Photo Perspective

Miah has come up with some doozies these past few days:
It's raining = The sun's crying
Being nice = Be niceing

Then there is the opposite arguing at the table between the two four year olds:
"I'm blue and you're green."
"I'm good and you're bad."
"I'm pee and you're poop."

And how's this for faulty assumptions leading to bad conclusions:
While dad was changing a messy diaper, "Dad, why do girls poop green and boys poop brown?"

Sometimes I find myself at a loss for how to arrange my scrapbook layouts. Especially when most published examples are of one page layouts. I like to be able to open the kids' scrapbooks up and have coordinating pages on each side, so I'm always looking for dual page ideas. I found a scrapbook sketch at Page Maps by Becky Fleck that I thought would work with my pictures, took the layout idea and 70 minutes later I had this:

Eventually she got tired of staying in one place, but that canvas is so scratchy on bare knees, so we've got to do the bear crawl instead.

We ask this of S several times a day, although we never get an answer - just more tongue sticking out of that sweet little mouth. The younger boys notice it as well and come running to tattle on her. "Mom! S stuck her tongue out at me!"

I was at Virginia. My Poppa and me and Ivan went to find worms in front of the house. Then we put them in a can. The next day we went fishing with the worms. We caught fish, but they slipped away. Some of the fish we caught and some were too small.

We went in this big maze. It was hard to go through. We went in this big cave, too. We saw fossils, and there was a big pond. In fact it was bigger than the pond we went fishing in the other day. I was sad when I had to go and leave all the caves. Then we ate and I felt better.

The next day, I took a bath. That was the last day. I was sad when I had to go back to Pennsylvania, but I was sorta happy that I didn’t have to be in that van so long. I said goodbye to my grandma and grandpa, my uncle, and my aunt, and then we went in the house. The End.

Siah points to a letter on an alphabet chart Kacie was making for him, "Mom! This letter is called PEE!! Ha,Ha!"

Saw this in a catalog today, and had to share it.If you plan to put it on YOUR Christmas list include this link so they know exactly what you are asking for. I can honestly say that I do not want one for Christmas, but thanks for thinking of me. :-)

V wanted to share his creative writing for the day. His assignment was to describe someone he knows well using his senses. He chose to concentrate on sight, sound, and smell.

I have a friend named Jim. He has gray hair. He has a cowboy shirt and pants. He wears cowboy boots because he has tons of cowboy boots. He is carrying a saddle with both hands. He has a mustache. You know how you have like a beard, but he has that all shaved off. He has a white, black, or brown cowboy hat. He has a band around the hat, like a cowboy band. He wears vests.

He has a tough voice which sounds like a grown-up. That’s just how he is. When he’s carrying a saddle, he’s grunting. Once he gets the saddle on the horse’s back, he takes a big breath. When he is mucking out the stalls, the pitchfork he has makes a scraping sound on the bottom of the stall. Once he flies the poop into the wheel barrel, it makes a big quiet bang.

He smells like he is always out in the barn. He doesn’t smell like that on Sundays. He takes a shower. On Monday he still smells like he took a shower, but after a while he smells like he is always working in the barn. YEEHAW!

Here is a picture of V with his friend Jim taken at a rodeo in January.

This weekend we had the privilege to gather for a potluck with other families who had adopted children from Ukraine. V had looked forward to it all week, and was able to interact with 20+ other Ukrainian kiddos. We enjoyed swapping travel stories with others who had been there, and even met up with a family that we first met in Poland while we were both on our journeys home from Ukraine.


We adopted V from Ukraine through the Independent Ukrainian Adoption Family Network. The IUAFN naturally developed as one adoptive mom, Cathy Harris, turned around and helped others adopt from Ukraine. Many of those joined in the effort to help others, and now Cathy and the IUAFN has helped over 900 families adopt children from Ukraine without the extra costs of an adoption agency. We call our kids the Ukrainian Angels. Needless to say, I wanted a picture of V with Cathy for his scrapbook. V, though, didn't care much for getting his picture taken with a lady he had never met before and was not as cooperative as he normally is.


If you have time to get lost in a bunch of priceless pictures of children given a future with a family, check out Cathy's web site. We are family #275. Cathy's site is a bit out of date, but I suppose that is because she adopted 3 more children and now has a total of 10!

We see little white nubs starting to come through. Don't you just love babies' toothless grins?

This morning I cleared the school/office desk off in preparation for our day and thought, "I'd better get a picture while it looks so neat." We are thankful for the large desk we were given and can easily fit several of us around it. It fits just perfectly in the space next to the stairway in the basement. We have not completed the finishing of the basement yet, so we just try to ignore the insulation between the floor joists above us. Someday, Lord willing, it will be finished. :-)


If you look closely you can see our blue timeline on the wall. We are using the CD from Homeschool in the Woods that has various versions of hundreds of timeline figures and events. We are still working on the beginning of World History, so our line isn't very long yet. The kids will color a timeline figure while listening to their history story, Bible lessons, or other literature. I'll color a miniature figure printed on Post-it paper, and stick it up in its place on our time line. I'm hoping the kids will get a better feel for the big-picture of history this way.

On the right side of our homeschooling space, you'll see a map hanging on the wall. The flip side of the map has a zoomed in map of the U.S.A. The whole thing is laminated so that we can use white-board markers to indicate locations of what we are studying in history or reading in our literature.

I love looking back and reading some of the cute things the kids said. I have one scrapbook page in Miah's book that is dedicated to cute things he said while he was three, but since then I haven't really kept a journal of them. I decided I'm going to put them here so you can enjoy them and I can remember where I put them!

Miah while fighting sleep in the van during today's sunny drive: "Mom, my eyes keep turning on and off, and I don't like it!"

We were blessed with a sunny 70 degree day today, and the autumn sunshine is so nice for picture taking. V was overdue for a retake on our 2006 portraits, so we headed out for a photo shoot. Here is my favorite result. Isn't he so handsome? Today I've notice how grown up he is acting. He is definitely not the same little guy we brought home 5+ years ago. In fact, just for fun, I'll find a picture of V when we first came home and post it here for you to make your own comparisons!

I'm drowning in laundry today. It has been an incoming tide that never seems to recede. I don't have a hard time getting it all clean, it is the folding and putting away that seems impossible. Always makes me think of two friends from college who have laundry quirks. One is so particular about her shirt folding that she actually researched and learned the best method for shirt-folding online. The other imagines the wrinkles being permanently pressed into the clothes if they aren't folded as soon as the dryer sounds its signal.

Today I took a break to share how S helps with the laundry - NOT. She's actually so cute that she becomes a major distraction!

I wish I could figure out how to get these pictures next to each other here like they will be in K & V's scrapbooks, but for now you'll have to use your imagination. The top will be on the left, the bottom one on the right.

The journaling is pretty much cut and pasted from my last post. I'm finding that to be an added benefit to blogging about my pictures. Then when I'm ready to put them in a layout, the journaling was already done when the event was fresh in my memory.

Ooops, just realized I forgot to put the date on these. I'll have to add it before I get them printed.

As a precursor to studying World History, we were learning about archeologists this week. We picked up a "I Dig Dinosaurs" kit at the local craft store to get a feel for the thrill of searching and finding something in the rock or dirt. K & V spent about an hour chipping away at a block of glacial rock to uncover several unassembled dinosaur bones.

Watching V dig was especially fun. He could barely stay still enough to hit the chisel with the hammer.

In science we've been learning all about water and then about plants. We put the two together into a colorful experiment watching dyed water go up the waterways of celery stalks to color the leaves. Each one had a different color of water. (Miah & Miester had to join in on this one - it looked too fun to resist)When we looked at the bottom of the stalk, we could see dark dots where the water was being pulled in and up.
A week later, some look a little wilted, but all have extra color in the leaves.

One of my most frustrating part of my life these days is getting everyone ready to go somewhere. Inevitably one or two of the kids will be unable to find a matching pair of socks. Why, oh why don't those silly socks like to stick together? Why is it that one can be outside under the trampoline while the other is on the bathroom floor? One can be just inside the side door while the match to it is under the couch in the living room?

By the way, for those of my friends who are wondering how to leave comments, I believe you just click on the words under the post that say "0 comments" or "1 comments". That should take you to a page where you can leave a comment.

A funny story to share:

Last Saturday, I noticed that V had three safety pins neatly poked into the front shoulder of his t-shirt. When asked why, he replied, "Because that's how many years I've been a cowboy!" Then I questioned him on the source of the safety pins, since the only pile of safety pins that I was aware of was safely nestled in my "off-limits" drawer in the basement. But his answer surprised me, "from my bike."

"Your bike?!? Where do you have safety pins on your bike?"

"In the front tire," he responded confidently.

"You mean the tire that went flat a few days ago? WHY do you have safety pins in your bicycle tire?"

"Because Mr. G (a family friend from church) told me to put clothes pins on my bike and it would make a cool sound!"

Well, Mr. G made V's day a couple of nights ago by taking him to K-mart, buying him a new innertube and helping him to replacing it on his bike. Pete and I just shake our heads, shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, we never told him NOT to put safety pins in his tire!"

C-Meister loves muffins so much that he literally watches them bake. I have learned to hide them once they are done because we used to find them missing. Now C knows he isn't supposed to take muffins without asking, but he still can't resist taking one bite and putting it back on the muffin dish. These are zuchinni muffins, and we LOVE to have them fresh from the oven for breakfast.
We just had C in for his yearly physical. He's grown 2.5 inches and gained 7 pounds this past year. Way to go, Meister! We've been telling you those "green" things would make you grow big and strong!!

Our schedule has been crazy as of late - filled with dentist appointments, doctor's appointments and busyness. I'm seriously wondering if we will ever get into a "normal school routine". As a result, I've also been struggling to find time to work on the kids' scrapbooks. This one took me a whole week!

She's only 4.5 months old and has been doing this for a few weeks now. I guess she watches too many other kids moving around here. Time to pick up those Legos!

The kids were watching Fetch with Ruff Ruffman yesterday and saw a second-long clip of Plimoth Plantation. "Mom! We went there!" The look of excitement on their faces gave me the motivation I needed to pull out these photos from our summer vacation to Plymouth and do some scrapping.

K and V discovered a praying mantis on our window screen yesterday. Unlike our spider, this insect was actually inside the screen. After convincing V that we did not need to smack this bug with the fly swatter even though it was more than 4 inches long, we learned some things about this odd-looking creature with the help of our insect field guide and the internet.
- It is otherwise known as a Chinese mantid.
- It catches other insects with its front legs and holds them to its mouth to eat them. The large ones in the tropics have been known to eat tree frogs, mice, and hummingbirds.
- Its front legs are not poised to pray, but poised to prey. (we've been learning about homophones, too)
- It is one of the few insects that can turn its head, and it can turn its head a full 180 degrees.

We also learned by observation that they CAN FLY!! It took us by surprise at first when he flew off of my hand and past our heads towards the kitchen light. When we let him go outdoors after his photo session, he flew over our neighbors' house to a large pine tree on the other side.I thought the most interesting thing to watch him do was clean himself. He would put his "foot" in his "mouth" and then rub his eyes and head much like a cat would.

That was our hands-on (or maybe we should say on-hands) science lesson for the day.

C and J will be starting preschool on Monday, and we were told they needed a family picture to bring with them. So here we are on Sunday afternoon posing in front of our unmanned camera trying to convince the kids to all look at that blinking light all at the same time.

There were actually several versions of this layout before I got to one that I felt did justice to the portrait. I'm still working on the side that will be facing this page. I'm hoping to include some of the basic stuff we use during bathtime. It may be boring to us, but when S gets older she may enjoy seeing all the "antique" stuff we used.

I've been reading Charlotte's Web to the kids and today we found our own Charlotte.

Here's an exerpt:

"You mean you eat flies?" gasped Wilbur.

"Certainly. Flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty cockroaches, gnats, midges, daddy longlegs, centipedes, mosquitoes, crickets -- anything that is careless enough to get caught in my web. I have to live, don't I?"

"Why, yes, of course," said Wilbur. "Do they taste good?"

"Delicious. Of course, I don't really eat them. I drink them -- drink their blood. I love blood," said Charlotte, and her pleasant, thin voice grew even thinner and more pleasant.

EEEEWWWWWW! So glad our dear Charlotte is OUTside!

On this layout, my new technique was the text around the silhouette. Photoshop Elements 4.0 does not have the ability to create lines of text that follow a path. So I asked my personal Photoshop expert (who happens to be the photographer in the layout) to create the text path for me. Once I opened the revised file back up in PSE, I was able to edit the font and text as needed.

Caught this one last night after S's bath. The only light was flourescent off to the side, so I took these in RAW format which gives me a lot more choices in fixing the color cast the flourescents create. Unfortunately the pictures are too noisy (grainy) to be able to sell on any of the microstock photography sites.

I ran across this scrapbook page that 7 year old K did a month or so ago. The whole idea was hers and hers alone. Can you tell that she wants to be an artist? Notice she even created a visual triangle with her three squares along the edges.

I dread suppertime. I dread the whole ordeal: figuring out what to make, clearing off enough counter space to work, putting it all together, setting the table, and serving it. Lately I've been trying to make it all ahead of time to avoid making supper while "Mom, I'm hungry!" and "When is it suppertime?" ring in the air.

Yesterday I made chili and put it in the crockpot long before lunch. Hubby was going to be working until after bedtime, so I prepared for handling supper solo. After a late afternoon doctor appointment, I returned with all five kids, and starting dishing chili into their bowls. I discovered via finger-lick test that the chili was much, much spicier than my kiddos would tolerate. Back-up plan? Can of soup and grilled cheese.

While I was toasting the sandwiches on the griddle, my ears were assaulted by many sounds. "Mom, I need help!" from J in the toy room. S was protesting sleep in her crib. K was pounding on the side door to tell me that V and C were pulling levers, pushing buttons and pretending to ride on dad's new riding lawn mower. Ignoring the first two, I walked outside to inform V and C that they were not allowed to "push buttons, pull levers, sit on the seat, lid, grass bags, mower deck, or otherwise touch in any way dad's riding mower." (gotta cover the all the possibilities)

As I attempted to return to the sandwiches on the griddle, I realized that the side door was still locked. Scooting around the house to the front door, I walked in and smelled the charring of the grilled cheese. I flipped them over to confirm that they really were as black as I suspected, and groaned as tears filled my eyes.

V and K had followed me into the house and witnessed my reaction. "Mom, it's OK. We can eat burnt sandwiches. If we dip them, we won't even be able to taste the burnt stuff." was V's reaction. K didn't like that idea very much being a pickier eater, so she offered to finish supper for me. "I can do it, Mom. You'll see that I'm pretty good at making supper."

I handed K the flipper, and walked away to tend to the crying baby. After settling her down, I found the fortitude to walk back into the kitchen where K was toasting the unburnt sides of the sandwiches and V was hovering nearby to help when he could. I helped K peel the burnt sides of the sandwiches off (dropping one on the floor in the process), and she replaced them with fresh pieces of bread. I placed the warmed soup on the table, found bowls, and walked out the door. I was done. finished.

K and V handled supper beautifully. They called the younger ones for supper, served the sandwiches and soup, and left me in solitude weeding the front flower garden. By the time everyone was finished, I had recuperated and was ready to take on being Mommy again. My crushed spirits had just been rescued by my sweet, sweet 7 and 8 year olds.

With the addition of a baby to our household came new twists to my favorite hobbies: scrapbooking and photography. My traditional paper scrapping has morphed into full-blown digital scrapping, and I've recently discovered the addicting world of micro-stock photography. I guess my ever-inspiring friend got tired of trying to keep track of my newest time-eating crazes because she hounded me until I finally agreed to start a blog. So now you can join me as I discover the nuances of digital photography and scrapbooking, as I uncover the joys (hopefully) of being a first-year homeschooling mom, and as I observe the personalities and quirks of all five children God has placed into our home.

I'll start with posting a couple of my digital layouts so far.