art
My grandnephew, Jaxxon “Jax” Killinger, is a sweet little boy who is going to be in third grade in the fall. Jax is growing up fast, and he has started to show his own likes and dislikes, as well as the interests he has. Jax is interested in art, coloring, and drawing. Who knows? A love of art could develop into many things, including traditional art or graphic art. Time will tell. While Jax loves art, that is not all he loves. With his dad, Chris Killinger’s engagement to my niece, Lacey Stevens, came additional aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. Jax and his sister, Brooklyn love their cousins, Elliott and Maya, and those 
girls love having cousins too. They all play together very well, and they have a great time. They are all great friends.
Jax also loves hanging out with his dad and his uncle, Matt Miller and his aunt Michelle Miller. They all love riding on the side by side, and Jax is pretty sure he is ready to drive a truck too. The Stevens family has taken several camping trips this summer, and Jax has had a blast camping this summer and going swimming!! The family has done a lot of camping this summer, and Jax has just reveled in it. It’s like he in in his element. My sister, Alena Stevens, also likes to take the kids to the 
Rec Center pool. They have such a great time. The slide at the pool is a kid favorite, and they can spend hours going down it if you let them. Jax, his sister, and cousins are definitely “water babies.”
In May, Chris and Lacey took Brooklyn and Jax to Denver for a trip. They went to the aquarium and the children’s museum. They had such a great time. Jax had never been to a big city before, and he was in awe of everything. Jax was so in awe that he told his dad that “It was crazy!!” The big city can be a lot to take in, but for a young boy, it’s really a lot!! I’m sure it is a trip he will remember for a long time. Today is Jax’s 8th birthday. Happy birthday Jax!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
My niece, Chantel Balcerzak was the first grandchild of my parents, Al and Collene Spencer. From the start, Chantel was a Diva, and very girly. She could have been a model of baby clothes. She was almost always in a pose. Chantel always had so much going for her. She was everything lots of girls wanted to be. She was cute and petite, 4’10” fully grown. She had a super smile, and you couldn’t help but smile with her.
Of course, Chantel has other things going for her. Chantel has a wonderful imagination…both for stories and for art. As she has grown, Chantel’s imagination has grown, and developed into a love of art. She is so creative, and her art is stunning. Recently, Chantel has been painting murals for people around town, and her mural business is really growing. Painting a mural is no easy job. It takes a lot of planning. I’m sure that Chantel started on her own walls, and she has painted so really beautiful murals for her 
home. The other people heard about her murals, and her business took off.
Chantel also has a wedding business. She doesn’t do the whole wedding, but the flowers, and other decorations. This year she already has flowers for two weddings lined up. She is very skilled at floral arrangements, and word of mouth is one of the best ways to advertise, so her business has really grown.
Chantel and her daughter, Siara Kirk have been working out together for a couple of years now, and they are both crazy strong. they do a lot of the heavy lifting, and they are really good at it. They try to work out during 
lunch breaks, which kills two birds with one stone. They get their workout in, and they eat less food at lunch. It’s a win-win!! Siara is so proud of her mom’s tenacity.
Chantel is a woman of strong faith. No matter what comes her way, she prays over it and then patiently waits on God to take care of the situation. She has passed that strong faith on to her husband, Dave Balcerzak, and her children. Her strength and her faith have made them very proud too. Chantel and Dave are not only husband and wife…they are best friends. Her daughter, Siara says she is her best friend as well, and always has been. And her sisters dearly love her. Today is Chantel’s birthday. Happy birthday Chantel!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
My grandniece, Raelynn Masterson is very smart, but she, like so many other people, is also timid and shy. Once she gets to know people, she does great, but it takes a little while to get comfortable with people. In the past, she wasn’t aways confident in her abilities, or in herself, but she is working on that. For one thing, Raelynn was never really good at cooking, but these days she is not only spending time in the kitchen with her mom, Dustie Masterson, learning to cook, but she is learning about nutrition, and how to better take care of her own body and health, which of course includes exercise and fresh air too.
Raelynn has also been stepping outside of her comfort zone to make so new friends and hang out with them. The social aspect of things hasn’t always been easy for her, and like many people, when Covid hit, being on lockdown made the social interactions hard, and many people just started leading online lives. Stepping back 
out, or stepping out for the first time, is not easy, and I’m very proud of Raelynn for pushing herself to be more of a joiner.
Raelynn likes to write stories and develop characters for her stories. The friends she has made have similar interests, and they like to bounce ideas off of each other concerning their stories and characters. Sometimes it’s a big help to brainstorm together about what you want to do with a story or character. Also, every character needs a backstory. They need to have come from somewhere, and that isn’t always easy to develop or to make interesting. Raelynn is also into art and uses her drawings to illustrate her stories. Raelynn says that using her drawings in her stories “makes it easier for me to visualize that character and what they would do so I draw them at least once and then maybe later in a scene I wrote them in.” She doesn’t necessarily think she is very good, but I think that she is doing very well, and as with any skill, practice makes perfect. She knows that too. She is ok with the progress she has made. She obviously hasn’t seen anything I can draw, or she would really understand that she is leaps and bounds ahead of my skill level.
Raelynn may have held herself back in her earlier years, with shyness and a lack of confidence, but she is breaking out of that shell now, and like with any caterpillar, we are seeing the beautiful butterfly emerging. Raelynn has always been a beautiful girl, whether she knew it or now, but as she becomes more and more social, more people are able to see what we all saw…just how beautiful she is, inside and out. Today is Raelynn’s 19th birthday. Happy birthday Raelynn!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
While I knew that the Louvre was not always a museum, since it was built in the 1500s, and no museums existed then, I never would have guessed that at one time it was a palace. I’m not sure why, it just didn’t occur to me. The construction of the Louvre palace was begun by King Francis I in 1546 on the site of a 12th-century fortress built by King Philip II. King Francis was a great art collector, and the Louvre was to serve as his royal residence. What better place to eventually become a museum than the castle of an art collector.
The work, which was supervised by the architect Pierre Lescot, continued after Francis’ death and into the reigns of kings Henry II and Charles IX. It seems that every successive king wanted to change things or add things to make it their own. Almost every subsequent French monarch extended the Louvre and its grounds, but major additions were made by Louis XIII and Louis XIV in the 17th century. Not only did these kings make major additions, but they also greatly expanded the crown’s art holdings, and Louis XIV acquired the art collection of Charles I of England after his execution in the English Civil War. Then, in 1682, Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles. That was the end of 
the Louvre’s time as the main royal residence, but it would not be closed up and locked away forever.
In the spirit of the Enlightenment, many in France began calling for the public display of the royal collections, believing that it would be a shame not do display them, and that they belonged to the commonwealth of France. The French writer and philosopher, Denis Diderot, was among the first to propose a national art museum for the public. In 1750 King Louis XV temporarily displayed a selection of paintings at the Luxembourg Palace, but it was not until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 that any real progress was made in establishing a permanent museum. The French Revolutionary Government turned the Louvre into a public museum in Paris on August 10, 1793, calling it the Musée Central des Arts in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. After more than two centuries as a royal palace, seen only by royalty and guests. With artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and culture, the art collection housed in the Louvre is one of the richest in the world.
The French army seized art and archaeological items from territory and nations conquered in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, and the collection at the Louvre grew rapidly. Much of this plundered art was returned after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, however the Louvre’s current Egyptian antiquities collections and other departments owe much to Napoleon’s conquests as well. Two new wings were added in the 19th century. The 
Louvre complex was completed in 1857, during the reign of Napoleon III.
The Grand Louvre, as the museum is officially known, underwent major remodeling in the 1980s and 1990s. Modern museum amenities were added and thousands of square meters of new exhibition space were opened. The Chinese American architect I M Pei built a steel-and-glass pyramid in the center of the Napoleon courtyard. Traditionalists were outraged. In 1993, the 200th anniversary of the museum, a rebuilt wing formerly occupied by the French ministry of finance opened to the public, and for the first time the entire Louvre was used for museum purposes.
It is so hard for me to believe that my grand-niece, Aurora Hadlock is 8 years old today. It seems like just yesterday that she arrived…such a sweet, pretty little baby girl. She was given the name of her mother, Chelsea Hadlock’s dreams…Aurora. The name Aurora means “Dawn” or “Sunrise,” and either one fits Aurora, because she has a sunshiny personality. She loves hanging out with friends, cousins, and her brother, Ethan. As siblings go, these two are very close. Ethan is protective of his sister, but doesn’t mind teasing her a bit either. Aurora can take it though, because they have grown up in a family of teasers, a long line of them really, dating back at least four generations.
Aurora is a smart little girl, who does well in school. She especially loves to read and make art. She also comes from a long line of musicians, dating back at least four generations, and she really loves to play the guitar with her dad and grandpa. I wish she could have played with her great grandpa, my dad, Allen Spencer, because he would have just loved having a little great granddaughter who could play the guitar. His own daughters weren’t really so inclined, with the exception of Aurora’s grandma, Allyn Hadlock, who played the violin, as did our dad.
Very soon, Aurora and her family are going to be moving into a bigger house. My sister and her husband, Chris, 
Aurora’s grandparents are building a new home in the country, and Aurora’s parents are going to buy their current home. It is bigger, and will provide them with all the home they need for the rest of their lives. Aurora is very excited about the move, as is her brother, and it can’t come soon enough. The kids know that their grandparents house isn’t done yet, and they know that they will have to move when their old house is sold. So they have asked where their grandparents are going to live when they move into the house. Allyn laughed and said, “With you!!” The kids hadn’t thought of that, but they liked the idea. They love to spend the night over there, so now their grandparents can spend the night with them for a change. It’s an exciting time for Aurora. Today is Aurora’s birthday. Happy birthday Aurora!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
My grand nephew, Topher Spicer is a typical teenager who like to hang out with his friends. They like to go long boarding and walking around. Topher loves long boarding, and he is very good at it. He is always practicing his moves, and that leads to greatly improved skill levels, but that doesn’t mean that the only thing you need is practice, because that isn’t true. Lots of people practice things and some still have no talent. It takes a certain amount of talent. Topher has talent.
Topher’s talent doesn’t stop at the long board though. Topher is an artist. He does his drawing on the computer, but the drawing is all him. I’ve tried to draw on a computer, and 
believe me that is also not where my talent lies. People who are artists have the pictures in their head, long before they appear on the paper or the screen. Art takes a number of forms too. Photography is an art, but not everyone can take a photo that anyone would call art. Topher has a pretty good eye when it comes to photography, and one of his favorite subjects is his dog, Buttercup. Buttercup is a silky terrier, and like all pet parents, Topher loves his Fur Baby. They hang out together, and 
Buttercup is totally content doing whatever Topher wants to. It doesn’t get better than that, does it.
Topher is going into high school this year. The thing I notice the most about Topher is that he is getting so tall. His mom tells me that he is polite and smart, and always makes her so proud. He is a good student, and is looking forward to the cool things that high school will bring. High school is a turning point for kids. They get to spread their wings and start to decide where they want their lives to go. It’s going to be an exciting year. Today is Topher’s 14th birthday. Happy birthday Topher!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
For my grand niece, Kaytlyn Griffith, summer is just an ideal time to take classes to learn about her favorite pastime…art. Last summer was filled with such classes, and as it turns out, Kaytlyn is a talented artist. At this point, most of Kaytlyn’s art is in the form of drawings, and while I’m not an expert, I can tell you that they are very good. She entered a contest at Christmas time, and she was declared the Grand Champion out of all the schools in Powell!! That is a high honor for any student.
Kaytlyn’s parents, Susan and Josh Griffith are so proud of their daughter’s abilities, and her continuing interest in the arts. They are considering having her work on a few projects that she can enter in the county fair this summer. Looking at Kaytlyn’s work, I think she has a great change of winning some ribbons at the fair, and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out. I am so excited for Kaytlyn to be entering her first fair.
Kaytlyn Has been working very hard this year in school. She’s trying to improve her math skills. There are lots 
of kids for whom math does not come easy, and I think that often, artistically minded kids don’t naturally gravitate toward mathematical skills. They have to work hard to hone their mathematical skills. That makes their success even sweeter. They have have had to step outside their comfort zone to embrace something that is a little bit foreign to them, but when they work hard, breakthrough can come. Last week, Kaytlyn received an Effort Award at school, because she had been working so hard on trying to improve on her math skills. Her parents are so proud of her, as is the rest of her family, and we are all thankful that her teacher can see how hard she is trying. Good job Kaytlyn!! Today is Kaytlyn’s 11th birthday. Happy birthday Kaytlyn!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
Louis Mantin, was a French aesthete, which is a person who has a special appreciation of art and beauty. He was also, “obsessed with death and the passage of time.” He wrote in his will that he wanted to turn his home into a museum after his death. He wanted to share his love of art, and his vast collection with others. However, his Will was very explicit in the details of how this would be carried out, and some might even say it was eccentric. In his will, he made a very specific and seemingly odd request, the museum would open 100 years after his passing.
Mantin died in 1905, and though he made it very clear in his will what he wanted the house to be in 100 years, he didn’t make any provisions for the upkeep of the house in the meantime. Because nothing was specifically laid out, the house eventually fell into disrepair, because it was locked up and ignored. Eventually, worms and mold settled in among his statues and in the elaborate wallpaper. After a distant relative discovered Mantin’s will and initiated an extensive renovation project, the house was finally re-opened as a museum in 2010. It was five years late, but the will was finally carried out. I suppose that it took a little time to get the house back into a condition that would allow the house to become a museum.
Townspeople and tourists can now marvel at this once hidden world, that went completely untouched for a century, admiring Mantin’s eclectic collections, as well as his flushing toilet and heated floors, true luxuries for any home back in 1905. Mantin inherited a large fortune from his father, and since he was a bachelor, with no children, he used the money to start collecting the things that he loved. He was almost obsessive about it. 
Egyptian relics, medieval locks and keys, monkey skulls, and stuffed blowfish. Mantin had strange taste, and since he inherited the money later in life, he knew that his time with his newly acquired collection would be short. He decided that the logical solution was to turn his home into a museum. He thought people might like to know how an artistic gentleman had lived at the turn of the century. The museum might be filled with odd relics, but when you consider how rare they are, their value in the world of art would probably make them priceless.
My niece, Michelle Stevens sees things that most of us would miss. Of course, when I say that, I am talking about seeing art in things most of us couldn’t even imagine. Not all of these things were her ideas, but she could make them work, because she is very talented. Her artwork is truly prize winning. Michelle has studied every form of art in her pursuit of her art education degree, and I think she could do any of them and will no doubt create some in the future.
Michelle has taken up crocheting. I did that once, but I don’t think I was nearly as talented as Michelle. She made a beautiful blanket for her little niece, Elliott Michelle Stevens. It is beautiful in gray, pink, and white. Little did Michelle know at the time she was making the blanket, but her sister-in-law, Kayla was decorating Elliott’s room in pink and gray. The blanket fit in perfectly. Of course, becoming an aunt to Elliott has been the biggest change in Michelle’s life for this year. She doesn’t get to see as much of little Elliott as she would like, because she and her parents live in Sheridan, and Michelle lives in Casper, but she is still Aunty Michelle, and that is very cool. Michelle has also taken up sewing with a sewing machine her mom, Alena Stevens gave her. She wants to make quilts and things. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few little baby outfits make their way to Elliott for her Aunty Michelle either. Michelle sees many different things as art, and she is very good at all of them. She makes wreaths, pottery, and is planning to take up mosaic glass art. Even Michelle’s fur babies, dogs Obie and Leia got gifts. She made them stockings, because she loves those puppies like babies and I hear they are spoiled rotten. Michelle is an artist in every sense of the word. Oh…to have such talent!! Unfortunately it is not in my sphere.
On top of all her artwork, Michelle is a great cook. When we had our family Christmas party last weekend, Michelle made crab stuffed mushrooms. They were amazing. Michelle loves to cook, and like everything else in her world, she considers it a form of art too. The more creative she can get with it the more she likes it. Oh…to have such talent!! Today is Michelle’s birthday. Happy birthday Michelle!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
My grand-niece, Aurora Hadlock is growing up so fast. She is a girl of many talents. Of course, having a big brother, Ethan, who loves his sister and hangs out with with her, helps Aurora to diversify in her choices of activities. Ethan has taught her to play Minecraft,and they play together. Also,having a big brother who likes football has made Aurora like the game too. So it seemed only logical for her to decide to sign up for Flag Football. I know that she will have a great time with that. She is athletic,and while she has a girly side, there is a little of a tomboy in her too.
Aurora still loves to read and has since the day she learned how. Reading has always been a big part of her life. Her parents and grandparents read to her, as did her big brother. Books have long been a highlight of Aurora’s life. She also likes art…a trait that she gets from her mother, who is very crafty. They love to make beautiful things for their home, and as in her mother’s case, selling them. I don’t think it will be very long before Aurora’s mom can include some of her artwork for sale too.
Something I was not aware of is that Aurora is actually a chip off the old block…or as in her case, two blocks…her dad, Ryan Hadlock and her grandpa, Chris Hadlock. Both of the men play the guitar, and now I have learned that Aurora plays too. She is learning from them, and loves to have jam sessions as a threesome. Really, that is pretty impressive for a 7 year old girl. Of course, when you look back in her genealogical line, she comes from a long line of guitar players, that include her great grandpa, Allen Lewis Spencer, and 2nd great grandpa, Allen Luther Spencer. With all that talent (and maybe more for all I know) in her lineage, it’s no wonder that Aurora is a guitar player at the tender age of 7 years. I think it is sad that her other grandpa’s didn’t get a chance to jam with her too, but
maybe they can in Heaven when we all get there.
Aurora is such a sweet little girl who is always smiling. She is getting ready to start 2nd grade this year, and I know she will do very well, because she is a good student who loves to learn new things. She has enjoyed her summer, and has done some great things, including a family vacation to Disneyland, where she met lots of Disney characters, and especially loved the rides…if I know her. But then, the princesses and mermaids were probably highlights too. Aurora has had a great year, and I know the coming year will be even better. Today is Aurora’s 7th birthday. Happy birthday Aurora!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
