My Little Authors

M and C both love "writing" books. M's most recent novel is entitled "Fairy Arshall Arts". Did you mean 'martial arts', I asked her when she announced the title. No, it's definitely 'Arshall Arts'. What that means, I'm not sure but I found her story quite entertaining so, on the off chance that you will too, here is a copy of her story, as dictated to me, as well as some pictures of the finished product, once the illustrations were added.

Chapter 1

Once upon a time there was a fairy named Leah. She went to Fairy World with all her friends. One of her friends was named Rosie. Her other friend was named Bella. Her other friend was named Karina. Her next one was named Madeleine. One time there was a girl named Amy and she was looking for fairies to trap. And she trapped all of the fairies. And then she put them in a cage. And so she went to look at the orange fairy Bella. She had orange leaf magic then she caught all of the fairies. Then she wanted to catch more fairies and she catched more and put them in the cage. And then she wanted to catch all of the fairies in Fairy World and she catched all of them.

Chapter 2 The Fairies Get Lost

When the fairies got lost, they found a deep dark wood and they heard a growling and snarling and there were two tigers and two bears. Karina, the silver fairy, poofed an elephant with silver drink inside of it which it shot out of its nostrils and it poofed out the tigers and bears and they disappeared so the fairies could go through.

Chapter 3 The Fairies Go in the Forest

They wanted to go in the forest. Leah, the pink flower fairy, poofed pink flowers all around them so powers could go inside them.

Chapter 4 The Fairies found the way to their Fairy Home

They went and went and found their home and they were so excited that they got out of the cage and they went to the play place which is already in their home and the Fairy Queen and Fairy King were so happy to see them.

The End.

C's books are usually similar in structure to M's book, although with more adventures and monsters to be sure. But this time, he decided he wanted to make a comic book. So Jess set him up with a camera on a tripod, a white backdrop, and left him to it. C planned out his plot, built his Lego characters, and carefully arranged them in each scene to tell the story. He then took all the pictures himself. Then, Jess helped him format the pictures into a comic book, and add the dialogue, and voila, a fantastic comic book, called "The Quest for the Diamond City".

Oh, and finally, I thought this picture was great. This was after S, C and M spent several hours playing together (a miracle, I know), and they played "radio". Whoever's turn it was to be on the radio, sat inside a little tent and used a microphone to broadcast their program to the others. It was really cute.

"School" Pictures

After a few years of disappointing school pictures (fake smiles, messy hair that was neat when they left that morning, corny backgrounds, etc, etc), I've decided now to have Jess take our school pictures every year. That way the portraits of the younger ones match the portraits of the older ones AND I have complete control over the pictures! Plus this year, I got the added bonus of getting to use my new Paint the Moon photoshop actions to enhance the photos, so fun! So, here are the before and afters, one "good" portrait of each kid and one goofy portrait to keep the whole thing fun for everyone.

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H didn't get the concept of making goofy faces so this is the best silly face we could get from him (he's about to let out a loud roar on behalf of the dinosaur he's holding):

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And finally, this isn't a school picture but C wanted Jess to take pictures of him with his best friend Howie and at one point in the photo shoot, Jess stuck a dog treat inside C's collar to keep Howie from jumping off the chair and I just love the expression on C's face as Howie tries to find his treat!

Happy Halloween!

We've been celebrating Halloween around here the past few days and here are a few pictures of what we've been up to.

We spent the Monday before Halloween carving our jack-o-lanterns, like we always do. M didn't want to touch the pumpkin guts at all but C enjoyed every minute. I bought a miniature pumpkin for H and he was happy playing with the seeds for a very long time. It didn't take long for the seeds to end up in his hair though!

Since Halloween was on a Sunday this year and we didn't want to go trick-or-treating on the Sabbath, on Saturday night, we took the kids to a Trunk or Treat activity at the church. There were a ton of people there - I handed out candy to over 200 kids in less than half an hour. Our car was parked across the "street" from Nolene and Clay's car, Jess's cousin and her husband who just moved to Edmonton, so that was fun to be neighbours for a few minutes!

I often put a lot of time and effort into my kids' costumes but this year, I just didn't feel like it. So I bought costumes for H and M. S wanted to be a cheerleader which was great since I had sewed her a cheerleader skirt when she was 6 so I just had to add a simple panel to the waist and it fit her just fine. Topped it off with a dollar-store t-shirt and bought her some pom-poms and she was good. C wanted to be a skeleton and since that's what H was too, I thought it was a great idea for them to match (so cute). But I didn't want a gory skeleton costume for him and I didn't want to spend hours shopping around for one in his size that was similar to H's (besides, storebought costumes always rip so quickly). So I decided I would spend some time making one for him. I used an online tutorial for making a skeleton costume using freezer paper to make a stencil and then white fabric paint. It took a few hours but I'm happy with the result (and so was he!)

The fact that they all ended up colour coordinated was a complete accident!

We went to a Halloween party on Friday at which costumes were mandatory for the adults too so I got to see Jess dress up in a costume for the first time in years. Here's what he came up with: (that's the same tuxedo he wore on our wedding day!)

H is completely obsessed with dinosaurs these days. Also other animals that roar such as bears, lions, and tigers. But mostly dinosaurs. C has a 16 inch tall hard rubber t-rex and H has claimed it as his own and takes it to bed with him. He also has numerous smaller dinosaurs that he likes to take to bed with him and after I tuck him in, I'll often hear him roaring away in his crib as his dinosaurs talk to each other. I'm really wishing I'd made him a dinosaur costume instead, that would have been the cutest thing in the world but maybe he'll still love them next year...

Other things that have happened in October:

C started his first hockey lessons. He spends an hour every Saturday basically practising his skating, trying to kick a soccer ball around on the ice, and playing British Bulldog. Hopefully he'll get to play an actual game soon, he'd really enjoy that. I'm really amazed at how quickly his skating has improved. The first week he went out, it had been a couple of years since he'd been skating and he could barely stay standing, let alone move around. But after a few short weeks, he's out there skating his heart out and he barely even falls down now!

Also, I bought some PhotoShop actions from Paint the Moon, a SAHM blogger and photographer who does amazing things with PhotoShop. And I've been wasting/spending a ton of time playing around with them, they make editing photos so much easier and really fun too. Here are a few of the pictures I've edited.

And this one is the biggest difference between the before and after (and no, I don't remember why he had green lips, probably a marker or something):

I think I went too far on his eyes. There's this one action called "Sparkle Eyes" that whitens the whites of the eyes but I think I turned it up too high, he looks kind of freaky. But besides that, I really like the picture so I'll have to redo it with less whitening in the eyes.