Before & After

This blog hop is therapeutic for me. :)

This week, I edited a picture I took of the logo on a Schwinn trike. I thought it would make a cool photo to frame for Stellan's room....when he has a room, that is.

Before:

After:

Photo taken with my Canon Powershot S2IS and edited in Photoshop CS3. Click on the Before & After link to see more cool photos!

Reflections

We went to the beach a couple weekends ago....well, actually we go to the beach very regularly, but anyway. I was snapping some pictures of Stellan in his car seat. I knew right away that I wanted to play with these in Photoshop. The reflection of his eyes was awesome! Here's the original photo, straight out of the camera:


To start, I cropped the photo to get closer to his eyes, then lightened it some.

Then I wanted an up close shot of his eye. Look! You can see me! And Chris is standing behind me. Isn't that wild? I love it. It makes me happy. :)
I'll share some more beach pictures soon. The sunset was to die for that night. Wait for it!

Jesus Lubs Me

Yay! I couldn't find these videos of Caleb for a while and I thought they were lost. But today, I found them. :) I hope you enjoy!

Park Pics!

I meant to post these a while ago. We went to this park in St. Petersburg back in September on National Museum Day! Before the park, we went to a children's museum just a couple of blocks away. Unfortunately, the museum closed early that day and we were only there for 45 minutes. But this park came to our rescue! The kids had lots of fun and it's a beautiful park!

Caleb!

My older son. My middle child. He has a charming personality. His Sunday school teacher's have told me so; not that I need them to. :) He has an adorable smile....see?

He's all boy! Loves to color on things that shouldn't necessarily be colored on:

Among his list of favorite toys are things that go (cars, trucks, trains and planes), Little People, balls (usually accompanied by either a baseball bat or a golf club), and of course, his little brother.

He, like his big sister, smothers Stellan with hugs and kisses all day long. And when someone comes over he's quick to let them know that the baby is his "brother Stellan".

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As you may already know, I've been in no hurry to potty train Caleb, mainly because before, I was pregnant and exhausted. In the past couple weeks he has started to show a lot of interest in the potty, saying he wants to go. So I'll sit him up there and he will want to stay for, oh I don't know, 20 minutes? 25 sometimes. He finally had a successful trip to the potty over a week ago, for which he got 2 Gummy Bears. But that's it so far. I will continue to allow him to sit there whenever he wants. I sure don't want to discourage anything. We'll just see what happens for now.

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Something cute Caleb does only when Daddy's around: he calls Chris "Dada". When Chris is away at work or whatever it's Daddy, but when he's talking to Chris he says Dada. I think it's sweet.

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And one more very important fact about our Caleb-boy: he's now caught up on his immunizations! Since he was sick in the hospital around his first birthday last year, he never got his shots from 12 months on. Now, he's 2 1/2 and completely caught up. Yay!

Update Mode

This just in! Of course, as soon as I published the last post, Stellan drank a whole bottle! Yay! I'm so excited! We're going to see how this goes for the next couple weeks and when we're sure he is comfortable with the bottle I'll start doing what it is that I will be doing. I promise, I will let you know details when I have them. For now, just know that it has to do with photography. :)



Also, I forgot to post Stellan's 2 month photo, so here it is!


Now on to our first born! Dear little (big) Laura Anne. She's a sweet, sweet big sister and is always planting kisses on her tiniest brother. She tries with Caleb too, but he's not always a happy recipient. :)


We've started homeschooling semi-officially for the year. She loves doing schoolwork and currently, she's learning character traits, sight words, calendar (months, days, weeks, etc..), weather, writing her letters *neatly*, and writing her numbers 1-30. She's doing very well with it all and I can't wait to teach her to learn to read! I'm actually waiting for a book to arrive any day now. It's called "The Reading Lesson" (thanks Aunt Jen!).

Laura Anne still is tall for her age. I can't remember how many inches, but this picture below was taken at Target last summer before she turned 4! This year, the question I get asked from lots of people is "what grade is she in?" Um, she hasn't started kindergarten yet!


I recently discovered a new skill she has, too. She can write her name backwards--letters and all! I was impressed! At first when I told her she wrote backwards she apologized. I told her not to be sorry! It's pretty cool that she can write her letters backwards! Although we will continue to teach her how to write them the correct way. :)


And finally, when I saw this picture of Stellan, I immediately remembered an old picture of Laura Anne and I went digging for it. I think they definitely resemble each other, don't you?

That's the update for Laura Anne. Next up is Caleb!