I talked to my buddy, Bryan from Oregon, today and it was kind of surreal. They are having a spectacular, warm, sunny day there while we have rain and enough cold for Lorena to fire up the outdoor fireplace. We have gotten enough rain this spring that everything is very green. Even the lawns are all looking Willamette Valley, Oregon level green. We are planning to stay in tonight, eat a grilled ribeye steak, and enjoy that ambiance. Until then, Lorena is practicing on a watercolor that she wants to see if she can perfect. Pretty excellent first pass!
Kelly entered a piece of art into a charity auction at the Chelsea Flower Show in England. Her bee watercolor sold for £150. I thought that was pretty good–getting pretty close to $200. And she had a blast doing it. You can see the painting 
Kelly painted this watercolor of a bee on a postcard for a friend how plans to enter it in a charity auction. I do not know if she has any chance of winning, but she certainly had fun doing it. She has one more day in Cornwall after which she will head to London for a few days, then attend a church convention somewhere near by. After that, she will have a day or two in London then catch an airplane just in time to make the long move from West to East coast.
I thought this was a nice picture of my brother-in-law, Lauro, the artist. We have several of his pieces in our house and hope to get more. Right now, he is doing something about which I am very envious. He found an old house in a very beautiful setting in the Mexican countryside that is also close to a town with all the services (Internet, grocery shopping, great restaurants, etc.). The house is old (over 100 years) and was in very bad shape when he bought it. He is methodically turning it in to an atelier. He has been taking pictures of the entire process. It will have living space, entertaining space, a modern kitchen, a beautiful fireplace, and other features. When he finishes the building he will attack the grounds. It is really going to be something when he finishes and he designed it all himself.
Lorena is taking an Art Appreciation class online at Clackamas Community College this spring. It was a similar class Kelly and Christian took when they were at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh that turned our family into big art museum fans. Long before that, we had read a book in our homeschool that turned us into Diego Velazquez fans.
Lorena drove up to Seattle on Friday so she and Kelly could go to the Seattle Museum of Art on Saturday to complete an assignment for her Art Appreciation class at Clackamas Community College. They had a super time. The museum is really not the same level of quality or experience as the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh nor the top three art museums in Dallas, but they felt it really was not too bad. What is especially great about this is that our family got started going to art museums in general when Kelly and Christian had to take a required visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art for their Art Appreciation class at Wake Technical Community College. It seemed like a chore before we went, but every since, we have been big, big fans of art museums and go to them whenever we get the chance.