I have sent you to her blog before.  A talented and encouraging woman who graduated high school with my sister and who I now call friend.  Reading her blog each day is a joy often accompanied by a stab of conviction and gorgeous photography of every day life from a new angle.  I seriously love her photography.

So, when I was thinking of gifts for Little’s birthday I remembered her barren walls and thought it would be fun to get her some artwork that was just her.  We had gotten Bubba that great alphabet poster for Christmas and it sums him up so well at this stage; he loves it.

Little is all about computers but I couldn’t find anything feminine and computerish at all.  So I took a chance and emailed this friend and asked if she did projects for folks and if she felt up to the challenge of making a computer interesting and girly.  Actually, that makes it sound like I made the project seem exciting.  I basically apologized for asking and for such a seemingly ridiculous subject and SHE wrote back thanking me for the challenge and made it sound like a fun afternoon plan.  

She gave it much more than an afternoon of planning.  All while she was redoing her floors.  And parenting three small children.  And I have to say, the final product was everything I hoped for and more.  I am beside myself with happiness and Little’s response to the pictures was priceless.  As I pulled them out for her to see, she touched the one of the full computer and said, “They are so beautiful.”  More than I could have hoped for, I tell ya.

So, here they are.  They aren’t hung yet but now that Spring Break is here, honey will be getting them up on the wall.  I am one step away from finishing the five year quilt too, so when that is on the bed and these are hung in place I will get another picture posted.  

Little’s room is orange, yellow and bright pink.  Seriously, look what she “just happened” to have on her wall!!! That canvas is perfect!

Her middle son was the hand model, God bless him.  So sweet.

I printed them as squares and I am thinking they will hang in a large square over her short bookcase.  We’ll see how that goes.  

Thanks so much for your help, Christian.  You guys click through and tell her what a great job she did.  You can find her at Modobject at Home! 

Just pretend you are reading this on March 17, 2011.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Never in my life has this day been a big deal but my kiddos turned it into something huge this year.  “How did they do that?” you ask.  They talked about it. . . all day long.   They talked about it for the week leading up to it.  

“When can we wear our shirts?”

“Is today St. Patrick’s Day?”
“St. Patrick’s Day is in March, Mommy.”

and on and on. . .

Finally the day came and breakfast commenced with hoots and hollers of “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!”.  Everyone was in their shirts and I announced a photo must be taken.  This was the best I could get – KB is blurry because she is always in motion.

That picture is literally one of 8 or more photos; most of them were very blurry.  Funny thing is that each of the pictures caught something I would want to keep.  The one above caught their faces actually looking my way and their shamrocks are all showing.  Another one caught KB’s little toes curling up like she tends to do so often.

And at one point I put the camera down, put my hands up to my face and called out, “Bubba! Look at Momma! Put your eyes on Momma!”  (Who says that to a kid with Autism? No eye contact is on every person’s first symptom list.  Once I said “Look at the camera” there was no problem)  One photo caught Bub’s doing his best to do what I had asked him to do.   

He actually said to me, “I am looking you in the eye, Momma” as he was doing this.  What a goose.

The fun of the day didn’t stop after this frolic of a photo shoot.  No! Call it the “luck of the Irish” but we had a day of 80 degree weather dropped in the middle of days requiring coats.  After going to get Bub’s glasses fixed (again) we headed out for our first day at Longview this season/year.  It couldn’t have been more perfect.

The horses were in their stalls and ready to be greeted by every child coming to play.

The playground itself looked like a sea of green – so many cute shirts and appliques – and the kids ran from swings to monkey bars to slide.

Look at how tall my little man is?

And our little girl demonstrated her great courage once again.  I helped her slide down the pole once and then she was all, “I can do it myseff” and she did for the next 15 min. with no break.

She is so hard headed, though.  I couldn’t get her to look at me as she went down.  Stubborn little mule.

Here’s Bubba when he was three going down the same little pole.

and now. . . 

Freaks me out a bit.

Hope you had fun on Thursday!