…and there he is in the local newspaper!

Remember when Brick says “I love lamp” in Anchorman? That’s what I think of every time I see the cat lamp Andy made from an old boat motor.

I love how Andy has been using cards on some of his recent pieces. I’m thinking about putting this fish on a t-shirt. What do you think?

Donnie Sundal performed Saturday morning. His band, Boukou Groove, just released a new CD.

Guess whose art is on the CD sleeve? Andy‘s! (This is the second time Donnie and Andy have mixed music and art. Watch this video.) We’re selling these CDs at Andy’s gallery for $20. Email me (lori@saczynski.com) if you want one. Yes, we’ll ship it.

I wish I had a good excuse for why I don’t spend much time in Seaside. It takes less than 30 minutes to drive there from my house. Seaside is magical, especially at night. Living here is a dream come true.

Some of our friends also participated in ArtsQuest, so I’d love to tell you a bit about them.

Francisco Adaro won Best in Show! We are so proud of him. He’s one of our favorite artists. I can’t wait to have one of his pieces hanging in our home.

I especially love Francisco’s piece on the top left. Awesome!

Our pastor’s sister, Lisa Young, drove up from south Florida.

I especially love Lisa’s flamingos.

Which flamingo piece is your favorite?

This is Alan Moore‘s tent. He’s a fellow folk artist and graduated from the same high school that we did. He lets his kids make art with him, which is cool. And they have five kids, so they are just as crazy as we are.

This is Alan. He received an Award of Merit.

Justin Lyons participated for the first time this year, and he won Best in Mixed Media. His work is really cool! He comes from a talented family.

Speaking of Seaside being magical, how awesome is this piece?! It’s a collaboration between Beeb Benson and Mary Hong. I love it!

PS – Sorry about all the links in this post, but dang… you should really click on them. Really.

Jonah

Taylor and Noah (playing dead again)

Knox

Josiah

Madison and Nathan

Jackson and Caleb

Keith and Katie

Kaeden

Izzy

Delaney

someone who should have worn eye make-up and Andy

Matt and Jessica

Jim and Beth

If you’re interested, we stayed at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.

Like Andy’s facebook page!
Art available for purchase.
Photos of Andy Saczynski Studio-Gallery.
Photos from the grand opening.

Andy after hanging the sign above the courtyard entrance

the sign above the Logan Lane entrance

the gallery downstairs

Andy in the studio upstairs

us at the grand opening party

yummy food at the grand opening

vanilla bean pastry cream in a dark chocolate shell with fresh fruit by KaraBoo

caramel chocolate in a dark chocolate shell with fresh raspberries by KaraBoo

Last Friday night, yeah we danced on tabletops, and we took too many shots, think we kissed but I forgot, I attended a ladies-only event. When I got home, I found a bouquet of hand-picked flowers and greenery that Andy, being a thoughtful and considerate man, had prepared for me as a token of his love and devotion. Aww! So sweet!

However…

Saturday afternoon, it came to my attention that unintentionally nestled into the bouquet was a DEAD BABY BIRD. Um, oops? Didn’t quite notice that when arranging the flowers and greenery, huh?

I guess I’ll think of this incident as one of life’s full circle moments.

My mom’s dreams came true, and the four children she birthed were all in town for Thanksgiving. You can only eat so much before you get bored. So, my step-dad constructed targets in their backyard, and some of my more adventurous family members practiced throwing darts and tomahawks.

Apparently darts and tomahawks weren’t exciting enough, so rather than shop on Black Friday, they went to the shooting range. Yes, my daughter shot a gun. I’m not sure how I feel about that, to be honest.

I really like this photo of me with my brothers. They are crazy! I’m sure you want a name with a face, so…

This is David, age 29. He’s married and has two daughters. They live in Clearwater, but they are not Scientologists.

This is Rich, age 24. He has a cool girlfriend, and they live in Maryland. He’s a college student and a college professor, at the same time. I can’t decide if that mustache makes him look more like Mario or Luigi.

This is Ben, age 22. He lives in Colorado and goes hiking and wrestles bears and stuff like that. I really like his red jacket.

Surprisingly, Josiah tolerated being this close to Ben. He usually freaks out when I put him down long enough to take a photo of him. And God forbid someone touch him. He can’t handle it!

You see? I tried to take a photo of my mom with her grandbabies, and Josiah pitched a little fit. Thanks for nothing, kid.

To be fair, Josiah doesn’t always cry. See? He can smile! He walked all over the house with this thing, but he still won’t attempt to walk unassisted. Maybe by Christmas?

My niece Olivia is six months younger than Josiah. I wouldn’t be surprised if she walks before he does.

My niece Ava loves her cousin Taylor!

But you know who became BFF? Noah and Ava. They are three months apart, and basically played together every second. It was fun to watch them. They had so much to talk about! They discussed preschool, movies, toys, etc.

I’ve basically given up having The Perfect Family Photo, 2011 Edition. This might be as good as it gets, but you know what? That’s good enough for me!

I wish we knew the girl’s name. She’s officially our favorite customer!

We stayed on the fifth floor of the St. Croix building. Our three-bedroom condo had a fantastic view from the wraparound balcony.

The boys thought the condo was “fancy”.

October really does have the best sunsets.

Breakfast on the balcony? Don’t mind if we do!

See the little white arrow? That’s our unit.

October is a great time of year to visit Destin beaches. The crowds are gone and the weather is beautiful.

Since it was too cold to swim in the morning, we brought the boys to the playground.

These are all the males in our family. That’s a lot of testosterone.

Nathan, Noah, and Jonah gave into temptation by late afternoon. They were freezing, but they just HAD to swim.

Jonah turned blue, so we wrapped him like a burrito while he shivered.

They were much happier playing in the indoor heated pool!

Nathan loved the hot tub.

Taylor had a couple friends come hang out with her. She was wearing my t-shirt from 1992, which reminds me…

I stayed at a condo with my family when I was her age, and had a couple friends come hang out with me. I know you’re glad I shared this jewel with you. Aren’t we so hot?

The kids pretty much ate ice cream sandwiches for every meal. What can I say? Vacation!

Josiah liked the condo during the day, but not so much at night. He woke up 752 like 7 times. Sucked to be him me.

Another award-winning sunset!

Taylor was a “cereal killer”. Ha!

Gnawing on a lollipop was the only thing that made Josiah stop crying.

This photo was taken right before the swarm of children invaded the space.

Noah and Jonah were so well behaved! It [almost] made up for Josiah being terrible.

Nathan and Jared were Mario and Luigi. They looked more legit with their fake mustaches on.

The food was great! I made this and this, and our neighbors brought delicious nom-noms.

This was the scariest costume ever. I instantly felt like my five-year-old self after seeing The Wizard of Oz for the first time.

This was the most creative costume of the night. Maybe a bit top-heavy, but so cool!

So much fun!

* Yesterday I discovered that Josiah has an ear infection, which would explain his clingy/crying behavior. Ear infections are not contagious, yet somehow 3 of my 5 kids have one right now. Nice.

The kids and I arrived in Fairhope just after 9:30. After talking on the phone with Andy for a few minutes, I assumed we’d arrive at the hotel about the same time. I was wrong. Andy was exhausted, hadn’t eaten since lunch time, and was in an unfamiliar town. I had printed mapquest directions from the festival site to the hotel for him. However, because so many roads were blocked around the festival site, Andy had to take roads not mentioned on my directions. He took a few wrong turns, and was lost faster than you can say Fairhope, Alabama. We had a series of phone calls, where I tried to figure out where he was in relation to the hotel. Then I remembered the GPS feature on our phones:

Andy hadn’t used the map app before, but it was easy enough to understand. I told him the blinking blue dot indicated where he was, and the red dot indicated where he needed to be. This would have been extremely helpful in his situation, except for one little problem: his cell battery died. The icing on the cake was that nowhere (near him) was open, so he couldn’t even ask anyone for directions. The festival site was only a 6-minute drive from the hotel, yet Andy had been lost for over two hours. Yikes. You can only imagine the trauma 911 going on in my imagination.

I did the only thing that seemed logical at the time: I called the Fairhope police department. Luckily, Andy was pulling a large red trailer behind his truck, which made it easy to spot him. Within about five minutes, the cops located him, then escorted him to our hotel. Hooray! I’m 86% confident that Andy was thankful after he was done being irate. If I was lost in an unfamiliar place late at night and my cell battery was dead, I would hope he would have done the same for me.

P.S. – Andy, I’m really sorry about the breathalyzer. I told the cop you weren’t drunk, but I guess they wanted to make sure. Forgive me? xoxo