Saturday

A day can hold so much when you're seven--and if you're seventy, you can end up happily exhausted from the sudden twists and turns of attention!

In one day, we sewed fancy stitches on my machine.

We made dream eye patches out of felt on Elena's--after Jan came over and repaired the presser foot.

In between, we went to Michaels to buy felt and elastic for dream eye patches.

Then she ran over to invite Makken and Sebastien to come help make slime--as she had also purchased a box of slime ingredients. 

I wasn't available to read directions because I was telling Abe what to hang where, so the slime didn't work as promised, but it did create some slimy little jelly beans with glitter. 

We watched a video on drawing faces and Elena drew faces in her art journal to her utter delight.  "I love them!" she said. "I always thought I was not good at faces, but these are amazing!"

Then Elena, Makken and Sebastien created spyware out of cardboard and foam board and various other items found in my house; at one point two of them were hiding in my closet and one was under the television and Abe was asking me questions about what to hang where and Jan was remedying the pressure foot problem and sharing some delightful old-fashioned spools of thread from her mama's stash--with the price of 5 cents to 25 cents printed on the wood of each spool.

By then, my multi-tasking along with the pain in my back from unloading 30 bags of mulch began to stir frustration and I asked Abe if we could postpone the interior work until next week and he went outside and cheerfully spread the bags of mulch in the flower beds and pulled out weeds and I took a nap while Elena finished watching Christopher Robin. Then we washed her thick curly hair, finished her dream eye patches, and hurried off to Chama for Brazilian steak and an amazing salad bar and celebrated Nathan's 12th birthday.

In the rush to get there, I'd forgotten my phone, so I don't have pictures of the party, but I do have the memory of Nathan opening the bag from Papi (the owners manual to a go-cart! which he'd go find at Papi's house after the party) and watching Nathan give Papi a huge hug, arms outstretched as he strutted back to his seat.   "I feel like Jesus!" he said, our funny little twelve-year-old. 

The spyware creators,

scientists and artists and cute little kids

To add to the delight of Saturday, my package of India Inks arrived from Amazon, happily packed in rolls and rolls of bubble wrap, which can be used to stamp textures on ink creations: