Art Camp 2014

Camp-a-palooza continued this morning with a trip to the Quinlan Arts Center for a new art camp that has a science theme to it, as you can see above by their logo.  The morning started as it did last year with a brief parent orientation, which also translated for an opportunity to come inside and explore the gallery with Madison.  On the walls were some great scenic photography, and a room of paintings of various subjects - and another hallway filled with some quirky work that the three of us enjoyed tremendously.  We enjoyed seeing those rooms.  The main gallery, however, was another matter, as it was filled with abstract painting after abstract painting with vague names.  We'd look at one and scratch our heads, and then see the title, "Dawn of a New Day" or something like that.  But I'm being dead serious when I tell you it looked like a Wal-Mart imploded.  Here, judge for yourself:

I'm not mentioning the name of the artist, but I'm not the biggest fan of abstract work to begin with.  There's some I get, understand and appreciate.  But a lot of it puzzles me, apparently!  I wonder if Madison will be doing any abstract works this week?

We left her at the Arts Center, and made our way to the chiropractor for our check-up.  Missing was Madison for this visit - we'll keep that one a secret from her for now, shall we?  She really does love going to the chiropractor.  But we signed her up for art camp after scheduling the visit, so we decided to go onward with the alignments.  Speaking of which, since Saturday, Daddy has has a sloshy feeling inside his ears.  It happened after going over the mountains near Toccoa, when his ears popped.  And then, it's as if the water from the swimming pool some time ago finally became dislodged or something - I had no idea it was even in there.  And it's annoying!  So Sunday we were trying the tricks everyone recommended, such as:

1.  Pouring more water into the ear, to break the seal.
2.  Pouring alcohol in the ear.  Not beer though.  Unless you want to sing that old Hank Williams' song, "There's a Beer in my Ear."
3.  Ear suction thingies.  We had that rubber ball with a suction thing at one side.

Today, we tried more aggressive treatment at the chiropractor.  I am not making this up:  after the back alignment, I had one genuine "ear adjustment."  This basically involves grabbing the patient's ear, and tugging it off.  Fortunately, it has been glued on pretty good, so Doc Williams couldn't add another ear to his private collection.  There was all kinds of cracking and so forth, and the general promise that things would work themselves out soon enough.  And for added insurance, there was one more thing done:  he assigned his assistant to the job of attacking my ear with a large vibrating thing for a few minutes.

So that's five attempts so far.  Are we finished with the ear therapy yet?  No sir!  After visiting Cracker Barrel with Mommy on a date, we went to one of those generic nutrition shops nearby, and got some ear candles.  Ever hear of those things?  This was a big event this afternoon, with Mommy and Madison attending to Daddy, the patient.  They had him on the floor, laying on his side - and then they stuck this ear candle through a paper plate and into his ear canal.  Then they lit the candle, which started to work like a vacuum cleaner, sucking any gunk that was left out of my ear.

At this moment, I'm not entirely sure if all is clear or not - my ears have been attacked so much today that I'm giving it another day.  At least I don't feel like my ears are in a shoebox anymore.

ANYWAY, as mentioned above, Madison did come home.  Daddy picked her up from art camp, and she had a swell time.  She did some water color painting, and painted a shark and some fishes and a really big crab.  We do not know if this was Sebastian or not.  Madison also learned about some artists today, and ran around outside for some fun.  She likes camp a lot, so this will be a great week for her.

When we got home, it was bath time, and reading time - she read five books today, to add to the list.  She's now over halfway through her reading program, with only thirty-something books left to go.  She sat on the couch with these books, reading them one by one to Mommy, who enjoys hearing her read.  Another thing Madison did was play some piano - not much though.  Daddy has to get with Mrs. Pam about the rest of her playing assignment, and see how to do it!  Until then, Madison is getting better and better with this one piece of music that she's playing over and over again - it's called "Moon Dreamer," and it's tough.  But she's been doing it again and again and again and again!

We finished the story mode of "The Lego Movie" game later, and then there was dinner - sloppy joes!  And after that, it was movie time together.  In light of some recent news - and the upcoming series we have at KidPak - we watched the first of of the Little Mermaid movies, actually the prequel to begin with.  This ties to something that's coming up, hopefully it will come to pass!