Oh Baby

There is something so amazing about a newborn baby. You lose yourself just staring at their perfection, amazed that such a short time ago they were with Heavenly Father. I think that having children built my testimony in an entirely unexpected way. I loved how soft they were, each little detail perfection and marveled at God's creation. I took a picture of each of my children at one week old. I have always loved those pictures. I have scrap booked them (surprise, surprise) but also wanted them out for display. When I found these 12x12 canvases, I knew they were the answer. Each of my kids has a favorite color, so I carried some elements through, like a crown (child of Christ), wings (to fly), key (guess why), a flourish (cause I like them) loll, and a stamped clock with the time they were born. I also put their full name, (should have used an S for Alex, but we never call him Shon) and the date they were born. Such a fun project. I really do love how they turned out.

Disgust!!!

I am so tired of the weather at this moment. We have big beautiful irritating flakes of snow lazily falling from the sky. On the first day of Spring, which has already brought in this order, snow, sun (rising to 48) hail, rain, more sun and now snow. The weather here reminds me of a woman with a really bad case of PMS. Completely unable to make up her mind and moody! Now on the news they are saying to watch out for thunder and lightening storms. Crazy!

I was so excited to post the smilebox story about Alex that I forgot to write about it. My mother in law Joan took the time to put it together. It sure put a smile on our faces. Thanks Mom O!

Make a photobook - it's easy!

Mad Scientists!

Remember when you were a child and any toy could become something else? I went into Joey's room the other day and the kids were playing with their ds lite's. They had repurposed them however, into something very clever! They had pulled out shirts to use as lab coats and were pretenting that they were scientists. They used a science kit that Joey had and then added their own elements such as bracelets for petri dishers, knex pieces for lab tools and the ds lite as a scanner. They had placed a bioncle squid on the "scanner" for observation. I love how kids use their imaginations. We are so lucky that ours will spend hours playing together.

Here are the pictures, smarty-pants one and two! I couldn't load them yesterday because blogger kept saying the server was down. So, what do you think?

I have had this little dresser for years. It has had many incarnations. Dresser in my daughter's room. Holding tools in the garage, craft supplies, in the linen closet, back in my daughter's room as a Barbie high rise apartment building. When we moved into our new house, I knew it would be perfect in my living room. It had a really wonky paint job however, dark purple on top and pink and white on the bottom. (Painted many years ago at the request of a 7yr old Barbie fanatic.) Blindingly colorful, but not the look I had planned for my living room. I painted it walnut brown. I loved the original hardware so I left it the way it was. To dress up the drawers, I pulled out a Monet poster that I have had kicking around since college. It was pretty beat up on the edges, but I really loved the picture so I cut it and decoupaged it to the drawers. It turned out really well, no bubbles, and after weathering everything just a little bit, the whole thing now looks like an antique. My girlfriends came over for a stamp party and everyone had to keep touching the drawers because they thought the picture was painted not decoupaged. On a funny note, I now know that being a graffiti artist can be crossed off of my bucket list. I thought I was going to die after spraying the whole piece. How do those kids do it?

There are so many fun memories for Disney, I think I will have to just start them little by little. One of the things that we loved was the 3-d shows. This one was the Bug's Life one. It started out sweet and then Crusher took over and treated the audience like bugs, you were sprayed and poked and spiders dropped from the ceiling. (about 15 feet above you, but way too close still!) It was funny and crazy. Every detail at Disneyland was amazing. I took a few pictures of that section. Funny girls in glasses, funny signs, just plain funny.

I think that I want my life to let me off for a short while. This week has been insane. Every single day has had many things going on, things that you just can't get out of. The things that I can get out of I don't want to. One of the little ironies of life. I feel a little bit like I am on this merry-go-round. When we were at Disney (more about that later-so much fun!) My little niece Millie wanted to ride this carousel over and over, there were no lines and seriously, we ended up riding it something like 7 times in a row. Since she is only 3 she needed an adult with her. I didn't get sick (although it crossed my mind) But I sure felt off balance and dizzy afterwards! :-)

Life seems a little bit like this. Lots of what I am doing is for my kids and it is really important to them. So until Sunday is over, I am just hanging on tight and trying not to get too dizzy!

We have been so worried about Alex's health this year. Shon and I had hoped that it would be the year of "no asthma trips to the hospital". We should have added year of "no crazy bacteria strains" as well. Alex is normally very healthy. However, somehow he ended up with a bacterial infection that has caused him to lose 32 pounds since the beginning of January. He went in for an endoscopy today and was put under general anesthesia. Ironically getting the IV bothered him more than the thought of a camera going down his throat. Luckily, one of the nurses up there was one of our good friends from Scouting. She helped calm him down. We ended up with some really gross pictures of his esophagus and stomach. We learned that the bacteria has caused severe ulcers which in turn are inflamed enough to start bleeding badly very soon. Hopefully today has given the Dr. information to figure out what is going on and start to cure him. He is not happy because he can't eat many foods for a minimum of six months, one of those foods being pizza. On a funny note, he saw the pictures of his stomach and thought they were so cool he wanted me to do a scrapbook page. I was taken aback and mentioned that I hadn't thought about it (honest!) and said I didn't bring a camera. He laughed and told me to use the one on my cell phone. So here are some pictures of Alex today, No gross stomach ones ~ I promise!