What do you get when you have 3 boys (who should be sleeping), a camera with video recording capabilities, a flashlight and a CD player, all in the same room?
Alek (age 12): Kenton Russell **BLEEP** (edited for internet privacy- they all got this right)
Gracie (age 9): Kenton Russell **
Gabriel (age 8): Um, Kenton Russell **
Emilia (age 6): Um, Kenton Russell **. Right?
Josiah (age 4): *shrugs shoulders* <You don’t know what your dad’s name is?> *shakes head* < Is it Fred Flinstone?> *nods head*< next question>
How old is he?
A: Thirty-seven. Well, last time I heard he was 37. Oh, yeah! The last birthday card you gave him had all sorts of 37’s written all over the envelope & I remember you put somewhere on there something about rubbing it in. I even helped you put Latin words... < okay, that’s enough, moving on>
Gr: Thirty-uh-seven.
Ga: Thirty-seven years old.
E: Sixty-two. Right? < me laughing>< Sixty-two!?are you sure?> No. I’m not. Sixty-one?
J: Seventeen. < yes, I’m robbing the cradle.the only thing right about that is he was 17 when we started dating>
What does your dad do for a living? What do ____ do?
A: He works as a nurse at the hospital and of course he works as our dad. I’m not good at explaining at what nurses do but all I can say is they are similar to doctors. Nurses help the patients and help the doctors. I don’t know. I’ve never actually been with dad when he was working.
Gr: Works. <doing what? is he a mechanic?> Nooooo! He’s a doctor. A nurse. Nurse. <what do nurses do?> He makes sure that they don’t die by watching them. <just by watching them, huh? if it were only that easy hehe>
Ga: He works to get money. <what does he do at work?> He’s a registered nurse. He watches people’s hearts beating on a computer and helps sick people by giving them medicine and gives them food and water every day. < that’s great that he feeds and waters them every day. Sorta sounds like one of your chores…>
E: Hm. A parent? I have no idea. < dad’s in trouble if that’s his job when he leaves you guys…BIG trouble… hehe>
J: I don’t know. < does he work on a ferry boat?> *shakes head* < what does he do?> He works on the minivan. < when he goes to work, that’s what he does? Works on our minivan?> *nods head* At nights he does. < okay….>
What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy?
A: Well, there are a lot of things I like doing with him. I like going on bike rides and fishing trips with him.
Gr: Play softball with him.
Ga: Work outside. < not a surprising answer from Gabe>
E: Go to Disneyland and DisneyWorld and the fair. < side note: we have never been to DisneyWorld. Ever.>
J: Eat chicken nuggets with him. < yeah, that ranks up there in my top 10 , too…>
What is something cool that your dad has taught you about?
A: He taught me how to fish and how to ride my bike.
Gr: How to play softball. He showed me where you should be standing in the outfield.
Ga: How to run fast. He said to just look straight where you’re going.
E: He taught me about animals and platypuses and all that stuff in school.
J: Spikey hair. < okay…earth to Josiah. Come in, Josiah..>
How do you know that your dad loves you?
A: If he didn’t love me, he probably wouldn’t do many fun things with me at all and he probably wouldn’t care very much what happened to us.
Gr: Because he shows it by taking care of us and spending time with us.
Ga: Because of how he teaches me and what he teaches me. Like what? How to catch things and how to work outside.
E: Because he always gives me food like donuts and clothing and he smiles at me and he let’s us go on walks. That’s why. < food + Millie= love. Smiles at us… that made ME smile>
J: Cuz he’s my dad. Cuz he likes me.
When you grow up, do you want to be like your dad? Why?
A: Yes, in quite a few ways. < what ways?>Well, like I said earlier, nurses are kind of like doctors and I want to be a missionary doctor so I’d have to know a lot of the things he knows. And I also want to be like him in how good he actually is. I’ve never seen him do bad things like saying bad words. But instead of staying in one place like he does, I’d like to get out all over the world so I can be a missionary and preach. And I’d like to invent a few things too.
Gr: Maybe. < why “maybe”?>Because I might be a nurse… but he works nights.
Ga: Yes. Because I want to work with him. < yep, Gabe wants to be a nurse just so he can work with his dad. His hero. Love it.>
E: No. Because I want to be… I mean, yes. So I can get some money and so I could get some food for us and if someone else is poor I can give them some food too. That’s why I want to work a lot. So I can get some money.
J: Yeah. Cuz he goes to work. Nothing else.
What makes your dad happy?
A: One thing that would make him happy is if I immediately do the things he asks me to. Another thing that makes him happy is when we buy gifts for him, with our own money especially.
Gr: When we give him gifts like games.
Ga: Julianna. < smile. So true>
E: When I do what he says and when I give him some surprises and then he kind of laughs and that’s how I make him be happy.
J: Me doing chores and stuff like I should do.
What’s your dad’s favorite thing to eat?
A: Well, I don’t know his favorite but I know he likes spaghetti, beef jerky, bacon, blueberries, chili and eggs. < best answer to this question goes to? ALEK!>
Gr: Cheese. < cheese?>
Ga: Probably hamburgers.
E: Probably that stuff that we had yesterday- those sausages.
J: Cheese-booger. Actually, not a booger. Uh cheese…. What? I don’t know. A double bacon cheeseburger. < I’m glad you clarified that>
What is something your dad always says to you?
A: These are the 3 words I hear him say the most: yes, no and goodbye. < laughing! yes, he’s a man of many words>
Gr: Goodnight.
Ga: Be careful! < especially to you, you little daredevil!>
E: In the mornings when I eat dad says, get to work! < oh my, I think I’m going to have to have a talk with him!>
J: Get to work! < me laughing, because I’m not sure Kenton has ever said this to him> That’s it! That’s all the words!
It's Show & Tell Friday! Be sure to visit Mary's blog for more great Show & Tell's!
I actually have something to share today! Several days ago, I made the girls matching 4th of July jumpers. Well, except Julianna. I purchased a dress for her on Etsy. Since her birthday is on the 4th of July, I wanted something a little extra special. The Etsy seller did an awesome job and I am very pleased. But you'll have to wait till I get pictures of Julianna in it before you get to see her dress. :)
I don't have a sewing room or any kind of room that I can leave things like my sewing machine out and ready to go. It's a bit of a pain to start a sewing project since I have to drag everything out and set it up. And I usually have to get out my manual and figure out how things go since so much time elapses between projects. So Millie's dress took a LONG time to complete. I probably worked 12 hours on her dress. (argh!) I sewed Gracie's the next day and because I had left everything out and I was familiar with the pattern by that time, it only took 6 hours to sew Gracie's. I wish I was the type that could just whip something like this out in an hour or two. But nope.
I also crocheted some beads onto socks for Julianna. Those took about an hour to do.
Here are the girls' dresses. I just loved the fabric but it ended up being tricky to cut the pattern out since it can only go in one direction.
(they've been on my dresser! I should've ironed them before I took these pics!)
And here are Julianna's socks!
Thanks for stopping by!
(added for Mary :) How To Make Beaded Socks
This is the only thing I know how to crochet so my directions may not be super clear. If you don't know how to crochet at all, you don't need to know a whole lot to make these socks. They are super easy! Believe me, if I can make these, you can too! Here's a video on YouTube that explains how to make a chain: http://tinyurl.com/nynmkh Here's what you need:
a pair of socks with a ribbed cuff (obviously :)
crochet thread or a very thin yarn (thin enough to slide beads onto)
beads
crochet hook
hot glue gun (optional)
Here's what to do:
The first thing you need to do is pull a long piece of the yarn or thread from the skein (do not cut it!) and string your beads. You'll need at least 30 beads. I used 33 beads and these socks are size 18 months. You want to err on the side of having too many rather than too few, because you'll have to cut your yarn/thread to add some more if you run out.
Next, make a slip knot onto your crochet hook. (like she does at the beginning of the video above)
Leave your sock the way it would look if you were wearing it, right side out with the cuff folded down. Starting at the back of the sock, slip your crochet needle with the slip knot attached behind the cuff (so that you won't see the knot) & poke your needle through the cuff and away from the sock about 1/8 to 1/4" above the edge of the cuff.
Begin the basic chains from there. I did 2 chains down, slide up a bead, 2 more chains, slide up another bead, two more chains, slide up another bead, two more chains and then repeat the part where you poke the needle through the rib of the sock (from behind the cuff, away from the sock). I counted 3 ribs in between to make it even. You can vary the number of beads per loop, chains, etc.
When you get all the way around the sock, you have to knot it off. I cannot explain how I do this very well and I don't even know if I'm doing it right. But I cut the thread/yarn, poke it through the cuff so that the knot is not visible, slide the yarn through the slip knot and then knot it a couple more times with the tail end of the beginning stitch. Here you can hot glue the knots to make them more secure (we don't want babies pulling off the beads and putting them in their mouths!).
Just wanted to add a couple more since that last post was just for the I Heart Faces entry. Can you believe my baby girl is almost ONE YEAR OLD!??! I can't. She has brought so much JOY to our home. She is such a blessing to us. It was so funny- I had to leave church today because she was getting REALLY noisy. I sat in the nursery with her and watched her play and was able to semi-listen to and watch the service on a TV monitor in there. When the rest of the fam met up with us after church, you would've thought it had been MONTHS since my older children had seen the baby! They mobbed her with kisses and sweet words. Loved that.
Anyway, here's Julianna in living color. :)
and a big smile for ya
(in some of the pics I took, her smile was SO BIG her eyes disappeared! LOL!)
This is my sweet baby girl, Julianna, examining some daisies. I got plenty of B.I.G. smiles the day I took this photo, but her seriousness here seemed to suit the mood of the sepia tone.
Be sure to head on over to www.iheartfaces.com to check out all of the beautiful face entries this week!
The weather has been unusually nice here. And for quite a while now. I'm talking for the last several months; maybe even a year. And by nice, I mean sunshiney days. Yeah, we had more snow than is typical for this area this last winter, but I actually liked that. I'd take snow over rain any day. Well, almost any day. In the past 1.5 months, I think we've had 2 or 3 rainy days. We even had one day that was over 90 degrees. So that's been nice. And this is supposed to be the rainy PNW!
I am also enjoying a freed-up schedule now that we're done with school. I've gotten around to some projects that I couldn't have before- like the jumper dresses I made for Gracie & Millie this last week. Since I actually had something to share, I really wanted to participate in Mary's (canadagirl) Show & Tell Friday. But yesterday ended up being pretty busy. Yesterday I spent nearly 5 hours removing a virus from my computer after hubby downloaded an infected music file (thank you, honey). Do any of you remember that this same thing happened LAST year around this time? Just before I had Julianna? Well, it happened again. This time wasn't as bad as last time though, thankfully. I have now banned hubby from using my computer. hehe. Then we spent the second half of the day with the in-laws & hubby's sister and her husband. So I just never got around to photographing the dresses for Show & Tell. Today I finished up making Julianna some 4th of July beaded socks. So I guess I'll participate next Friday.
Another thing I've been doing is trying out new hair styles on the girls. I found several blogs that do a great job explaining how to do all of these cute hairdo's. There are pics of a couple below (I took them for my parents who've been in CA for a couple of months).
Well, my hubby's trying to hurry me out the door for a walk, so this post is done! I'll just add some pics below.
My baby girl is almost ONE! Can you believe it?
I LOVE this one. Just wish it wasn't so hazy that day.
Spinning the umbrella was Gracie's idea. :)
A couple more things...
I think it was Kristi in one of her comments who asked if I could write up something about how I use Homeschool Tracker. I've filed that suggestion away and will do that when I can! I did write up something about it (with screenshots even) last year. You can find that here. Our needs change every year though and it seems like I'm always learning new ways of doing things on HST.
And someone else asked about typing up something on how I shoot silhouettes at sunset. I typed up something about that a while back here. I changed the category that post was in so it'd be under the "tips" section.
Okay, so this part isn't so wordless, but remember in your old high school biology text the provided illustration of mitosis? That's what this photo reminded me of as soon as I saw it, and thus the title Mitosis of Millie.
I recently came across a great website that not only offers all sorts of Photoshop tutorials, but also lots of freebies just for signing up for their newsletter. You can find the website here.
After signing up and downloading all of the freebies, I was playing around with some of the photomask brushes and wondering what on earth to do with them. I went back to the website and found a video tutorial that explained all. To make things easier and faster for later use, I decided to make an action with the included steps I learned from the video tutorial. What fun! After lots of tweaking, I think it works pretty good and is SUPER fast to do.
Here's a photo I ran through the action and used one of the photomask brushes I downloaded from the website above.
Here's another one using a different photo and brush:
If you already know which brush you plan to use, it literally takes seconds to run a photo through the action. What took me a long time was writing and tweaking the action, finding a site to host the action file and figuring out how to upload and share the pictures so that you could see the transparent background (tip: saving as .jpg makes the background white- save as .gif or .png for a transparent background).
I'd love to have feedback on it too, so if you use it & it needs more tweaking, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
See the little birdies in my blog header? I made those using a brush I downloaded from that site. If you enjoy playing around in Photoshop, you may want to stop by graphics-illustrations.com and look around a bit!
After saving that last post, I *thought* I was missing some pictures. I should've added to my "happenings" list in my previous post that I've been spending too much time on FB lately. I had uploaded some pics on FB, but not on Photobucket (which I use to post pics here) and didn't notice these were missing until after I had posted.
The other night, or I should say *morning* since it was 1 am, I walked past the boys' room and noticed the light was still on. I opened the door to find two things.
First, this. My sweet lil' guy completely zonked out and hanging over the side of his bed:
And secondly, on the top bunk, I found this. My oldest child reading encyclopedias. For the fun of it. About satellites. Yes, he's "one of those" strange homeschoolers. Although Alek would be Alek no matter how he was educated:
Why yes, I do believe this is the 3,957th photo of one of my children blowing the seeds off of a dandelion! They're such fun photos to take though and the children love it too!
And I think I will save my "mitosis" picture for Wordless Wednesday. Remember those diagrams of the process of mitosis in your high school biology book? Keep that in mind when you see the picture I post on Wednesday. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Two good things have happened lately: School's OUT and my satellite internet is back up & running!
We were on dial-up for over a month. That's like, an eternity. We had/have the option of getting wireless internet and I was sort of waiting on the outcome of that situation before making a decision to either go back to satellite or wait for wireless. I've been in contact with the owner of this company. He came out to our house a few weeks ago to do a site survey. He said he couldn't even get a good line of site of his towers standing on our two-story high roof because of all of the tall trees! He told me he'd either have to put the receiver up one of our very tall Douglas firs or piggyback a connection from a neighbor who'd have to both be a customer of his AND be willing to have his equipment installed on their property. Well, it just started sounding more and more like this wireless thing wasn't going to happen. And if it did, it sounded like it was going to be a big hassle. It would've saved us $30 & supposedly be quite a bit faster, for both uploading AND downloading. But May's almost gone & he's not even close to being ready. So we signed a 1-year contract with WildBlue and they came out and fixed the problem free of charge. It is SO nice to not have to wait 15 minutes to pull up our bank account and to download pictures and watch videos again. My word.
And boy, were we ready to be done with school! It feels so weird to have so much time freed up, although there's always something that needs to be done around here. I spent this last week entering next year's school assignments into Homeschool Tracker. It took me around 30 hours to do this! I told someone it only takes 4-6 hours to do this, so thought I'd keep track to be sure. Four to six hours. HA! But that is DONE. Grades have been entered. I still need to print out the children's report cards, assemble their portfolios and find a spot (or list on Amazon) for last year's books. Next year's books are in tubs in our school area, waiting to be put on the shelves. I plan to write up a post soon listing all that we are going to be using next year. I enjoy reading others' school year plans (like my friend Tracy's- check out her plans! Talk about organized!) and what they're doing and I'm sure others do too.
As you can see, I've also updated the look here @ CrazyBusy. It really needed to be done. The graphics I had on there were from fall and the letters that spelled Crazy Busy looked like poo. Literally. And I'm surprised nobody told me that. Hehe. I am not good at this html/redesigning blog thing at all. I literally wasted my entire day on that. How frustrating. At least it doesn't look like poo this time though. I had some fun downloading and playing with different Photoshop brushes though.
So what's happened here in the meantime?
Julianna is 10 months old; she's learned to give kisses, play pat-a-cake and has taken several steps on her own. She LOVES to eat real food (but of course I'm still nursing her), especially Cheerios and bananas. I wish I had named her Liberty.
Josiah... just keep watching my Friday Funnies posts. That child cracks us up.
Gabriel turned 8 on May 15th. We spent his birthday @ Discovery Bay. Kenton took them fishing but they didn't catch anything. They spent a lot of time in the pool. That child is going to make the BEST husband and father someday. He's a sweetheart.
Alek has been obsessed with satellites and TV's lately. He probably knows more about how they work than most adults.
Alek was baptized May 17th!
I became a GREAT AUNT! I've always been a great aunt, but now it's official. ;) Kenton's oldest sister's oldest child had her 9lb 3 oz. baby boy on Memorial Day. They live on the other side of the country so I only get to enjoy him in photos. He's a doll and his mama is sure to be one of the best moms around!
The neighbor kids are driving me nuts. What ever happened to knocking on one's door and *asking*, "Can _____ come out & play?" I will stop there on that one.
Had my kidney stone blasted. Have a feeling she didn't get it all. Haven't passed anything, as far as I know. Argh.
Gracie added "Beat rugs" to her chore list. I think she's been reading too many Little House books. It was amusing seeing her out there, rug draped over clothesline, and her beating it with a big stick. How many children do you know that ADD chores to their list?
Millie is a handful. She reminds me of myself at times- more than I want to admit. Heaven help us.
And of course, I have pictures to share- just snaps from Gabe's birthday and some others.
This was @ Discovery Bay. Josiah was a little Mopey because he had to stay with me while the others went fishing.
Gabe in the pool. He got these goggles from my parents (plus $20!). That is ALL he asked for. Goggles. Gotta love that boy.
He's such a stinker about having his pic taken though. One. This was the only one he semi-cooperated for.
My sweet punkin-girl.
Gabe & his 8 candles.
Some rhodies on a rainy day. (rainy days have been rare- it's been so nice here!)
This next one is a close-up of the previous shot- I thought it was neat that you could see the anthers (?) up close and open.
Yellow rhododendrons with a bee buzzing about.
I am looking forward to catching up with everyone!
This is my first entry, so I hope I did everything right! I took this of my older 4 children a while ago down at our favorite beach. I have to say, I LOVE taking silhouettes and had a hard time choosing a fave!
Be sure to head on over to www.iheartfaces.com to check out all of the beautiful face entries this week!
As we were driving to the beach, we passed several cows grazing in a field. A little further down the road, there was a stray cow in a marshy, treed area close to the road, ankle deep in water (do cows even *have* ankles?) with its head bent to the ground eating.... something.
From the back seat we hear Josiah yell, "Hey! I just saw an anteater!"
Um, no dear. While that cow did look a bit different from the rest, I assure you, it's no anteater. ;)
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One Sunday afternoon we hiked down to a beach that was, except for us, completely vacant. It's not the easiest beach to get to and is enclosed by a steep bluff. A short distance from the shore we noticed some sort of head bobbing up and down in the water. We were trying to guess whether it was a seal or an otter when Josiah set us straight, "No! That's a man out there!"
Um, yeah. Just swimming out in the middle of the ocean.
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Millie excitedly (and quite loudly) proclaimed to me one day, "MOM! You're GROWING blond HAIR now!"
*sigh* No, that, my dear, would be called gray. Wouldn't that be nice to spontaneously change from light brown to blond hair at this point in life though?
Children have such a way about making us feel good about ourselves, don't they?
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Overheard on the baby monitor one morning: Baby fussing a little as Josiah walks in the room and in the same sweet, sing-songy voice one would say, "It's okay, baby! It's alright!" he coos to her, "I'm not a robber, Julianna! No! I'm not a robber!"
I'm sure that's what she was thinking when she saw him.
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On the way home from a field trip to a goat farm I was explaining to the children my game plan for our next school year, which includes schooling year-round, except during the couple of months in the summer when our weather is at its nicest. I told them that during those brief two months, we'd check the weather forecast for the week each Sunday. If 4 out of 5 weekdays call for rain, we're going to do school that week.
I guess Josiah was not pleased with my plan. I hadn't even finished speaking when I heard him loudly declare from the back seat, "THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY!"
Okay. Maybe introducing a 4 y/o to the protesting process was not such a good idea.
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(this one from Alek)
Alek, unfamiliar with Josiah's MP3 player (more like the mp3 player *assigned* to Josiah when we hand them all out on long road trips), asked Josiah how to turn it off. Josiah replied, "I just leave it on for a long time and it just turns off by itself or I throw it on the ground *really* hard and it turns off."
*sigh* Is it any wonder things don't last around here?
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Hi and welcome to my crazy busy world! I'm Alyssa. Hubby & I have been married for almost 16 years and we have 6 wonderful children! Their ages are 12, 9, 8, 6, 4 and our newest little blessing was born on the Fourth of July ('08)!
Spend any amount of time here and I'm sure you'll quickly learn that I love photography! You'll find quite a mix of posts here- lots of photo blogging, some photography tips and tutorials, posts about home schooling and posts that will give you a glimpse to the goings-on in our lives. I hope you enjoy your visit! Thanks for stopping by!
This is my sweet baby girl, Julianna, examining some daisies. I got plenty of B.I.G. smiles the day I took this photo, but her seriousness here seemed to suit the mood of the sepia tone. 
