A Full Day

We had a full day of catch up. Everyone is finally back to normal. We did a bunch of cleaning and school and made sure to get outside in the wonderfully warm weather. After dinner I took Flannery and Jedidiah with me to the store for some grocery shopping. We had a great time. We got back kind of late. I hope that doesn't mess up Flannery tomorrow for her soccer game! We took a bunch of pictures today. There were some really cute ones that I would love to touch up, but I am way too tired to do so. So for now I am going to put a bunch up here and when I touch them up maybe I'll do a little before/after post with them.

Well scratch that! The photos are taking f..o..r..e..v..e..r to load! I need to go to bed. I started uploading them to Flikr thinking that the problem may have been with Blogger, but apparently it is with our computer. Up above you see a picture of a sick Jonah. Hopefully tomorrow you will see a healthy Jonah :-) Goodnight.

Jed Eating - What a Beautiful Sight!

This post speaks for itself. ;-)

A new look

I hope you are all enjoying the new view :-) Along with a new background I also have some page buttons up above. Right now I don't have any actual material on those pages, but I wanted to see if I could make the buttons (done in PSE8), and have them actually work. Success is due to the tutorials on the CoffeeShop site. I'd write more, but three kiddos are down....taken out by the dreaded tummy bug. Talk about having my hands full!

I did it!

I FINALLY did it! I made the above storyboard on my own! Working with Photoshop Elements has been a lot of fun. So far two out of the three tutorials I have read have worked for me. I am very excited. Sometimes it's the small things in life :-)

In other news we signed Jed up for a third day of speech therapy for each week. He starts today! It was great to talk with the coordinator as she was telling me that she can finally understand some of Jed's words!!!! How wonderful is that?! Adding a third day will make it hard for the rest of us as it cuts right into the middle of our day. But it will be well worth it. Yesterday we were trying to get some things done here and ended up taking our school work with us and doing it in the van. So it all works out.

Poor Flannery caught Saoirse's tummy bug :-( She woke me up at 2 AM telling me her tummy hurt. Thankfully she only woke up hourly to every two hours. However a little after three Saoirse woke up with extreme pain in her ear. Yeah, I can't win. I have a post in mind on health mulling around in my brain. One thing I want to hit on I will mention here as it is something that happens to us E.V.E.R.Y. T.I.M.E. Whenever we start to do something right, or good, our kids get sick within 72 hours. Seriously I feel totally confident that I could bet my life on it. Sometimes illness is not the result of a bad diet, or hanging out with other sick people....sometimes it's spiritual. This time it hit within 24 hours. I definitely want to save the "why" till later as I don't have a lot of time right now to get into the story. But we are all really excited about an opportunity we have to serve others.

Off to tidy up and make some breakfast.

Another try

So I grew tired of trying to figure out GIMP. Well at least temporarily. I mean I have limited time on the computer and I kind of want results now. Call it impatient. Go ahead :-) Sooooo I downloaded a free trial of Phototshop Elements 8 the other day. You see I already have a couple of blogs in my favorites that have written various tutorials on the things I *actually* want to do. The problem with Gimp isn't that it can't accomplish the same effect, I just can't find the tutorials I need to figure it out.

Yesterday I needed to fill up our oat container and decided it would be a fun thing for a little boy to do. The boys around here can't get enough of fill/empty "games", most notably when water is involved! Jonah was more than happy to help. He made sure to bring along a snack in case the work got heavy :-) I'm uploading the storyboard directly from our computer and then I will resize it in Flikr to see the difference. This is the first time I am using one of the CoffeeShop's templates and I am not sure how big it will be displayed on the web.

Well, that didn't work as expected. I increased the size of the image and got the above result. I wanted the image to be larger still and went in and resized it, however the image didn't change size for my blog! Oh well. No time to figure it all out. We have a bunch of cleaning to do today, Jed's speech and later this evening dropping Isa off to soccer. Moira is no longer playing soccer as a referee told her this past Saturday that she had to take out her earrings in order to play in the game. She wasn't willing to do that since she has had some bad experiences with taking her earrings out. Personally I find that rule a bit much. I could see if she had dangling earrings, but hers are small little starter earrings. Oh well. Nothing like a bunch of money thrown out the window! Off to start work :-)

My comments were not working!!!

To all that have made comments to my blog over the last two months I'm sorry that I did not get them up. I saw only three comments, and at the time I read them (from my email) I could not publish them. My sister said something to me the other day about it and I decided to go into Blogger itself to publish the *three* comments I thought I had. WOW, there were at least TWENTY waiting for me! I'm supposed to be emailed when I get a comment, but apparently I haven't been! Yikes. Anyways I won't have time to address everyone, but I wanted to say a big thank you to all who prayed for us while we were sick!

And I did want to briefly address a comment from my friend about us being sick all the time. You are RIGHT! We are sick all the time! However, homeopathy is only something we do once we get sick, it's not something we are doing to stay well. Plus homeopathy is an art....you have to know what you are doing to get it right. The other, as far as diet, we have only changed our diet since we were so sick in Jan. We may have been eating "healthy" compared to what people think is healthy, but that doesn't mean we were eating HEALTHY. Ha, ha! Kind of like you can be a vegetarian, but that does not mean in any way you are eating healthy. Just because you take out meat does not make one healthy. If you are still drinking sodas, cakes, chips...etc, all vegetarian choices...you'll be a very unhealthy vegetarian. So our diet looked healthy to most, but in reality, knowing what we know now about food, it was not.

I just don't want homeopathy and *actual* healthy eating to get a bad name because of us :-) There is a lot more I could say about what goes into being healthy, but I don't have time. Diet has been helping....a lot! But we were SOOOOOO sick, seriously never been so sick before, that our *actual* good diet now will take a while to undo our unhealthy living. Natural stuff takes a longer time to work. And when I called the homeopathic doctor when I couldn't get the remedies right myself, he is able to pick the right ones, and were finally able to get better. So diet and homeopathy work, just not in the conventional way. Phew! Off to make breakfast for our crew.

Found a new blog to share

I have some extra time on my hands as Jonah is sleeping, Jed is playing a computer game, the older three girls are at soccer and poor, poor Saoirse has the tummy bug, sitting next to me. I really have a ton of things to do, but no energy. I was up early helping Saoirse in the bathroom. Jonah woke up early and Jed started the day needing a bath as his overnight diaper leaked. Jed has not been hisself today and so I am allowing him some extra computer time. Right now he can not handle even simple, normal family situations. Sooooo, as Saoirse was napping I took a look at some blogs that I have not visited in a while. One had a link to some blogs of Moms of Many. I found one I am totally loving! Check her out. I love her DIY tutorials on the left side.....how cool.....magnetic wall, chalkboard wall (one we were thinking about already), and hand dyed play silks. Take a peek at Raising Olives.

Ok, off to see if I can tackle some dishes before Jonah wakes from his nap. He's been a little booger too, not being himself and wanting to be held non stop. Sigh.....

I am still playing around with storyboards. This one came from an online program that you can enter in how many pictures you want in each row/column. I have yet to make my own template. One day I hope I can get it right!

Tomorrow is soccer for the girls. We have a couple of errands to run and then a mad dash to clean up as we are having some new friends come over for a bonfire. Everyone can't wait.

No other news to report. Just some basics getting done here. We had a productive week in the education department. We are continuing in our e-course from GNOWFGLINS. I've been enjoying it. I ordered something very interesting that arrived in the mail today. It will be a post of its own.....for women only though. Trust me guys, you won't want to read it! Ha, ha! I also ordered some new tea to try out. I think its called roiboos. Something close to that. I mixed it with another tea that was made up with a lot of cinnamon. Hmmm, not what I was expecting, but not bad. I'm not into tea, but these teas have a lot of good *stuff* in them. I suppose it would make it taste better if I put honey in it, but I don't want to add any more sugar than I need to into my diet.

Other than that I am still working my way through trying to read and learn about new things. I'm still learning about my camera. Still trying to learn how to use GIMP. Needing to dig in and read up on goats giving birth....as that is going to be happening in a few short weeks!!! Needing to read more on the Charlotte Mason approach to education. Plus reading over a couple of parenting books. Phew! I've got a long list of things I am trying to learn! Now why didn't they teach these *important* things in school. I would be so ahead of the game by now. Oh well, it gives my brain a workout :-)

But alas, the most important.....my heart is having a workout. Maybe I should say my spirit. I was so inspired when I read a friend of mine's post. You should all CHECK IT OUT, its not too long. It spoke directly to my heart and what I have been thinking on long and hard these last couple of years. I think it is time for some serious wrestling. Not sure why that was the word that popped into my head, 'wrestling'. I think I also feel a lot like this women HERE. I visit her blog often. I started to go there for the photography, but then read with interest about her son. Now, this woman and her husband are in Africa on a short trip and she is blogging about it while there. This is where the wrestling comes in. I know, I mean I *KNOW* somehow, that God wants to DO something in my heart, and with my hands and with my whole being...with who I am. Not for my self, or my purposes, but for HIS. Which is why it is so important that I really truly *GET* what my friend Bethany is talking about. I need to have the Spirit moving in me, guiding me. With a lot of prayer and I am hoping some inspiration with THIS and THIS book maybe I'll get to where He wants me to be. I am currently waiting to see if those books can be gotten through inter library loan. Its usually a good sign to not get an email from the library people right away as that usually means they have located the book and they are waiting to make arrangements to get it to my library. We shall see. Not like I don't have 50 other books waiting to be read in the meantime :-)

My pillow is now calling my name. Goodnight all!

I finally made a storyboard....

Finally figuring out how to make a storyboard in GIMP. GIMP is an open source "Photoshop". These are not perfect, as I did not want to take the time to try to resize them all to the exact size. But, FINALLY, after weeks of trying various programs I have succeeded in making a storyboard. I would like to make template and colored plates with text in it, but one step at a time! I think I will need to change my background color to white so that these will look a lot better.

Testing photo sizes

I had seen a tutorial on how to resize photo images for your blog. I really like the impact of the larger photos. I am quite surprised that I was able to do it! I'll have to go thank the person who did the tutorial as she put it in clear English (with lots of visual help). I've tried other tutorials in the past and found myself beyond frustrated. It kind of reminds me of my college physics professor. He was one of the top minds in the field and truly had a love for all things physics. He tried his best, with enthusiasm, to pass that love on. However he couldn't break down these big ideas for our wee little Physics 101 class, and we were all LOST. Ha, ha! I don't remember if I passed that class or not.....hmmmm.....oh well, onto some larger photos. Let me know how you like the larger photos.

A day or two in pictures

It is a bit difficult to remember to take pictures of the everyday scenes around here. We had a busy day yesterday. I wanted to take pictures of the kids outside at the speech therapists, but it was raining and very col d. Another day perhaps. As we are now in the process of waiting for paper work and insurance to process our claim for the DynaVox, we have decided to not go to therapy in the city and instead pick up an extra day with his school therapist. This will make it a much more regular occurrence and our drive much shorter. So Jed will be having speech three days a week. That does make our days a bit harder as his sessions are all in mid afternoon. Ok, on with the pictures.


Jeremiah piloted the camera for a while. First stop is a lovely photo of Moira.

Jonah pushing his beloved tricycle.

A couple of chicken loving girls. Chickens give our kids hours of fun. Everyone should have a few :-)

See, Jeremiah still has the camera. Me, hanging out, watching children ride bikes down the road. One must make sure no one is getting run over by their siblings.

My only thought was--I sure hope that chicken doesn't have to go potty!! Thankfully (for everyone) it didn't! Phew.

Somehow I keep imagining a majestic Eagle on her arm....but it's just not coming to me. Ha, ha!

Jonah ready for another run down the hill.

Flannery our speed devil. She is the one you need to watch out for.

Saoirse insisted I take a picture of her rock collection. If it was up to her she'd have half her room floor covered in rocks!

I was really diggin' the blue and yellow combo of Moira's outfit. We picked up these boots at Walmart. All the girls want a pair. They have been just the thing for when Moira feeds the animals. We will definitely be getting everyone some soon.

Jonah doing a fine job raking our dirt driveway.

Isabella being a nice big sister and pushing Jed up and down our hill of a road. He's a speed demon in the making!

Jed's turn to push the tricycle around. We've been working on the boys sharing and taking turns these past few days. I have to say our efforts are really paying off.

Saiorse writing in the dirt. I think she was setting up a hopscotch board. One must find uses for ones rock collection.

I asked Saoirse to lay on the grass for me so I could get a close up of her. She is so photogenic.

Flannery likes to be moving in her photos...has anyone else noticed that?

Part of yesterday's breakfast. We had pancakes with strawberries on top. I still can't get over that my children now eat pancakes syrup free! Amazing.

Our beloved pancakes. They are a staple around here. Now if I can only remember to soak my grains!!! Hopefully the e-course I am taking will help me with that! The e-course just started this week and I am SOOO excited about it. It's a course on the Nourishing Traditions way of eating. I love the name of her blog and the intro she has to this type of eating...you all need to go check it out---right here. Click on the video in the right side bar titled, "Defining GNOWFGLINS", and for a laugh check out the video, "Real milk comes from" directly under it.

Our food loving boy.

Our recent food consuming boy.

Just a sweet picture of our 12 year old.

That's it for the day. Off to make some pancakes, make a grocery list (shopping day tomorrow), reading/school, and then soccer this evening. It started with a bit of snow this morning. I am hoping it warms up soon.

New Beginnings

So we are turning over a new leaf. I realized that I needed to take my own advice. My advice in short, "You won't die". I suppose that needs some explanation. I will explain it as it pertains to our new overturned leaf. You see we've had some problems sticking to our guns when it comes to parenting. There are so many different avenues one can go down when it comes to "how" one parents. The best way would be a biblical way. But sorting that out and figuring out how that really looks in real life is not always easy. There is one way that I have experienced working. It's called 'tomato staking'. The very basics are that you keep your children with you at all times. You make sure to say what you mean and mean what you say. You need to catch every act of disobedience. The child needs to obey you or there is a consequence. The kicker is that what ever battle you come across you must win! Winning means that the child obeys with a good attitude. You don't give up until their attitude has changed.

This is a lot of work. It is very, very emotionally tiring. It is physically tiring. It is hard. By day three everyone is worn out and you end up letting things slip here and there making future attempts 10 times harder to accomplish. I let up because I feel like I can't survive the suffocation. I can't turn my back on the children. That means no *me* time. Ouch! How can I go on when I can't get any time to recharge?!? Aaahhhh, then I realize I needed to take my own advice. It is so much easier to give advice than take it, isn't it? This really is a great piece of advice. When faced with a tough situation, and you feel like you just can not go on, or that you need to cave in....you need to stop and think....if I can't do what I want (me time in my example) is it going to lead to my death? The obvious answer is, "Of course NOT!" Yet I haven't been living that out. I feel like I might just be crushed by the never ending work and diligence that is needed for this thing we call parenting. Now granted it is a LOT easier starting when children are young. It is going to be a long few months around here to see some much needed attitude changes in some older children. But I need to keep remembering when my *wants* are being drowned out.....I won't die. I can keep doing what needs to be done, right now, today. I don't need to think about tomorrow. I don't need to think things like, "this situation will never change."

So we are off. I started right in the middle of the day. I knew there would be no 'good time' to start. I need to be willing to put all life on hold in order to follow through with the needed consequences. As a matter of fact we had our first clash with 'life' and 'follow through'. Saoirse was refusing to cooperate. So life stopped. And because we didn't back down until her attitude changed she ended up missing her first soccer practice. Ouch. But that has been my weakness. I have let life get in the way of what is most important in parenting....my children's hearts.

So things will be busy around here. Very busy. I will say that great strides have been made with Jed and Jonah. By evening both boys were coming when I called them. I am sure there will be some needed reminders tomorrow, but I am happy to see some success the first day.

Along with this change I decided to do more photos of our days. The good and the ugly. It is so much nicer to write about the good things that go on around here. I don't plan on sharing everything, nor photographing everything. But I would like to try to be more 'real'. It will sort of be like, 'a day in pictures'. But I know that I will not always be able to photograph everything we do, as a lot of what I do takes both hands :-) But I will try to be mindful this week and take lots of photos. So here is my start:

Yeah, isn't that a site?! This is the real deal. Right before I sat the girls down to have a talk about how things were going to change around here, I decided to snap pics of where we were starting. One of our weak points is not having routines. Clearly we need some cleaning routines. The above is a bucket of dirty utensils awaiting the dishwasher.

Of course my days are not complete without Jed's homeopathic remedies. Here is his first remedy of the day. The jelly bean box is where I store his remedies. On the other side you see the line up of Dixie cups. His remedies need to be given in what we call 'dosage cups'. Too long to go into now, lets just say it takes a lot longer this way. BUT it makes a huge difference in his reactions (or lack there of) to the remedies. He is a much happier camper this way. Which makes the rest of us happy :-) A non stop screaming 3 year old is not a pretty site.

There's plenty of this around here. One of those never ending chores. Sometimes I'm master and sometimes its master over me. Right now I'm losing!

Oh, look, we even have work to do outside! Those are our two garden beds. We will be trying the no till method this year. Mostly because I'm lazy! Not really, but I do have other things that need tending to than having to tend to weeds.

Tonight's scene. I was off to bathe the boys and came across Saoirse 'painting' her nails (that's lip gloss she's using). Jeremiah was in charge of the girls while I tended to the boys.

Some cute boy getting a bath this evening. They love the water!



Coming back to the living room I caught Moira just hanging out. She and Isabella were reading.

I had to print out some pictures for Flannery to write some thank you notes on, and was surprised that Jed wanted some too. He sat right down and got to work. I was totally shocked to come out from putting the baby to bed to see that Jed was coloring his picture the whole time. He colored in the whole thing!

Flannery and Saoirse coloring. It was a coloring fest on the living room floor :-)

That's it for our day. I have a couple of other odd ball pictures I wanted to throw in.

I really loved how Jonah's eyes match his shirt! And what a smile!

This was just too cute. Next to Jonah is my newly crocheted hat. I use it as a night cap of sorts. Well he loves to touch it and pull on it and such....when it's on my head. But he stays clear of it when it's off my head! Too funny. I wanted to take a picture of it on him.....not a chance!

Have a great day. I'm looking forward to tomorrow :-)

First Birthday of the Year...and photos!

HAPPY BITRHDAY FLANNERY

The first birthday of the year has arrived! Flannery turned eight. Hard to imagine! Her day was filled with a lot of fun. Earlier in the day Jeremiah went to pick up some new baby chicks. We got 10 Buff Orpingtons and 2 Americanas. The Americanas lay green/blue eggs. That will be cool. I can only hope that none of them are roosters. Once we got the chicks settled we headed off to get Flannery her birthday presents. She really likes Hello Kitty. I remembered that there was a Sanrio store at the mall in the city. We went there first. This mall was 20 times worse than the mall by our house! Yuck! We trudged through the crowds. I couldn't believe how crowded it was. And we finally hit our destination.


Flannery and her birthday sign. This year I had the help of some wonderful women from a study group I am in. We are going through the book, "Created to be His Helpmeet". I had fallen ill this past week and hadn't gotten around to getting the necessary supplies for the sign. So right before the study I ran to the dollar store and got poster board and markers. It was late by the time study finished and I had only gotten the outlines done. And these wonderful ladies helped me color the sign in. If they hadn't I would have been up till 2 AM! Flannery LOVED her sign.



Here was our first stop. Of course the girls wanted everything in the store.

See? We got a lot of, "Ohhh, look at this...can I have it?" Ha! Um no, it's not your birthday, go put it back.

Even Jed wasn't exempt from the temptation. He saw a Hello Kitty in an elephant suite. He had to give it a squeeze. He played with it the whole time we were there, and was disappointed to have to leave it behind.

Isabella I think was a bit on the old side for the store. So she casually looked around, but wasn't all that interested. Now, had this been a store with a bunch of dragons in it.....lets just say that would have been a different story.

The official birthday "cake". This was the brownie recipe with a peanut butter topping. I did use a chocolate bar for the writing. The other chocolate recipe that I found that was healthy only stayed fluid for maybe 30 seconds. That didn't allow me enough time to write! So I went with a Hershey's bar (shhhh, don't tell anyone!). I have to say had I made this pre-sugar free, we would have probably spit it out. It certainly wasn't to die for, but we all enjoyed it. It really did fill you up fast! One piece was all we could handle. Saoirse was asking for it for her birthday. So it wasn't a flop, but not the wonder I was hoping for. I think I will keep my eyes open for other healthy recipes.

The birthday girl and a few eager children ready to dive in.

Jonah was having a lot of fun!




That's it for birthday photos. Yesterday we had a family over for a while. We all had a lot of fun. After they left I took Jonah out to see the chicks. He was not very excited about being in the storage room. Therefore he wasn't too keen on the chicks. Oh well. After that I decided to let him hang outside for a bit. It has been sooooo cold down here the past few weeks. This weekend was actually mild so I let him loose.

Have I told you all how much I am loving my new camera? I have such a long way to go learning how to work it, but I'm having a blast. See how wonderfully blurred the background is? I love that!

Oh, see, more blurred backgrounds. The blurred backgrounds let your subject be the focus. I just love that :-)

Oh, and see here, the things in the foreground get blurred too. How cool is that? Only Jonah is in focus. Never mind the handful of pictures I had to delete because I had the point of focus wrong....ha, ha.

Jonah just being silly. He is such a cutie pie. You can't really see it in this photo but Jonah's hair is now sticking out beyond his ears. So very adorable. All too soon it will be time for a haircut, which will make him look like a big boy :-( Boo hoo.

I love this shot. He was just about to throw a rock. And look I hit is just right, with is foot off the ground.

Saoirse is usually the camera queen. She absolutely loves the attention of getting her picture taken. Well last night she was being fussy about it. But I decided to take her picture anyways to show her how silly she was being. She didn't find that silly. Hmmm. I did, I was sitting there laughing. Oh, well, maybe when she is 20 she will laugh about it.

See? Silliness. I laugh, she pouted. Thankfully she is in better spirits today.

For some reason I like this shot, not sure why. She was actually trying to collect a stash of rocks. She made this rather large pile and then asked if she could take her rock collection inside. Ummm, do you see the size of that rock she has? I don't think so! More pouting.

Look at the cuteness factor of this one! I love it. I'm making sure to end with a cute picture. We wouldn't want Saoirse's poutiness to rub off on anyone :-) We have a busy week ahead of us. Speech therapy, a get together, or two, Bible Study, and the first soccer game of the season!! Soccer? Already? Wow, time flies. I need to go around looking for their jerseys. Off to make breakfast and get set for the day.