Toot Toot!

From my customer: "Hi, Cheryl. I have to tell you when I saw the picture, I cried. It is really beautiful and the hummingbird looks amazing! ... Thanks. Bonnie"

I think that means she likes it as much as I do. wow! I was just floored by her comment.

Not to toot my own horn, but...

I am SOOO excited about this last custom order that I have been working on. It is turning out even better than I thought. I hope my customer likes it as much as I do. Lol. (by the way its not complete yet, still need to fill it in some more.)

For anyone wondering, yes, the bird is made from a leaf too.

Our awesome weekend

We had an awesome weekend here. Benson's family came to celebrate the fourth with us, as well as the baptism of our Goose and blessing of Daniel. We had front row seats to the fireworks, they were sooo loud! The only one who didn't enjoy them was Tank. She didn't cry, just hid her head under a blanket. oh well.

Fireworks Finale - Chicago - July 2008 from Max Drown on Vimeo.


a few of our 13 guests The VIP's of the day, the girl is Goose's cousin on my side.

some of the cousins from Benson's side

an awesome feeling, all my boys in white.

As an FYI, we believe that little children are born perfect through Christ's atonement, so we do not baptize them as babies. We do give our babies their names and a priesthood blessing when they are born. At the age of 8, children are ready to be accountable for themselves, and are therefore baptised if they choose to be. I'm so proud of all of my boys! My hubby for being worthy to perform these priesthood ordinances, and my Goose for being prepared and ready to be baptised. And of course, I'm also grateful to have our little Daniel as a member of our family.

I did it! The best sights and sounds in the world.

My darling boy talking to me, enjoy!

Oh, and for those who are wondering how I finally got it to work, I used my regular digital camera's video option then edited with Windows movie maker. I was able to make the file 18M instead of 1.5G doing this. Big difference, lol! And movie maker was on my computer the whole time.

just for comparison

This is how our family pictures *usually* turn out. LOL! opps, cut off Sweetie's head, small issue
typical, eh


our last attempt with a timer

sibling love

Now can I get some credit for our awesome family picture a couple posts ago?! :)

The best sights and sounds in the world

I was trying so hard to upload a video of Daniel cooing and smiling, but I totally failed. I was using our regular digital camera to take a movie, but it is too big to upload here. I tried to edit it to cut out some parts, and instead of making the file smaller, it turned out 10 times bigger. Anyone have any hints?

I'm not exactly sure how I'm feeling

So Goose had his meeting with the doctor today. He spent 30 minutes with him before he called us back to join. It was sort of surreal, the doctor basically restated a bunch of the things we told him last week. The strange thing is that when it was coming out of his mouth, I sort of felt like he was attacking my son. I wanted to defend him and say, well yeah, but its not THAT bad. Such a strange feeling.

Anyway, to shorten the story a little, he confirmed that Goose does have Asperger's syndrome and a little to my surprise he additionally said he has ADHD (primarily inattentive type). I really thought the inattention was part of Asperger's, so that's why it surprised me. Anyway, the other thing I wasn't really prepared for was that he thinks medication will really help him. I wanted to have him evaluated so that if there are further problems in school that he will be able to have the resources he needs to get help. The doc would like us to consider using a stimulant medicine to improve his attention, and possibly an SSRI (which is actually an anti-depressant) to help the Asperger's. I'm REALLY not sure how I feel about all this. I want to do the best thing for my son, I guess I'm just not sure what the best thing is. I've worked for a doctor for years, so I know that there are problems that are substantially improved with medication. I'm not anti-medicine, but I'm also NOT a drug-pusher. I rarely give my kids medicine for their colds, and really only take medicine myself except for a migraine and my thyroid. Is asperger's really the type of medical problem that can be helped with MEDICINE? I always placed it more as a problem that would need social therapy or behavioral therapy. ok now I'm just rambling... I realize you may not be an expert in this area, but any advice would be welcome. Thanks.