Oh Beautiful...

Swim Lessons

Two weeks of daily swim lessons has come and gone.  My three little fishies are stroking across greater depths.  The boys are diving.  Nobody acquired a serious sunburn even though class was at 1 p.m.  I attribute that to swim shirts and aerosol sunscreen.  It has also been SO helpful that each of them could lather their own faces.  I usually was waking Jayson up from his nap and packing him a lunch to go.

It was delightful for me to see ALL THREE kids in the pool with Jayson hanging out on the side with me.  I couldn't help but remember last year.  Just days before our session started we had to withdraw Jacob so he could be admitted to the hospital.  On that first day of swim class I was so torn - between being there for my kids on their first day and getting back to the hospital for Jacob's bone marrow aspiration procedure and possible port placement surgery.  I was also nursing at the time and didn't know how Jayson and I would do apart from each other.

Of all three kids, Jacob wanted to swim the most.  He was so disappointed to miss his swim classes.  James advanced to level 4 without him, so this year they were all in different levels.  I couldn't have been more thrilled to see all of them in the pool together and know that we were going back to our house when the class was over.

Got Color?

First of all, I apologize to Blogger for assuming they were the problem with my color.  I'd like to re-allocate blame to Photoshop CS4 and to my clueless-ness.  I didn't know that photoshop thought it would be a great idea to move me to an unfamiliar color space (Adobe RGB).  Didn't seem like Photoshop Elements did any such thing.  I wasn't choosing it consciously and it doesn't work well in the world of web.  I would like to thank Flickr for not ignoring the imbedded color file (most web spaces will just ignore such fancy files thus stripping your pic of all the lovely color) and for displaying my images closer to their true likeness.  I have changed my settings for future editing, so hope the brightness has returned for good.

Thanks to several websites that showed me where to go in my menus to make the fix.  Thanks to commenter who brought color spaces to my attention.  I didn't realize it was a default in the program.  The more I learn, the more I realize that I know nothing :)

Krispy Kremes

My James keeps growing by leaps and bounds. He is off for his first sleepover this week. He can't survive without his video games, but he will put them down for 30 minutes to do his reading. He is half way through the Harry Potter series. I want him to finish #6 before we go see the movie.

Blogger & I are NOT getting along. I haven't learned about calibrating my monitor, but I'm looking on the same monitor and this is what I see. Image #1 was uploaded directly to blogger (colors are completely washed out looking nothing like the image on my desktop) and THE SAME PHOTO is hosted on Flickr and pasted in the blog (better color, but I still think his eyes look more black than blue-oops).  Someone smarter than me, please send me a tutorial or web page that will help me understand what's going on.  I've hosted images on blogger primarily for ages and thought the images looks fine.  Whatever - most of you don't care anyway.



P.S. They look blah on Safari browser & even worse on Firefox. Yeah!!! The frustrated side of me is off to Google more info.

Conga

Congrats Jessica on your first dance recital!!! You looked adorable.

Black or White

Seems there is much more face stroking in this number - whenever she is embarrassed, shy, or unsure. Maybe it is just more noticeable because she has that gorgeous red glove.

Danke Schoen

I had to order a special cable to get the video to transfer to the computer. I am so happy to FINALLY present Jessica in all her cute stage-fright glory in her first tap number of the recital. So cute!

Why There's Trash all Over the Floor

and FYI: I DID remove the knife out of his hand BEFORE I ran to grab the camera.

Family Fun

Jon deserves some pretty nice Fathers' Day gifts this Sunday. He is a favorite around our house. In May he took the two older boys (and their friend) on an overnight campout. Jessica & I invited a friend over for a Pizza Party, but she still longed to go camping like the boys. Her daddy told her that when the boys were out of school they could go camping. Well, on June 10th only minutes after the final school bell rang, Jessica clarified, "do you say the boys are on summer break- no more school?" I said, "yes." She immediately said, "we get to go camping." Jon was surprised that she remember, but he did pitch the tent in our backyard last Friday. We filled the pit with wood and enjoyed the warmth on a cool evening.

Last night we rented "Bedtime Stories" for Family Movie Night. All of us were in the family room together. Jayson climbed on and off my lap again and again. We learned that he LOVES popcorn. He'd gobble down a bowl and say, "mah" and do his more sign. It was nice to see my growing ones curled in blankets, layered on Daddy, and sitting in my arms. Family togetherness at it's finest.

This morning I watched Jayson nestle in close beside Jessica to share her blanket (she wasn't initially happy about that). We added a second blanket. He suckled his bottle and put his other little hand down his shirt. Oh babies... how I love you.

"Where's Jayson"

The phrase I use most: "where's Jayson." The kid is faster than a speeding bullet. Apparently he can SEE IN THE DARK. He is sooooo not bothered to enter a dark room and then work his magic.

I have found him locked in the bathroom ("locked" because he doesn't know how to turn knobs), sorting the checkbooks and thank-you notes in the office, playing with the boys' trophies, dumping Polly Pockets, on the dishwasher door (knew he was there because I heard shattered glass coming from the kitchen yesterday - broken into 1000 pieces was one peanut butter jar. so glad he was sitting on the dishwasher door - it protected his feet).

Just today I found him up in my bedroom - didn't think to look there BECAUSE THE DOOR WAS CLOSED. I'm finally catching on to his new M.O. He closes the door behind him so I think he never entered. We have sun blocking blinds in my room. They weren't shut tightly, but there was only a ray of light. He climbed on the tub so he could climb onto the countertop. Then he crawled to the other side and was sitting in the second sink. There he was rinsing off (or in some cases drenching) my make-up. I almost didn't see him there because it was so dark. Didn't phase him a bit.

Later when I started asking myself the question, "where's Jayson?" I found him in the backyard in the corner on the other side of the little brick retaining wall. He was digging in the dirt and sorting rocks and climbing back and forth over the little wall. He was filling an old bubble bottle with dirt and then dumping it out again. He was covered in dirt and looking ALL BOY.