This has been quite a week–nothing having to do with my business. My daughter flew in from Vermont last Friday and her boyfriend got here from Texas on Saturday. They both left this morning. My youngest son, Chris, will leave today for his summer job. Yesterday the Empty Nest thing hit me. But here is a glimpse of how we spent our week.

We spent a day in San Francisco–taking the ferry to Alcatraz, watching the sea lions at Pier 39, visiting Coit Tower, and ending with a walk on the Golden Gate Bridge and a visit to the Marin Headlands for a look over the bay.

Isn’t this a perfect plant to have at a prison? Look at those spines. Actually, this was part of a decorative garden. The employee families used to lived on Alcatraz and had normal lives other than the fact that the kids took a ferry to school.

This photo is taken from Marin County, northwest of the Golden Gate. Alcatraz is the island to the left of the north tower and San Francisco is south of the bridge.

Katie celebrated her 21st birthday. I guess this was the first time she has tried to blow out candles with her hair not in a ponytail…or maybe its just the number of candles that was a challenge.

Katie and Aaron painted the barn!!!

We visited son and daughter-in-law in Pollock Pines and drove up to the Forest Service helispot where Matt works so that Aaron (from TX)  could see what real mountains look like.

We also went back to San Francisco to see the show, Wicked. This is the story that explains the history of the Wicked Witch and the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz, including how the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion originated. It is an excellent show–well-done and very funny. It’s a great experience if you ever get the chance to see it.

Here is the culmination of the weekend.  Chris, the #3 kid,  graduated. He leaves for Lake Shasta today so he can start work tomorrow morning on a Forest Service Hotshot crew. He spent all night at Grad Night and I hope we can wake him up in time to get there before dark today!

Tomorrow–back to work for me. I have ignored everything. I have wool to sort and get to the mill, buttons to finish, looms to warp, classes to plan, website to update, etc. My husband now has 2 months off (teacher) and his next task is to enlarge my shop/classroom! We’d better get busy. Maybe that will keep me from realizing that there are no happy little faces in my house anymore.

Graduation is just around the corner, so high school classes are finishing up projects. The Physics classes at Dixon High have a project called Walk on Water. The idea is for teams to figure out a way to get across the pool using “foot-power”. I don’t know all the criteria, but I do know that they couldn’t make a boat, use oars, etc. and they had 2 minutes to cross the pool.  The teams who are able to accomplish the task (and turn in the written work) can use the Physics final as extra credit.

The day started with one of the students playing the National Anthem on his electric guitar. Then the crafts were christened by dumping water on them. I took photos of all 16 entries, but will include only a few here. There seemed to be 2 main types of creations–raft-type of crafts powered by feet and  floating foot-gear. The former seemed to function better than the latter in most cases. There was a 3rd structure as well–wait till you see that photo at the bottom!

This is my son’s team with the smallest guy as the “walker”. That’s Chris in the water in front. The “walker” had a bar to stand on but brought pedals forward one at a time that turned the paddle wheels. They used large water bottles as floats and old plastic pipe that has been lying around our place since we moved here–they had to buy a lot of fittings though. (I think the local hardware store has to stock up on duct tape and PVC fittings for this event.) And, of course, there is baling twine.

This team used a similar idea but taped shoes onto the pedals so the feet would stay in place and they made a different kind of paddle-wheel.

Here is the most successful of the floating foot-gear style. I don’t know what the big tubes are, but the walker’s feet are so well sealed in them that she had a hard time getting them off.

Here is another raft type of craft. The walker used the supports to hang on and paddled the water directly with her feet.

There were several of this style, but they kept filling with water. I think that this one finally made it after a few attempts.

This is was a crowd-pleaser–the hamster-wheel craft. There is a PVC pipe framework inside and the walker rolled through the water in a record-breaking time of 21 seconds. It’s a good thing that it moved quickly because it didn’t take too much longer until the cardboard structure was falling apart.

A bunch of clever kids, don’t you think?

Here is a photo that shows the back of the shawl–my fiber friends are asking for this.

This is Chris catching the garter. When he learned the significance of that he tried to give it away as quickly as possible.

What flower girls do when waiting for all the adults to finish with photos: