Tie dye

Snowman

February 2014, Fraser, CO

Lately

We've been 

and

and

Before that we

and 

Love to all!

Amelia loves you...

but she's not sending you a Valentine.

Back in the fall, I taught a class related to the artist Clyfford Still. Clyfford Still was an abstract expressionist, one of the first and most famous during his time. Yet today, his name isn't as well known as artists like Jackson Pollack or Mark Rothko. This is, at least in part, because Clyfford Still did not like to sell his paintings or even show them in museums. He believed that to understand an artist's work, you needed to see ALL of it, in the same place. He believed this was true for all artists, not just himself. He rarely sold his work, so when he died, it was all collected at his home (most of it in a barn). He left his paintings, all of them, to the American city that would agree to build a museum for just his work. After about 11 years, Denver won, and today you can visit the Clyfford Still Museum, not very many blocks from our house.

I learned all this because I taught a creative writing class based on Still's work. The connection this has to Valentine's Day is that Amelia shares Clyfford Still's artistic vision for her work. She wants to keep it all together.

For weeks, we've been making Valentines. We have probably made 40 or 50 different kinds of Valentines. But Amelia has refused to send any of them away. They are "too beautiful" and she wants to keep them. When she was younger, I could have sneakily mailed some, but not now. She has a running inventory of them. She files them in various places and even sleeps with some of them.

So, you will not find a Valentine from Amelia in your mailbox today. Here are some photos to make up for it. We love you.

Apres Ski

Amelia is taking ski lessons. She is apparently very good at it. This was her after-ski-lesson snack.

Christmas

ABN Dance Recital

Santa dress

Cousins

Amelia's zillionth flight

Dance recital

Amelia has been taking creative movement for 4- and 5-year-olds. The studio did a demonstration yesterday afternoon. We saw lots of neat dancing. I love the studio, which is called Between the Bones. They are focused on the connection between mind and body and do a lot of choreography and letting the kids choose how to move, which you can see below in the form of Amelia standing around deciding what to do next. They also tell stories through dance. This dance is about making different shapes and contrasts with the body, like low and high, fast and slow, curvy and straight. They called it the leaf dance. The video was too big for a single file so it is in two parts below.

Amelia turns 4

Amelia's 4th birthday party was at an indoor pool in Golden, one of her favorite places. She invited her friends Micah, Eliose, Navi, Finley, and Meryl. The kids swam, ate cake and then played a bit. It was a fun day!

I love the photos of Amelia blowing out candles below. She clearly thought hard and took her wish-making seriously.