the real masterpiece: cousin asher

congratulations, christian and robin!  we are so excited about our new cousin, asher christian markanich!  hopefully we'll be able to get together soon with the express purpose of scooping dirt with all these boys!

you are like a star shining brightly

as an expectant mama nothing is better than welcoming your new baby into your arms.  especially a much-wanted and long-awaited baby!  i wanted to help christian and robin welcome their little guy with a special painting for the nursery.  robin said she wanted the phrase "you are like a star shining brightly" from the primary song.  i thought for a good 3-4 months about what exactly to paint, how to incorporate that phrase, etc.  and then i woke up one morning, knowing exactly what i wanted to do, and seeing the finished painting in my head.  so even though a magician never reveal his secrets, here were the steps to this special painting:

1.  first order of business:  get david to take a photo of me holding a star.  i told david i wanted a shot from the side, with me cupping the star in my hands.  this took A LOT of shots...and patience.  i think at one point i said, "hello, can't you see what i want in my head, from my angle?  do you need to chop off my head and put the camera there?"  good old david, ever patient.  we finally got the shot.  and then i played with the lighting on the computer until it looked just right...and star-like. 

2.  next: sketch the hands with water color pencils and the words with a "masque pen".  i found that thing on clearance when a craft store went out of business a year+ ago (i think i was actually still pregnant with max, now that i think about it!), and knew i'd want it for a project.  it was just patiently waiting for the right project.  this stuff is really cool--you "write" with it as a liquid, it dries as a gel, you paint over it, then rub it off when you are done!  voila!  

3. painting the hands, glowy effect included.

4. painting the background and throwing salt down.  salt absorbs water, and water adheres to the water color paint pigment, so when you sprinkle it on a water color painting, it absorbs both the water and the pigment, turning the painted paper into a really cool stippled effect.  i used so much salt it looked like a salt flat...it took a long time (and a palette knife) to get the salt off.  a lot of it ended up staying on, which i actually ended up liking--it make the painting have a sparkly, star-like effect.

(before rubbing off the salt)

after rubbing off the salt, sprinkling white paint with a toothbrush, and then finally rubbing off the gel

close-ups of cool areas

after taking pictures, i realized i didn't like how the water dried to the left of the arms, making a line in blue paint, and the weird curved finger-like projection to the right of the hands.  solution?  paint brush with water, a little rub here, a little rub there, and it looked a little better.  finished product (exactly as i saw it in my head!):

a few tricks up his sleeve

hey max, wanna do some tricks?

where are your teeth?

how about your nose?

head?

tummy?...yeah, down there somewhere, huh?

where are your eyes?

mouth?

max has always used and preferred his left hand over right, and always points with his left middle finger...kind of good for a laugh, right?...

a weekend away

we decided that since both david's vacation weeks were eaten up with surgeries, we needed to take a long weekend and get out of utah county.  phew!  what a much-needed breather.  we love southern utah, and haven't really done much traveling since having kids, so we were excited to give st. george a try.  i was nervous; we haven't traveled much because the boys don't really travel well--they are done after an hour in the car.  and after pace's recent carsick episode after driving just 45 minutes, i was bracing myself for having to clean up more carsickness, minus a conveniently-located walmart.  everyone tells me they don't travel well because we don't travel a lot; but we don't travel a lot because they don't travel well...vicious cycle. 

we thought if we packed everyone up at bedtime and hit the road, the boys would happily sleep while we made the drive.  they slept about 1.5-2 hours of the drive, and then woke up cranky because they weren't in their own bed.  we finally made it around 1230 (no carsickness, thankfully), and got everything moved into the condo we'd rented.  i thought everyone would be happy to snuggle in and fall asleep, but boy was i wrong!  max vehemently hated his pack-n-play and screamed like we were pulling out his toenails.  so into the bed he came.  he kept kicking and playing, and david wanted to "get up early" to go on a bike ride, so i brought max out to the couch, trying to get him to fall asleep.  then pace trailed behind...pace finally fell asleep around 330, and max around 4.  and then david's alarm went off at 530.  needless to say, it was a long night and an even longer day...

(the ride back was made much more manageable by david finding a dvd player with two screens at walmart, and a 4 hour richard scarry movie!)

we hiked snow canyon the next day--perfect weather for hiking--overcast and cool, and only slight sprinkles.  pace was really into adding to his rock collection, and david gave him a geology lesson.  pace now can tell you igneous rocks come from lava and sedimentary rocks come from "sand squished gedder, like dis" he says, as he squishes his hands together.      

max, after sleeping 1.5 hours and not taking a morning nap (and he also wouldn't sleep that afternoon...).  at least he was happy feeling the rocks.  we made him wail cry himself to sleep later that night in the pack-n-play.

pace is really into "pace-size" things--he was ecstatic when he saw these "pace-size stairs"!  and although it isn't terribly in focus, i love the photo under the pace stairs.  david caught pace's nonchalant but determined face--his "do it myself" face!

at the end of the butterfly trail there was a outcropping of rocks to climb up for a great view.  i stayed down lower with max while david carried pace to the top.  he got some amazing photos from the top!  can you spot max and me waiting?

sunday, after finding a ward to visit for 9am sacrament meeting, we drove out to zion's park for the afternoon.  we rode the bus around the park (for as long as max would let us before he got crabby), and then got off and hiked the emerald pools trail.  it was another beautifully overcast and cool day, and was ironically pretty humid for the desert.  even though it was the afternoon, the clouds stayed low over the mountain tops and david got some great photos! 

the emerald pools trail was quite the workout!  it was a very steep trail winding through the mountain side, and was a gorgeous hike.  at the very top of the trail is a little mountain pool, and the water trickled all the way down the mountain in little waterfalls.  pace loved the waterfalls!--and we even got splashed a little!--i love pace's look in those photos!

there were tons of europeans on the trail, and they were all impressed with us each carrying a little traveler on our backs.  everyone in passing gave us huge smiles, and reached out to pat the boys, wave, coo at them, or say wow to us.  we had no shortage of willing hands to take a photo of all of us!