Finally, some pictures

Hey, I like pictures :-).  They make a post a lot more fun!  I've got some odds and ends ones.  After a busy few days I thought I would catch up with pictures. 

 Jedidiah was quite pleased with himself that he earned his reward for passing a long awaited milestone.  Potty training.  Yes, he's much older than most children who are potty trained at the tender age of 2 or 3.  I've shared here before that I was quite sure we would not be among the group of parents with an apraxic child who doesn't potty train until the age of 6.  Yes, six.  This is a very common thing among children with apraxia.  No one knows particularly why.  Sensory issues?  Miss wiring?  Not sure.  I'm happy that he beat the age six dealy, but not by much!  Not to mention he still has to tackle nights.  But, hey, I'm just glad he is day trained!  We had a much coveted reward waiting for him when he tackled the day time potty challenge.  Pet Shops.  Yes, the small, cooky looking animal thingies that are a craze?  Definitely not on my list of 'keepers'.  But hey, desperate times, call for desperate measures :-). 

He thinks the mailman gave them to him!  Ha, ha!  He was very excited to open up this box.

He takes them everywhere!  I try to limit where he can bring them, more for fear of him losing them, and a meltdown ensuing.

While the boys were on Plymouth Rock with the new Pet Shops, I was making a list, or lists as was the case.  Getting ready for our Boot Camp 2012.  Things are falling into place.  And lest anyone thinks this may be a bad thing, I can assure you I have a lot of FUN planned.  We have a hard time staying on target when we try to do some child training.  So I thought by adding some fun, good family time, and some fancy 'team' shirts, we would be on our way to a splendid Boot Camp.  I am looking forward to this challenge.  It won't be easy, but I think we will come out the victors, with some well behaved children, a renewed love for each other, and some fond memories to boot.

This is the pile of composted dirt we had dropped of the other day.  Not as impressive as I thought it would be.  It will still come in handy, we were just expecting there to be more of it!  Thankfully we found a free source of composted mulch.  We have plans to use the mulch pretty much all over our land.  No, really.  We considered renting a dump truck for the stuff.  No, I'm not joking.  Most certainly not after our fiasco tonight.  Currently, as I write this, Jeremiah's pick up truck is stuck.  Really, really stuck, right in our back yard.  It's under belly is in the mud!!  It's not going anywhere any time soon, especially when it's supposed to rain tomorrow.  We are seeing if we can get a hold of a chain to pull it out with our van.  Fun times people, fun times.

Speaking of fun times, we all had fun at a recent birthday party we went to over the weekend.  I still have not gotten Flannery's official birthday picture up (her birthday was on the 20th of this month)!!  But this wasn't Flannery's b-day party, her's is this coming weekend.  The party we attended was for a friend, who turned 5.  It was held at a local park.  This was good and bad.  Good, lots of room to run around, bad because there was lots of room to run around :-)  Trying to keep track of the boys was very hard to do.  Jed was obsessed about running around this fence.  Jonah...
 

 ...he was obsessed with finding all the balloons he could get a hold of.  Aubrey?

He was obsessed about trying to climb the stone stairs.  Stone.  Baby.  Not a good combination.

At one point as I was grabbing the baby away from said stone stairs I caught Jed chasing his balloon.  He was just running out of sight when I called out to him.  I really try not to think about what could have happened, but that can be hard to do.  After I called him back, we went together to get his balloon.  Had he ran after it himself he would have gone all the way out by the road.  And I can assure you he would not have found his way back!  Scary.  This is why these types of events stress me out big time.  It only takes a moment for a child to get lost, in a big, big park.  Thankfully all ended well.  We had fun, Jed got his balloon back, and I'm still sane....sort of.

Saoirse peeking out of one of the old buildings on the park's premises.

We seem to have a new problem here at my house.  A problem between Flannery and I.  You see Flannery has fallen in love....with bokeh.  Oh, yes!  Don't know what bokeh is?  It's the blurriness you get in the background, or sometimes foreground in photos.  Like the picture above, you can see the flowers, but the background is a blur of color.  I have to practically wrestle my camera away from Flannery to get a turn with it!  And this has gotten worse, *after* we just bought her her own camera!  When I brought up the fact that she has a camera of her own now, she responded with...yeah, but it doesn't do photography.  Ha, ha!  She's talking about the bokeh people!  Too funny.  But I will say that she's getting pretty darn good at this photography thing.
  

For the record, I love bokeh too :-)  I also like this picture I was able to capture as we were leaving the park...ya know, after I wrestled my camera away.  I like it in color and b&w.

A beautiful sight!  Our front herbal garden is complete.  Well, except for the actual herbs.  That will be the easy part!  See all that dark goodness on top?  That would be the free composted tree mulch.  Black gold!

A Flannery picture.  We went out in the back yard to start on the corner garden area.  It's filled with weeds, vines, brambles and such.  Flannery decided to take pictures.  That wasn't helping to get the weeds up.  But after all the work we did I was hoping she did have a picture of "before".  Unfortunately this is the only before picture she took of the area.  Trust me, it's a lot worse in real life.  This looks tame to what we had to deal with.  I may have to bring my camera out the next time we work on the area.  It was kind of discouraging to work, work, work and stand back to see that we didn't get too far!!  Some before pictures may help boost the moral of our crew :-)

Another Flannery picture.  Warning, bokeh not only in the background, but the foreground as well.  She loves when that happens.  I only have about 1500 pictures of her trying to get the best angle and bokeh from a shot.  And NO I am NOT kidding.  My memory card can only hold about 500 pictures at a time (I lost my bigger mem. card), and I've had to delete the card multiple time in the last two weeks.  Multiple times.  I have enough goat pictures to last me a life time!!  But hey, that's how we learn...by doing :-)

Because when you keep practicing, and keep 'doing', you end up with something cool like the above picture.  This is a picture that Flannery took today.  Maybe not amazing (although I think so), but for a ten year old?  Hello!  I was taking a picture of my sister making bunny ears over my brother's head at ten years old.  Wait...I don't think I used a camera till I was in my teens.  Keep up the good work Flannery!  (yes, she reads my blog :-))