An End of an Era

Some of you know that Ian was dx'ed with a focusing issue when he turned 6. Not really exactly sure what the medical term is, but the first time they did a vision test, they thought he seriously needed glasses because he did that poorly on the eye test. They got the dr. in the room, he had Ian read the chart . . .and he was 20/20! We'd been sent to this OD because we'd had Ian in OT because he couldn't color! Yes, the kid figured out multiplication in K, had been spelling since he was 3 .. . .but the kid couldn't color to save his life! So, off to OT we went .. .seeing if it was poor fine-motor skills. She asked if his arms got tired at school, and he said "No, but my eyes do!" . . so off we went to Dr. S, the OD PA (whatever PA means . . .maybe pediatric something? He has a ton of kids in his practice). So he went through the most thorough eye exam I've ever seen. I thought that perhaps he was just doing this extensive an exam because we'd been referred by an OT. . . .nope, those are his regular exams! Both the girls have been too, and it was just a "regular" check.

And the dr. discovered this focusing issue. Apparently, it's not often discovered this young . . .and a lot of times the kids are dx'ed with Dyslexia, ADD, etc before they are properly dx'ed because it's harder to catch. They gave him a script for prism lenses. Literally overnight, the kid went from being very relunctant to read, to reading vary well. He had all those words in his head, he just couldn't see them properly! He's worn the lenses for 3.5 years. . .they basically retrain the eyes to work properly, and we did, I don't know . . . a TON of vision therapy sessions. Not cheap, but so well worth it! Who knows what kind of student he would've been without them.

Today, we went to visit Dr. S and he did an exam, checking to see how fast he would read things structured oddly, etc. And the kid ACED it! He doesn't have to wear the glasses at all anymore, unless he's having a particularly stressful day, hard time with the eyes, etc. So no more glasses. . . on a regular basis at least. I had to capture Ian today in his glasses. You can't see it so much in the pic, but man, these glasses have been well loved. After 2 frames broke, we went with those flexible ones. . .and oh, are they bent out of shape, lenses scratched. . . they've been worn on the playground, wrestled in . . .they're definitely used!



Allie did a drill team dance clinic today, since we had no school. 6 hours with a gym full of girls of all ages! The other 2 kids and I were there for the "showoff" time, and I'm not sure Allie learned anything. She wasn't enthusiastic, by any means (as you'll see below). They're supposed to dance at halftime at the ballgame tomorrow night. I was not thrilled to miss my first photography class for it, and even less thrilled with the aspect that I'd be missing class to watch her stand there! So, Mom and Dad are taking the 3 kids and going to the game, and I'm going to class.


The first picture was when she noticed I was sitting there. Vast improvement over last semester, when she rolled around on the floor with a couple other girls when they were supposed to be sitting quietly! Photo 2 . . .well, you can see how enthusiastic she looked!
Third photo . . .I can't get why their drill team counterparts (the teenagers) gave them party blowers before the day was over! Allie was more into it than the dance! ROFL And yep, all the girls in her group had these tiaras . . . and they blink! ROFL

Okay, I don't normally do this . . .you guys will notice I don't even have a "my favorite blogs" sidebar. . .but if you're in for a giggle and 40-something women and undergarments . . . go check out this post (sorry, Kelly . . . I just had to! Too Darned funny .. . besides probably a majority of the people who come here, end up here because of one of your links here! tehehe) Kelly's blog

Dead On . ..

You know, these internet personality things rarely get me right. I think, in part, because I never like the answers I have to choose from. This one, however, nailed it!

You Are Likely a Second Born

At your darkest moments, you feel inadequate.At work and school. you do best when you're evaluating.When you love someone, you offer them constructive criticism. In friendship, you tend to give a lot of feedback - positive and negative.Your ideal careers are: accounting, banking, art, carpentry, decorating, teaching, and writing novels.You will leave your mark on the world with art and creative projects.

The Birth Order Predictor

Yep, I feel inadequate when I'm not doing well emotionally. ROFL . . work was school, and I evaluated all the time. Friendship . . . yep, perhaps I give too much feedback sometimes!

Even the ideal careers merged all parts of my major: I was a secondary ed major with emphasis in business (loved the accounting part) and English (writing novels). Guess I'll leave my mark with scrapbooking, huh?

These are a few of my favorite things . . . .

Here's Alaina giving you a friendly wave. We told her to get some shoes on to go outside to play on Saturday. Here's what she came down wearing. . . .a few of her favorite things. The infamous red boots, her favorite pair of pants (she calls them giraffe pants, because she's a giraffe nut; but they're really leopard) with the matching sweater. Then for a special touch, her favorite summer dress. And yes, we did let her go out in the backyard this way.



I looked out the window one night last week and saw this view. I loved it, and have been looking to photograph the sky at this time of night for a project I'm working on. Unfortunately, I couldn't shoot over the houses. {sigh} will keep trying.

A few of my favorite things:

the iPod . .. it's quickly becoming an addiction. While working in the scraproom this weekend, I listened to a whole audiobook.
beef fajitas from On The Border. . . as long as I ask for the beef and the onions well done.
The Motive by John Lescroart I love this guy's books. I usually like it when an author takes the same character (or 2. . . here) and writes several books with them. Seems to give the character more depth.
The movies . . . my friend Erin took me to dinner and a movie (Last Holiday) to celebrate my birthday. We laughed and laughed through it. It's always great to spend time with a good friend.
Chatterbox Chalet and Holiday Lodge papers . . . YUMMY! I got some late last week in the mail and I'm in love! If you haven't checked out Chatterbox's sneak peeks . . .go, quickly, to their website (www.chatterboxinc.com) and check those things out! Oh, they have some journaling embellishment boxes that look AWESOME, several new rooms, transparencies. . .and more!

Okay, off to watch an evening of DVR'ed TV.

Sometimes you get what you ask for . . .

This can be a good thing, or a bad thing.

Good . . . I got the iPod I've been asking for on Friday for my birthday. Spent a lot of this weekend looking up songs, downloading them from iTunes, etc.

Bad . . . I've been wanting to get more daytime reading time in with Alaina. Reading to her through the foggy glass when I'm in the shower . . . not so much!

Good, yet bad, part 1 . . . . I love girl scout cookies. Yummy! They rank at the top of my list as far as sweets. Bad . . . Allie's selling them. I hate selling things. When I worked at gymboree, I never tried to sell people 20 thousand pieces to the wardrobe. I rang up what they handed me, tried to help them out if they needed something to match, and that was it. And as Allison is a 1st grader, you can imagine who's doing most of the selling! Andy had one lady from work tell him she'd buy "at least" one box of cookies, if Allie would write her a note about why she was selling (basically give her sales pitch). #1 . . . this lady has no idea how long it takes Allison to write anything .. . and #2, unless she writes fairly slowly, it's not going to be anything the woman can read!

Good, yet bad, part 2 . . . . I put several camera things on my Christmas/Birthday list. I got a 50 mm fixed lens for Christmas. That's working out well. My birthday . . .my sweet dad fixed me up a bag of goodies. A couple of different filters (a skylight filter and a Polorizing filter), plus a soft focus lens (he said it would work better than a soft filter, which I'd asked for), this lens, an adapter, and 2 other things I haven't figured out (can't remember what he told me) what they're for. All very cool things. The soft focus lens and the 5x lens, he told me I'd need to set it at f4 . . . I don't even know how to do that! Hoping that's one of the first lessons when I go to photography class! So, great, because he picked this stuff out for me, and knew it was stuff, I wanted . .. but it goes to show you, you'd better watch what you ask for .. . you just might get it!

A Little Experimenting . . .

After letting PSE 4.o sit dormant for a week or so, with the exception of downloading some pics, I decided I really need to learn something about photo editing. More than just the basics I've been doing so far. I've got the b/w pic with a colored element nailed down. So I thought I'd try the all black and all white backgrounds. I played around and didn't do them as perfectly as if I were really trying. Doing some experimenting more than anything.

First attempt was to change this photo's background to an all black background:



It turned out fairly well, except I didn't notice the light spots at the bottom of the pic (gotta remember to scroll down!)



Then I decided to try and take this one from a pink background to a white one:



This one didn't go so well. I used the dodge tool and played with the hard edges and the soft edges. Her legs and arms just don't look right! The left side was done with the soft tool, and the right with the hard tool. Left definitely looks better, but i still need some practice on this one! And then there's that smudge on the right hand side. . . it looks like you've got it all, but just doesn't end up that way.

Guess I'll keep practicing!

On Being an Insomniac . . .

New meds . . .. upside, not as many migraines (YEA!). Downside. . . not as much sleep either. The past 5 weeks, I've been a whirlwind of nocturnal energy. Thus the 4:30 am wrapping spree one night. Lately, I've been using that time to clean . . .don't know what little cleaning monster got into me, but it was about time! I've spent 3 late, late, late nights going through kids' memorabilia, endless scrapbook magazines, Gymboree clothes that need to be ebayed, countless books and the like. Now if I can just get the Christmas tree down!

Talked to dr. and he's changing the dosaging. . . but who knows how long that will take to adjust my sleeping schedule! So next couple of nights, I'll be in the scrapbook room, working on some layouts that are percolating in my head, and perhaps start a Chatterbox entry.

Two Things I Hate About Christmas

Now that the Christmas season is over, I gotta admit. There's 2 things I hate about Christmas. The first one is putting Christmas away. Taking down the 4 trees, finding places for all the new toys (so they're not all over the floor), getting the house back into order. I've not made much headway on this, so far. I set the girls to work taking ornaments off the big tree, with the order that they were not to touch the china ones, the dept 56 ones, or the Christopher Radko. Like they know what any of these things are! And Ian took the ornaments off his tree. That's as far as we've gotten! We have had years that the kids' trees end up staying up until March because I just want to avoid that they need to be put away.

The second thing I hate about Christmas . . .the weight gain! All the yummy desserts, the baked goods, the potatoes. . . they all call to me! I was shocked when I got on the scales and discovered I'd LOST 7 lbs over the holiday season! Whooooohoooooo!

The kids are all back in school today. Before Alaina left, I took some shots of her with her favorite piggies in her hair. I wanted to try out the new 50mm fixed lens. Here are a couple shots:


Now I just have to figure out how to use the new PSE 4.o!

An Interesting Two Weeks

When the Christmas break began, I was so full of hopes and plans. We were all healthy after coming off over a week of the stomach flu. The kids' parties were finished, the wrapping was done . .. . the holiday baking completed early. We had 3 really good days there.

Then Christmas Day evening hit. We'd spent a majority of the day at my parents' house. . .eating (2 meals), unwrapping presents, laughing and playing. Andy hadn't felt so great that morning, but he seemed to be better as the day went on. By the time we got home, Alaina had a fever, and Andy basically tanked. {sigh} We never did really figure out what we all ended up passing around .. . the flu (of the non-stomach variety)? a cold? I'm not sure. But by the time we were to leave on Thursday morning for Arkansas, we'd taken 2 of the kids to the dr . . .one with a double ear infection, one with an ear infection and a sinus infection. I figured surely a day of antibiotic would help. With Ian, it seemed to . . .Alaina . . . no such luck. I think here, 6 days later. . . and 9 days after she started the whole she-bang, you can finally see a spark of that Alaina flair.

So, over the course of 2 weeks. . .we celebrated Christmas 4 times (once at home, once at my parents, again at home with Andy's parents, then in Arkansas), we watched 2005 slip into 2006 (I was in bed trying to go to sleep. . . fear of another migraine), and we earned an extra day of Christmas break. Yep, you heard me! I almost became one of those moms who got their kids ready for school and took them to drop them off, with nary a kid in sight! We didn't realize until yesterday evening that we didn't HAVE school today. Oops!

Then, last night, someone from down the street came and rang the doorbell, wanting to know if our neighbors were in town. They're still gone. . .and apparently someone broke in their van window and stole a bag inside. Poor thieves . . . they didn't snatch anything worth getting, and dumped it in a recycling bin, where it was found. Poor neighbors, they now have to have a window replaced. And it's kinda scary . . .knowing that someone was either (1) survailing houses, trying to find people who were out of town or (2) going from driveway to driveway peeking in all the vehicles looking for something to steal. The policeman that came felt it was more likely option 2. Kinda makes me feel "oogy" knowing someone is doing that.

I don't really make resolutions . . .they've never really been my bag. But here's hoping that (1) we all stay safe and (2) Christmas 2006 is more healthy than this past one!