Photoshop Tricks

I have loved photoshop for a couple of years now. It's definitely a work in progress for me. I had been working with PSE5, which is very limited in what it can do. So for Christmas, J upgraded me to PSE7. It was so affordable for what it does. I think this program has changed my life! Ok, so maybe that's a little dramatic. One of my favorite things are photo actions. These are pictures I just now edited.

Here's the picture, straight out of the camera:

First I cropped and sharpened it. Then fixed the eyes. Finally I darkened the edges a bit.

So cute!

Now it's Sami's turn.

Here's my shot, straight out of the camera:

I didn't need to crop, just sharpened, added a color boost, and darkened the edges.
But I really wanted to bring out her eyes.
I really like CoffeeShop Free Actions and Pioneer Woman for great free Photoshop actions. Some people think that actions are cheating. And maybe it is, in some ways. But I don't care, it's just too fun! I don't have a fancy camera, but with Photoshop, sometimes I can even fool myself (which isn't too hard).

He's done with school!

This past Thursday was Jonathan's last day of school FOREVER!!

Yeah, we were pretty excited.
We wanted to celebrate J's last day of school with a little barbecue. Our family came over along with our long time friends, Colby and Suzanne. After lunch, us girls stayed inside and chatted while the boys watched the kiddos outside.

I love these women. (And my mother-in-law who is taking the picture.)
The kids loved the swing. But loved playing together even more. When it was time to go home, they were all crying. It was cute to see how much they love being together. (Janie was in bed because she was so tired from being sick, poor girl missed most of the party.)
Jonathan, his brother Jeremy, and his BFF Colby (and Andrew in the background, the only little boy present).

We also had a little Easter egg hunt with all the kids. They had a blast. We are ready for Easter around here.

I am so grateful for Jonathan. Our kids have been really sick around here. Janie had bronchitis last week and was on a nebulizer for four days and is still taking an antibiotic. She is doing a lot better now, and I am so grateful that bronchitis is not contagious. But now Sami is sick and has been throwing up all day today. Jonathan has been there, helping me change bedding, giving baths, and giving medicine. I didn't do a dish all day yesterday. He is man of the year, for sure. I am so glad he's home for a few months before residency starts. We are definitely going to enjoy our time together.

St. Paddy's Day

We had such a fun St. Patrick's Day this year. Jonathan had the day off, so we decided to do some fun things. The night before I set up green buckets, full of green juice boxes, fruit snacks, some green leis and a green ball. I also taped green shamrocks all over the house so that Sami could find them all morning. They were so excited when they woke up and saw all the treats and shamrocks.

Later that morning, we took the girls to the train park. It was Jonathan and Janie's first time being there, and it had been more than a year since Sami and I had been there. We had to wait about 15 minutes before it was our turn to ride the train, and it was almost more than Sami could bear.

After the train ride, we had our first family picnic.

After lunch we took the girls to ride the carousel. Sami was really scared of this ride last year. And she was a little nervous this year. But once the ride started, she relaxed and got into it.

Janie wasn't nervous at all. She loved the whole ride and didn't want to get off.

We had a fun day. My dinner of corned beef and cabbage didn't turn out. I've tried two years now, and I think I just don't like corned beef. It's all pickley and fatty. We ended up giving the girls chicken nuggets (which they thought was awesome) and we ate cereal. Next year I'll do a stir-fry with cabbage or something.

Hope you had a great "green" day!

Drum roll please...

WE MATCHED AT BANNER GOOD SAMARITAN!

We matched to our first choice and are so excited! This is a great program and a really nice hospital. And we get to stay!

We are humbled by the Lord's goodness to us. We pray that we will be worthy of His blessings.

Did I mention that we get to stay?

We've matched! Somewhere.

We got an email at 8:57 am this morning telling us that Jonathan matched. It was such a relief to know that we matched somewhere! We just don't know where yet. We find out on Thursday. And we can hardly stand it! Just so you know, if we didn't match, we would have cried. Then after the tears stopped long enough to talk on the phone, we would have started "scrambling." Scrambling requires a whole team. You have to contact all the residencies that didn't fill their spots and send in all your application stuff, do interviews, and hope they are willing to take you. Needless to say, you take what you can get, regardless of where it is or how you like the program. Not too fun.

So in celebration that we matched, the munchkins and I are going to party! I'm going to make mac 'n cheese for lunch and do 5 loads of laundry. I mean, nothing spells fun like clean clothes, right?

I'm only partly kidding. The real party is on Thursday when we find out if we get to stay. I hope so.

What we love...

Sami-

Sami loves all things art: stickers, glue, crayons, markers, paints, stickers, coloring books, stickers...you get the idea. She spends so much time at the table that I sometimes wonder if her little bum gets sore sitting on her hard chair. She makes us so much art that our "art gallery" gets full at least twice each day. She loves to show dad her "peatty pitures" as soon as soon as he walks in the door. And that's what she calls them: "oh, peatty pitures."

And I love her wild woman hair style. I think it adds to the artsy look, don't you? :)

Janie-

Janie loves to walk. We knew she would, eventually. She claps for herself after she walks a few steps. She also loves bracelets. But not to wear. She loves to hold them in her left hand. She gets as many as she can find in her left hand and then uses her right to play with any toy that seems interesting at the moment. She gets a little mad when I take away her bracelets during mealtime, but luckily food is a great distractor for her.

Chrissy & J-

We love that "Match Day" is on the 18th. That's the day we find out what residency Jonathan has matched to {not the day we play with matches, just fyi :) }. We also love that Jonathan only has three more weeks of school and then he is DONE! That's right, folks. His last day of school FOREVER is coming in three weeks. What will we do with ourselves? Well, I have a very long list of things that need to get done and things I want done before I lose Jonathan to residency. So we won't get bored with the 2 1/2 months that Jonathan will have off before his residency begins at the end of June. Yee-haw!!

I love my job!

I love these pictures of my girls because they highlight my favorite features: Sami's gorgeous blue eyes and Janie's beautiful, long eyelashes.

When we went to Wal-mart this week, there were tons of senior citizens. At least four of them came up to me and told me how cute my girls were. One sweet, cute, little old man came up and said to me "Your girls are so cute, I want to give them something." He then stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out several coins. Now, I will admit that in my head I was saying "No, not coins! They will put them in their mouths and then I will have to take them to the ER so they can get out the coins that will be lodged in their esophagus, etc." But he was so sincere, that I just smiled and said "That's so nice of you." Sami gladly took the nickel he offered and told him thank you three times and yelled "Bye" at him at least another three times. Janie just looked at him and looked at the coin like "What's that, and who are you, and why do I want that?" He ended up giving Sami both coins. Which she held all through the store. (I actually wanted to borrow one from her at the checkout but I thought that would be frowned upon by the cashier, so I gave the cashier 2 quarters instead of the exact change that Sami's nickel would have offered.) The coins "magically" disappeared once we got home. But it was so thoughtul and reminded me that one day, I will be old. And I will go to the grocery store admiring all the cute kids. So I need to enjoy every day while it's still my turn to have the cute kiddos. And they are cute, if I say so myself :).