and shopping-all under one roof.

Complementary Heart Watercolors

Our homeschool co-op's second semester began this week. Since it is February, my art classes did a heart project. I got the idea from Art Projects for Kids. Her project was simply watercolor hearts painted in a grid. I decided we could use this project to review the color wheel and talk about complementary  colors. We used watercolor paper, color crayons, and watercolors. We talked about primary, secondary and tertiary colors and about complimentary colors. We talked again about how watercolors should be transparent not opaque. Learning to mix the pigment with water to create a wash seems to be a hard concept for some kids to grasp.

The kids were to outline hearts in a grid shape with color crayons and then watercolor wash the centers with their complimentary colors. It seemed easiest for them to draw all of the hearts at once, pressing hard to outline them. Then they were to mix up their complimentary colors  and paint in all the red, then all the green, then blue and so on. By doing all of the same color at once, it is much easier to finish in a short class period.

Then, as so often happens, one child did something different and I liked his plan as much or better than mine. (See above.) Jack  colored in his hearts and then watercolor washed the complimentary color over them. Looks great!

Sea Shells by the Sea Shore

 When we were in FL, I was lucky enough to have lots of time to be on the beach. I can hardly walk along a beach for looking for shells. One never knows what one will find! I limited myself to unusual shells, or specific categories of shells. I still managed to drag home more shells than husband thought wise.

 I liked the shells that had worn away and began to look weathered. I also picked up lots of conch shell pieces.

 I was lucky enough to find this large full conch shell and this lovely smaller one, which was whole and new, and still had the little guy living in it. The large conch shell is quite weathered, and quite an impressive size, as you can see in the last picture. I  found it at low tide, farther out. I am tempted to try gilding it.

Hillbilly Wedding Belles

 L. participated in the one-act play competition on Sat. with some of her large cast of friends. They did a comedy called "Hear Those Hillbilly Wedding Bells." They did a delightful job with an ambitious show. We spent the last month listening to her and sister M. (who helped her practice lines) speaking in a Hillbilly drawl.

With Friend Cassie.

We served the cast a lunch of meatballs, fruit and vegetables with dip before their play.

Farm Family

This week a bunch of us went to the supper honoring Glenn and Gaylin as Farm Family of the Year. It was a nice evening and a good opportunity for a picture. As I grow older I am beginning to realize more and more what a blessing a large family is. This is just a small fraction of  husband's immediate family. (back-David, Brian, Mike, middle-Karen, Dena, Andrea, Rebekah, Nicholas, Jannell, Husband, front-Al, Mother, Glenn, Gaylin, Edna, Ron)

Waffles

We didn't know what to have for supper the other night, so L. made waffles and smokies. The girls were giving me the evil eye while we ate, because I had not made waffles in recent memory. We put frozen fruit and powdered sugar on them and they were delicious. Guess we'll be doing that again.