Self Portrait of a Tenager

I liked this one - she is starting to put her signature on things. Roxy is very jealous of Darby's perspective. Roxy has gotten to where she does not draw people much, because the hands are too hard to draw. Darby solves that problem by hiding the hands - good trick, Darby Doll.

She Does It All

Tonight Darby cooked dinner. She made vegetable soup from a recipe. I must say that she did a great job. I did supervise the process, but she chopped all the vegetables and added all the ingredients and set the table and fixed the drinks. Job well done, girl!

And then later, when I was upstairs on Facebook, Roxy decided to direct her kind of movie. You have to wonder about the people I live with sometimes...

Color Me Obama

Roxy had a little book from school that she was supposed to color. She was absent a significant part of last week, so the book was incomplete. I asked her if she wanted to finish her coloring book, but she said, "No, the pictures are kind of freakin' me out." You can see for yourself and decide - does this picture look freaky to you?

Music for a Happy Friday

It's Friday and it is a gorgeous day. I am going off on an adventure - the Ladies' Retreat. I have not been on a retreat in years and years. Our previous church did not do the getaway thing, but in Georgia you can have your pick of many wonderful spa/resort areas. It's time for my happy music soundtrack:

Say Hey (I Love You) by Michael Franti and Spearhead
A-Punk by Vampire Weekend
See the World by Gomez
Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups
Colorful by Rocco De Luca and the Burden
Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra
You're All I Have by Snow Patrol
Love Is the Only Way by Robert Randolph and the Family Band

Darby - when you read this, go and click on Say Hey and enjoy some zydeco-style music! Love you, girl.

Wanted: Wooden Indian Statue

For some reason, I would like a wooden Indian statue, or a wooden bear or some other unique statue. Then we could pose at home in our free time...

The Children's Wonderland - for Steven King

There were a few details about the town of Warm Springs that I did not share with you, but I had to pace myself and reflect on the day. Scott's interpretation of Warm Springs was that it was the place where the evil clown from Steven King's It lives - a place where old carneys go to die and their ghosts get together for drinks.

When we hit main street in Warm Springs, we browsed a couple of shops and looked for a place to eat. I nixed everything I saw - I like charming, but there was something definitely off about the place. And then we found the courtyard...

Painted signs invited us to a courtyard of shops and antiques, and an older gentleman walking around told us the kids might like to look around the courtyard. There was even a sign calling it a Children's Wonderland - sounds good to us, so we bit on that one. I tried to capture it all in pictures, but you just had to be there...nonsensical statuary, most of it appeared to be dug up from Fred Sanford's house; broken merry-go-round machines that used to be at grocery stores, statues of giant green rabbits, broken juke boxes, very old, tacky dime store items for purchase but nobody there selling anything, outdoor toilets smack dab in the middle of the courtyard. Poor Scott was so creeped out he had to beat it out of there very quickly, but somehow that made me only laugh more. Somebody that just ain't right made this place, and I don't think it will be around much longer because they are advertising a giant estate sale on March 6th. Looks like the creepy clown from It will have to find a new place to live...

The Nerds Do President's Day

Scott and I, being raised by education professionals, have a thing for tracking down historical markers, historical places, and random bits of trivia relating to the area in which we live. We just can't help it. So, for President's Day, the girls were out of school and we headed to Warm Springs, GA. We toured Roosevelt's Little White House and explored the area. The girls had to come along, of course, but they were indulgent of us, anyway.

The town of Warm Springs became known in the late 1920s because Franklin D. Roosevelt went there in search of treatment for polio. He had be stricken with the disease three years prior to hearing about Warm Springs, GA. He loved the place so much, and he felt so much better after his visits, that he spent 2/3 of his fortune purchasing the springs and surrounding land. FDR came here before he was in politics and before he was President. Because of his contact with this part of the country, he became an advocate for poor and rural people, for children forced to work because of a terrible economy, and he started the March of Dimes. Within 10 years of its founding, a vaccine for polio was discovered and people did not have to live in fear of the horrible disease.

The place is perfectly preserved and very moving. They never changed anything - there is still toilet paper from the 1940s in his house. You get a sense of the type of man Roosevelt was and how a wealthy New York Yankee could start so many programs to pull the country out of a horrible depression. I never knew how scary polio was until seeing everything yesterday. We were impressed with all the detail and all the history. All the old stuff was great to look at. He had a stroke while an artist was painting his portrait in his living room, and he died from it. The portrait hangs here and is still unfinished.

I thought some things were kind of funny. Because his electric bills were four times higher in Georgia than they were in NY, he started a program to get electric service to rural areas at reasonable rates. He helped out poor farmers, starting all sorts of New Deal programs, and Social Security - because of his contact with ordinary folk in Georgia.