Her eyes keep getting better, which is great news!  …almost as good as the news that we can go back to having exams only once a year now!  ;)

This time, she chose glasses that just happen to match our roses…

Coincidence?

During Spring Break, Claire is taking a class at one of our favorite places in our little city and loving every minute of it. Of course, we have to play on the dragon before and after class…

Happy Spring Break!

Portrait of Claire reflected in Sue

Honestly, I think it’s a silly tradition (yes, I said it out loud!), but it is what it is.

Today, Claire wanted to wear pink and purple and didn’t want to get pinched, so I did this:

There. She’s safe.
…and her great-grandmothers would be proud.

If this is any indication, summer is going to be awesome!

Claire got her ears pierced today!

She wanted little hearts in honor of Valentine’s Day, but they don’t offer those as the initial studs. So, just like her momma, she opted for her birthstone.

As you can tell by the photo above, they did them one at a time, and she didn’t even flinch.

That’s my girl!

Claire dug down to get into this “cave” on the deck.
I think using the table on the deck as a snow fort is pretty clever.

Then, when we shoveled the front, we built this one!

Happy Snow Day, Denver!

A scientific explanation of Paper Chromatography, as defined by good ol’ Wiki, can be found by clicking here.  But, it’s basically watching the pigments in a marker (or other ink) spread across a paper dipped in solution.

This is an experiment I learned about years ago, and it’s so fun and easy to do.  I’ve wanted to do this with Claire for a while now, but I never remember.  This morning, she reminded me, so we got out our tools.

1) Cut strips out of paper towels.

2) Draw a line on the paper towel strip with the marker. (One color per strip.)  This example shows black, but we did six colors at once. NOTE: Be sure to have a piece of scratch paper underneath the paper towel when you color the lines. Also, color both sides of the line (flip the strip over and color the line from the back, too) for the best results.

3) Dip your paper towel strip into a glass of water. Be careful NOT to submerge the line.

As the water “climbs” up the paper towel, the color separation starts almost instantaneously depending on the marker or ink you’re testing.

This photo was taken about 15 seconds after dipping.

4) Leave the paper towel strips in the water long enough for the colors to spread nicely. Here, you can see that we’ve done a bunch of colors at once.

5) That’s it! When the color has stopped spreading, hang them to dry.

All of them are really cool, but black is always shocking and beautiful to behold.

Last night, I was looking through my pictures and found one I took of Claire in Cozumel, which is one of my favorites:

I love the color of her eyes in this photo, so I decided to play around with it and see if I could make it into an interesting background photo on my phone.  I zoomed in, and I was shocked to discover something that I’d previously missed!

Not only had I captured her beautiful smile, freckles, and sun-kissed locks, I’d inadvertently captured the view of the ocean and coastal buildings in her eyes.

Eye Sea The View!

I see the view, and I love it!