I wa tandy

Z :  "Momma, I wa tandy" 

Me:  "No, No more candy"

Z: "Momma! I wa tandy"

Me: "No sweetie, No more candy"

Z: "You ba momma"

Me: "What? I'm not bad.  That is not a nice thing to say"

a few seconds later..

Z: "You ga momma"

Me:  "Thanks, Z"

Z: "me ba dirl"

Me: "No, you are not bad" 

Z: "Momma.....  I wa tandy"

Watermark

Today I learned how to create a watermark.

Then I learned how to layer it onto photos.

Of course I had to post about my accomplishments.

That is what blogs are for.

But aren't you glad? 

You get to see these wonderful photos of my beautiful niece!(and her parents)  

My question now is....

does having a watermark make me professional?

Happy Fall Y'all

We headed out to a pumpkin patch this evening to pick up some pumpkins(obviously).  We have passed this stand several times driving back and forth from Mt. Pleasant and this is the first time we've stopped.

This place is super cute.

The pumpkins...

One for each of us....

Everyone enjoyed themselves.
Z was not into the group picture but I did get one of her holding her small, adorable pumpkin.

All of our wonderful goodies waiting to be purchased.
We picked up some honey, fresh pressed apple cider and Fuji apples.

Oh my!  I have got to say that these are the best apples I have ever tasted.

See you again next year!(or sooner-I think I need more apples)

TRUTH

I'm just letting you know this weekend will be tough...

I lost my 4th baby this weekend, 3 years ago.  

I was not even 2 months pregnant.

It still hurt....

My 6th baby was due to be born this weekend.

I was only 2 months pregnant..

It hurt even more....

Life goes on.

In the midst of pain.

Life goes on.

It doesn't stop.

Life doesn't stop for new life.

Life doesn't stop for young death.

I believe that is what makes miscarriage hard.  Your life goes on.  There is no stopping.  If anyone pauses, even a little, it is you.  You might stop.

Pause.  

Think.  

Grieve.  

But everyone else?
They don't, can't, feel what you feel.
They don't grieve how you grieve.
They go on living.  You must too, of course, sometime..

I'm just letting you know this weekend will be tough...

As they speak...

N comes into the room wearing a clip on tie....

"Look mom, my bow-tie!  I'm a genius!"

Z is standing outside my room...

"Yours, mom. Yours, mom. Yours, mom"

Knowing that this will continue until I figure out what exactly she is trying to say to me, I go investigate.  

It took me a minute or two to figure out it was "legos" she wanted.  They were up on a shelf and she needed me to get them for her.

Legos? 

Yours?  

They kind of sound alike, right?

Let's Get It Started

We started school last week....

and it went well...

It is amazing what a year can do..

We started school on Tuesday after a last minute organization of the school room Monday night. The first day went awesomely.  No meltdowns.  M did copywork and dictation without any attitude problems. L finished her Math and she liked it.  N and I were able to sit down and go through his reading book. Z tore books off the bookshelf and colored on paper. We even finished two history lessons.  I had not planned on starting history.  Our history and science books have supplemental books that I had found at the library but I had not been to the library yet to pick them up(we did that together on Wednesday night).

Speaking of History....

We are using The Story of the World 

I am in love with our History CD. 

We used The Story of the World curriculum for History last year and loved it. This year I bought the CD that goes along with it.  Basically it is every lesson you would read to you children on CD. So they can listen to it and you can sit back and listen to it.  Its not that I don't like reading to my children but I read to them often and so its great when I don't have to read.  

We were not going to start History until next week but we had a mid-morning snack time and listened to the lesson while the kids ate their snack.  They loved it so much that we did it a second day(we only need to do two lessons a week).

You can find Story of the World here.

The rest of the curriculum..

It is funny how we have converted to using mostly all Peace Hill Press curriculum. 

Writing with Ease comes from Peace Hill Press.  This small book provides you with instructions for all of the elementary grades.  I can use it for both my girls for multiple years.  I did not buy the workbooks that go along with it but I'm sure it would save you time on preparing for lessons.  The first week using it has gone well.  No complaints from me or the students.

First Language Lessons is also from Peace Hill Press.  It is the grammar part of their Language Arts curriculum.  Confession: We only completed 67 lessons of the 100 something lessons in Level 1 but we are still moving on to Level 2.  This year we will be more pro-active in completing our grammar lessons.  We have already completed 4 lessons. 

Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading also come from Peace Hill Press. This book is for N.  N is four and a half and already knows all of the letters of the Alphabet and the sounds that they make. I decided it was time to teach him to read. He already sounds out three letter words.  I think he is pretty amazing considering that I have never done formal "school" with him yet.  We plan on going through this book plus some of the books from our Kindergarten curriculum that I bought from Living Books Curriculum when M was starting Kindergarten, three years ago!! Can you believe this is our forth year homeschooling?  N was just a toddler when we started schooling the girls.  

I absolutely love Apologia.  This is our second year using it for our science curriculum.  Last year we used Zoology 1 and now we have Zoology 3.  Our kids love animals so that is why we decided to study animals! The text is engaging and the workbooks easy to use.  

School pictures

Are You My Sissy?

2 year old Z can say all of our names except for M.  Instead she calls her "sissy".
This morning we were going through everyone's names.
I asked Z, "Where's L? Can you say L?"
"Where's M? Can you say M"
And she says "sissy"
She also calls my mom, Grandma M, "sissy".  So I mentioned  that to her.
Then she says "L sissy"
"Me sissy"
"Momma sissy"
All in her cuteness.

I Lost the Track

"I like starting school before Labor Day 

but this year it may need to start after Labor Day"- me

When I discovered I was expecting I jumped on the planning track.  I needed to figure out how we could get the most out of our school year before the beginning of March.  I was due in the middle of March and could realistically give myself a month off before needing to start full time school again.  There's nothing like a mid-school due date to throw a homeschool mother into planning mode.  I was planning to start the second week of August-then the bleeding started and I miscarried and since then my planning has lacked muster.  It's expected that it would be hard to get back on track but seriously, it's not like I can't plan.  I need to plan.  I cannot let myself get totally off track.  So, very slowly, I've planned. So slowly that we might have to *gasp* start after Labor Day.  It is really not a capital offensive but I have never in the history of homeschooling(going on our third year) started schooling after Labor Day.

 I believe starting school after Labor Day is a Michigan thing. We began our homeschool journey in Oklahoma where public school starts the second week of August.  So naturally we have started mid August.  I have loved the extra week or two of time that it has given us to take off during the year.  I seriously would LOVE to end school at the end of May but you really can't do that unless you start school early then stay on track.  So that is our goal... staying on track if I can, somehow, find the track to stay on.  

Fun In The Sun- beach time photos

While on vacation in Ludington we spent some time on the beach taking photos.

I started taking pictures of Z first, it was her birthday.

 I wanted to get some shots before she got grumpy(it was bedtime)

Then I took some of M, L and N in that order. 

Next was group photos which honesty did not go well, 

they were goofy by this point and did not want to listen.

Cute goofy.

`Group black and white

 Colors.  

The sunset was amazing and gave us excellent lighting.

I just started editing with Lightroom 5 so I tried some presets out.

 Middles

 Youngest and Oldest

My most favorite of the night!

A more cars

Z is upstairs on a mission.  She quickly enters the bedroom she shares with her older brother and is struggling to push the bin back on the shelf, all the while uttering the same phrase over and over.
I don't understand her utterances but help her push the bin back.
Her hands are full of matchbox cars.
She then leaves her room and starts heading down the hall towards the stairs.
M comes upstairs and she informs me they are having a rubber band car race(whatever that is).
It is then that I realize Z was saying, "a more cars, a more cars, a more cars" over and over again.

N Saying

N "I don't want a Disney Princess! I want a boy princess!"

I Create Beautiful Children

I have been wanting a new camera lens for at least a year now.  A few weeks ago I decided I would have a garage sale to earn the money to buy one.   I needed a little more than $100. So I had my garage sale, made the money plus some and bought my lens from amazon. HERE  It is a Canon EF 50 mm f/1.8 II . As soon as I received it in the mail I started using it.  We had found this old chair at J's Grandparents house and it has been sitting in our utility room.

It's old, worn, the color is not too bad.  What do you think?

I kind of want to sand it down, re-paint it a brighter turquoise color then sand it down to give it the old, worn, look again.  But right now it is sufficient as is.  I might be on the look out to find more chairs of this nature. 

I set the chair up toward the back of our yard next to some purple flowers, put Z on it, who by-the-way was already in this pretty dress and shot away.  Most of the pics were taken with a f/1.8 or f/2 setting.  I forget what my ISO was, most likely 100 or 200. We were in complete shade, although I noticed on a few photos we had some sunlight come in.  The fun was to the subject's right side and it was around 5 pm.  I tried to get my auto focus to be on their eyes because I heard that this helps with getting the color of their eyes out. I don't know if that is right but I do think it helped.  

Look at those bright blue eyes!

I really love how the lens can blur out the background!  A lot better then my kit lens can. 

BTW... my son is shirtless.  It was a hot, muggy day today so he was running around in his underwear all day.

So much cuteness wrapped up in a small package!

I changed some to black and white because they were a little overexposed.  Just a little side note I do not have photoshop or any other editing program other than Picasa 3.  Although I want to take pictures in RAW I don't yet and won't until I have a decent editing program.  I did the "I feel lucky" action on a few of these.  Cropped some and then changed the overexposed ones to black and white. 

She is even cute in black and white

A few more of my favorites.

Look at her eyes!

I'm sure this is a crop. Look at that cute pout face!

Funny Moments

Baby Deer

I was driving out in the county the other day- alone and saw a baby deer crossing the road.   He/she was very focused on its destination. I was maybe 10 ft from it before it noticed me, at this point it was just a few feet away from the side of the road.  The poor baby deer saw me and jumped 5 ft in the air then jumped off the road.  I for real laughed out loud.  Then after realizing that he jumped because he had been so focused on  his destination that he didn't notice my large, loud vehicle approaching, I laughed out loud again.  

Musical Chairs

If you ever want to laugh until your side hurts, come over to my house and watch my kids play musical chairs.  Here is the run down.  First they start with three kids playing with three chairs.  They realize that that isn't very "fun" and take a chair out.  Then when the music stops the first time one cries, usually the smallest one.  I quickly start the music again and the crying stops.  I try to stop it when the youngest one is standing next to the chair so that he will get a seat.  Sometimes this works and sometimes not.  There is usually a 5 sec. reaction time to the music stopping which sometimes ends with the older kids getting the younger kids chairs even when the younger kids are right where the chair is.  Hilarious. Very Hilarious. 

Morning Madness

Last night my son peed his bed.  Which means that he spent the rest of the early morning hours in our bed. Later in the morning my youngest daughter joined us. 

There are four in the bed and the youngest one said

Yep.  Sang that to myself this morning.

My son kept on hitting me in the face with his arm.  His blanket.  His pillow. It got to be annoying.  Let's just say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  So I said rather angrily "Stop throwing stuff on my face!"

A minute later Z(youngest daughter) starts singing in her almost two year old, high sweet voice, "Not on my face, not on my face, not on my face"

Her brother laughed at her.  I laughed at her.

Z's sayings

I was showing Z a pick of our friend's newborn daughter and trying to get her to say her name, "Heidi" 

Z looked at the picture and said "Hi baby" and waved.  

I asked her "can you say Heidi?"  

Z said "No" 

I said, "Say Heidi"  

Z Said "Hi baby"  

This conversation repeated itself several times and didn't change.  I guess "Hi" is close enough to "Heidi"

Tooki the Owl

We found the Eastern Screech Owlet on Sunday, June 9th.  We were having M's 8th Birthday party and I had asked my dad to bring up his saw to cut down a couple pine trees that were planted too close together.  While he was cutting down limbs to get to the base of the tree, he found the owlet sleeping, not scared at all by the sound that the saw was making.  He yelled that he had found a baby owl and everyone came to see it and took pictures.  Ironically we had been discussing owls earlier in the day and my Grandma had said that she had not heard one in her neighborhood in awhile.  The pine tree that he was in is right next to the sidewalk.  Dad had cut down branches exposing him to the world.  We put some of the branches up to the tree to create a covering.  I was worried that he would not make it.
The following day I went to check on him in the morning and he was still in the pine tree.  He had moved over a branch or two.  I let our neighbor and mail lady know about him so he had a lot of visiting that day.  During the day he also moved to a higher branch in the tree.
On the third day of us knowing about his existence when I went to check on him in the morning he was gone.  I was a little disappointed but had known all along  that this might happen.  Around dinner time I was staring out the window and saw something in a tree and quickly went investigating to see if it was him.  I was sad when I found it was only a branch.  But when I turned I saw him in a totally different tree.  I thank God for this second opportunity of finding him.

Tooki sleeping

       I made a quiet sound and he woke up and looked at me 

This morning, the forth day, he is not in the pine tree or the second tree.  We will keep looking for him and hopefully will spot him again soon.