Please Pray

Today is Jillian's surgery. To make a long story short, a little 4 year old girl named Jillian is sick. It's hard to believe that this all only started in February!
Jillian had been sick for about a week, her parents took her in, first diagnosis was pnuemonia, then they took a look at the xrays and said no, she has a massive tumor in her chest. I can not imagine how shocking this news would be... you think your child has a cold and find out that she is within days of death.
The first few days/week were very iffy as to whether or not Jilli would live long enough to recieve treatment. God intervened and she has made remarkable progress in the past 8 weeks with chemo treatment. The tumor is now small enough to remove and today is the surgery.
This surgery is very intricate as well.
Please keep little Jilli in your prayers today.
-Jillian's physical strength to withstand the surgery
-doctor's wisdom and skill
-parents comfort and assurance
-family support on the homefront

If you are interested here is the blog where the whole story is recorded. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/TeamBettendorf/321279/

Stuff

Well, Jessi seems to have completely recovered from her... whatever it was, fever illness thingy. She stayed a little warm for a few days, and took naps for a few days, and has been a little grouchy, but I think that she is pretty much back 100%.

I kept waiting for one of the other kids to get sick, but so far, (knock on wood) nobody has anything too terrible. Joy is fussy, runny nose, and has a tiny fever, but she's also pushing through some molars so I'm going to blame that. Joey is doing fine as well.
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I do have to brag a little, we are happy homeschoolers who are confident in what we are doing, but sometimes, with some people, you can feel the need to "prove it." So this morning when Joey saw a picture of an animal and said that it was a gazelle, I upped the ante by asking him where gazelles live. He was of course correct and replied "the savannah." I went ahead and asked him to name some other animals that lived on the savannah and he complied. I saw that we had the full attention of the person (who shall remain annonymous) so I casually mentioned, "and where do kangaroos live?" "the scrub." "and what else lives in the scrub?" "those different kind of elephants with small ears."
Not wanting to let Joey hog the spotlight, I let Jessi inform us that polar bears and penguins live in the tundra. Not too shabby for a 5 year old and 3 year old.
Ah, sweet success. Once again I am glowing in the satisfaction of proving that my unorthadox schooling methods are working.
Here's the full disclosure. They know this not because I have spent hours drilling them on the various biomes of the world, but because... we play zoo tycoon for hours at a time.
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I have a little shop online where my mom and I sell handmade toys and clothes. No one is breaking the doors down, but I'm at least getting to the point where my extensive love affair with fibers can sort of pay for itself. I sold a soaker last week and the customer posted a rave review on one of the largest online cloth diapering communities. I'm pretty stoked. It feels great to know that someone really, really likes my work.... I mean someone who isn't related to me or friends with me, someone who paid real US currency to aquire it.
I made a custom shirt and sent that out, I can't post pictures of it yet because it's a collaberation with another online shop owner. She is quite popular, so linking my work with hers will probably (hopfully) be a good thing for me. She'll unveil the set at her stocking next week and at that time I will post pictures... you never know if there are industry pirates out looking to see what is going up next! (ok that was 98% a joke... but I still don't want to steal her pre-stock thunder.)

I'm doing another dinosaur shirt which will be fun, it's for a bigger kid so I have more shirt to play with. I like doing baby shirts, but there is really not much room to work on a 12 month T. After that I plan to do a panda shirt, then I have a secret project that I'm doing for a mother's day swap. Pictures of all will follow.
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Speaking of making my hobby (a nicer word than addiction) pay for itself... I owe Jeff $19. He gave me $40 of "pin money" (I adore that term, it sounds so quaint and goes right along with my white-picket-fence life) . Well.... I obviously wanted a trip to the local yarn shop. I tried to keep it at $40, honestly, I did. But the lady... she said she'd give me two for one prices on some things that weren't moving... and she TWISTED my arm into trying some new bamboo silk/wool blend yarns, so by the time I got what I actually went in for, plus the extra... it was $59. Sigh, I guess I need to give back my $40 and give him a big kiss to cover the $19.

Party!!!

Last night I called Joey into the kitchen to ask him if he wanted to help make brownies (which is a given!) and he asked if we were having a party. I replied "sure! let's have a party." When he asked what the party was for, I told him "just because I love you." He was quite excited to have a "loving the family" party.

We made brownies and cut up a "halfalope" (that's a cantelope, and since Joey can easily eat half of one by himself... it was dubbed a halfalope). After we ate treats we played the Veggie Tales Dance game.

I asked for this game for Valentine's day and my sweet husband indulged me. It's a hoot, especially to see baby Joy out there stomping away. I'm up to a "medium" skill level, but Dean just mops the floor with me- of course he has hundreds of hours of practice on his game system "Dance Revolution" game. I didn't start out to have a "party" but really, when I look at all that God has given me, every day should be a celebration. I love the way these shorties turned out, they are still a tad long, but look like capris I guess. I think they turned out so "beachy", I will probably do a life-ring or perhaps a lighthouse on the shirt to match.

I'm glad they turned out cute because I think Jeff was a little bummed that these sold out; I figured if they didn't sell to keep them for Joyana this summer. I'm glad they sold though, now my PayPal is a bit revitalized.

Code for "we don't know"

We got home from T ball last night, I was feeding Joy so Jeff bathed the kids. Jessi came over to me afterwards and I touched her and she was on FIRE. Temp was 104. Yikes! Long story short, we spent a few hours in the ER this afternoon because her temp just wouldn't come down; 15 hours of tylenol, motrin, baths, cold drinks to no avail. It got up over 105 and I couldn't get it even down to 103.

The nurse line lady and I finally decided to take her in--whereupon she immediately took a turn for the better and by the time we got there she was at a cool and comfy 102 point something. They checked her over and decided that it was just one of those weird things that kids get, " a viral febrile illness", which is code for, "hey lady, we don't know either, but she sure is one fevered up kid, let's watch her for a while and make sure she doesn't sieze or get dehydrated." I have to give credit though, that ER is almost a pleasure to go to, they are SO quick and so nice. We have, unfortunately had many occasions over the past few years to visit. That might be a fun blog sometime, a listing of ER trips since we've been married.

Now, 24 hours after that first high temp, she is down to 100 and is quite crabby. That's always a good sign. Now I'm just waiting to see who gets it next.

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Here are a few more random scrap pages that are done digitally.

This one was supposed to be a cute "matchy" picture of the kids. That picture never quite happened, but here are two pages of trying.

Someone asked for a picture of the grown ups. Here is one of me with the girls. Oops, I was thinking it was just a few months ago and now I see it's from a year ago! Time flies!

I loved this one of Joey and Joy, the quilt is one that Jeff's mom made for him years ago out of his baby and little kid clothes. Joey and Joy are laying on it, then I used a picture of it to mat the photo.

Just pictures

I had a few minutes this evening to post pictures.
If you look closely, you can see Joyana's new teeth breaking through-pretty much the whole bottom gum.
Joey's eye today, almost one week post crash.I was trying to get some shots of the girls in their Christmas dresses (what? it's only April!!) This one amuses me greatly. At first glance it's a sweet picture... then you see that baby Joy is ripping the book apart and Jessi is yelling at her.

I"m going to have to retake these... the color is very wonky. Joy isn't normally this shade of green.

This one is no good either, but it shows the dress off. My mom made them then sent them to me to do the finish work. They are so beautiful.

Joey on Monday, 3 days post.

Follow the Christmas Chicken; Never Drive Your Car Into the Pond

Kids are funny. Not just cute, but knee slapping funny. Or maybe it's just my weird sense of humor (in which case, Julia, you will have to validate me).

I have pictures of the progression of Joey's black eye. It really developed into a thing of beauty. Thankfully it hasn't been very painful for him, in fact, I think he forgets about it until someone mentions it. The other day I asked him if it hurt, he reached up, poked around (rather firmly!) and announce, "Hmmm. Only when I touch it." Well, if I touched my eye as purposefully as he touched his, it would hurt too, previously blackened or no! So anyway, here we are still with the vivid reminder of his often heedless ways, and he does it again. Yesterday he was having a few tortilla chips and suddenly SCREAMED, "Owwww, Owwwwwwwyyyyy!" I thought that he must have poked his throat with a chip or something, so I'm peering at his mouth for gushing blood. Once he finished yelling, he was able to explain that his mouth was fine... it was his finger that was in need of attention. He bit himself. Not his tongue or his lip, his finger. Very, very hard. It looked like it was going to make a blood-blister thing so I made him put ice on it. How do you bite your own finger? Leave it to Joe-bug.

Jessi is quite the artist. I love to see what she creates. Often it's not just drawing, she has the whole mixed media art thing going on. She will poke holes in the paper and tie on scraps of yarn or fabric (or pixie stick wrappers) for added dimension. Now as "gifted" as she is, she is still 3 and sometimes the pictures require a bit of interpretation. Yesterday she eagerly showed me her latest masterpiece. It was a manger scene, that much was recognizable. The lean-to stable, Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus were all quite clear. The donkey I wasn't sure of, but did at least see that it was some sort of animal. It was the blob on top that had me questioning. "and what is this?" I asked, after she gave me the tour of the picture. "Well you know, I can't draw a star," she explained, " so that is the chicken."
Ah yes, because a chicken is SOOO much easier to draw than a star. Would the wise men have followed the Christmas Chicken in all its glorious splendor? Decorative nativity scenes would come with a cluster of feathers instead of a light bulb, we would sing Christmas carols about "fowl of wonder, fowl of light, poultry of ever-living light." Topping our Christmas tree would be a colorful bird instead of shining star. Maybe I'll do that next Christmas. Just for the fun of it.

As I am sitting here writing this, the kids are playing. I'm not certain of the entire set-up (I seldom am) but it does involve a mother laying down the law. I heard something about "the rules are made to keep you safe "and then began an enumerated list.

I missed the first two, but here are a couple that I think we could all benefit from.
3. never, never drive your car into the pond.
4. never, never kick your brother in the head.
5. if you see an alligator, don't forget to scream.

Joy just woke up from her nap, so I need to close. May you all have a lovely day, and never, never, drive your car into the pond.

My Jumbled Thoughts

I'm just sick about the shooting at Virginia Tech. As the story unfolds, it seems like there are more questions, not more answers. This kid had so much background, he was basically marked as being "at risk." I can foresee many people demanding to know why "something" wasn't done about this young man (in the same way that so many people are now demanding to know why "something" wasn't done to warn people/lockdown the campus after the initial shooting).
We all know that hindsight is 20/20. I really feel that finding fault with the way things were handled is probably just a coping mechanism that many people will use to try and establish some sort of control as they process this absolutely out-of-control situation.
I wish there were an easy answer, a way to make sense of this tragedy. My heart hurts for this young man who felt so alone, so hurt, so dark, that this seemed like a way to ease his pain. My heart aches for the young people who have been brought face to face with this senseless violence; for all of our society's fixation with violent "entertainment", we are, for the most part, pretty insulated from the reality of raw death. My heart is crying with the families who have lost their loved ones. The parents who sent their bright, promising, children off to prepare for their future only to have their future cut short.

As a christian, what should my response be? How can I make sure that I am not merely "stirred" but truly "changed?" The first place I feel God leading me to inspect is my interaction with my own set of "troubled youth." Our teenager and his friends are facing things that I simply can't understand--and I didn't necessarily have a bed of roses youth myself. I asked my teenage son recently if any of his friends lived with both parents. He couldn't' think of any. Most of the kids we have hanging around here live with grandparents, step-parents, or like us, Uncles or Aunts. These kids face violence at school, they face the fact that they are essentially less important than their biological parents' addictions, they face a culture that tells them on one hand that they are "all that" and their own best friend, yet on the other hand raises up an impossible standard of beauty and brilliance. We have consciously opened up our hearts and home to these crazy kids, but I am often out of patience and ready to throw in the towel. I get frustrated with their bad attitudes and their self-importance. I want to "tell it like it is" and let them know that their 17 year old crisis are patently ridiculous and to just wait until real life hits them in the face.
I think God is telling me that I don't get to decide for other people what constitutes a crisis. I have no idea where the line is between teenage angst and true mental breakdown for each particular kid. What I can do is love on them, show them that in their whole turbulent world, Mr. Jeff and Mrs. Jody are there, that they can count on us to believe in them, set fair boundaries, and show lots of mercy.

What if this kid had just one person to turn to, one person tried to understand him and saw him as a person, not just a duty? We can not control the decisions that someone else makes, I'm in no way saying that there weren't people in this guy's life that tried to help... I just want to be sure that when God places someone in my path, no matter how odd or distasteful they are, I am doing everything in my power to "stand in the gap."

Photography and Digi-scrapping, part 2

All good Mommies are supposed to scrapbook and record each precious event of their little darling's lives. Right? Let me go ahead and confess that I "started" scrapping before I even had any kids, trying to do a wedding album. It has about 8 pages.
About 4 of those pages are just brochures and lists from wedding things.
I have a bin full of fancy papers and scissors and pens, templates and stickers.
That bin has remained basically untouched for the past 6 years; or at least untouched for it's original purpose.
I have made a few half-hearted attempts to scrapbook even post children. Ha. That didn't work so well for a variety of reasons.
-I flip out at the mere thought of cutting my photos. I know, I know, cropping enhances them, it doesn't ruin them. My head knows this, but my hands simply will not follow through.
- Time.
-Mess. Small children + paper, cutting implements, stickers and pens = lots of fun, but not of the scrap booking variety.
Then I heard of "digital scrap booking." I was intrigued. I tried it and was hooked. No mess, no supplies, work on it a few minutes at a time and never have to clean it up. For me personally, it was a lot more creative. Using the programs I can create my own papers and elements which is half the fun. It also has the potential to be more affordable. Instead of buying papers and embellishments which can be used once, I can use them over and over.

There are numerous sites where you can download freebies to get started. There are papers, frames, embellishments, alphabets, fonts, brushes... all for free. I wasn't sure which graphics program I wanted so I downloaded a 30 day free trial of Adobe PSE (Photoshop Elements) and after a week of wandering around the program, it clicked and I stayed with it.

But isn't the whole point of scrap booking to end up with an actual book to look at? Why yes it is. I do most of my layouts on a 12x12 which can be printed page by page at several locations like Costco or many online sources. Or, I can scale them down to 8x8 and print them for use in a smaller scrapbook. Another option is to use an 8.5x11 (or whatever size is appropriate) layout and get them printed in a book from one of the many sources like Snapfish, Mpix, etc. With the use of tools like textures, bevels and dropshadows, the results are amazing and you have to touch them to believe that the elements are printed and not actual layers pieced on.

With the help of a messaging program called Hello by Picassa I can even have crop parties with my girlfriends in the next state, or across the country. Hello does instant messaging with instant screenshots. We chat and work on layouts. Of course I do still try to go to crop nights and craft nights with my girls from church, but I simply take my tiny bag of knitting instead of a huge rolling suitcase of scrapping stuff.

Some good places to start:
http://www.freedigitalscrapbooking.com

http://www.shabbyprincess.com/

http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/

http://scrapbook-bytes.com/

Photography & Digi-scrapping

Tara commented on some of my pictures from my last entry. My mom got me a nice "real" camera for my college graduation gift and things pretty much took off from there. I resisted a digital camera for a long time, turning my nose up in disdain, claiming that nothing could replace the love affair I had with my Nikon. A few years ago, my husband finally talked me into it just so we could easily send pictures to the grandparents. Thanks to a really good salesman at Best Buy, we walked out with a lot more camera than we went in intending to buy. I have to admit that as anti-digital as I was, it was only a short time before I was hooked. The appeal of being able to snap off hundreds of pictures with no regard to film or developing cost is undeniable. I still don't think that digital photography replaces traditional film shooting, but I have come to respect it for its own sake. Sure, I Photoshop, but I'm here to say that even the most tedious of editing isn't going to fix a shot that simply isn't there.

The flower shots from the last entry are basically untouched, I just cropped them. The day was perfect (overcast) and the subjects beautiful. They didn't need any help.

I will give a few examples of what I do like using Photoshop for (actually, I use PSE, it is a fraction of the price of full PS and still ample for everything I do as a amateur photographer and for my digital scrapbooking).

I wanted to scrap this shot of Jeff helping Jessi eat cotton candy at a picnic we went to, but as cute as the picture is, I find those people in the background distracting. Since I couldn't rent the park for my own private photo session, I just made them "poof" and be gone. This shot is much more scrap-able.

I wanted to use this shot of giraffes at the zoo on a block-puzzle (I'll blog about that sometime) but it obviously needs a little help.

So, I cropped, brightened, and most importantly, got rid of the buildings in the backgroud. Was I at the zoo or on safari? I'll never tell!For this, I took a simple shot from the front yard and put Joyana in a studio.

Well, I intended to talk about digiscrapping as well, but I think I have more than enough photos in this entry. I'll do some examples of my layouts in another post.

Spring, part 3

I just can't resist... my friend Jamie's yard is about as good as a trip to the Botanical Gardens. While the kids were having their party, I was roaming and taking pictures. I told her that she just saved my husband a trip ;-) Even better, her rhodedenrons are in fat buds so she said she'll call me next week when they bloom and I can come back over for more pictures.

Opening Day!

In the spirit of unity and in the interest of being supportive, I will refrain from venting my many negative feelings about organized sports in general and Tee-Ball in particular. Today was "Opening Day." It started out at o'dark thirty (ok, 7:30 am) for pictures, home by 9 am. Back at noon for opening ceremonies, then the game. I will say with much appreciation that their lack of respect for the schedule worked in our favor. Word came down that it would be our turn to play at 2 pm. CONFLICT with one of the birthday parties of the season; Joey and Seth are BEST friends and we missed last year due to adopting our dumb dog that morning, also, you just don't want to miss a party that Mrs. Jamie throws. So Jeff promised me that we would leave the game at 3 whether they were finished or not. Anyway, like I said, we were told 2 pm, they actually started closer to 1:00 which meant that we were finished and on our way by 2:30 ish. I happened to look at the actual printed schedule and saw that we were really not supposed to have played until 4 pm. Whatever. Next game is supposed to be Monday evening at 6. We'll see what really happens.

ok, there is obviously a learning curve when it comes to picture placement... sorry about that.

In the one picture of Jessi throwing the ball--she's actually throwing it, it is really airborne there.

Also, I'm seriously thinking about getting Joey one of those catcher's oufits to wear every day. Seems like he'd be a lot safer... (but doesn't that black eye make him look so MANLY?)

Mothering Sons

I have to say, as much as I adore my little princessy girls, there is nothing like a boy. Wild, headlong, heedless, but at the same time, so tender-hearted and gentle. My son is 100% pure boy (with poison control programmed into my speed dial to prove it!) and yet as rough and tumble as he is, he can melt my heart the way he cuddles his baby sister. Tonight we were at a get-together for Jeff's work to meet some other families with young children. Joey and Jessi were playing in the yard and had quite a collision; it looked like mountain goat kids butting heads, sounded almost that loud too. Joey got the bad end of the deal and ended up with an instant shiner. Jessi bawled a little bit, but she caught it on her forehead so she was ok. I have to admit, I was SO relieved that it was my two kids who got hurt (vs. one of them hurting some other kid!). I also have to admit that I fussed and put on ice etc. simply for show... That thing was swollen up within seconds, ice was doing nothing for Joey (except making him holler) and was only to assuage the concern of the other parents who were ooohing and aaaahing over his injury. In true tough guy fashion, he cried more about the ice than about the actual black eye. Now I suppose I'll lose any hope of Mother of the Year if I confess that I find these pictures to be simply hilarious. The boy is a goofball! I told him to stand still so I could take pictures of his "cool" black eye. You see the results. I finally just grabbed his head and held him. Not that that worked out really well either.

Just in case you are wondering, the slightly greenish lump above that eye is the remains of last week's injury gained through wrestling Daddy or the wall or maybe it was Daddy and the wall, I really lose track of these things. The girls are sweet and adorable but my son... well he's the one that makes me laugh until I cry.

When Spring lets you down

So since I've switched blogging host sites, this might be confusing, but this is kind of part two to my rambling thoughts on Spring.

It has been warm. The flowers and trees are blooming, the kids have been playing outside barefoot.

Skip to the day before Easter. Plans are made for egg hunts at the park. I'm dreaming of taking adorable pictures of the kids in their cute playclothes next to flowering bushes, baskets full of colorful eggs.

Reality Check:

The kids were thrilled (this has been a chintzy year for snow), the banana trees, not so much.
So, since we are wussy southerners, no egg hunts, no spring time pictures, just a few minutes of snowy fun.

ok, just trying to see if i can post pictures. apparently I can.

New here...

I've previously blogged with another site, unfortunately, they seem to be down more than they are up, and today was the last straw when it ate a rather lengthy post. I'll see if I can link or transfer my old articles to this new blog. There is a link down on the bottom of the page to my old blog.