Recently in Photos Category

I am recovering from a very busy weekend, one which included karaoke of Tom Jones' hits post four beers. Then there was the terrible Heart cover of "Magic Man" in which my caterwauling sliced through bar patrons' ear drums with all the ease of a dull, serrated knife. I normally do not seek out karaoke bars because I can only endure so many drunken frat boys singing off-tune pop-country songs, but I recently reconnected with my best friend from high school who's always loved karaoke. As it was her birthday, the birthday girl sets the rules. Plus, it's always much more fun to karaoke with people who can actually sing - and by "sing," I mean if it weren't for the smoke and the Roger Daltry look-a-like running the board, you'd swear you were witnessing a Grammy's performance. I danced and screeched and the birthday revelers put all the other karaoke singers to shame. Chris took video and I respect the art of music too much to post it. However, I am a bit concerned as he now has his own Flickr account.

Earlier that same day we had the first public meeting of the St. Louis Bloggers Guild, which was crazy and fun, and I met new cool people. We're partnering with Playbackstl to start St. Louis's first interactive festival in conjunction with Play:STL. It's very exciting and I'm looking forward to pulling it off with so many other talented individuals.

Now we're going to go out and enjoy some sun.

As we walked into Liam's art fair/competition on Wednesday night I immediately scanned the room for his entry because shame and I, we've never met. I finally saw his piece, an interpretation of a work by Jackson Pollack, with a red third place ribbon affixed to its corner.

I checked in my purse to assure that I'd packed a jar of Vaseline so as to get our egos back out the door before showing him his ribbon and congratulating him. Liam is at the stage where he could accomplish quite a lot artistically (more so than now) if Chris and I wanted to really push him, really cultivate him. But we don't. We let him do as much as he wants. We first thought that perhaps we were doing Liam a disservice, holding him back. We've since decided to the contrary. I always second-guess my parenting decisions. (I'm sure that will make the kids feel fabulous when they read this as teenagers. Hi! We've no clue as to what we're doing! Love, Mom and Dad.)

When I first began homeschooling we decided that our major goal was to discover each of our kids' particular gifts and then teach and encourage them to use those gifts for societal benefit. I don't want to burn them out on their passions during their childhood, besides; I want them to enjoy their youth. We know another young artist whom I believe to be equally advanced as Liam. He's always in some art workshop, studying in a mentor program, doing this, doing that, going here, going there. He's a brilliant kid but he doesn't act like a kid. Perhaps he's just super mature for his age but the last time we were around him and his parents in a social setting I fully expected to see him smoking a cigar and clutching a glass of scotch. I want Liam to run and revel in all that defines childhood. We have a period in our life where we're afforded a free pass to behave immaturely and explore all of our options because of our age. I want him to enjoy that. Besides, I think he does wonderfully as it is.

Some new photos mixed with older ones I came across while clearing off my SD card. We're gearing up for summer and winding down Liam's extracurricular lessons, though his core lessons will continue as planned year-round. Click photos to enlarge and for captions.

(I'm also still working on putting the site back together and yes, all the archived entries that you asked about will be restored!)