Back to the real World!

So life is soooo much better now that we're all healthy again! Lots has happened in the last couple of weeks but we've been too sick to get the word out. I had my yearly major bad virus. Was coughing and hacking for almost a week. Things didn't start to get better until I started with a cough syrup that made me sleep--then it's gotten slowly better. Christopher ended up with a nasty stomach flu. Just in time, though since I was just well enough to care for him. Now it's been a long couple of days trying to get everything caught up--ick, piled up laundry! The kids have been on fall break but we didn't get to do anything really fun--we were all too sick! Bummer for the kids. But at least we didn't have to worry about them getting behind in school and homework. So it was a missed blessing.


Wade has a new pair of hand knit socks! It's from a really nice, soft yarn that's 60%wool, 30%bamboo and 10%nylon. It was really nice to work with. The yarn was soft and slightly shiny. The bamboo is supposed to give it antimicrobial properties--what a great thing for socks! It wasn't hand spun but it was hand dyed and it really turned out nice. I took a class at the local yarn store so I could learn how to knit socks using the Magic Loop technique. It took a little getting used to but I must admit that I like using this technique with only one knitting needle versus four double point needles. It's quite a bit faster and a whole lot more portable.


The kids get hand spun, hand knitted mittens this year! I blended 50%wool with 50% collie hair. Anthony's yarn is already spun. The color didn't turn out like I hoped. Dog hair is quite a bit warmer than wool so I'm hoping these will be the warmest mittens ever! Now it's off to the knitting store again to learn how to make mittens using the Magic Loop technique.



The studio is coming along nicely. The wall of hats is up and I must say that it's been a hit on the two shoots that I've used them. The kids just love them! And they do some really cute things with them in front of the camera. It has been a great project. I don't have a picture to post since it's not all done but I will in the next few weeks. A new green screen is the newest investment into the business. I also invested in tons of digital backgrounds. It's actually cheaper to get these instead of one muslin background--I think I have 1000 or so now and there would be no way one could have that many muslin backgrounds. Can't wait to get Christmas pictures done!
For Halloween, the kids dressed up and I took pictures of them against the green screen. Then adding in the new background and you can see that they came out really cool. Christopher was Harry Potter, Cally was a cat and Anthony loved being a butterfly. We had fun. Wade took them to the church Trunk-or-Treat earlier in the week as I was too ill to go. They ate chili and hot dogs and had alot of fun. Brandon didn't think Halloween was so fun since his doorbell was constantly ringing. I don't think the kids thought it was so fun either since they heard this deep, very big dog bark. When the door opened, their eyes were always very wide and they were as far back from the porch as they could for fear of a wild mean dog bursting out the door!

Just more of the same!

How do you like that? I'm already behind and actually I don't have anything interesting to share this week. Didn't take any interesting pictures--but have two bookings this week: one family session and one child session. Didn't have anything exciting happen last week--unless you count going twenty minutes one way to get to a store I wanted to go to only to spend another half an hour in backed up traffic. I had to turn around that that point because I had to go pick up the kids from school and I just had enough time to get back in that direction. That was as much adrenaline that I've had all week. Oh, I spent five hours bathing, blowing and brushing out Brandon this week--he's going threw coat change (the adult poodle coat is coming in and since they don't shed if you don't brush it out you get mattes, sometimes overnight.) I might have a picture of that. He desperately needs to be trimmed as his hair has grown out of his show cut but I'm not brave enough yet to do it.

But next week's entry promises to be be loads more interesting as we're so busy this week that I'll have loads to report--lots of home improvement projects so pictures will be coming. I've been putting my point and shoot camera in my bag and let me tell you after my digital SLR, it's so hard to get used to!

The First Official Post!

Welcome to our blog! We hope that this will help keep our family and friends in the know as to what's going on with our family. Much simpler than trying to tell the same stories over and over to everyone individually.

Everyone is fine and healthy. The older children are doing very well in school. Anthony is the only one home now and he's soooo lonely. The first day of school he woke up and ran from room to room before coming up to me in desperation. "I can't find my brother or sister anywhere!" he exclaimed in panic. He was so worried that they were gone for good. It took a whole week before he realized that they were safe and were coming home every day. He was so excited when they had a day off at school two weeks ago and declared that they would be home to play with him all day long! It will be two years before he can go to kindergarten so Christopher and Cally have put together a school for him where they are the teachers and I am the principle. He has homework to do and he "reads" along side them when they do their 20 minutes of reading for school. They told him that he could go to preschool next year and he was deeply offended. "I don't want to go to PRE-school," he cried, making it sound like a swear word. "Chrisopher and Cally don't go to PRE-school."

Wade only has two more classes left before graduating. It's very exciting--it's been a long, long road. The class he's in now is very challenging and keeping him busy. Plus he works a day job and a night job so he's too busy to get into trouble. After this, a regular day job will seem like a vacation!

I opted to not go to school this year, even though I was registered and all. Wade will be doing his thesis in six weeks and I didn't think it would be a good time to be competing for study time. We'll see next year or in the summer. I've been busy building up my photography clientele and getting the studio set up right. We've decided to turn the front room into the studio/living area since the downstairs just doesn't have enough room unless I knock out a wall. Been fun planning things out and considering dual purpose furniture. I bought another photographer's props last week and will hopefully have a bunch of stuff to make fun photographs. Already have a Christmas picture booking so I get to look forward to setting up for Christmas early!

Probably the biggest news so far--as far as the children are concerned--is that we finally entered the modern age of entertainment and got a PlayStation 2 (used) and a couple of games for the kids. Now I can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse. It's great for motivating the kids to get their chores done but then it's annoying to keep hearing, "Can we play the video games? Can we play the video games?" We only have two games and I intend to keep it that way for awhile. One day, I'll maybe get the wii. Just so they can get off the chair and do some of the games and not just sit there and tap tap tap with their fingers. Better yet, I think I'll throw them outside in the yard and make them find something to do. That used to work this summer until I bought the darned thing!

Cool picture of the week: A spider in his Halloween costume. The story behind the spider is that my kids are absolutely terrified of spiders--comes by it honestly since their mother is the same way. So we have two house spiders of the harmless jumping variety that we see and don't smash--Jumpy and Slidey. I hope this helps the kids realize that we can be OK and have no reason to freak every time we see a spider. So far it's been helping. When I saw this guy I thought he was so cool and to keep the kids from freaking out, I told them that it was Slidey in his Halloween costume. It worked and there was no hysterics. He made it safely outside but he was really, really cool. Never saw a spider like this.

Testing, testing, testing

Hi, this is just a test of our newly created blog....OK, everything seems to be working fine. We'll get our first post up soon.