Apollo, 8 months old

This is my new favorite photo of my favorite baby. It captures his personality so well. Mr. Serious…Mr. Thinker…Wearing one of the  many, many hats I've knit for him. 

*sigh*

But I'm not going to blog about Apollo today. Instead, I'm going to answer some questions from readers…

Lou asked: What do you use now instead of iPhoto? 

I store my photos on Adobe Bridge, which is the software that came with Photoshop CS3. Tilly uses iPhoto, so we can keep our photos separate. I must say though, I've always liked iPhoto and I like it even more since we updated our software. It now has face recognition, so if I'm looking for a photo of Hezekiah, I can just tell my computer that, and it sorts and brings up all the photos with him in it. How slick is that for scrapbooking?!

Kate said: Be careful of the external hard drive. I stored all my pictures for 3 years in mine, a Maxtor, and it died. The company offered no hope, no one has been able to extract my pictures at a price I can afford. SORROW!

I'm well aware of that! We began storing photos on an external hard drive because after storing our photos on CDs for a year or so, we found we could no longer access them….so I lost all of those photos. And of course we've had computers crash. All the more reason to scrapbook, create photo books, and/or have prints made. I upload photos monthly, usually to ScrapbookPictures even if I don't plan to order them…it's another way for me to back them up.

Another Kate asked: How much water with the four cups of beans (for refried beans?) These look great!

The thing is, I don't really measure. I only know it's four cups of beans because that's how much fits in my Crockpot. I cover with water, plus a couple of inches (since the beans will expand) then in the morning I add more water if necessary. When the beans are cooked, I decide whether or not I need to drain of some of the water.

Gabe said: We just finished reading Tortured for Christ. We are reading Making Brother's and Sisters Best Friends, at meal times now, the kids beg for more every time! I just read Unplanned, that was a great one, but not so much for kids! We are looking forward to starting Amon's Adventure too!

I thought this comment was funny because the older children and I  have read Tortured for Christ, we've read Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends out loud, and Adalia and I both read Unplanned!

Emily asked: My question is:- How did you originally start discussing home schooling with Chuck? I know you have wanted to do it since high school – did he? How did the rest of your family react to your homeschooling? Thank you

But I think I'll save the answer to that for tomorrow. I've typed enough, my children are about to wake up, and I'd like to give more than a two sentence answer…see you then!