Shot of the day

A game of poker with Indy watching every move...

Painting Ryan's Room

BEFORE...

DURING...

AFTER!!!

Great job honey!!

Chemistry Class

Jacob has been doing some amazing things in school this year - some unique art projects, British Lit. presentations and reports, an excellent video presentation for history (with a good bit of humor thrown in), and some cool experiments and projects for chemistry class. Math? Nothing exciting about geometry. No fun projects or reports happening there. Just math.

Chemistry is a different story though! Mrs. Ellis (the science teacher) lets them do projects to earn bonus points and here are a couple samples of those.

This is a picture of maple syrup that he boiled down to make candy - he had to pour it on ice and take observations and measurements.

Yummy.

I am happy to report that Jacob is an excellent student - taking some challenging high school courses and getting A's in every class! Sooooo proud of you Jacob!

Remedies

I took this shot of Danny as he was taking his dose of remedies. Each of these bottles contain a remedy that he has to take three times a day... though we have never used homeopathy before, we are quickly becoming believers!

Yummy Green Smoothies

This year for Christmas we got a VitaMix blender - something I have wanted for years - and now we have been making super healthy green smoothies!

Yeah, they don't always look so yummy, but believe it or not, this particular one tastes like strawberry-kiwi and yet it has neither of those ingredients in it. Even the kids like this one!

Valentines Day

This year was another one of our traditional Valentines Days where someone cooks someone a beautiful meal, and the boys bless the girls, and the girl bless the boys. Sweet indeed.

Danny and I both cooked this year as we were both exhausted from serving at the PC Sweetheart Banquet two days earlier. Here is a sampling of our day in pictures.

These are the little treats that were given to Danny by Hannah and myself.

Hannah's diet is restricted at this time as she is going through allergy treatments, but she happily could still have every girl's favorite - chocolate!

This was Hannah's gift to Jacob (obviously the fuzzy poster of a fairy was a joke!)

And for Ryan as well - the colorful color-a-kitty was a joke, although Ryan didn't know it at first and responded very graciously. He said "cool!" and then after second thought said "There is something else in this bag isn't there?" haha

Braces for Hannah

Hannah got her braces on last Thursday, but alas, she won't let me take a picture of her. Maybe someday I can get one to post here. (hint hint Hannah)

January

January was really an uneventful month for us. As I look back on where the month went, what we actually did, etc., I couldn't come up with much at all. It seems that it was a month of hunkering down back to school, and also working on getting Hannah well. We started a non-allergen diet for her to exclude all her food allergies, put her on supplements for insomnia, and started acupuncture and novocaine injections in her back. I am happy to report that she is actually feeling better - Praise God! She has a long way to go, but at least there is movement in the right direction.

Also, Danny took a series of cooking classes which were so much fun for us! He came home from each class and cooked for us what he made in class - it was really a treat!

You can see what an organized chef he is... he cooks like he does everything else in life. Organized. Controlled. Orderly. And with a flair of passion.

Look how perfectly chopped his ingredients are. Sickening, huh?

One result was this delicious honey-vinaigrette salad... absolutely delicious!

And here is his homemade chicken wild rice soup. Even the broth is homemade! All this was topped off with macadamia white-chocolate chip cookies! Yum yum yum.