hilarious

ok. seriously. you HAVE to watch this. if you are reading my blog I command you to. It will make you laugh - unless you have a dull, cold, dead heart. seriously. so funny!

or maybe its just hilarious because Noah is about this age and coincidently (?) has had several facial injuries and would act JUST like this if they doped him up. they may be long-lost twins or something like that.

(sorry i still cant figure out to embed it. erica -help?!)

DAVID AFTER THE DENTIST

10 Random thoughts

1. I like random posts

2. its going to be 84 today. my kids played outside in shorts and tshirts yesterday. in February! tonight the low will be 56 and the HIGH tomorrow is 59. thats texas for ya.

3. I hurt my back. I got a major muscle spasm two days ago just sitting on the floor and didnt think Id be able to get up. Steve insisted I go to the chiro yesterday and she helped me SO much. I go and see her tomorrow and i can hardly wait. Im sore today, but better..

4. Think its from carrying around 22+lbs of "arm candy" on my hip all day?!

5. I sold my camera! Im meeting the guy at 10:45 today. Praise God! I sold my swing Monday too. Craigslist rocks.

6. We picked out the tile for our kitchen! Its from Costco and its 20"x20"! Its HUGE. So awesome. Will do before and afters for sure.

7. Calebs doing great learning to read. He's sitting here whining about being hungry (he had breakfast less than an hour ago). My "there are poor kids who work in factories and you should be thankful" speech apparently didnt work. Although he says its not him, its his stomach. Darn those stomachs.

8. Ive lost 8lbs. Someone at church last week noticed which made my day :) 19 baby pounds to go.

9. Noah took apart a toy car yesterday for 2 HOURS (lots of screws and such). Then he spent an hour putting parts back together in a different way. My uncle Tim was a genius and he could do things like that. He was one of only two people in Ca offered a full scholarship at MIT tech the year he went. He died shortly afterwards in a hang gliding accident, the year before I was born. He was a Christian though and I look forward to meeting him one day!

10. Starting in March Steve will have a set schedule. I think its the first time EVER that I will know what hours he works on which days. that makes it SO much easier to plan time with friends, appointments, etc! Thank you Lord!

Check out Abram in his fancy clothes from Papa Chris and Heidi :) They sent me these when he was born and Ive been anxiously awaiting the day that I could put him in them! (they are 9 mos and he is 6 mos so at least I got to put them on early!)

Mr G - expanded edition :)

Here are some of my favorites! im really happy with how these turned out, Im so thankful for all Im learning!

Sunrise

Yesterday was a glorious and wonderful day (I know I can be sarcastic, but seriously, it was). And it was despite the fact that my chubby little rooster was up at 5am! No one else is up until 7 so at 6am we headed out for a drive. I found an elevated part of town nearby and busted out the camera to watch the sunrise.

I dedicate these to you Alli :)

I then had the photoshoot with sweet Baby G (more picts coming later today!) and.........the camera fairy brought my new camera by!!!! Ok, not really the camera fairy....... I bought it. But it arrived and I am SO excited about upgrading!!!!! (got a fab deal) So Ill now be departing from my faithful and oh-so-loved D40. I just put it up on craigslit for $399 but Ill sell it for $350 if anyone I know wants to buy it (less than half of what we paid back in Dec 07!). Just shoot me an email and let me know if you need more info. Of course Id rather sell it to a friend than a stranger :)

Mr G

This is my dear friend's 10 day old little boy. I had the absolute pleasure of getting to spend a few hours with them this morning and photograph him. He is so precious!!! He wasnt too into the whole gig at first but mama finally settled him down (with the magic milk!) and we were able to get some sleepy shots in :)


This is just a peek! Im going to share them all with her and then post some more soon!

And a smile! goodnight!

Daniel and Katie

You HAVE to check out this video!!! Katie is a dear friend of mine from college and Daniel went to Biola with us as well. They are absolutely amazing and adventurous - the most adventurous people I have ever met!!! They are applying for "the best job in the world". Click on the 5th star to give them a rating and help them get the job!

VIDEO

Katie works at Biola and counsels women in spiritual growth. She has a beautiful, quiet, gentle soul. Ive always just adored her. And here is she is, hanging of off mountains and being an awesome and supportive wife too. She rocks!

What Abram does in the bath....

He's a male. what else is there to say?

and because he's cute

First Food

I could just eat him up!!!!! excuse the pun ;) He wasnt that thrilled with the steamed cauliflower but he had fun mashing it all to pieces! We are going to skip purees this time around. More on that later. For now, just a cute picture of my handsome little man!

Noah

Warning: Noah brag post

Last night about an hour before bed I gave Noah a math packet. It was all the spare math fact sheets from the Saxon 2 workbook from the first half of the year. There were 14 pages with 25 problems on each page - addition and subtraction (9+6, 2-2, etc). He worked on it last night before bed and then this afternoon while he listened to Chronicles of Narnia on CD and he finished! SO fast and he only made one mistake...in 350 problems!

Back in January we were doing an all-church, week-long fast. In cell group Randy was talking about what you could fast even if you didnt not eat all week, TV, dessert, etc. I leaned over and told Noah to think about something he could give up. He thought very hard and then suddenly, and joyfully exclaimed "MATH!!!!!". Um....no, son. Not quite sacraficial ;)

So the fact he is liking math right now and asking for it totally thrills me!!! :) Cant wait until we get to Alegebra (Im a math geek, I know!!) I keep jumping ahead and skipping lessons. I really, really like the way Saxon teaches the math but its kind of slow. And I taught him multiplication ahead of the book. Couldnt help myself. Yesterday we learned carrying-over when you add (like 36+45). So fun! They are also teaching them word problems, fractions, reading thermometers (like anyone uses those anymore but whatever). This is the fun part of homeschooling! ..........for me anyways :)

Today in the car we talked about hybrid cars and solar power. Neato :) I love this boy. I love how he can learn so easily and its just more and more fun as he gets older!

All pictures taken at Cabelas last Monday :)

Just because....

she's beautiful.




Jaynas speech is improving every day. She continues to have speech therapy every 2 weeks and it definitely helps. They give us things to work on and point out bad habits or patterns so we can work on those as well. She is stringing 3 words together for the first time and speaking more and more clearly.

Right now we are working on adding "ing" to words like sleeping, sitting, etc. So if you ask her what she's doing she will say "jumping" instead of "jump!". Also we are working on using "I" instead of "me". So when I ask, "who wants to go to the park?" she will answer "I do!" instead of "me do!". Nothing to stress over, just working on it :)

We are thrilled and praise God for her improvements!!!

p.s. i never have to ask or worry about her going potty, she does it all on her own! Im still amazed at how easy that was!!! (girls!)

Uncle Dan's Visit

Steve turned 30 this past monday :) We He is getting old - aaaaaah! (Im young until August)

I wanted to make his bday special so I conspired with his best friend Dan to come and visit from Boston! Dan is our friend from college and was our best man and we hadnt seen him in 2 years. He and Steve still email or talk daily, they are long-distance workout accountability partners :) Anyways we TOTALLY surprised him!!!! He had no idea! I totally built it up, that I had errands to run that day (valentines day) and to be all ready to go out when I got back. I told him to hide in my room because I had to put something big in the garage and then I had him come out of our room and there was Dan! so fun! :)

We had a great weekend. They had some good guy time and I got to hang out and talk with Dan too. He is a researcher like me (except much, much smarter....working on his PhD right now in something really smart that I couldnt even repeat for you) so we could talk for hours. I like to pick his brain on science stuff :)

Monday we went to Cabelas with the kids (its a hunting/fishing/outdoors store for you non-Texans. lots of guns and deer heads on the wall LOL). Here are some pictures. Dan enjoyed the kids a lot and they adored him!!! He insisted on buying them something and we decided on a mini-trampoline. That finalized their love for him, once and for all :)

(twinsies LOL)


They have an "Africa" exhibit there.
This is Abram infront of the sky painted on the wall!




Hello moose!

We also surprised Steve at cell group with a cake. Some friends came by and joined us and it meant a lot to Steve. He said it was his best birthday ever!!! yay!!!! I love you sweetheart!!!

Happy Love Day!

I meant to post these this morning, which would have had more of an effect LOL but I never had a chance. Steve's big birthday suprise was that his best friend Dan flew in to visit! We havent seen Dan in 2 years so its very exciting. Steve was shocked but so happy!!!!
Here are some more Valentines Day picts I did with the kids for fun, and one of JJ.

i did the kids pictures at all different times of the day which really gave each one different lighting. oops!

She's saying "three!!" and holding up two fingers LOL.

She always does that.

We try to tell her she's two but she's convinced otherwise.

These are over-processed and weird-lookign to me. i did it the other day, i have no idea what i was thinking. probably was late! but she's just so precious i had to share anyways.

This is blurry but I still love it, it cracks me up!


another one from out front. i really need to edit these and share them together!

Beautiful Sunset

I sat down in the front room to hang out with Abram and Noah (while he finished his chore of folding the dish towels) and looked up to see the sky full of beautiful pinks and oranges! I knew I only had a few minutes so I grabbed my camera. Abram was in quite a mood and didnt appreciate me being more than 4 inches away from him but I think the pictures were worth it ;) I put my camera down and sat down and when I looked up just a few mins later, the sky was dark and gray! Just happened to catch these and Im glad.

I upped the color saturation a bit and sharpened them but otherwise this is what we saw - gorgeous!

(This first one is my favorite!!!)

Hey Lens Fairy!

If you are flying by my way tonight, can you drop this off please?


thanks! (Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Nikkor Wide Angle Zoom Lens)

and if you see the Camera Fairy, drop a litttle hint for me (D90)

Im getting a lot of practice with my manually-focusing 50mm but sometimes it would be nice for it to auto-focus! So my first goal (far off in the future im sure!) is to upgrade from the D40 to the D90. The D90 even takes video which is pretty nifty.

Then Id love to save for that lens above. They dont have half-off sales in this world though - although the prices to get better and better. The depreciation is steep on the lower-level cameras like what I started off with. It (and the two lenses it came with) are worth about half just a little over a year later. crazy!

I really believe you can do a lot with any camera. Ive seen some amazing pictures from point-and-shoots, but shot by people who know what they are doing. My old point-and-shoot has manual settings but I never had a clue how to use them! Its much more about the skill of the photographer than the camera. That said.....there are also some things about the higher-end cameras that make your job much easier :) I couldnt catch my busy kids on my old point and shoot except on rare lucky occasions - it was just so slow! and there really are some looks (like sharpness, depth of field, etc) that you can only get with certain lenses and the better the lens the better the effect, etc.

Anyways. the idea of spending $2k on camera equipment is laughable for me right now, in this economy and in our situation (you know, mouths to feed and all that!) but its fun to think about. I like to have goals too. I like challenges.

Ive pretty much reached my goal for saving for tile for the kitchen (family christmas money plus math tutoring money) ! Im going to look at it next Friday and hopefully it will be a reality soon! :)

Lead

If you know me well you know that sometimes I just get my feathers all ruffled up by health issues. Thats what lead to my other blog where I compiled all my research on healthy baby products, beauty products, etc. I just posted over there about LEAD in crockpots and plates. Its seriously disturbing. If you are interested HERE is the link.

Its this kind of thing that makes me so sad :( Everyone knows by now that any amount of lead is dangerous. Yet these huge companies use lead in a product they know will leach lead into food that is eaten by children. Children in this country are less and less able to deal with this kind of toxic exposure. Its a criminal act in my opinion yet the FDA allows it to go on.

Its just like all the toxic chemicals like artificial colors and fragrances used in things like baby lotion, kids toothpaste, shampoo, even kids cereal. It makes me think of all the moms who work and sweat and cry every day to fight for their autistic children. It all goes back to the immune system and what we are assaulting it with from birth - vaccines, toxic, pesticide-filled, genetically-modified food, pollution and on and on and on and on.

NO, we cant fix it all. And stressing out doesnt do any good. But we can "know better, do better" for our kids. I think of the times Caleb has had trouble breathing and needed his nebulizer and thats all the motivation I need.

*off soapbox*

and now a cheery picture! more to come from this set of pictures!

Glorious day!

Today the kids and I went to Target AND Costco (thats an accomplishment in my world!) For the first time Abram happily sat in the shopping cart!!! (in a shopping cart cover of course, germ-phobe that I am. the sad thing is that its the hot pink butterfly one I made for Jayna but thats how life is as the 4th! I do actually own a blue one, I just need to find it......)

anyways it was SO much easier than wearing him in the carrier! And I love seeing his face and getting to get smiles while I shop. Yay! It just felt so much easier.

I weighed him yesterday, he's 22-23 lbs. Crazy big. but oh-so-yummy and soft!!! As of yestedray he's now taking all naps in his crib (instead of my bed). This will keep my paranoia of him falling off the bed (since he did twice) and therefore my anxiety levels down. I just could not take freaking out about it all the time!

Noah and I are commiting to 3 simple goals each day for school - do math together, for him to read me a chapter in Charlottes Web (he just started this and im so impressed by how he's doing!), and for him to copy a few sentences from a book of his choosing. Im also reading him a chapter or two each night. Right now we are reading A Tarantula in my pocket. So far this plan is working really well and keeping both of us on track! and of course he is learning ALL day as well ;)

Math had become SUCH a battle even though he is awesome at it. It comes down to having to write it all out. So we've been doing the lessons orally, with me filling in the answers and now we can do several lessons at a time! He picks it up so quickly - venn diagrams, multiplication, fractions (the idea of them and labeling pieces), patterns, dozens and half-dozens, adding by grouping into 10s, etc. All that we've done this week and its super easy for him. So Im really happy we've found a way to do it that he enjoys - he actually asked to do it with me the other day! And the bonus is we get time together :)

Anyways just some blabbing so I can continue to be in denial about the ever-growing pile of laundry that needs to be folded. And the toys and other junk that seems to be multiplying all over my floor. oh and the groceries that need to be away......



and because every post is better with a picture and you know i love me some baby feet :)

some funnies.....

(good question!)