miscellaneous moments

A few little updates for the good ol' blog...

Joseph broke his hand playing church ball -- the arrow points to the diagonal fracture in his middle-finger hand bone (sorry, no technical medical terms from this music major). It's been healing really well -- because the bones on either side keep the middle bone in place he didn't need a cast and has been wearing a brace for the last few weeks. Hopefully he can ditch it soon! It was a good wake up call for him - no contact sports that put his career in jeopardy, thank you very much!

J-boy and Baby A got a hold of my make up bag. I really thought this kid was old enough to know better. Apparently Baby A is a bad influence. :) Every time she sees my make up bag she says, "Eye! Eye!" That kid loves eye shadow. :)

Happy late St. Patty's Day! Do they look lucky, or what??? :) I made the banner with my cricut, cut clovers out of knit and sewed them to plain white shirts, made Baby A a new hair bow and leprechaun hats out of felt for the big kids. We ate corned beef with cabbage, potatoes and carrots, and lemon (golden) jello for dinner. I think it's the first time I've ever served my children jello -- they were completely amazed by it. :) I think that's the most attention that holiday has ever gotten from me. :)

J-boy decided he was done with training wheels, so I broke out my new baby seat (Christmas gift from mom and dad!), and now we can't get enough of the family bike rides. We need to get another grown up bike so Joseph can come with us on weekends. :) I really really really love this - what a fun phase of parenting!!

Other updates -- Joseph had a trip to check out potential practices. It was a good trip and now we know what we DON'T want! A few days later the kids and I took our own trip out to New Jersey to visit my brother's family and met a new little boy to adore. :) I'll post about that soon.

J-boy turns FIVE!

The day after his birthday we were driving in the car and J-boy announced, "Mom, I made a wish  when I blew out my candles, but I can't tell you what it was, but it was a really good wish."  Then about 30 seconds later, "Mom, I can't tell you what my wish is, because then it might not come true."  Another 30 seconds later, "Mom, my wish is to drive a big rocket, but I'm not going to tell you because I want it to come true."  :)  We had a little chat about 'driving' rockets, and how you should learn to fly airplanes first -- now he wants to be just like Uncle Dave and fly an airplane "big enough to fit a car inside!"  :)

 

(the birthday cake picture has been modified from the original version - it has been formatted for the blog) :)

Then the next day we got to visit the dr. and the pharmacy - poor kiddo had strep and bronchial ickiness (my interpertation of the official diagnosis) so we had fun with the antibiotics and the albuteral. But he's all better now!

One of his gifts -- he loved digging for treasure -- by the time he was done my entire kitchen was covered in a thin layer of treasure island.  If there is a next time for this sort of gift, I'll try to give it in the summer - this would have been a good OUT DOOR activity. ;)

J-boy picked this sword out on amazon and waited (ANXIOUSLY) for it's arrival by mail.  :)  He's been through at least a dozen plastic or foam swords in his short life, and had been wanting a new one for quite some time, so this was perfect!  It also came with a mask (serious J-boy bonus!!!)  It hasn't broken yet!!!  It's a G.I.Joe toy and came with a dog tag, too -- J-boy says, "Don't call me [J-boy] -- call me G.I.J-boy."

And for my un-scrapbooking purposes:

J-boy is such a fun kid - he loves to play with and clober his little sister, he loves to play with and mimic his older sister.  He does have a slight problem with his wardrobe - poor kid can't choose an outfit without emptying every drawer in the dresser.  It gets kind of tough putting ALL those clothes away every day.  :)  He's also frustrated that he's now 5 and still wearing clothes with a 4 on them.  :)

favorite color: dark green

favorite movie: pixars' short on Cars - Mater and the Ghostlight

favorite game: freeze tag

favorite song: If you're happy and you know it

favorite accessory: green swimming goggles (at the moment)

Love that kid. :)

Snow Animals

Joseph's at it again --  I love seeing him play with our kids. :)

Valentine's Day

(I think these pictures have aged sufficiently that I can now blog about them)

Heather, Ryan and L joined us for Valentine's Day dinner - it was really fun. It seems like having more people around always makes it a better celebration. We had Heather's red chicken with pink rice, pink faux-tatoes (mashed cauliflower - not a big hit!), and salad with strawberries and bacon. Mmmm bacon. Heather also made the awesome cupcakes - so pretty!!!

The night before Heather had babysat for us so Joseph and I could go to a Valentine's party. It was so fun! We played a few games, carved our initials in the 'love tree' (a bare-branched paper tree taped to the wall), the girls made cards for the husbands while the husbands drew crayon dipictions of our first date (the girls had to pick which one was their own). The ladies brought their husbands favorite desserts (Joseph got a hot-lava-ish-fudge cake w/ ice cream & hot fudge sauce), and the husbands brought a poem they'd written for their wives. Joseph's was beautiful - it was so sweet - I had to be careful not to cry. :)  Joseph and I won one of the games and got a prize - some Valentine's treats including Twilight conversation hearts (not the ones in the bowl up there)!  I laughed so hard - things like "True Love" and "Forever" and "Bite Me."  So romantic. :)

Joseph is a great husband, and it was lovely to have our own little Valentine's night. And then to celebrate again with our darling family the next day was just the icing on the cake (or cupcake, as the case may be).

Valentine's Day completely destroyed my diet (I was doing a little South Beach action - hence the mashed faux-tatoes). But that's okay. I was not very happy without my carbs and fruit in phase one, so now I'm skipipng to phase two(ish) -- I feel like it's a better balance now. I'm hoping that someday I can actually figure out how to eat sweets in moderation and have one of those active, fit and healthy lifestyles (a proper ending to a post that began with a humongous bowl full of candy, right?)

this and that

J-boy said, "Uncle Ryan taught me how to do this." :)

We've had lots and lots of snow lately - this particular night we got around 3-4 inches - and we left the sliding door on the van open all night long! Joseph had it mostly cleaned up before I took a picture, but I just had to laugh and laugh.

You can see little bits of the snow drift and Baby A sitting on a grocery sack (since her hot little bum was sure to melt the ice-crusted car seat!).

And K-lady lost her two front teeth! It was a little involuntary -- She and J-boy like to hop around with both legs stuffed into one pant leg on their PJ's. It's always bugged me SO MUCH (I think because by the time they are in PJ's I'm generally not in the mood to be amused by their antics - I just want them IN BED!) Anyway, she tripped and knocked her already loose teeth quite a bit more loose. Joseph whipped out some lidocaine and hypodermics and did a little tooth extraction while I distracted K-lady with tales of tea parties when I was 10. :)

Thanks for the kind comments and advice - it always does work out. I always wish I could see the end from the beginning, but it's never worked that way yet! And I suppose that's a good thing. My word for the year is diligence - to me it means one day at a time, each requirement fulfilled step by step. I'm trying to turn "endure-to-the-end" into "joy-in-the-journey" -- one day at a time. :)

Good food and our 'adventure'

On my birthday we had dinner with Heather and Ryan and L - we decided appetizers would be fun and out-of-the-ordinary. So Joseph made the pina coladas (aren't they so cool?!), I made the shrimp, Costco provided the mini quiche, Ryan & Heather made the bruschetta, the fruit & veggie plates and the artichoke dip w/ pita chips. Oh yum. This is making me hungry.

 

Lucky for me, they only put 5 candles on the cake - and I still barely got them all out (something about blowing on food someone else is going to eat in the middle of H1N1 season just didn't feel right...)

Joseph made me a movie - Tara-through-the-years style (his first 'music videon' - Heidi, you'd be so proud!!), and then I opened my presents - I think K-lady was a little more than excited. :)  All told, it was a great birthday.

The next day was a little unsettling - we'd been planning on going to GA for another years' residency. Joseph flew to GA to interview and they unofficially offered him the chief resident position. For residency we go through a 3rd party to actually get the job - it's called the match. So this third party gets a list of all the schools you want, and they get a list from the school of all the residents they want, and they 'match' it up.
We didn't match at GA. Which was a bit of a shock, and really, truth be told, just made me mad - isn't it kind of wrong to lead us on like that?!  So now we've begun digging into the practice search - we want a retiring dentist who wants a quick transition (1 month or less). And there we go, off into adulthood and career path!

So if any of you know of any retiring dentists, let us know! (silly aside - the phrase retiring dentist makes me think of southern belles and sweet, coquettish manners - that's not what I meant.)  I go from being mildly terrified to terribly anxious. I told a friend I used to think the 'bend in the road' ala Anne of Green Gables was romantic and intriguing. Now it's just obnoxious. Who wants a bend?! Especially with 3 kids and students loans coming due!! AGH!

Meanwhile Joseph just tells me, "It's our adventure!" Isn't it nice that when one of us feels like we're falling apart, the other one has it together? Bless him and his adventure! I'm sure it will all work out. It always does, right?

Picasa Collages - how-to

I've had a handful of comments asking about the collages -- I thought this might be the easiest way to show you how I make my collages. Sometimes, if I know exactly how I want it to look, I use Photoshop Elements (a watered down digi-scrapping friendly version of the full photoshop). But most of the time Picasa works just as well for simple, quick and easy collages.

So download Picasa if you haven't already! It's a free photo editing software by google people, and it's GREAT!  Just google 'picasa' and they'll send you to a link. 
Once you've got it open and running it'll find the pictures saved on your hard drive. So pick a few of them that you'd like to throw into a collage: click on the picture, then click on the little thumbtack button by the bin at the bottom of the screen (I circled it in the screen shot below). It'll show up in the bin at the bottom left hand corner. Then pick the next picture, 'hold' it with the thumbtack button, etc etc. till you have all the pictures you want for your collage in the bin. (You can also hold down the ctrl key while you click multiple pictures within the same folder, then click the thumbtack to 'hold' them all at once).  Then click the collage button (the 2nd red arrow is pointing to it on the screen shot below)

Now picasa puts you in the collage window -- there's lots of fun possibilities to explore in the options bar on the left of the screen - starting with format - a picture pile, a grid, a mosaic, etc. You can rearrange the pictures (at the bottom of the screen below your collage draft is a shuffle pictures button), you can add a grid in the color of your choice, you can do lots of stuff. If you decide you need to edit one of your pictures, click the library tab (circled below), edit the picture that needs it (maybe a recrop to fit the collage space better? Maybe a color adjustment?), then click back to the collage tab (to the right of the library tab). It's pretty straightforward and user friendly.

Once you're done with your tweaking, click create collage. It'll save it to a new folder picasa will create (for me with my Windows XP operating system, it's in My Pictures folder - it'll probably be the same thing for you with Windows 7 or vista or whatever).  It'll show your finished collage in your library view.  Double click it to add text if you want (button in the red circle below).

I love adding the text - I think it makes it fun and interesting - just play with the options in the text box -- for this one, I wanted it all the same font, right justified. Piece of cake!  Once you're done adding text, save the changes - back in your library view it's the little disk button at the top of the folder (did that make sense?!). 

And here's the collage (blogged straight from picasa - see the little blogger button in the bottom button bar??  It'll upload 4 pictures at a time for you - it only works with blogger.  If you use a different blogging platform, just upload the pic as you usually do - you can copy the full path of the collage by right clicking it in picasa):

Wasn't that easy?! LOVE free picasa goodness!