Well, I’ve been up since 3:30 AM unable to sleep due to my stuffed up head, dripping nose and watering eyes.

So, I leave you with this photo of Apollo and Judah at the Woodland Park Zoo.

Tomorrow I will announce the Wondershare winners and hopefully have more zoo photos to share.

If you’ve enjoyed out themed parties in the past, don’t forget to vote over at Circle of Moms. One vote per day, no need to register or sign up, just find my blog icon and click

We’re sick over here. A cold followed by a nasty cough. I was optimistic enough to think I was going to miss out on this particular illness…But, alas, it has ahold of me now too. Hezekiah has recovered well on his antibiotic, though he has a lingering cough. Avi stayed home sick today. Mordecai went to school, but he ended up in the office with a fever around lunch time so I went and picked him. This particular plague has already struck Judah, Tilly, Hezekiah and Enoch. Kalina, Adalia, Avi, Mordecai and I are currently sick.

Chuck and I are waiting anxiously to see whether or not this sickness will reach Apollo. He has stayed remarkably well. Due in part, no doubt, to us not taking him out in public in the winter.

Oh, and today is our 18th wedding anniversary!

So today I share with you a series of photos I took last week. I was striving for the classic “child blowing dandelion seeds” and got this very unique series instead.

Hezekiah has unilateral tonsilitis. After four days of fever and sore throat I finally took a peek in his mouth and found one huge tonsil with white streaks on it, so off to the doctor we headed. His throat culture came back negative for strep. He has barely complained. He hasn’t been to school since last Thursday and won’t go back until Monday (assuming the antibiotics do their work). He has been quiet and uncomplaining. Poor little guy.

I have had this particular photo shoot in my head, basically since I knit him his Pi Hat. I am so happy with how they turned out!

{The Wondershare giveaway winners will be chosen on Monday, May 20th, so there is still  time to enter and share! There is also a 50% off coupon for those of you who don’t win. Also, I have been nominated at Circle of Moms for their Top Party Planning Moms. If you have enjoyed my themed-party posts, I’d love for you to take a moment to vote for my blog. I’ve just been nominated, so you’ll have to scroll way down to find me.}

I am so very proud of my Liberian children! Keziah was home last weekend and brought her certificate of completion for Office Administration to show us. She has worked so very hard for this!  Soon she will graduate from Job Corps. She has decided to stay near the Job Corps center, rather than move back here to Bellingham. She has made some great friends, attends a church she loves and is setting down her own roots.

Boaz has completed his carpentry training and is working his first full-time job, about three hours south of us.

Ezra is working toward his High School Diploma and job training in painting.

These kids have worked so hard…We are so proud of them!

The long-anticipated day has arrived. Kalina has her first hearing aid! The whole hearing loss thing has been different from what I anticipated. The closest comparison I have come up with is getting your child glasses. Kalina has no scarring or damage to her right ear, it simply doesn’t work well- just like a child (or person) who needs glasses. Once the doctors ruled out a physical issue needing medical care, we were on our own (financially and otherwise) to seek out a hearing aid.

We decided to go with a local hearing clinic to get her hearing aid. We could have gone down to Seattle Children’s Hospital, but that seemed like a bit of overkill and I knew the wait time would be longer. The experience has been so weird. After the CT scan to rule out a medical issue, someone from the ENT’s office called and said, “Kalina’s CT scan came back normal so you’re free to get her a hearing aid if you choose to go that route” and she began to hang up. I had to stop her and ask where and how we might get a hearing aid for her. In the end, I went with the hearing clinic associated with the ENT’s office because they have her audiogram and records.

Then we had the snafu I posted about on Facebook. Monday when we went in for the fitting the lady was rude and condescending to Kalina. Once the hearing aid was on and calibrated Kalina said it kept turning on and off…the third time she said it the lady said, “Why? Why do you keep saying it’s turning on and off?” in a very rude tone…once she took it out and checked it, sure enough, it had a faulty wire that was shorting out (it was soon replaced and fine).  Instead of having the attitude that “wow, here is a twelve-year-old girl getting her first ever hearing aid, this is probably a sensitive time for her” she was clearing irritated and upset that Kalina was being “difficult”.  Not cool, my friends, not cool.

Her current hearing aid has a two-year warranty, and I can guarantee we will purchase her next hearing aid somewhere else.At any rate, yesterday was Kalina’s first full day with her hearing aid. The thing that has surprised and delighted her the most is the ability to hear music in both ears! She has adjusted very, very quickly. She has gone from being irritated at so much noise, to barely noticing. We are so excited for her!

I’ve thought about Kalina’s hearing loss a lot lately. As I said before, I took Kalina into the doctor as a toddler because we were concerned about her hearing. After a quick exam of her ears and listening to her talk, the doctor said everything was fine. As she grew and her speaking progressed, I all but forgot about our early concerns.

Let me state up front, I fervently wish her hearing loss would have been discovered and treated earlier, for her sake. But I also know that ten years ago,  learning that my toddler had hearing loss would have been devastating. I would have been filled with worry about her future…would the hearing loss be progressive? Would she need to learn sign language? Would she go deaf? Was anything else “wrong”? Learning about it at twelve means we know she can (and will continue) to learn and develop. Her hearing loss isn’t a disability as much as an inconvenience. One which can now be treated with modern technology.

And one more thought…learning about hearing loss in a child after going through heart surgery and several life-threatening illnesses with another makes it seem pretty minor in the big scheme of things. My reflections on Kalina’s hearing loss reminded me of a friend I met at the Ronald McDonald House in Houston. Her first child was born with some pretty serious (but not life-threatening) defects, including missing an eye. She shared how devastated she was….years later her second child was born with a life-threatening defect and she was now pregnant with her third child, born with the same life-threatening defect as her second…she said, “Looking back, I can’t believe how upset I was…it was only an eye…”

I am not in a place where I can look at Apollo’s heart defect and suffering though a lens of “lessons I’ve learned” or “blessings it has brought”. But I can fervently say it has completely altered my priorities and perspective on life.

I just finished up our third (and main) photowall this weekend and am so excited to have photos to share with you. Without further ado:

3 Photowall Ideas

1. Hang unframed mounted photos on the wall with 3M Command Strips.

Don’t be afraid to Go Big with your photos. The 8×10′s of our childhood are neither “standard” nor large photos these days! Large photos make a bigger impact.

To give you a bit of perspective on size, look at Tilly standing next to our photowall:

You can see just how ludicrously tiny an 8×10 family portrait would look on our wall!

Here is a close-up of the photos so you can see how they look on the styrene. I like clean, uncluttered lines which is why I chose to hang unframed photos on my wall. This images are mounted for durability and are coated with UV protection.

2. Buy 12×12 frames for an eye-catching photowall.

This photowall was designed to be fun! No formal portraits allowed here. I wanted somewhere to display some silly photos that I loved. The 12×12 frames allow me to easily and inexpensively switch out these photos. The photos that come off the wall go directly into our family scrapbooks.

3. Hang favorite photos on a string, attached with small office clips.

I was inspired to start this photowall after attending a local photography conference where we each brought an image for the photo salon. I decided to have my own photo salon and enjoy some of my favorite photos.

Here is the view from our formal wall looking toward my personal photos salon.

I hope you are inspired to hang some of your own photos up on the wall. If you have a photo, feel free to post a link in the comments. I’d love to take a look!

My earliest memory of reading is sitting in my Grandma’s basement. My grandma had a collection of old Dick and Jane books she stored in one of those old-fashioned valises. This one was so old the leather was curling away in parts and the smell was musty and choking.  I remember laboriously working my way through that stack of books. By the time I was in Kindergarten I could read solidly and was sent to the first grade class for reading…in second I was sent to third and so on until some type of equilibrium was found and I was able to remain in a reading group in my own class.

I discovered Beverly Cleary in second grade and  C.S. Lewis in third. I worked my way through The Babysitters Club, Little House on the Prairie and Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. In sixth grade I was entranced by Tuck Everlasting and The Green Futures of Tycho. I think I was fourteen when I read my first Stephen King novel and was hooked. Chuck introduced me to Michael Crichton and John Grisham (okay, he didn’t technically introduce me to them, but if you love books as much as I do you know what I mean). I can’t begin to tell you how many memoirs I’ve devoured during a decade of  breastfeeding my children.

Books are so important to me  that a love of reading actually made it to the list of Qualities That My Future Husband Must Possess. It was right up there with a love of God and desire for lots of kids.

These days we hit the library every week, but gone are the times when I could leisurely browse the shelves for interesting books. Instead I am watching my children browse the shelves and discovering their own love of books. For years I have taken advantage of our libraries website and have been putting books on hold. It is a brilliant system: I request a book, the librarian finds it and saves it for me. The only downside of this is that to request a book, you need some idea of what kind of book you are looking for…

Enter Good Reads. How have I just now discovered this amazing site??? I have knocked away more books in the few weeks than in I don’t know how long.  I currently have a list of 46 books to read. Every couple of  days I pull a few titles from my Good Reads list and request them from my local library. As I rate and read more books, the site makes more recommendations.  Now, every visit to the library is yeilding half a dozen or so books for me to read. And I am in literary heaven. For years I have toyed with the idea of keeping a list of all the books I read in a year. Why? I’m not quite sure, but I suppose it has something to do with savoring the moments, no the memories, I’ve shared with those characters. Now, Good Reads does that for me. I recently set a goal to read 50 books this year (hey, I didn’t set the goal until last week) and have currently reached 13% of my goal.

Are you part of Good Reads? How do you utilize it? Has it changed your reading? Feel free to seek me out there and we can share our mutal love of reading.

Today I’m really excited to share with you a new photo sharing program: Wondershare. I happen to be using Wondershare Video Editor for Mac, but there are other versions available as well.

First, the fun little slide show I made:

For this slide show, I just grabbed random photos off of my computer. I wanted to get to know the program so I didn’t pick any particular theme, but imagine how much fun this would be for vacation photos, a birthday party or family event! I guarantee I will be making more of these in the future.

The Wondershare program downloaded to my (very old) computer in only a minute or two. I purposely didn’t read any instructions or watch any videos from the Wondersharewebsite. I wanted to see exactly how user-friendly the program was.

I was able to quickly figure out how to add photos. rearranging them is as easy as dragging them into the sequence you want. The  transition between photos can also be easily changed (also by simply dragging). With this program  you are able to add text, an intro and conclusion pages. Photos can be cropped, you can add tilt shift and mosaics, voiceovers and sound effects.

Videos can be optimized for YouTube, iPads, and smartphones. They can be easily shared on Facebook and Twitter.

The most difficult part for me was figuring out how to get the slide show in a format that could be used on the web. A quick Google search answered my question (in Wondershare convert to MP4 format). I uploaded to video to my Flickr account, then added a link in WordPress.

All in all, I found this to be easy, efficient and fun!

Wondershare Video Editor retails for $39.95, but I have TEN lifetime registration codes to give away to blog readers!

And, for those of you who don’t win, here is a 50% off discount code, just for my readers!

So, leave a comment. Tell me what  you do with your photos. If you’ve ever made a slide show. How many digital images you take a month. Why you’d like to win…Just leave a comment and you will get one entry into a random drawing. Share the giveaway on Twitter and Facebook for more entries (just let me know you shared it and where!)

Apollo has never slept through the night. Well, he has, a time or two, slept for five or six hours…but he’s never Slept-Throught-The-Night. He began taking Melatonin at the recommendation of a sleep specialist back in March 2012, after his first heart surgery.

Back in December I wrote about Apollo having nightmares several nights a week. These were no doubt directly related to the second major heart surgery in eight months. Back in December I was beyond exhausted. Shortly after that post Kalina began taking Apollo to bed with her a couple of nights a weeks. She likes that he keeps her warm and he feels secure with her. I get a break every few nights and Kalina enjoys the time with Apollo. It’s a win-win situation. Finally, finally I’m getting more than a couple of hours of sleep (for the first time in two and a half years). 

A while back we removed Apollo’s toddler bed (the one he never spent more than a couple of hours in) and replaced it with a twin sized mattress on the floor. Our theory was sound: someone could lie down with Apollo as he fell asleep. Great theory, except for the whole waking-up-screaming-in-utter-terror part. After a few weeks we abandoned that plan and began just taking him to bed with us.

Now, he simply goes to bed with Kalina or me and Chuck. If  he falls asleep before we go to bed we stick him in our bed. Not a great plan, I realize. I know a thing or two about toddlers and healthy sleep habits. And our bedtime routine isn’t one. But you know what? Now he is no longer terrified that he will wake alone and he seems somewhat more settled. He will often cry out in the night and search for one of us. He puts a hand on our cheek, realizes we are there, and all is well.

He’s not sleeping well, but he is sleeping better than he ever has before. And today, that is enough.

Sweet little Brenna (Devon’s little sister) just turned one! I didn’t photograph Brenna’s birth, but did get to capture her newborn pictures in the hospital.

Brenna and Duncan

Can you believe Brenna’s mom, Kara, made this dress?

Brenna’s big sister Morgan.

Devon and Tilly.

{Please excuse the slightly out-of-focus photo. Owen always insists on putting his face right up to my lens }

Many of you blog readers remember me asking for prayer for Devon’s brother Owen just after his birth. Owen was born at home (unplanned) and not breathing. Kara and her husband had to call 911 and do CPR on Owen as they waited for the paramedics to arrive. The doctor’s down at Children’s told Kara and Rod that Owen was brain-dead…

Owen’s parents refused to remove life-support and here he is, almost four years old. Owen had a feeding tube for over two years, but now eats 100% orally. Last fall Owen began having seizures and thus another medical roller coaster began for Owen and his family. Kara just started a blog, A Time for Every Purpose, if you’d like to keep up on Owen’s progress.Owen and Apollo. Two medically fragile boys who have a little too much in common.