Recent Happenings

First off, We want to thank all of you who were so patient and helpful with our car situation. For those of you who didn't know, our car alternator wasn't charging the battery (I think that is how it works, I'm not car savvy...) and so when we would start the car, it would die about one minute later. That is a problem with snow on the ground (no bikes) and when you only have one car! But everything is fixed now, and Dave and I feel more attached and grateful to our car after putting some money into it. Funny how things work that way. Once you sacrifice for someone/something, you love it more. I imagine that will be what it is like to have a family.

Dave is working hard at school as always, but he is also LOVING his interpreter service at the hospital. He gets to go into all parts of the hospital, speak spanish, and talk about medicine/anatomy. And anyone that knows Dave knows that this is a dynamite combo for him. He is grateful that he gets to help serve others at the same time.

A little note to Spencer Craven(one of Dave's best buds): we watched your video and feel that it is share worthy.

The other day Dave and I took a peek at our friend Spencer Craven's blog and found this TED talk about some research that has been happening in the medical world on growing new organs from sells of a person. Crazy eh? If your curious, you really should take a few minutes and check out this amazing video about it.

::: Anthony Atala on growing new organs | Video on TED.com :::

Here's a little bit about what I've been doing lately.

Yesterday I was looking almost all of my old photos, (and believe me, there are a lot of them!) and I found this picture that I took of Grandma Richards holding Annie Richards, my darling little niece. I miss her! It has been about a year and a half since she passed away, but she is still very much a part of our family. My grandpa still talks about his life as if she is still with him. For example, I'll ask him what he had done that day and he will say, "oh, we went to such and such's house for dinner and then we went home and took a nap..." Those two were truly one.

On Sunday I went over to my parents house to take some reference pictures of them in order to paint them. They turned out so fun that I thought I would share just a few!

I think this is the one I will use.

I also took a few of Kim's(my sister) pup for her. Isn't he beautiful?! His name is Moe and he is the gentlest and kindest, mellowest dog I have ever seen. He sat so still for us while I took pictures of him!

And last of all I just did this self portrait last week to try and figure out what kind of painting style I want to use in my work. I feel funny painting myself, but it is just so much more convenient than making someone sit there for hours. Anyway, hope you like it.

Hope you're enjoying the snow! It sure is beautiful out there. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!