Pictures

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAOIRSE

We love birthdays around here. That's the real reason we have so many children.....so we have more birthdays to celebrate :-) We had a wonderful day. The girls made Saoirse's birthday sign. I never did get around to putting up the streamers though. We picked Jeremiah up from work and headed to the "Dragon Park" (what my girls call it). It was nice that it was early evening as there were not a lot of people there. This is a large park and it can be hard to keep track of everyone if it's busy. We came home and cooked up the rest of Saoirse's birthday dinner. She chose roast chicken, garlic green beans, mashed potatoes and (of course) cranberry sauce. Moira made the birthday cake. It was loved by all :-) Here is her day in pictures:


Saoirse with her birthday sign. Lots of doggies! Isabella had printed some out, cut them out, traced them and then with the help of her sisters colored them in!

We always visit the dragon first when we go to the park. Otherwise he may be upset and try to eat us all :-)

Here is the whole dragon popping up here and there from the ground.

Jedidiah always enjoys the dragon. He had a lot of fun climbing on him.

Some young maidens about to be a yummy lunch for a big mean dragon. They innocently walk along this ridge and find themselves in the dragons mighty grip of his tail. Where is a prince when you need one? Hee, hee.....Oh, I think he went off to play in the sand box....

Isabella made peace with the dragon, and here she is posing for us.

Just some more innocent people, not aware of a big green dragon creeping up behind them to gobble them up. This is one dangerous park! Ok, enough silliness. I have Moira sitting here next to me and she keeps saying, "Moooooom.....Mooooom stop it".

Next it was time to play in the sand. The other girls were looking forward to riding on the tire swing, especially since they had Daddy to push them. Saoirse isn't such a dare devil, so she stuck with something safe :-)

Um, Jonah, the sand is not for eating! Yes, this boy puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. This was his first experience playing in the sand.

What cuteness!

There are a couple of different sand play areas at this park. This one has a couple little "houses" for the kids to play in and around. Here's Jedidiah checking things out.

I was snapping Jedidiah's picture and looked up to see Jonah looking at me from afar. I zoomed in to take this cute picture.

I thought this one was really cute. I unfortunately missed the shot I was trying to get by a millisecond. Both Jonah and Jeremiah were looking at each other, but here Jeremiah is starting to look away. I thought it was cute that they were just enjoying each other.

A fair maiden in an enchanted wood. I always love this little area of the park. It looks really lovely.

Birthday cake time! We sat down after this to light the candles and sing.

Here is a group shot we took right before leaving the park. It was the only one we got. Flannery was wondering why Jed was upset. After I got their attention again, one of them looked down to see a bunch of ants crawling along the crevices of the rocks. That freaked most of them out and that was the end to the group photo shoot. Many of them have experience of getting bit by ants and they were taking no chances to see if these were the biting kind.

flu blues

No, we do not have the flu, thankfully. I thought I would pop on here while my pictures are uploading (for the birthday post) and link you to some interesting information that I have found on this piggy flu. Trust me, this isn't the kind of info that you will find on the mainstream news.

I do not know the copywrite jargon on the information so I will just give you the links for you to read on the original sites that I found the articles on.

This first one is from a pediatrician. She has some good info. I don't personally endorse getting vaccinations though, but the other info is still good to have. I tried to post just a link, but they didn't have one, except just to the site itself, and then you would have searched. So I did copy and paste the following letter. I got it from this site: http://www.drjen4kids.com/ I originally found this article and some great flu discussion of the Raising Godly Tomatoes site (RGT).


Author: dr jenDate: 4/27/2009 10:41 am CDT
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Hey everyone, and my apologies to those of you who have garnered this info from my Facebook page, I feel as if I need to give you some info on swine flu. Some of you know that I am in the midst of a Master's in Public Health, so this outbreak is fast becoming an area that I am better prepared for. So, first public health info... Each country is charged with keeping "surveillance" data on certain diseases. Surveillance means that we keep track of baseline cases occurring, and then set an "epidemic threshold" that when met, causes us to pay attention. Epidemic just means more cases than usual or expected. Influenza reaches epidemic status every year. Also part of that surveillance is the occassional sample of the strain that caused the disease. For influenza, they monitor the strain to make sure that the strain they predicted would occur this season was the one they made the vaccine for. So, during this routine surveillance, they picked up this new strain. That means that all these people in Mexico tested positive for Influenza A, probably awhile before their strain was determined to be swine flu. (In the office, that's all I ever know. I can test for Influenza A or B. Not Influenza strain H1N1.) In retrospect, many of these people may have had this new strain and their doc only knew it was Influenza A. So what does this mean? Well, as they find out the type the strain of more and more of these positive cases, more and more cases of swine flu will show up. That's the only thing that can happen. They weren't looking for it before. When you look for it, cases go up. Most of the cases have been in healthy people. If they spread it to less healthy friends and family, you will be hearing about it becoming a more dangerous strain. I'm not sure that's going to be true. It is probably dangerous- it is just the host's immune system and underlying health that will make the difference as to how dangerous. And I'm loving the phrase "mutant strain." That's the very essence of influenza. It "mutates" every year (we call it "antigenic drift"), and that's why we need a flu shot every year. This one is special since it originated from pigs, and usually only the one handling the pig gets infected, but this flu morphed so that it can now be passed person to person. Like a million other diseases. The next thing is that there isn't a single recommendation that the medical pundits are recommending that we wouldn't recommend already: wash your hands, cover your cough, stay home if you are sick. Basics, really. The anti-viral medications aren't all that helpful in pediatric cases. We don't usually write prescriptions for them, even during flu season. The flu shot isn't protective for this strain. It was for the human influenza that we just had a zillion cases of. To put this into perspective: influenza kills Americans every year. It's contagious, can be fatal and is one big reason why I hope you all get flu shots. I have been thinking that they ought to be reporting how many people have been diagnosed with coronary artery disease, have been suspected of having heart disease and who have died of a heart attack right next to these case outbreak numbers. Side by side tickers. The heart disease will win. So, what am I saying? It looks as if the US pandemic flu system is up and running. It's a good test of our capabilities. It's flu. Wash you hands, cover your cough and stay away from sick people. Get some sun. If it ever comes out again. Vitamin D has been shown to prevent flu. And of course, we are theoretically heading into summer, so that should increase out chances of getting sunshine and slowing down the spread of the illness. If the media coverage is worrisome, stop watching. We're here if you need us and happy to test those with symptoms. I'm not sure we'll be treating a lot of people with anything but reassurance. As always, we're happy to see really sick kids. Even if it's not swine flu. Take a deep breath, Dr. Jen, on her birthday

In the flu thread on the RGT site someone sent us to the Well Tell Me message board. They had some great info there as well. Some that are interesting:

http://www.welltellme.com/discuss/index.php?PHPSESSID=cnr8lfttqks60bautp3f7f2b53&topic=23892.msg228699#msg228699

If you have the time read it all, if not read response numbers: 1, 12, and 25

That is just a taste of some of the information to be found to keep yourselves healthy. I'll post more information when I come across it. In the above link to the message board I found something very interesting. One person made the following comment (just a paraphrase on my part), "Besides cancer my family hasn't been sick in years". I found this interesting because of something I read in Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book "Disease Proof Your Child". He found that quite a few cancer patients had something in common. They would tell him that their cancer was a shock because they had not been sick in years. This is what the one person on the board said. Dr. Fuhrman said that the reason these cancer patients were not sick was because their immune systems were not working. All of us have cancer, it's just to what degree. Our bodies are able to deal with these renegade cells as long as we haven't destroyed our bodies' innate ability to fight them off. Without a working immune system these cancer cells are allowed to run amuck, finally causing symptoms and problems. We think that when we have a runny nose that it is the virus itself, the actual sickness/germ. However the runny nose is our immune systems response to the germ. We try to get rid of the runny nose, thinking we are getting rid of the germs, but we are just undermining our bodies defense system, not killing any bugs in the process. Anyways, I thought that was interesting, the comment, and what I have read in the past. So maybe, since my family always seems to get one thing or another, maybe that actually means we are really, really healthy??? Maybe???? One could hope :-)

Ok, I must get going, and get back to work :-) I will have some birthday pictures to share later.

Our weekend in review and a birthday post coming

We have a birthday girl in the house! We have decorating to do and a cake to bake. Moira will have the honor of baking and decorating the birthday cake. Tonight's cake will be a box cake, and then on the weekend Isabella plans on making a cake she found in a recipe book. The birthday girl, who is Saoirse by the way, turns five today. FIVE! I was telling Jeremiah the other day that she may be the last little girl we have. We are most certainly hoping for more children, but whether God chooses to bless us with more, and more precisely if they happen to be girls is unknown at this time :-) So she may be our last little girl....and that just about brings tears to my eyes. But today is not the day to be thinking those kinds of thoughts. Today is a happy thought day :-) I will make sure to post a birthday post, with pictures either later tonight or tomorrow.

Our weekend was full. Saturday was the Walk for Life. It was an opportunity to raise money for the Pregnancy Support Services center. They offer free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, plus counseling on pregnancy options and post abortion counseling. A cause we whole heartily support. The walk this year seemed shorter, and it wasn't as hot. They had food and games afterwards which was a lot of fun. They were giving out this little short book called, The Treasure Principle. I started reading it that same afternoon during quiet time. I couldn't put it down. It was on the joy of giving. The wonderful part was that it brought me back to the days where Jeremiah and I had such a joy about serving others. We have lost that. Not because we don't like to serve, but it has more to do with our lack of faith. I really want that joy back, that first love for our Savior. That little book has put such a spark in my heart, that I hope it catches fire and spreads :-) I will have to write more about it later.

I should have been on the lookout for a downswing after such an inspiring Saturday. And I didn't have to wait long. Come Sunday I found myself in a funk. I really couldn't put my finger on anything. My whole week had been great, and here I was feeling depressed. By lunch time I was ready to go home, even though I love fellowshipping at church. I had Jedidiah in my arms and he started up his new sensitivity. Seems like we get rid of one and another pops up. This past week Jedidiah has been grabbing his feet and complaining and complaining. It lasts for only a minute or so. It seems like his feet are falling asleep. Most of the time though he is freaking out that someone touched his legs. So we are standing in line for lunch at church and there is a point where it kind of bottlenecks. Saoirse was standing in front of me, and her hair would touch Jed's legs. That sent Jed crawling up me trying to get away from her hair!! He was freaking out the whole time. At that moment I really thought I couldn't possibly take on more second of Jedidiah's sensory issues. Please note I was NOT mad at him, I was just so worn out having to see him go through this. I was upset for him. After lunch we headed outside. We went for a walk to the pond. A bunch of people were going swimming. I let the girls take their shoes off and wade in. I was surprised that Jed wanted to wade in as well. I was feeling really down as I had been told he couldn't go swimming by his GI doctor. I figured that I would look up online for ideas that might help him to be able to go swimming. We plan on cutting out the AC for as long as we can and I thought that being able to go swimming would make it bearable. Something to look forward to. I didn't get around to looking up the information until yesterday, and would you believe that Jedidiah CAN go swimming??? The no swimming ban was only for the first week he had his g-tube put in.....which will be two years this August!!!!!! The doctor failed to mention that part of it, and I didn't think to ask as it sounded like swimming, or baths were off limits period. Oh well.....live and learn. I still have a wee bit concern over him swimming in pond water. We will try to get him a wet suit shirt to help keep out the water. Jedidiah's tube will bleed now and then and I would hate for his site to get an infection. Really that is the very last thing we need right now! Until this past month or two Jedidiah has had no interest in submersing himself in water, so it hasn't been an issue. But for some reason he is quite fond of it in the bath tub and I don't want to have to keep him out while everyone else gets to jump in the water. So we'll see what we can come up with.

I came across the name of the 'condition' that Jedidiah's coordinator told me about. She told me not to look it up. And I didn't go out on the net to do so. However we were looking at the preview videos on the Signing Time website and they have a page of videos sent in by parents of their children signing. Each comes with a little bit about the child. One happened to be about a boy that had Apraxia of Speech....the name of the condition that Jed might have. I am sure the word condition is not the right one, but the only one that comes to mind right now. The mother wrote how much the signing videos have helped her son. So I did it....I looked it up :-) And I'm not sure what part was supposed to be scary, but I didn't find it scary. I only looked at one website though. Anyways, for the past few months they have just assumed that Jedidiah had a speech delay. The program that Jed is in tries to bill our insurance first and then the rest is funded by tax dollars. Our insurance doesn't cover speech delays. However after reading over the sight, Jeremiah called our insurance to talk to them about it. If this is indeed what Jedidiah has (this is only a speech issue, not something that will help us explain his lack of growth) then it is considered a "condition" or what ever that word is on the tip of my tongue, and insurance will pay for so many visits to a speech therapist. From what we read normal speech therapy does not work for children with Apraxia of speech. I will link to the site as it explains it better than I, and in much fewer words than I could :-) A delay in speech is characterized by the child moving along in the correct sequence of speech growth, just at a slower rate. Apraxia however is when there is a disparity between the understanding of speech and it's usage. For Jedidiah that gap has been getting larger and larger each month. The last he was tested at he had the understanding level for a child his age (which was about 26 or 27 months old) but only the speech level of a 12 month old. Besides the fact that he can now say the word 'up' correctly nothing else has changed. He will be 34 months this week. For Jedidiah's birthday we had planned on trying to get him some more Signing Time videos. They are expensive, but he LOVES them and they truly have been a help to all of us. But after what we read, signing and books, seem to be very important in helping a child with Apraxia. So instead of it being something we would like to do, it will be more of something we need to do (or get!). It may seem like a silly prayer request, but please join us in prayer for this new avenue we are headed down. He will need speech therapy outside the home after the summer as he has to switch programs due to his age. We are a bit concerned with how that will all work out. Also we would like to get the videos, as Jedidiah really learns a lot from them. We can get a couple a month, but Jedidiah's health care already takes a lot out of our budget and that might mean something else is put to the side. We are of course MORE than willing to do that, but do pray that it works out smoothly. Like I said they seem like silly prayer requests, but all of these things are just hitting me in a funny way. I'm feeling a bit emotional over it all, but at the same time am chastising myself for doing so because it seems so trifle.

We are going to do our rounds here in the house in chores. It is getting close to lunch so maybe after lunch we will hit the park :-) I'll write again later......we are a little birthday crazy around here :-) It is a wonderful joy to be celebrating LIFE!

Jedidiah's update

We have been keeping busy here. I finally feel that we are getting into a "groove" in the right direction :-) It has only taken me nine months since the baby was born...but we are finally being more productive. Which makes things run so much more smoothly and lets us venture out more. We had the privilege of having lunch with Daddy today. It was "Take Your Daughters to Work Day" today. I'm not exactly sure how much work one would get done with four inquisitive girls following you around all day. So instead we just met up with Jeremiah for lunch and he showed us around. We got to meet some of his team mates, manager and other coworkers (hello there!). It was great to put faces to names. The girls really enjoyed themselves. I think it helps them when they get to see where Jeremiah works. He doesn't just vanish off the face of the earth only to reappear magically around 6pm each night :-) Of course one of the highlights of the afternoon were the vending machines. Yes, you read that right. We don't frequent too many vending machines. I am sure it has only been a few times in the older girls lives. So I brought along some change and they took some time (a lot of time) figuring out just what they wanted. And by golly, have you seen the prices of the items in vending machines? We might have to take out a loan if we decide to do that again :-)



On the way home from lunch we decided to stop by the park. It was a beautiful day and hard to say no! And what a blessing it was as we ran into some people from church. Then as we were about to leave we saw someone from our last church. After that we went home to clean up, relax and then make dinner. It is nice that clean up only takes ten minutes and not hours. Later tonight I am hoping to finish Flannery's skirt. The girls are in need of summer clothing and I had some fabric I bought a few months ago, and some fabric I was blessed with from a friend. I am making a very simple tiered skirt. I also plan on getting a pattern for a split skirt. They are like culottes except that they resemble a skirt more than longer shorts. I am hoping that our very active 7 year old will find them more comfortable.



Now onto Jedidiah's update. I wish I could say I having a glowing report. However, Jed took a turn in the opposite direction a little while back and he is recovering from it. Here is what happened:

Almost two months ago Jedidiah started to throw up. I didn't think too much of it as his sisters had a sore throat accompanied by a really yucky tummy. I figured he had the same thing. However after a few days of him still throwing up once a day, he went to twice a day, then three times a day. During that week he also reverted back to grinding his teeth, digging at his throat and pinching his cheek. It was as if all the improvements we had seen since on the homeopathic remedies just went "poof". I called his homeopathic doctor. He figured that something had antidoted the remedies (something made them ineffective). I thought and thought about what that could be (I have a list of things that antidote remedies and none were something that we had been around or used). They asked me where I kept his remedies, and I told them I kept them out in the open on the piano. They said they could send me a tin box to keep them in, which would help to protect them against wireless "things". So we did that and he very slowly started to improve. I figured it was a coincidence. Well a few weeks later Jeremiah was working from home and he needed to be in a quiet place for a meeting that he was going to have. He told me that he needed to turn the router over to being wireless for two hours. (For those of you who do not know, we have gone to land line computers and phone, as per the recommendation of the homeopathic doctor.) He went on to the router to switch over the setting to wireless.....and.....it was ALREADY switched over!! He realized that when he had redone our computer (I'm sure there is some fancy dancy name for it, I just can't think of it right now) the router must have reset itself to its previous settings. I asked him how long it had been since he had done that....."About a month ago," he said. That was the same time Jedidiah went downhill. Well we turned off the wireless and would you know that within three days he was back to his "new" self?!?! We certainly can not ignore the experience we had. We had both thought that going wireless was a bit extreme, but were willing to do it as we are pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to get Jedidiah healthy. There is no denying that it has some effect on him/or the remedies for that matter. Why, how....? We don't know the science behind it, but we are certainly not willing for that to happen again. By the way once Jedidiah's body is healed then those things will not affect him in that way. That is not saying it will have NO effect on him at all, just that he won't go back to his former self. But obviously wireless technologies has a bad side to it, one that we may all be paying a price for, even if we don't see the results......at least we don't see them yet. So all of that means that Jed lost ground. He didn't loose weight, but he didn't gain much for that month...a few ounces. We have switched him over to some new remedies this month and so far he is doing great, eating pretty well (for Jedidiah). I will say that before we started him on the new remedies he had been having some serious sensory issues. Some of his most beloved things were scaring him. The noise of airplanes, helicopters and cars/trucks. Even tractors!!! That is saying a lot, because he LOVES tractors! But they literally ran him back inside the house, screaming all the way. I really am not sure if it is a coincidence, but since we switched his remedies he has improved in that area at least 90 percent! We have been able to be outside without him screaming to go in. He will get a concerned look on his face if he hears something loud, but it doesn't send him running. I am hoping that it will be resolved all the way for his sake.



This past week when Jedidiah had his speech therapy, Amy, his services coordinator, was out to visit to see how things were going. Both his speech therapist and myself told her that we were not seeing results. Jedidiah still says the same sounds for everything. And although we have made some progress in communicating, it hasn't been through speech. Jedidiah has learned to come up to me and pull on my skirt and show me what he wants or needs help with. This works well most of the time. But not for everything. For example he was pointing to his tummy and making this noise. I couldn't tell if he was hungry, hurting, felt like he was going to throw up or what! He has woken up in the middle of the night crying and crying and we have no idea why as he can't tell us. I plan on working more with sign language, I just need to learn some more signs to help him express some of these possible situations. Amy thought we could use the help of an augmentative communications specialist. We will be meeting with someone next week to determine if she has something that can help Jedidiah communicate more effectively. She said there is a possibility that he has this condition, the name escapes me right now. When I told her about him freaking out over noises he has heard all his life, that seemed to tip her off to this possibility. Basically the condition is that Jedidiah can understand us and he knows what he wants to say, but there is a disconnect in the brain, and he can not get the words out of his mouth. I'm not sure what we do about it, but she assured me that it is something that can be worked on, but it would change the course of his therapy. Jedidiah will be 3 in two months and he has three sounds that he makes for everything, "bah, dah, pah". That's it.



Well this is getting to be novel length. I had taken a break to cook dinner and even worked on Flannery's skirt. I probably would be done with her skirt by now, but I messed up on a part and had to rework it, and then I lost steam. Oh well, I'll make a go at it tomorrow.

Jonah

Here is a post (some of it anyways) that I had in draft form. I'm trying to catch up on blogging :-)

First I want to say to Nancy, that I am sorry about your chickens. Before we ever got our chickens or goats I didn't think too much about it when I had heard of other people loosing their animals. I felt bad for them, but I didn't really know how they felt. Which is why we decided to add yet another animal to our little farm. Isabella wrote all about it (I should say "her") on her blog, so I will let her tell you more about her. It is a Great Pyrenees, all white and fluffy. We have heard about their ability to protect livestock. I wasn't too keen on the idea, but after all this time of hand feeding the goats and bringing up chickens in our bathroom I couldn't bare the thought of all that hard work going "poof" in one night. Not to mention the attachment that you grow with them. Seriously if you asked me what I thought of goats just a few months ago.....eh...take 'em or leave 'em would have been my response. But now, being in the middle of raising goats ourselves.....I have a different answer...I LOVE goats! They are great, everyone should have some goats :-)



Now, on to Jonah. I feel like a bad Mommy for not writing sooner about my little guys accomplishments. He is now 8 months old. EIGHT months already!!! Where has the time gone? So Jonah started the army crawl at six months. He now does a normal crawl, although still relies heavily on the army crawl. He can sit up, get from lying down to sitting up and vise-a-versa.

The above was written a few weeks ago. This has been in draft form for a while now. Jonah has added to his accomplishments. He can pull to standing and takes just a few little cruising steps now and then. He also waves bye-bye and says it too!! I finally took the plunge and trained him to go to sleep on his own. I tried that a few months ago, but on day 3 we all got sick, including Jonah, and I stopped the process. He seemed to remember some of it, and did very well. The first and fourth day were particularly hard, but really it wasn't bad. And it has made the rest of life so much easier!!! I have been able to get some things done around here :-)

Jonah's personality is still somewhere between Flannery's and Saoirse's. He is prone to more grumpiness, but is easier to coax into smiling than Flannery was. He is more serious than the others were. He is a bit more cautious when meeting someone, checking them out, a bit suspicious of any one. He, however, is not suspicious of things, ANYTHING, that would be on the floor, picking it up and promptly putting it into his mouth. I mean EVERYTHING!!! We spent two days getting our house back in order this past week and for the first time in a couple of weeks I could put him down on the floor to play without worrying that he would choke to death on something he found. Now granted there is a little thing here or there, we do have six children, some of who are very fond of Playmobil and other small things. But we've sorted and organized and things are contained once again. He can roam around with supervision and us not having to pick up something every few seconds.

Well that's our little guy in a nutshell. We love him....well most of us do anyways. The girls are a bit more weary in the love department. They are learning to deny themselves, and serve others and sometimes that is hard, especially when it involves a cranky baby. Jedidiah was very easy to care for as a baby. He was happy to do anything, or nothing. Not so with Jonah. He keeps us on our toes and like I said is more prone to being grumpy (that is code for: cries a lot).

Off to start our day. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to have things in better order! We get so much more accomplished!

wow it's been a while!!!

I have a ton of things to write about....just no time to do so! I actually have a couple of posts in draft form that I never finished. We've been doing a bit of spring cleaning. Once that is done I plan on doing a video house tour. Some of the things I want to write about are: Jonah, an update on Jedidiah, how our new diet is going and about the projects we've been working on. But for now I am just taking a quick break, eating some very, very, yummy, just baked bread. I do want to leave you with some really nice pictures I got of the girls. I was really excited to have gotten (hand me down) my hands on Photoshop! I am really excited to get to know how to use it. For now I have used it to adjust the contrast/brightness of some of the photos.



Our bean-y baby. Here's Jonah inhaling a bowl of beans.

Most of the gang (minus the baby) ready to look for some plastic eggs. The eggs each contained a puzzle piece that when put together led to some wonderful goodies from their Nana and Grandpa.

Look at the cutie pie! All smiles after an afternoon nap.

This was the only picture of Saoirse I got on our girlie photo shoot. She wasn't feeling really well. They had just gotten done finding their goodies and I wanted to get a picture of all the girls wearing these cute hair ties. That led to a whole bunch of photo opportunities, some of which are below. Saoirse was on her way inside to hang out with Nana and Grandpa.

Just a cute picture of Jonah. He and Flannery are very similar in many ways. One of those ways is in not being very photo friendly. But every once in a while you can catch a great one.

Jedidiah on the go. You may be able to tell that he has thinned out again. That will be talked about in his update, when I get around to it :-)

Isabella is looking so much more mature! Scary!!!! She is a young lady with a lot of potential. Right now we are working towards that "potential" part :-)

Isabella again.

Moira is in the process of growing out her bangs (as are the rest of her sisters), and sometimes it makes her looked disheveled, and other times it looks cute. Here, all dressed up, I think it looks charming.

Moira, looking quite dramatic (she doesn't take after anyone here in this house....especially not her mother---I'm being silly here for those of you who do not know me). In her hand you will see the red hair tie. Each girls is a bit different. They each have little things tied to the end of the shorter pieces. On Moira's it's little red flowers. They look amazingly cute, especially when they are all wearing them at the same time.

Here is a great one of Flannery. I really love her natural smile. The only problem with Flannery and picture taking is she LOVES to say, "cheese", and make a really big fake smile. I try to tell her to just be herself, and give me her normal smile, but that never seems to work.

Here is a neat one of Isabella. I've taken a fancy to photography. I would really like some nice pictures of the children. Something frame worthy. With a little reading on it I am trying some new angles. I want to try to shoot manually as well. We have a point and shoot camera, so that has a limited ability in manual mode. But I know you can get great results, I just need the know-how.

So there ya have it, this will have to tide you over till I can catch some time to write up a real post.