The Reason for the Silence

Ok, so I know the Castleman's blog has been pretty quiet, save the two great videos that Dayton recently posted. I thought I'd offer this explanation in the two minutes before we take off for California and Disneyland!!!!

Dayton has been finishing up grad school (which he graduated from on Sat., May 17th!!) and applying for a great job (which he got!!!!) as a sculpture teacher at Trinity Christian College just south of Chicago. (No moving involved!)

I have been in the process of auditioning for and waiting for feedback from my all time favorite dance company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Just two weeks ago the director told me that he wants to have me in the company!!!! Only downside is that they don't have an opening right now. He speculated that they may be able to take me on by the end of November which is great and gives us some time to figure out what needs to happen to move ourselves into these new working situations.

Anna is still her sweet, happy, wonderful self and is looking forward to meeting Mickey and all the Princesses so we've gotta run!!!!

The Natural?

Oak Park Farmer's Market

ANNA (hands)

I just about flipped out this morning when I saw this. I was working at home this morning, and Anna was drawing on the floor. She said "Look papa! I drew my hands!" We've been working on tracing her hands, and she's definitely getting good at it, but this is the best that I'd ever seen her write her name. It's very exciting.

Anna says: "Um, I made that by myself. OK? I wrote my name all by myself. It was on my Magna-doodle."

Fun with Papa

Anna and I drove up northwest of Chicago for me to do a talk on art for the high/middle school youth groups from our church. We got up there really early so I decided to look for a place for Anna to burn off some energy. I saw no McDonalds, but there was an old mall, so I thought we'd explore. This is what we found, and had a marvelous time!

Art Star

Karen has a friend named Sally Gulde. Sally is a fantastic photographer. She's even won an award. Perhaps you've heard of it? Does Grammy ring a bell? Here's their Christmas card this year:

I kind of flipped out when I saw this card. No mere amateur makes a card like this from scratch.

Sally agreed to take a new head shot of Karen as she anticipates an upcoming audition or two. They actually met at the Oak Park public library to take the shots. Apparently it offers some really nice natural lighting. Well, in addition to the head shots Sally snapped several pictures of Anna and Karen frolicking around. Here's the Flickr set from their session.

This one of Anna might just be my favorite picture of all time. How I helped produce such a cool kid I will never know...

The Family Makes it to an Opening

On Wednesday night Anna and I met Karen up at Loyola U when she was finished teaching and we all attended an art opening at the school together. This was the view of Lake Michigan from the gallery's atrium:

What you're looking at in this small cell-phone picture are giant mounds of ice being pummeled by huge waves buoying even more ice. Were it not for the foliage and other signs of humanity, I'd have sworn I was standing on the coast of Antarctica.

Tonight we expect our 35th (yes, 35th) measurable snow of the winter. Brrrrrrrrrr...