Thank you for all the kind comments that you left after my last post. I am still in my first trimester, not far left though. I have really had a bumpy start to this pregnancy: ended up in the hospital twice. We're praying that the baby survives everything that I've been through.
Homeschooling has been very challenging while I've been so sick. My kids have learned a few important things though--how to do the laundry, how to make meals, how to do lots of cleaning. All things that I had tried to teach them before too, but now they have to do it in order for us to survive. So I think it's a growing experience for them too. We've managed to do some math and some reading, but otherwise it has been purely unschooling.
I was afraid we wouldn't have Christmas at our house, but some very lovely friends gave us a tree and helped the kids decorate it. I don't know why that makes all the difference, but though there hasn't been much preparation put into Christmas around here, having a tree and playing music has made it seem festive and happy.
So a very Merry Christmas to each of you and hopefully soon, I'll be able to report on the fun things and learning that is happening around our home.
In case you're wondering if I dropped off the edge of the world...I did. I have the worst case of morning sickness imaginable. Well, others have out done me, for sure, but I just don't feel one bit good. So I s'pect that over the next couple or more months, my blog posting will be sparse...on an as I feel like it basis. Just because I know you want the rest of the story--I'm due the middle of July. That's so far away.
My husband is still a kid. I wish I was more like him in that respect. He recently decided that he would really have fun if we would put a zip line in for the kids. You notice, who I said would have fun? Well, he has. The rest of us have too. In less than two weeks, we have spent so much fun time on the zip line. Even G'tums, our three-year old rides it with thrill.
Here is a short video of the kids ziplining (And just so you know, even though that isn't in the dictionary, I did find other people who knew that it was the verb form of zip line.)
I have had a few comments asking what kind of a camera I have, so I just decided to make a post about it. Photography has definitely become a hobby at our house. We have four photographers in our family. Let me introduce you to them.
First, let me introduce you to G'tums, the not-yet-a-photographer, but our favorite model. He's three and does love to smile for cameras and would love to take pictures, but he's just going to have to wait a bit on that.
We have JD Boy, the soon-to-be-photographer. He's six. He doesn't have a camera. He usually uses an old camera of mine that dropped and broke so it doesn't focus anymore (an important feature.) He doesn't mind. He takes pictures of things like fingerprints and his own shadow and things like that. He's quite thrilled though when he can borrow my camera, but it makes me nervous since he's the one who dropped my last camera. Mind you, he was only two then. He hasn't contributed many pictures to my blog, although, he did take some nice flower pictures a few weeks ago at the park and I posted those in the post about visiting Discovery Park and he's actually beginning to get a good eye for nice shots.
My 9 year-old daughter, Zippy, is the budding photographer. She saved all her birthday and Christmas money and purchased her own point-and-shoot camera, a Canon Powershot A1000IS. She has contributed a few of the pictures on my blog. She's working hard at learning composition and just loves taking pictures of everything, especially nature. She's got a really good eye. She can fill up a half a gig card in one afternoon, so now she has a bigger card. She recently posted on her blog all of her favorite pictures from a trip that we took to New Mexico.
Then there's me. I'm the wanna-be photographer. My husband purchased me a point-and-shoot camera several years ago, that I can stick in my pocket. It's a Canon PowerShot SD1000. I love my little camera. Since I was carrying a diaper bag for years, it was so easy to just drop my little camera in there and take it with me wherever. I'm trying to learn how to use a big boy's camera (my husband's) now though, although I usually set it on all the automatic settings, because I just don't really know what I'm doing. I'm the photographer that takes pictures of what happens around our home.
Last but not least is my husband. He's the real photographer. He's the one that takes all the pictures on my blog that are just amazing. Last year for his birthday, he got his beloved camera, a Canon EOS 40D. This picture shows his very special lens that he uses for his bird photography. I don't know its specs though. (Did I mention that I'm the wanna-be photographer?) He also has a few other lenses. He loves to take pictures of birds and flowers and of his family.
So now you know, we don't have a camera, we have three and sometimes all three are going.
