A Month in Pictures...

September that is, despite the picture to the left.

WAFFLES
A couple of days after Labor Day, when I started my new teaching assignment, I blew off steam one afternoon at my friend Mandy's house making out with her rat, Waffles. She has a hairless rat too which ina couple shots is sitting on my, um, "cleavage" area:



9/25
A few days earlier, my sister Rebecca came down from Idaho with her three kids. We made sure to take advantage of this by having pictures taken with all the cousins together. These 5 are the only grandchildren on my side of the family. (On Chris's side, there are 15, ranging from ages 19 to 2! Getting all those grandchildren together would be even more of a feat!)

This first one captures exactly what it's like getting a 9 year old, 5 year old, 4 year old, almost 3 year old and 7 month old magically to sit still. You can't be too picky of the results. My almost 3 yar old niece Brisa, on the left cracks me up in this shot, and the way the baby is pulling down Mikelle's shirt, it's pertinent that I should have had her wear a camisole underneath. But thank goodness his legs are covering a potential crotch shot.


And to show that the baby is not as cranky as the above pictures indicate, here he is in better form. This first picture would be even better if the stupid sunlight wasn't there. It just sucks that is was already officially fall, but that doesn't count when your upside-down mortgage is in HELL.


This one is better in better diffused light:


And here's Christian and Garon. This one will be a fun one to pull out in about 10 years.


Another good one of the baby to prove to my sister that he wasn't screaming in every single shot:

Cousins enjoying the ducks.


VISUAL PERSONAL NARRATIVES
Shifting gears, here are some highlights of the first project I took on with my high school studetns. When I arrived, they were in the middle of a self-portrait project. THe results were amazing. There is quite the fun range of talents in these students.

Therefore, to segway from the self-portrait project, we did a more "behind the face" type of self-portrait. A visual personal narrative with some 15th century narrative examples compared to of all things, modern "Where's Waldo?" illustrations .

Technically the project isn't due until tomorrow and there are more amazing examples that I'll see from that, but here are some of the highlights thus far. On a couple, it looks messed up, but that's because I digitally blurred out their name that was included in the design. I don't think I should have to do that, but in this world of litigation and everything being legally tied to something, I had to CMA.

Blurring out the name in this piece takes so much away from it, but I still wanted to share it!