Family biz

Things that make me happy to be a dad

McKelvey watched Star Wars for the first time over the weekend, now she wants to be Princess Leia next halloween.The geek in me is grinning. This halloween she is going to be Princess Buttercup from The Princess Bride) Arden is going to be bacon. Because, as she said, ” I love bacon so much I could kiss it”. Don’t worry, pictures will come soon.

Bit of the ordinary, Family biz

Kid fears, and fearing for your kids

Everyone has things they are afraid of, and they change as you get older. McKelvey currently is worried that there is a ghost in the closet. It is only after we read this silly book (that I don’t think is scary at all) about some who loves pie and comes out of the ground when he smells a pie baking and then he wants to try a bite. She was never worried about the closet until that book.

On the other hand,I have fears now that I never had before.

McKelvey is in 2nd grade now. So she has fire drills and tornado drills at school. After the tornado drills(and watching the Wizard of Oz) she was worried about tornadoes. Now it was easy to reassure her that there aren’t going to be any tornadoes that will take her house or school away. But she has a drill that we didn’t have when we were in elementary school, crisis drills.

When McKelvey has a crisis drill, the teacher covers up the little window. Then all the students have to crouch in the corner of the room that can’t be seen by the window. Have you guessed what the crisis drill prepares for?

I am so glad they are preparing for every eventuality. I never thought about it before, and now that I do it freaks me out a little. Then McKelvey asked me one day what the crisis drill is for. So I said, “what does Ms. Suter say?” then McKelvey got distracted by something and we never got back to the topic of crisis drills.

But now I have something else to worry about during the school day.

Family biz, Pictures

Recent pictures are up

Well a lot has happened the last couple of weeks. and now the pictures are up to prove it. They are here by the way. We have a trip to New york city, in which the girls saw their first Broadway show and afterwards walked out on Times Square. They got to visit some of Ann’s friends and we all went to the American Girls store as well.

This past weekend we wetn to a Fall Harvest festival. They did a big puppet show (no really they were big puppets). Most notably McKelvey finally wore pants.

Design Stuff

Even when it’s done, it’s not done

It has been a while since I have written. As you might have guessed from my last post, I have been painting. In between my work at etc, I took a design gig for a group called Aquila. I was working on the set for a Comedy of Errors, which I had designed for them back in 1998. They are doing the show again so it was chance to revise a previous design. That was neat, I got to update it and freshen up the look of it, you can see the old version here. It was good I did it on the computer, since we kept revising and tweaking the look of the show right up to the time that I started to build it. Even after all of the revisions, once we installed the set up in Queens, he still wanted to change it.

Now I am down in Virginia doing my normal job while they are tweeking and altering the design. I’m not sure how I feel about that. The basic elements of the set are good, so I think that it will turnout ok. But I don’t like losing control of the final look.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

the Blog of Owen Collins