frozen fog?!

have you ever heard of such a thing?!
i hadn't.
the morning we left to drive home to branson, nick and i found ourselves in a good old-fashioned fog freezing. i suppose i'd never thought about the fact that frost is just a little bit of moisture in the air getting cold... and fog is a whole lotta moisture in the air! it made some of the most beautiful sights to be seen.

it was like this the entire day long, all 8 1/2 hours we drove on that first day, if you can believe it!

we spent the night half way home in norfolk, nebraska with the taylors. it was so good to hug uncle dale & aunt lori & melissa... they were the epitome of hospitality and we caught up on the latest happenings well into the night.
the next day i showed nick the houses i'd lived in around the town before taking off. it was very deja vu-esque to be back after so many years! oh, and they've remodeled the church i used to go to -- it looks amazing! who would've thought an old warehousey type bowling alley church could turn into something gorgeous?!

despite the beautifulness and the good fellowship, the old adage is true:
there really is no place like home and we're glad to be here.

a walk about the prairie

nick & i spent a part of our christmas eve morn with a bracing walk around the land surrounding his house. my favorite spot was the hay bales that were just calling out our names. it would have been the windmill, if only we could have climbed it. i do so love a picturesque windmill.
the haybales were more accessible though.

we were supposed to be kings of the hay bales here but somehow it appears the hay bales might be winning...

the bales were also calling rudy's name. she couldn't refuse either.



nick became mr. creative photographer, i tell you what!


we eventually left the hay bales and hiked up my first official butte. in case you don't know what a butte is (who wouldn't know what a butte is?!) i've recently been informed that it's a low hill with a flat top. the dakotas have them a-plenty.

nick found an ancient fossil.
or maybe just a bone. he looks vaguely disgruntled that it's not a fossil.

this being the warmest of days since we've been here made our walk absolutely perfect. i enjoyed it immensely.

soon to come, christmas eve present-opening pictures! stay tuned for more of the fried family christmas saga.

carissa celebrated her 100th post with a list (what better way?)
this was my favorite...

i think doubts only make us stronger and wiser when we acknowledge them before God.

amen, sistah.

a week of parties

i don't think i've ever celebrated christmas quite so thoroughly in all my life! i've been to five parties, if you can believe it!
i just suppose branson is the happenin' place to be at christmas time.

here's the extensive rundown:

saturday:
blue eye school district took us to the showboat branson belle this year, despite the yucky weather. nick was feeling sick, but we still managed to have fun eating (their desert was my favorite thing about the whole night), roaming the boat, introducing nick to different faculty & staff, and watching the incredibly cheesy show. the main attraction was the showstoppers, a singing quartet who encouraged us to stop the show with our applause (we never really accomplished that -- i hope they weren't too disappointed). they also had 10 costume changes all together. that's 9 too many. the show was finished off with some talking dogs that seemed vaguely uneasy to be up there talking to us. they kept trying to walk away.

nick & i went up to the fourth level observation deck and it was FREEZING! we only stayed long enough to document that we were indeed there.

the boat is much huger than i imagined.


sunday:
eikon small group party in my classroom!
we screenprinted t-shirts (without burning anything), ate pizza & goodies, made things out of clay, designed buttons and watched the polar express. it was great fun all around.
here we are with our freshly printed t-shirts...

casey, nick & lauren really got into the clay action...


we had all the tables pushed together into one giant table that we made into a bed to lounge on during the movie.


monday:
party in every class!! (that's 6 parties, all in one day, i'll have you know. exhausting.) this is my first hour 7th & 8th graders. they liked being on the tables.

i had all my students make their own stockings to hang around the room. the art santa mysteriously left them treats before party day.


monday night:
we had an artfolk christmas party at the sugarloaf bistro...

there were 10 people there -- it was very relaxed with delicious food and a perfect fairy woodland atmosphere. i loved it. nick and i both felt as it the wood sprites were just about to come out and dance around our table for us.

sadly, that never happened.

this is art and his wife, faith telling a story. nick loves working as art's apprentice.


tuesday:
last but not least, the roomate christmas!

after a tasty candlelit meal, we were delighted with our gifts to each other then took some time to reminisce over our favorite memories of the last year.
here we are posed with our presents. mine included the perfect brown sweater (i've been pining away for one the past 3 winters but have been unable to find it... great job, erica!), a personalized mug from maren, some exfoliated scrub, lovely lipgloss & my favorite pretty paper.
maren's holding her clay dancer i made for her (it's not quite finished, but still presentable), erica's wearing her new crocheted hat & calendar, and you can't see it so well, but they're both wearing their t-shirts i made for them that have a heart and say 'friend' underneath.
i do so love presents.
who doesn't?

now that the branson festivities have run their course, nick and i are off to north dakota for a different kind of celebrating.
the fried family kind!
i have no idea what that means, but will soon find out, photograph it, and let you know.

the pyro strikes again

so i've already tried to burn down my house... this time i thought i'd try to burn down my school!
thankfully, i didn't succeed. it sure was a smoky mess though.

the high school art club has been learning the fine art of screenprinting this semester. perhaps if we had a less ghetto 'dark room' we could have remained incident-free...

it's actually just my supplies closet. there's no dark room about it, except for the lack of windows. oh, and it's a room.
part of the screenprinting process is to expose the light-sensitive screen to a flood light (300 watts to be exact) for 30 minutes or so. to accomplish that step in the process, i had the light clamp jerry-rigged over the wooden frame. about half way through the 30 minutes, the clamp failed to do its clamping duty and the lightbulb just happened to fall over onto the screen unbeknownst to me... luckily one of my students went into the closet around that time looking for something.
she said, 'ms. corley is it supposed to be so smoky in there?!'

that's the point where i almost had a cow.

here's the resulting melted floor tile. could have been much worse -- the wooden shelves were full of paper. i don't think the wooden-&-cloth screen the lightbulb had fallen onto ever burst into outright flames, but it was getting very close to that. we just ended up with a lot of smoke.

my hair smelled like a campfire. i've been spraying air freshener all day long.

moral of this story (and every story including fire):
life is dangerous.
be prepared!

christmas!!!

the official christmassy feelings don't arrive for me until i smell that piney smell of the tree...
there's just something solid and real about that evergreen smell combined with the feel of the prickly greenery... and the sweet sounds of all those oldy songs... and the bright, twinkling of the lights.
it's all about the sensory intake.

this last weekend, erica & i (with token help from maren) decorated the house. it was a good day. i'm starting to really appreciate traditions. they hold life together in an undefinable way.

we finished off the day with some cookie decorating (and eating of course)...

next year, erica will be in china! we'll have to carry on our traditions with an ocean in between us...

but carry on, we will!

value studies

after a six-week unit on value drawing, here are some of the projects that came from my art 2-4 kids. they had to draw a pencil, a paintbrush, a tool of some sort, a glass with water in it, and 2 more objects of their choice. then they compiled their 6 drawings into a composition that had to fit together and make a perfect square/rectangle.
i was pretty proud of them, they worked hard on these.

dawson

marissa

debra

adana

kaylan (obviously)

greg

sierra

colleen

a.j.

tirin

ray

jayme


now we're doing a project using graffiti art techniques, building on what they learned with value in drawing. let me tell you, they are LOVING it! if i had only realized all the educational potential in graffiti art, i would've pulled that out long ago!
can't wait to see how they turn out.

sunday started out so balmy & mild that nick & i got a-hankering for an adventure of some sort... after a sunday afternoon nap, of course. oddly enough, taking a nap made the temperature drop 40 degrees. our spirits were not dampened by the weather, though, and off we went for our adventure.



sadly, our plans to traverse the underside of a cement bridge next to the tracks were thwarted by the untimely presence of a squad car within sight.
we had to settle for filching extra railroad spikes and pretending they were ancient tribal chisels that civilization exploited to bring in the iron horse.

newsflash! noticias! kumflouten! notiziole!

the month-long hiatus from the sharing of thoughts has drawn a close! i'm glad to say, the silence has been broken.

phewsh.