Been working, just haven't been blogging

I was startled when I saw that I last posted on March 7....life has been full and challenging since that time. My husband had surgery about 10 days ago, so I've been extra busy with the kids and the house (not to mention my paid job....dear God, will things ever slow down?), but I have also spent a good deal of time on two art projects: the collage I started on over a month ago (I think.....feels like forever ago) and an 8 x 10 linoleum block printing project (I'm about 60% done with the carving). I'm posting some pictures of the collage as it's developing; I'm nervously pleased about the two faces (detailed here), as I rarely try for realism, and I rarely stick with the attempts I do undertake. In other words, I'm proud of my doggedness, even if the painting itself is iffy. The face on the darker-skinned woman looks better "in real life" (that is, on the canvas) than it does in this photo.

Speaking of iffiness, here is a picture of Astrid on the new scooter she received from the Easter Bunny a few days ago. The iffiness in the image takes several forms, some more obvious than others. As you can see, there's SNOW everywhere--we got about five inches two days before Easter, but a lot of it melted by Sunday. We are soooooo (SO!) sick of snow. We had our egg hunts in the messy living room (much more challenging than in the backyard--- the kids seemed to like it that way). It's hard to see this, but Astrid is also a bit iffy, never having ridden a scooter before. She should have been even iffier than she was: less than one minute after I took this picture, one of the back wheels fell off the scooter, because I didn't exactly assemble it correctly. She and I had a good laugh over *that*. Really, the scooter falling apart was emblematic of the past couple of weeks we've had: things don't feel like they're put together quite right, but we're doing our best, and leaving plenty of room for do-overs and necessary repairs.