Dream BIG!

Maybe some day! If this boy keeps up his art of negotiation and manipulation, he'll be very successful some day!

and she sleeps....finally!

A few nights ago, Emily went to bed and she did her typical banging around the bookshelf, playing with her babies and rearranging her clothes in the drawers and closet. After telling her to "get in bed!" several times, she finally crashed.
I went in later to cover her up and this is what I found....

not a great shot, it was taken in with just the light of her nightlight. But you get the idea....

Emily Mary, how does your garden grow?

Louie and I were at Menard's a couple of weeks ago, buying Dan one of those fancy show shovels with the curved handles that are easier on the old back...While we were there, we noticed that they had the garden seedling trays and vegetable seeds out already. We had such success with our plants from last year, I thought we would give that a try again this year. I started the seeds in early March last year. This year, we started them in mid-February. Hopefully, we'll have tomato plants that are a little stronger to start with. We'll see.

First, you put a potting mulch disk in the bottom of the tray and add water.

After the disks have expanded, you put a couple of seeds in the middle of the disk.

We planted tomatoes, jalapeno peppers and watermelons.

Then, once they're all ready, we put them on the ledge of the bay window.

Emily reminds me to water them occasionally.

She is going to be a great little gardener. Last summer, she helped water our gardent and pick tomatoes. Of course, she loves to eat tomatoes and would eat the cherry tomatoes right off the vine.

Happy Valentine's Day (belated)

Yeah, I'm a little behind....but I've been busy watching the Olympics. We've been recording all of the coverage so far and I'm going through it all! Love it!

Speaking of love, Valentine's Day has come and gone and I never posted any of the pictures that I took. I blog-lifted an idea for the kids Valentines this year. (I'm not going to post a link to the other site, her photos of them are much nicer than mine.)

Started trying to get a good shot of each of the kids with the heart pillow....
Add a little message in Photoshop. Resize, print in wallet size and voila:

I even broke out my scrapbooking stuff and used the edge distresser on the photos.

They turned out cute, if I do say so myself....

Yep, terrible pix of the actual Valentine's, but you get the idea. The kids loved them and so have their friends. The photo prints were actually less expensive than buying YoGabbaGabba or Spiderman or Princess Valentine's that we could have ended up with.

Sneak Peek....

We got our lens back from Canon last week, used it on Saturday to take some pictures so we could make some Valentine's for the kids to pass out at their parties at school this week...here's a sneak peek....

Return to me....

We got our lens back and finally it works.....Fed Ex delivered it on Tuesday and I took it outside and took a couple of test shots to see how the focus is working.

The Mitten

I haven't been taking (many) photos, but tonight I got some fun video of Emily and Louie.

Emily goes to Expo Special-Ed Preschool and she has some really awesome teachers. They do some really fun weekly projects. Today, she came home from school with "The Mitten."

Their project was to make a mitten out of paper and sew it together with yarn. Then they each got a picture of the animals that are in the book to color. Emily loves this book and we have read it many times. She got her own copy (a boardbook) from her cousin Katie when she was born....

Here's Emily starting to go through the story

After Emily finished going through "The Mitten," Louie told me about his day at school. It was mismatch day at NELC. Here, he sort of explains his outfit...

Hiatus

UPDATE: the good people at Canon, USA just confirmed that my lens does have some "poor focus issues and back focus problems" and are in the process of repairing my lens. it should be returned to me early next week! YAY!!!!

I'm taking a temporary hiatus in blogger land....at least when it comes to posting photos. I haven't taken any photos for a few days. For the past couple of weeks, I've been struggling with my 50mm lens; I felt like I wasn't getting a decent picture whenever I picked up my camera...It was so frustrating!
Last week, Karen Russell suggested that maybe my lens was doing a little back focusing. What is back focusing? I didn't really know. So my nerdy photography friend, Sherri, filled me in. Sure enough, that is what I think it is doing!
On Thursday, I called Canon had a long chat with a tech person. She checked some of my images and thought that might be the problem. So, on Friday, I wrapped my baby in several layers of bubble wrap and packed her in a box; I kissed her goodbye and told her to come back soon. She's going on a little vacation to New Jersey. I hope that whatever the good people at Canon do will fix her problem.
See you soon Sugar! we'll miss you while you're away!

The Snowy Day

One winter morning, Emily and Louie woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night and covered everything as far as they could see. After breakfast, they put on their snowsuits and went out into the

deep, deep snow.....

Pirates and Ponies

Some favorites from the Christmas holiday...Emily loves her My Little Pony

and Louie loves his knight castle



We've really been focusing on getting kids to be totally potty trained with out accidents. It seems to be a hopeless expectation....but hopefully, we'll get though it. Louie's been doing better...He hasn't pooped in his pants since sometime last week. We've been rewarding the positive behavior.
It seems that along with pirates and knights, we're also totally into Batman!
Thank you Santa for the Batman cape. Photos to come shortly!