Well, not quite, and mom thinks that is a fortunate thing. We tended Dr. Tyler's new dog for the week while he and his wife jumpped ship and went to Chicago. She was an inside dog until mom was fed up with her, and then became condemmed to outdoors---at which point she howeled and barked until we were all nuts. Over all though, it wasn't bad... I like dogs. P.S. She's not as small as the pictures make her seem, she is a beagle coonhound cross, and pretty large. 
These are some pictures that I took the same day to give Jami and you other people a feeling of being with us.. This is mom in her garden, harvesting her tomatoes, so cute. And the pumpkin is only one of the giants that will be used for our now "traditional" family Halloween party. Sorry folks, I already dibbed this one. :) 
Many of you are under the impression that this is only my blog, but really it's the families blog--I just happen to be the only one that makes posts. So I just wanted to post on the completely ordinary-ness of Wilson Saturdays. We had a fun day... doing homework, going to young women's meetings, and other ordinary things like a family work project and ending the day with an episode of Gilligan's Island. Our work project this Saturday consisted of finally redoing the mound. After it having had several revisions we settled on re-rocking it, but this time--no lava rock. We used a rock regional to cedar city and cut down the mound considerably so that they wouldn't roll off onto the lawn. In the end I think it looks nice, and mom loves it which is the most important part. She had me design the arrangement of rocks and stump and stuff so it would be compositionally aesthetic. The mound is still off balance, but without doing something drastic, it is far improved. 
Jer didn't have to go to work one day, and it was nice and overcast--so we went painting up the canyon. The light was pretty even throughout the painting, although the naughty sun peeked out a couple times... I was happy with this one because I felt it was one of the first times that I actually got my color mixtures correct from life--as Ben said, you just have to let it "click". It has clicked with me-- and now, painting from life is my main joy.
I felt that before mom's get well roses withered and died, I should preserve them forever is oil paint. It was a fun little painting from life, though quite a bit longer than I would have rathered.... I have a terrible tendency to get a little too tedious. It is 13x19 oil on linen.
So I was feeling sorry for myself one day as I was home alone, and felt an uncontrollable urge to do a portrait from life with my newfound plein air ability with color... so I called a friend, and she modeled for me. It was so fulfilling. In all, excluding model breaks, it was a 2 1/2 hour painting. This is a 11x14 oil on linen sketch.
Jer had the great idea to to sketches in oil paint. He came over and instead of doing our regular charcoal and graphite drawings, we busted out the good ol' grumbacher... It was quite fun. We set up the images on the laptop which makes it roughly equivalent to painting from life and set to sketching. This monkey got out of hand, and was about 2 or maybe 3 hours.
This little guy was only about 30 minutes... Which was nice, because I didn't have to sacrifice accuracy for speed... I got to have my cake and eat it too on this one.
