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!