Do you ever feel like the best weather always comes when you’re at work, and the rain and cold comes over the weekend? Well here is proof of that. To determine which days I will be cooped up in the office and which days I will be at Artsfest, just look at the weather icons. The days marked with thunderstorms coincide with the days I’ll be at Artsfest (except for Thursday when it appears we will have an upside-down tornado).

Artsfest is this weekend so for anyone who enjoys pottery, photography, art, or just festivals in general – you should come up to Springfield. The past few days have been a flurry of excitement around the McCoy household doing some last minute preparations. I’ve been framing and matting lots of new prints to take in anticipation of selling at least a few of them!

Here are a few examples of my newest works:

A big 24x36 of a bug and some flowers.

One of my favs - a cool mountain stream. Note: Emma's coloring books sold separately.

And here is one for the ladies.

Another significant improvement over last year is that I have a tent with real sides so that when it pours rain my stuff won’t be ruined like last year. I decided to do a trial run of the new tent, but since it was raining and windy outside I thought I would try it inside. Funny how you think a room is really big until you try to setup an exhibition tent inside it.

While I did manage to get it assembled, I could not raise it up or attach the sides.

This Easter weekend was filled with beautiful weather and good times with friends and family. It started with a trip to the lake where we participated in a shoreline cleanup project. We picked up a small mountain of trash from the shoreline near the house, including several huge blocks of styrofoam, half of a kid’s 3-wheeler, a syringe, a dozen tennis balls and about a thousand glass and plastic bottles.

Here is Emma in her Easter dress.

We had a great lunch at Steph’s grandma’s and Emma got to pickup Easter Eggs. Who ever came up with the concept of a giant rabbit that hops around and lays pastel colored eggs filled with treats anyway?

Sunday night we had a dance party at Mom + Dad's. The girls thoroughly enjoyed it!

Mom and Dad got some tricycles for the girls. As it turns out they would rather push them than ride them!

This has been among the coldest of winters I can ever recall so I guess it’s fitting that the first day of spring brought about 9″ of snow to the Joplin area. After several years with little to no snow this winter has been off the heez, as far as snow goes. Joplin averages 16″ per winter, and so far this year we’ve amassed 31.5″ (according to Doug Heady).

Although I am more than ready for warmer temps and seeing the deciduous trees come back to life, I always enjoy a good snow storm. Taking this was actually a bit tricky, thanks to the horizontally blowing snow. I felt like I was trekking up to the north pole or something just walking around in the front yard.

What’s really on my mind though is the bike ride this saturday. I recall when they postponed it to March thinking “it can be really cold in March… heck it could even SNOW!” So we’ll see how the next few days shape up for bike riding…

My kitty Puff died earlier this week. Even though she was in a miserable and decrepid state, it still makes me sad. Although in her youth she wasn’t overly friendly with people other than me, she had recently become overly in need of physical affection and often times Jaylee and Emma were the best sources of this attention. Whenever they would go to mom and dad’s to play, Puff would always manage to position herself right in the middle of the action.

I was in 2nd grade when we got Puff (and her brother Fluff who died a couple years ago) and she was always the more active of the two. She would routinely catch mice or squirrels and leave the carcass at our back door. Occasionally if we were lucky she would leave only a severed head as an offering.

I like to believe that I was Puff’s favorite person because I was the only person she would get under the covers and snuggle up with. She even slept on my bed when I was away at college. Here are a few photos in memory of my old friend Puff:

Puff used to eat breakfast with me.

She also liked to help me use the computer.

Puff also enjoyed traveling the world with me.

Last night before I went home I stopped by wal-mart to pick up a few items to make dinner. While I was there I also stocked up on some “shrooms”.

For some reason I just found this kind of funny…