33 Robins

Whether or not I manage to submit to this year's juried show at Outside the Lines, it's nice to have a prompt and a deadline to kick-start my studio time again.  Life has been busy, and just when I think that I have a sort of routine set up, then suddenly my violin-playing skills are in demand, and then the smalls get sick, and there's always the grad student support-team role that the smalls and I play most weekends.  Plus, a 4th birthday!  Halloween!  My laptop, cell phone, oven, and clothes dryer all going kaput within weeks of each other!  Surprise eye surgery!  Listing it all here at once, I am somewhat amazed that I've been getting anything drawn at all.

But there have been moments, and first some robins appeared.

And then it started snowing.

And the light was all dim around the edges.

Finished and framed.

Meanwhile we had our first snow.  Halloween pumpkins were procured and carved in the nick of time.

Halloween night my two coughing and feverish smalls still bundled up and made it to the neighbors' homes for a little bit of trick-or-treating.  This year we had a 'Jumping Spider/Monster Spider/Zombie Crab' and a 'Blue Octopus,' which temporarily sported pink vampire fangs.  Hopefully when everyone is recovered we can reconstruct the costumes for a photo shoot.

I've started my next colored pencil.  When I work on it, all I can think about is the digital images of my cerebral vascular system, flashbacks to Moo's birth and my hospital adventures then.  Here I am, four years later.  Happy healthy boy, happy healthy Mama.  Still holding lots of gratitude for every day.