To the Sneaky Facebook Person...You know who you are!

Nice try. I do believe I'm on to you. It wasn't that hard to figure out how you saw my photo albums. Teri is a good friend of mine. Don't bother her or use her any longer. I've changed my privacy settings anyway. So, it's no use.
I can't keep you from coming here, but I don't really use this blog anymore for personal updates, so no biggie. Sorry it has to be this way. It's not my choice. Please move on.

I Heart Faces Weekly Theme...

This weeks theme is sun flare!

Here's Todd and Erika. Father and daughter....nothing melts my heart more.

Great Tutorial!

Got Photoshop? Wanna make this?

Just go to this I Heart Faces Tutorial! Yay! I love photoshop!

MCP Actions Giveaway!!!

Swing on over to MCP Actions Blog to enter to win Jodi's new photoshop actions set! All you have to do is leave a comment in her comments sections about why you love her actions, blog, classes, etc. Also, you can enter twice if you blog, tweet, or facebook about it. Check it out!

"Crazy, Funny, Silly Faces"

Got this deliciously cute shot of Mark the other day and decided to enter it in the I Heart Faces photo challenge.




It looks like his face is melting off! LOL!

Jump on over to I Heart Faces and check out the other entries. This is fun! I may do it again some time.

Another Blog Give Away!!!

I Heart Faces is having a give away. It's for the new Tamron 18-270mm lens! WooHoo! Visit their website here. You can enter up to 5 times! Check it out for all the details!

Lisa

A Blog Giveaway!!!

Not my own, mind you! ;o)

But at MCP Actions Blog. If you are a photographer and would like a chance at winning an incredible lens, hop on over and enter! The WINNER chooses from the 18-270mm (for a crop sensor Nikon or Canon) or the 28-300mm (for a full frame Nikon or Canon).

I'm too excited about it because My wonderful husband and 2 of my kids just pitched in all their pennies and bought me my dream camera on Monday!!! A Nikon D90!!!!!!! If you read my blog you might remember me mentioning it here. *smile*

Well, my dream has come true! I'm so blessed. Now I'm trying to learn all I can about photography and how to use this beautiful tool!

Anyway, to enter, you will need to do the following:

- Post to your blog, twitter and/or facebook about this contest (let people know how to enter and provide a link)

- Leave a comment writing where you posted (with link so that it can be verified if your post is picked from the random drawing)

- In your comment, please write why you want to win this lens, where you would want to most the lens, and for fun tell how many lenses you currently own.

To qualify, you must:

- Have a US mailing address that the lens can ship to – this can be yours or a friend or relative but make sure you have one prior to entering (Tamron USA is only authorized to sell and distribute in the US)

- Have a Camera that works with Tamron Lenses. If you do not have a Nikon or Canon SLR, a similar range lens for Pentax or Sony will be substituted.

- Do all the above items explained in the “enter section.”

Good Luck!!

Love,
Lisa

One More...

Sorry. Just had to share this one. I just love the clone tool in PS!!! Can you see what I did with it in this before and after?

One of My Favorite Photoshop Jobs So Far!!

This is my good friend Amy's daughter. She has the most beautiful red hair. I'm certainly no professional photographer, but I'm sure there are many out there who would love to photograph her and those wonderful curls!

Anyway, I took this picture out in my backyard one day while she was here playing and ran a little photoshop on it. Look at the results!

This is the original SOOC (straight out of camera) shot. Notice the smudges on her face, something blue in the grass and someone standing behind the left side of her head in the back ground. Also, notice her hair next to the tree.

Here is the after effects of photoshop. I love photoshop. Have I mentioned that to you before??? Notice her face is now clean, and the empty space of her hair is now filled. Plus, the blue thing and person behind the left side of her head is now gone!

Here is the black and white version, which I think came out beautiful.

This is a lovely shot of her cute little profile and beautiful red hair. This one, to me, had to be cropped in closer to her face. Again, notice the smudges on her face. Now watch how they disappear.

Here's the cropped edited version. I love love love this one, but.........

I think I love this one the best! I love black and whites and would love to learn more about how to achieve awesome black and white portaits.

By the way, my camera is a Sony Cyber-shot point and shoot. But my dream camera? Oh, that would be this.

OK, a girl can drool dream, can't she???

Love,

Lisa

Recent Photoshop Magic

Have I mentioned to you that I love Photoshop???? I just wish I had all kinds of time to play with it.
Here are a couple of photos I edited recently. First is Erika (5) playing in the grass in our back yard. I removed a couple of things in the finished portrait. Can you tell what they are?
Then there is a beautiful apple blossom from one of our apple trees in one of our pastures. So so beautiful.

Before and After.

Before and After.

Love,
Lisa

I WON!!!!!

Did you hear the news!!!! I can't believe it!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my children and my husband who, I'm sure, all voted for me. Take a look.

*wink*

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!
~Lisa

Daddy's girl

Erika has been Daddy's girl from her very first breath. Her Daddy caught her as her little body emerged from mine, and she responded to his voice immediately. Nothing has changed in the 5 years she has been with us. Never mind that I was the one that carried her in my body for 9 months, or got up at all hours of the night to nurse her, or changed thousands of her diapers, potty trained her, etc.

Ahem....

Todd's the one she wants to be with.

So it only seemed obvious that she was the only one that wanted to enjoy a nice dinner of beef stew on this cool evening out back on the picnic table with him. He wanted all of us to join him, but it was just too cool for the rest of us. But not for Erika.

She found the only warm spot. Right on Daddy's lap, where she feels most secure....and warm. I mean, where else would she sit? Right?

They ate together....

Talked together....

They even look alike, don't you think? Maybe not. But, to me, there's just nothing more manly, nothing that makes my heart skip a beat like seeing a man love on his baby girls. Nothing at all..

~Lisa

Oh, How I Ache For Really Miss Chick-Fil-A!

If you live in the south...near a Chick-Fil-A, I hate you you're one lucky dog! Fast food isn't good for anyone's health, but when you live where there are more cows than people it's not available, one tends to miss it. Oh sure, we have a McDonalds...

About 25 miles away.

And a Subway...

About 25 miles away.

But that's it. To get anything else (like Burger King or KFC/Taco Bell combo....that's it!) one must drive at least 45 minutes. 30 minutes if you're really hungry.
This video about sums up my deeply disturbing, un-natural love feelings for Chick-Fil-A. Enjoy. And next time you're at a Chick-Fil-A, I hope you burn your tongue on a nugget think of me. Eat more chickin!

**DON'T FORGET TO PAUSE THE MUSIC BEFORE YOU WATCH THE VIDEO.**



~Lisa

Happy Earth Day???

Please Pray for Kayleigh!

This sweet little miracle just had surgery also, and was doing so well. Then all of the sudden things have gone down hill. Please pray for her and her family. They have been going through this for 10 months. I just can't imagine. Also, go hug your babies today and thank God for each of them. It's so easy to lose sight of what's important and take our loved ones for granted.

OK, I can only speak for myself. It can be easy to do in a chaotic house, full of kids. Once again, speaking only for myself.

Anyway, thanks for praying.

~Lisa

Pray for Stellan!

Some of you may already be following McMama's blog, but if you aren't, please be praying for this sweet miracle of a boy. He is headed into surgery as I write this. It's a very risky surgery for a baby of his age. Pray for his parent's to have peace, for the dr.'s, and naturally, for Stellan...today and in the days to come. Thanks.

Lisa

Funny YouTube Video Elyse Sent Me

This is just too hilarious not to share. My daughter, Elyse, sent it to me to watch. Why is this relevent? It's not. But she says I never mention her in my blog anymore. She's right. But I certainly have mentioned her here and there...oh, and here.

Have I mentioned she is such a sweet daughter? She has an awesome boyfriend, Sam, who apparently loves her dearly. I'm glad she has chosen him, and that he has chosen her. They are very cute together, too. The only draw-back to this relationship is that she always has her head in the clouds.....like when I sent her to the store to buy her sick dad some jello and some beef boullion, and she came home with SUGAR FREE jello and SODIUM FREE boullion. Ewwwww!

Ahem.

Maybe she's trying to tell us something??? Naaaaa....I think she just had her head in a cloud....the 9th one to be exact.

Elyse is also a great cook. When I'm not available I can always count on her to prepare a good nutritious meal for the rest of the gang.

Now, watering the plants seems to be a problem. She likes to let the plants get within an inch of dying before watering them. I'll have to work on that with her. But other than that, she's a keeper.

Enjoy the video. These two guys are very clever. DON'T FORGET TO PAUSE THE MUSIC AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE BEFORE WATCHING.



~Lisa

Happy Resurection Day!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Resurection Day! Unfortunately, most of us stayed home from church because Todd came down with a bug of some kind. I'm hoping praying no one else gets it. It was only a few weeks ago we had this happen! I'm all done with that, thank you very much!

Here is a video I came across that has a powerful message. Please watch it in it's entirety if you haven't already seen it.

PLEASE GO THE THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE AND PAUSE THE MUSIC BEFORE WATCHING THE VIDEO.



I can't tell you how many times His love for me has rescued me from the depths of sin, seasons of anger, and moments of feeling like nothing makes any sense. He washes my wounds and heals them, and has set me free from the enemy's grip.

And today, as we reflect on the day Jesus defeated death and rose from the grave after being put to death on OUR BEHALF, I'm praying you give Him the chance to change the very meaning of your life. To change the very reasons you wake up each day and breathe in and out. To give you the hope of eternal life in His presence. Be blessed.

~Lisa

Spring & Chickens

The first day of Spring here in Vermont is usually still much like winter. We usually have at least a foot of snow and it's extremely cold. April is usually still pretty cold with a lot of snow still scattered here and there, with a possible blizzard in the forecast.

This year, however, it's actually feeling a lot like spring! The sun is out, most of the snow is gone, and we can go out with jackets and sweaters on instead of coats and hats. It's muddy, but that's what mud boots are for, right?

There's just one thing missing......

Our chickens.

We have had chickens since 2004. This is the first year we've been without them. We decided to take a break from them. We kinda got tired of all the chicken poop all over everything....

On the porch, on the deck, between our toes, on our shoes, in the kid's hair (they love to roll down the hill in the grass) and on their clothes.....Yuck! Plus, they like to taste test our vegetables in the garden. Having chickens means we need to fence up the garden.

Oh, and keep the doors closed.

They're great fun to watch and listen to, though. And the eggs!!!

There's nothing better!

But my very favorite was having a rooster! We've only had one aggressive rooster. All the others were very nice and never attacked any of the kids. They're just so majestic looking and....I know this sounds weird, but I love to hear the rooster crowing. I love to hear it in the morning and all day long. Makes me feel like I should be wearing a prairie skirt and a bonnet, and that I should be scrubbing our laundry out on a scrub board or something.

We even hatched our own one year! Not in an incubator, mind you. A broody hen sat on them in her own private quarters and they hatch under the mama!!

Every once in awhile one or two needed some help when the mama wasn't interested in keep them warm while they were hatching, so we used a brooding pen and a heat lamp till they were warm and fluffy, and could be in with their mama again.

That was a lot of fun, and a great homeschool treat. We researched how to choose the eggs, how to candle them and how often to candle them. And when they should hatch. It was an amazing process. We must have hatched 3-4 clutches of eggs.

This was a much better process than buying the day old chicks and raising them in a brooding pen. The mama takes card of them and you never have to do a thing. BUT, the only problem is you end up with a lot of roosters that way. If you're looking to get more layers, this may not be the way to go. If you're looking to just put them in the freezer, it's great.

Now, if summer would just hurry and get here! I'll miss the chickens, but I think I'll survive the summer without them this time. Next year may be a different story.

~Lisa

Sunny Patch!!

I have an eBay store. It's called Kid Kadoodle.

It's not much of one, but there are plenty of cute things in there for any mother to choose from. And the prices aren't bad. Unfortunately, competition is brutal on eBay. I think my prices are competitive, but I just don't seem to be getting the exposure I would like.

Anyway, I'm excited to be adding to my inventory! Melissa and Doug has come out with a line called Sunny Patch. I think it's a line that use to be sold in Target. Not too clear on that. But I have never seen such adorable things!!! And the qualtiy....well, Melissa and Doug do not put out junk. Their toys are quality! Here's sneak peak.....

OK, that's all I'm willing to show you. So, so cute, huh? There are so many other items in the line, but I just couldn't purchase much more than I did. Business needs to pick up some.

Anyway, I haven't listed any of those items as of yet, but I'm hoping to have some time today or tomorrow to get those items up.

I'm also going to open up my own online store outside of eBay soon. Hopefully, I'll be able to add more items as business picks up. I have several things in mind to sell, including my Vermont Baby bibs. Just need money, that's all. Isn't that what we all need?

No?

Just me?

~Lisa

Vomit, birthdays, and other fun stuff...

I'm the worst mother in the world I need a really good long nap. I have had 2 little ones have birthdays since my last blog post, but haven't added birthday posts. Partly because when Mark turned 3 on the 13th, just about everyone was getting over a trip to Vomit City, USA....a mother of many's worst nightmare. OK, I suppose there could be worse things than 4 kids vomiting at literally the same time, all night long. But at the time, it just didn't seem possible.

It all started on Thursday March 12th. First ,Anna started vomiting around 8 pm. She made it to the toilet, thank God. She felt better, so we put her to bed. Since I was planning on a solo trip to Texas for a week long getaway all my self the following Monday, I said a little prayer that anyone here who is going to get it, gets it before I leave, so that my husband, who gets psychosematic nausea doesn't do well with vomit, wouldn't have to deal with it. Well, all I can say is be careful what you ask for.

By 10 pm, Mark was vomiting....all over his crib. Blech. While I was cleaning him up, Jonathan came out to inform me that he threw up....all over his bed. Joy. More throw up to clean up. But before I could clean up Jonathan's bed, I had to catch more Anna throw up in a bucket. So, after getting everyone cleaned up, I set up the infirmery in the living room with Jonathan, and Mark, caught a few more bucket fulls, than had to run up and clean up the next patient, Erika, who....yes, you guessed it....threw up all over her bed.

While I was up there cleaning HER up, Mark vomited on the sofa (which was thankfully covered with a blanket). So, I moved Erika down to the infirmery thinking that the three would have to be together so I wouldn't have to run up and down the stairs nursing everyone back to health.
Nope. I was wrong.

Anna continued to throw up through the night, plus I had to dump and rinse buckets, so I was up and down the stairs no less than 20-30 times before I gave up and left everything in the buckets.

Have you ever seen vomit ballet? No? Let me paint a picture...I'm sitting on the floor holding a bucket for one vomiter while holding one leg up to keep another, (who is flailing his body around in his sleep because he's about to vomit, too) in order to keep him from falling off of the sofa. This position felt quite unnatural, but what I did next seemed so graceful, I think it could be considered ballet. I set the barf bucket down, and gracefully leaned over to grab the bucket for the flailing, falling off the sofa child and caugh his barf just in time. It was quite a lovely, perhaps poetic movement, I'm sure.

NOT.

Anyway, when the sun finally did rise, I found out that my poor husband was sick upstairs, too. He's lucky, though. He has a great prescription for anti-nausea meds that keeps his vaso-vagal syncope under control.
So, on Friday the 13th, which happend to be Mark's birthday, everyone was just laying around looking zombie like, and drinking gatorade and eating jello. Not a fun birthday for Mark, but he really didn't know the difference. Here' are a couple of pictures taken the day after his birthday when he got to open some presents.






He wouldn't look into the camera, but no matter....he has the most scrumptious eyelashes!

After my trip to Texas we celebrated Erika's 5th birthday! Here she is!

*crickets chirping*

Well, apparently Blogger won't let me add any more pictures for some reason. The add photo button all of the sudden won't work, so I'll have to add the photo in another post. Sorry.

Love,
Lisa

Happy Birthday, Anna!!

Anna. Our "Sweet Petite". I don't know why we call her that. She was the second biggest baby we had, weighing in at 9 lb.s 4 oz. But she's petite now, I guess. And sweet. And seven years old!!!

She chose Fish and Chips for her birthday meal. It's a tradition we have, that the birthday person picks whatever they want for dinner that day. Sort of like the last meal prisoners on death row get to choose right before....well, you know.

And we didn't forget to butter her nose. Also, a tradition we have. Not sure what it means, but we do it anyway.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie Pie!

Funny Quote of the Day...

OK, before I share this quote, I just want to say that, I know I can be a little slow sometimes. After all, I use to think elbow grease was an actual grease you applied to your elbows. I also use to think that being "in cognito" meant being in an actual place, like being "in Kansas".
Anyway, I just learned where the word "Blog" comes from! It's short for "Web Log". WEB.... LOG..... weblog.... weBLOG.... BLOG.

Never mind. On to our quote of the day.

This comes from Erika, our soon to be 5 year old.

"Mmmm....Mommy, this smells soooo good. It smells like octopus hair!"

The End

Heat Wave....and other photos!

Here in Vermont we still have a ways to go before it actually feels like spring. It's one of the things I despise most about this place. But today we had a heat wave! It got to 50 degrees!!! When it gets that warm in the winter, the three stooges go out to play....in the snow....with NO coat! Yes, it might as well be a spring day except there's still snow all over the place. They loved it.

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We have talent in this house, I'll tell ya! Mark has learned to balance a spoon on his nose. I'm so proud of this extraordinary achievement! Now, all 6 of them can do it. I'll have to get a photo of all of them with spoons hanging off of their noses. I'm thinking Christmas card!

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And last but not least....this picture speaks for itself. But I'm thinking it needs a name. Something like "Facing Your Worst Fears". Or "It's Like Looking In The Mirror". Or "My Teeth Are Bigger Than Yours!". What do you think?

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Lisa

Momsense AND DADsense!

Most of us have seen this video
(DON'T FORGET TO PAUSE THE MUSIC AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE FIRST)





But now, there's DADsense! This is too funny!

Sunsets!

Still having fun with Photoshop. Here are some beautiful Vermont sunsets I took about a year or more ago. Enjoy!