I haven't given up!

They're in my camera - too busy to edit and post them right now. Stay tuned...

January 21, 2009

A picture of Billy and Lucky. Yeah, he has that "autistic look" in his eyes, but in reality, he was quite up for a photo shoot and with it when I was taking his picture. Just a bad capture I guess (but really, are there bad pictures of your kids? NEVER! LOL!

January 20, 2009

What a day for America! I didn't vote for Obama - shouldn't be a surprise to people that know me. Still, I'm looking forward to see what he can do for our country. Can't get too much worse, right? Bill and I watched the swearing in and address after the kids went to bed. It made me feel good to see him get sworn in. Our country has come a long way. You could feel the pride and hope people have for our first African-American President. The crowds in DC were simply amazing.

I don't have a picture for today. It was a very busy day - back to work for the first time in nearly a week, fantastic head cold that has my left ear nearly completely deaf and my right ear starting to fill, a trip to the walk in clinic for some meds, a quick sprint through the drive-thru for dinner, then off to basketball practice and the pharamacy for prescriptions. I didn't sit down until 9:00.

January 19, 2009

Good bye, Wii!!! We'll miss you!!

Had to send our Wii console back to Nintendo for repairs. It either wouldn't load our game discs, or halfway through a game would come up with an "unable to read disc" error. The bummer is that it will be gone for about three weeks. UGH!! That seems like an eternity! And I was so excited to start Wii Fit. The damn thing wouldn't even load the disc. HMPH!

It was a really boring picture so I put a watercolor wash on it to represent the tears we are shedding- LOL!

January 18, 2009

Happy Sunday! Bill is on the mend, but I can't hear out of my left ear anymore. I think it's a sinus infection gone rogue. Here are a couple of pictures of my sassy girl.

January 17, 2009

Today was Alex's first basketball game. Bill and I were a bit nervous - he's never really played basketball outside of gym class and his team only had 4 practices because of the bad weather we've been having (practices are at the school so if after school activities or school is cancelled, so is practice). He did surprisingly well! He doesn't get in there to try and rebound, but he played good defense, was the guy inbounding the ball, had the ball in the box (but didn't shoot it! He was looking to pass and ended up getting a 5 second violation), and got a fast break for his team.

January 16, 2009

Today was another snow day. The air temperature when we woke up was -23* and the wind chill was -39*. Bill has been home sick since Wednesday. He went to the walk in clinic on Wednesday but got a negative quick strep test OTC drugs. Today he went to his regular doctor and the quick strep was positive. He's been miserable so hopefully a few of these and he will be feeling much better tomorrow.

January 15, 2009

Don't let the face fool you, Milo's nickname is The Prince of Darkness. He's a cool cat - wouldn't trade him for another. He's a ruthless hunter - no ground rodent is safe in our yard. Birds are fair game, too, but not as often as mice, chipmunks, and rabbits. He'll only sit on your lap if you have a blanket thrown over you. He adores Alex and Caty - sleeps on one of them each night. They've been sleeping in the basement the last few nights (the winds have been really strong at night and in the open area we live in our house just rocks in the gusty conditions) and he's been right down there with them. His birthday is on Monday. He'll be seven. He's in his prime =)

January 14, 2009

IT CAME!!! WOOT!!! At least now I can do yoga at home if I get called out of class again - LOL! I can't wait to try it out.

January 13, 2009

No picture for today. It was a rough one. The blizzard never really happened so we were all disappointed we had to get up and go to school. I joined the fitness challenge at work and today was the first yoga class. About halfway through the class I got called out - the kids were locked out of the house. Grrrrrr.......I had to leave the class and get them from the neighbor's. I burned 3 pancakes making dinner tonight. Bill came home from work sicker than a dog. He literally chugged what was left of the NyQuil and went to bed. I had to shuttle Alex back and forth to basketball practice. Aaaaaaand the "check engine" light came on in my truck. It was a winner of a day.

January 12, 2009

Blizzard!!! We will be under a bilzzard warning from midnight tonight to noon tomorrow. We're only getting a few inches of snow, but the winds are supposed to gear up and come howling through here overnight. The snow just started. The kids are excited - the buzz around school was that tomorrow would be a snow day. We'll see.

January 11, 2009

I am embarrassed to post these pictures - they are so bad - but they are all that I have for this day. Caty and I drove 45 minutes to the mall to go to Libby Lu this afternoon, meeting a girlfriend of mine and her daughter, and when I got there, Caty had forgotten to put my wallet back into my purse. I had no money, no credit/debit cards, and most importantly, no gift card for Libby Lu. Not that it would have mattered. Libby Lu has apparently gone under. Everything in the store was 75% off and they are no longer doing makeovers. Bummer!

Anyway, I was aggravated at having wasted my time, and didn't take any pictures other than these two, totally dorky and one horrifically underexposed ones.

January 10, 2009

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. This snowstorm was supposed to happen yesterday, but it got delayed (LOL! Common around here. Must have been coming in through O'Hare...). It started snowing last night and is still going. These are the bushes underneath the windows on the front of the house. You can't even see the landscaping bricks that define the flowerbed anymore!

January 9, 2009

Bye-bye eczema! At least I hope so. I've been trying to find a way to get rid of Billy's eczema. It gets SO bad in the wintertime - worse than normal. The dermatologist just prescribes steroid creams for him, but that only gets rid of it temporarily and he has so much of it that he gets a good dose of steroid everytime we have to use the cream. This is not good. The steroids really mess with his autism. So I read that fish oil is supposed to help. I remember when we took Billy to an alternative-type doctor when he was 4 that he put him on fish oil, but he could taste it in everything we tried to put it in and wouldn't take it. Now that he can swallow a pill I thought we'd try it again.

Anyway, that's what's in the bowl. I had a lot of fun playing with this picture - trying to get the right angle for the shot, realizing after a few that the reflection on the glass would make a cool picture, and then all the Photoshop fun with cropping, sharpening, etc. I think I saved 5 different versions of this one. *blush*

January 8, 2008

There was a big, bright moon up in the sky while I was driving home today - at sunset. At 4:45. LOL!

January 7, 2008

*sigh* I honestly don't know where I went wrong....

January 6, 2009

BLASPHEMER!!!! There is no way this child is mine - she has no Italian in her whatsoever! Who goes and wrecks a perfectly good chicken and pasta with ketchup??? GAG!!

January 5, 2009

Well, today Winter Break came to an official end and we were all thrown back into brutal reality. Billy wore one of his favorite Christmas presents to school today - his custom made "sweater that says Meijer and Jewel-Osco". The things we do for this boy...

January 4, 2009

When we finished the basement, Bill cut a hole in the door so that Milo, our cat, wouldn't get stuck down there. This is Sammyboy peeking through the hole. We were all downstairs and somehow he didn't make it behind us before the door closed. Poor puppy!!

January 3, 2009

Good-bye, Christmas! See you next year!

We spent the better part of the day de-Christmasing the house today.

January 2, 2009

We're home!!! We drove 8.5 hours from Minnesota -> home today. VERY happy to be out of the truck and to see Daddy.

I love this picture of my Grandma. I took it on New Year's Eve, but wanted to share it anyway.

January 1, 2009

Happy New Year!! Let's give this another go, shall we? Hopefully I'll make it past August/September this year - LOL!

Here are some pictures of the kids from New Year's Day. We were in Minnesota and went swimming at the hotel where my brother, Marc, and his family were staying.




Here is Billy and my cousin, Bethie, playing together. They are only a year apart in age!

Lighting conditions in the pool were horrendous. Big, nasty, yellow overhead lights and not many of them. I had to bump my ISO all the way up to 1600, shoot with a wide open lens AND a flash - UGH. Even then they required some shopping - Photoshopping.

Caty poolside. A lot better exposure =)



HEY! We're starting the new year off in a good way - no goofy faces!