Finally Blogging...

It's taken an age for me to have five 'spare' minutes to put a blog post together. Once the old PC died life went a little nuts. While it was dead I did THREE photo-shoots (all unpaid), which resulted in such a 'back log' of work it has taken two solid weeks of catch up. I think I am finally there (pretty much). There are still a lot of things I need to spend time doing, but half term is coming soon... However, I do have the promise of 3 more PAID photo-shoots before Christmas so I need to keep on top of things now. Just need to pray they actually happen, because on the basis of them doing so we went out and bought I new PC. Needs must!

Anyway, some 'Home-Ed' updates...

Jake (Bugs) has now been in college for almost half a term. He loves it in many ways, but in other ways finds it frustrating/annoying and most definitely he is SHOCKED by the amount of work he has to do!! The enjoyment outweighs the rest atm, but he doesn't like having to write everything down and, because he already has a fair amount of 'ability' with a camera & with processing he doesn't feel he has learnt anything very new yet ~ apart from dark room skills, which is entirely new! He's not sure he likes all the analysis and 'how to's, but I think he realises that things will get more challenging as time goes on (at least we hope so). The biggest stretch for him is not in the actual work itself, but in managing his time and keeping on top of all he has to do. The work all has to be presented 'artistically', and him being such a perfectionist means this can take a VERY long time!! All the same, he'll be fine I think, when he gets better into the swing of it all :D. Next week they are off on a residential week to Wasdale YHA, shooting landscapes I think, so that should be a lot of fun for him.

Taz just continues on at home with most of the same work he was doing last year atm. I haven't done anything about contacting the college for him yet. REALLY MUST DO THAT ASAP!!!

All the others are settling well into a new 'school' year and working well. Even Stitch is managing to apply himself a little better this year and mostly gets his required work done each day. He is bright as a button and I have no worries about him ~ I just wish there were more hours in a day to make it all a bit more tailored to his needs.

Chip, well he is rising 3 and not one to be left out of ANYTHING! He needs an almost constant 'playmate', be that human or techno! He has mastered the computer mouse and now likes to commender a laptop for as much of the 'school day' as he can! When he's not at the computer he wants to have someone play a game with him, or to join in with whatever work they are doing! This works a large part of the time, but sometimes it's a challenge. However, he has an amazing ability to concentrate and is a whiz with a colouring pen, so that helps!

Lilo is doing really well with her reading and writing. All About Spelling has absolutely proved to be the right program for her (I somehow knew it would be) and she is coming on in leaps and bounds now. DD's spelling is still more natural to him, so he is slowly pulling away, but keeping him working alongside her motivates her to work hard at keeping up and thankfully is not holding him back, so for now that continues to work well. We started Level 4 this term and I hope to complete it and Level 5 this year. If we get to Level 6 that will be a bonus, but I don't think we will. The real issue I have now is that that Stitch has decided he would quite like to join in these lessons, but of course has missed 2 1/2 levels of work, so can't really just 'jump in'. His spelling is amazingly good though, for a 6 year old, so I don't think that taking him back to Level 1 is the right thing either. I think I'll just have to try and think of a way to catch him up quick, so he can take part. ATM he does Reading Express, or Explode the Code Online while we are doing AAS.

In other news, TP has decided that she REALLY likes taking pictures and is learning to use Lightroom. She's not ambitious with it, but just enjoying it, which is lovely. Her heart is still set on an animal career of some kind. The other day she talked about the RSPCA ...

The highlight of most weeks seems to now be 'art afternoon' on a Wednesday. The children now really look forward to this and to a large extent it is proving to be quite successful. Even Taz is enjoying it!! We've studied Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso (used an online program called 'Picassohead'), Romero Britto  & done some Word Art (sometimes the work has taken more than one session).

I have a couple of things I'd like to get time to look into at some point. One is seeing if organising a 'Forest School' group to run from my back garden might be an option. I wonder if there might be some H'Ed families locally who would like to take part. The Moss, where we live, is an very interesting place in terms of flora and fauna, and could provide a great base. We have a big back garden and an adjacent field which we are permitted to use (although I may need to check with the owner for this purpose) and can provide shelter on terrible-weather days, and hot cups of tea for grown-ups :D. It's a thought. I have a contact number. Watch this space...

I have also been contacted by someone interested in bettering 'music' provision to H'Ed families in the North West. I'm not sure where this might go, but hopefully somewhere...

As for me, I seem to be constantly in a whirlwind of never ending 'stuff to do'. I feel I wear a sign over my head, saying 'in house computer technician' much of the time and I often I knew just a touch more than I do. I know enough to wear that sign, but not enough to make things happen in a snap, so everything seems to take forever ~ from networking issues across the PC and laptops, to internet connection issues that drive me WILD!! Paul hasn't a clue, so it all falls to me. I enjoy it UP TO A POINT and then it's just a time drain and a stress. Currently I have on-hold three 'tech' jobs; build Paul a PC for down in his church office, build Jake a PC to use for college work & convert an OLD HP510 laptop (which is dead slow, but still works) to a Chromebook or Andriod laptop (either would be fine as it's just to get something working for Chip to use in the daytime when the others need the other laptops for schooly stuff). I tried to do the HP510 last night, but without success, so now that's going to be a more frustrating job than I had hoped :(. Doing the two computer builds MIGHT be easy, or not... It depends on how the two towers that I have redundant upstairs play along! But first I have to do a whole load of file backing-up and user data cloning, so as not to loose too much in the process, so it's a whole lot more complicated than it might actually otherwise be! Besides that I try to keep on top of home-ed, now with three secondary age children who need stretching and three primary age children who stretch me! I am trying to swim twice a week, for a couple of hours each time (to loose weight), and have just committed to swim 2 MILES in Windermere next summer, in the Great North Swim! I still need to decide a cause to do it for :D. And I am continually trying to push myself as a photographer and get my business to be some kind of success. That's not proving to be easy either, as most people actually don't want to pay very much for photography services, and I don't want to charge less than I consider I am worth! I really need to try and find a market outside of my immediate social sphere, but that is a challenge without being able to drive.

OK ~ that'll do for now I think, and if you got this far, WELL DONE!!

Mostly about Bugs ~ and other stuff!!

I don't even know where I'm up to with blogging! I really should keep up to speed better, but I don't and I'm not sure I can either, so it is what it is these days ~ sorry!

Where shall I start..?

I don't think I've blogged Bug's college interview yet, which was back on TP's birthday at the end of Feb! We weren't quite sure what to expect, but parents were invited to attend, so I did. I asked Bugs if he wanted me to disappear for the actual 'interview' part, but most parents seemed to be sticking around and I was surprised (but pleased) when he said he wanted me to also. I don't think he was lacking confidence, but I think he wasn't really sure what HE needed to know about the course etc..., so I was there to help prompt his questions. I was glad I did stay though because his interviewer was not terribly chatty or forth coming about anything really. He sort of talked Bugs through his tick sheet and made assumptions that Bugs knew about stuff on the course he would have had no way of knowing before! He was not a great conversationalist and seemed to be more interested in making sure his form was filled in than whether Bugs was right for the course. I prompted the fact that Bugs had brought a portfolio (it cost us enough money and time..!) and when he saw it he did seem quite impressed and asked Bugs a few questions about certain images. And that was that really. Lastly, he gave Bugs an assignment to complete within 3 weeks. He had to analyse 5 of another photographer's images, take a series of 15 shots of his own on a theme ("A day in the life...") and post 15 images to Flickr (which he already had so that wasn't an issue). I guess this gives them an idea of where each of the students is starting from and also an idea of how they work. Bugs enjoyed it and has now submitted ~ just in time! I think he's going to be a scrape-the-deadline kind of person all the way through, but I think he'll get used to it. The next we should hear will be an invitation to a summer 'tea party' in June ~ a kind of get to know the tutors kinds of thing I guess. And then there may be another assignment to do over the summer break too. It feels all very 'full steam ahead' and Bugs (and I) are really excited about it all. 

The one thing that is still a little niggling worry is that the interviewer had no record of the entrance tests Bug's had done! I think it was really just a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, as he agreed, it would be unlikely that they would have offered Bugs an interview for a course they were not willing to accept him onto. However, the next letter that came in the post was a provisional offer based on grades ~ which of course was a standard letter, but not at all relevant to Bugs. I said to him we'd sit on it and wait to see what comes next before we chase anything else.  I personally think he's in :D

The following week, at the beginning of March, Bugs and I took off to Birmingham NEC for the day to attend 'Focus on Imaging'. We had a really fun day together; handling cameras and lenses we can only dream of! Bugs took off a couple times when I was interested in business-y type things (like websites and album prints...) and took a couple of shots of one of the models (braver than me!).

I, on the other hand, quite by chance got to go have an impromtu coffee with Steve Gosling ~ one of the top UK landscape photographers! He was really friendly and down to earth, and even though landscapes are not my forte, he was really encouraging and had some good tips for Bugs (who came and found us), who loves to shoot landscapes.

When we were almost done for the day, and considering heading home, a guy came up to us and asked if we'd like to win a tripod. Even though I'd recently replaced the one Bugs broke with a better one, I knew anything we won here would be WAY better, so of course we said we would (who wouldn't!). We had to hunt for a little bit of 'lost' card called Leonard! We were told there were about 100 people looking for him. We truly did not expect to find him ~ the exhibition was HUGE. BUT... we did find him! Well, I didn't - Bugs did! And it took us all of about 3 mins! Seriously... we stopped to look at a Fuji camera Bugs fancies and then set off to look. We turned a corner - Bugs looked up into the corner of a stand - and there was Leonard! And just like that he won himself neigh on £500 worth of kit (tripod (named 'Eric') & all the accessories for the tripod - which, by the way, is also a monopod, a rock bag & a T-shirt for each of us)!!
So thank-you 3LeggedThing for making my son VERY happy that day, and believe me, he has become best friends with that tripod!

We'd both like to go back next year ~ maybe with some money in our pockets!! ;D

The rest of March has ticked along pretty 'normally' with schooling etc... Nothing miraculous to report!  DD completed Reading Eggs and moved into the Comprehension part and I know Stitch is pretty close to completing Reading Eggs too. He's not ready for the Comprehension yet though, so I'm going to have to think on my feet a little :D. I'm hoping our subscription to Sumdog will fill the Reading Eggs gap with computer-based English for a bit and I'll add in a bit of paper English when I feel he's more ready for it.

Somewhere near the beginning of March I also took delivery of our very first set of FIAR books (which I got from Conquest Books - who btw, also now stock All About Spelling - Yeah!!). Those books are GORGEOUS!! The short, fun lessons are right up Stitch's street and he LOVES the books too! DD & Lilo also enjoy it. I had feared it would be too young for them, especially Lilo, but it isn't at all and I am definitely glad I took the plunge. I can't fit it in every day, or even every week, but we've done two books so far and it's been fun for all of us ~ no stress! :D

On the subject of All About Spelling... which I wasn't, but I am now... We are now on Level 3. I can see MASSIVE improvements in Lilo's spelling. She still struggles, but what this is doing is giving her the tools & rules she needs to be able to build words successfully. DD is right up there with her, so his spelling is excellent for a 7yo boy! I think come September I will start again with Stitch, back at Level 1. He's quite capable of doing it, but he needs to be able to attend for a decent amount of time, which is where he has issues atm ~ and not just in school! He has about a 20 second attention span it seems at times! 

A week ago last Friday, I took a shopping trip my girls and my M-I-L in Chester we had fun and the pics are blogged HERE. We shopped till we dropped and the girls did fantastically well with their money. If you read their own blogs (links on the right) they made lists of what they bought!!

What else to say..?

Well, I guess the other big news concerns me and my photography...

This last six months I have been taking an online course and that ends in just a few days time :(. It's been great. I've learnt loads and I have the course on-file to keep for reference in the future. The last assignment was to do something out of our ordinary. SO, I reluctantly (I mean kicking and screaming) obeyed and hunted for some inspiration. There are SO many photographers who inspire me, but they mostly shoot outdoors (as I like to) and right now it is simply TOOOO cold to head outside with my crowd. SO I needed some indoor inspiration that was doable in my rather busy house!! I fell upon Sue Bryce and instantly knew I could do something like this with my girls. The upshot of it all was this shoot. When I look at these pictures I struggle with two things... first - believing that those two beautiful young ladies are MY little girls!, secondly - believing that I actually TOOK those shots! It's so confidence boosting to have the knowledge that I really did!

Now, the story doesn't end there! Having seen what I was capable of, coupled with some other spiritual inspiration that weekend (see HERE if you're interested), I felt led to do something new. I still believe what I do for my business is right ~ I am definitely a family lifestyle photographer ~ I shoot on the fly and I love it! But I have wanted for a LONG time to 'give something back'. I've wanted to give the gift of photography just because I can, but not at the expense of my business ~ so how and to whom?

A friend of mine (J) runs a charity. She is a professional beautician & masseur. Her charity gifts 100% free treatments to women refereed to her as needing some TLC!! Many of her clients are cancer suffers, or survivors. Many are struggling with bereavement  Many simply are struggling with incredibly low self-esteem, for whatever reasons (she won't always know why). She gives each of them 7 free treatments (of their choosing) and, in that time, aims to build them up and help them feel valuable and valued again. She is amazing at what she does and I love her! 

As I was editing my pictures of my girls I was just thinking about, and praying for J (as God prompted me), and then it came to me! I shared my idea with J on the Sunday and we have since shared the idea with J's support prayer- network. They have unanimously said we should go for it!

Currently, when J's clients finish their sessions with her, she gives them a bunch of flowers as a gift. The idea that came to me was that we could offer them a make-over and photo-shoot instead! J would do the make-up and I would take the pictures. Our aim would be to make these ladies feel like a million dollars for the day, and then to give them a portrait of themselves that they could cherish & enjoy. We envisage this being all the more valuable for those that are terminally ill. The image of themselves that they will leave behind for their loved ones to treasure, will be one them looking beautiful!

J and I are SOOOO excited about this. I can't wait to get started! I need to scout out a location and then I am going to start with J herself! We figure I need to put together a little 'flyer' so that the ladies can see what's on offer ~ so I need some models in order to do that. We don't imagine that all the clients will want the photo-shoot, but we hope lots of them will and it will be a whole lot of fun for them.

If you are a Christian, I would ask you to pray for our new venture. Pray that I will find the right venue to do this in (light and décor being the main issues) and then that I'll be able get the images I envisage. Pray that we will be able to bless these women with beautiful pictures to build them up and make them feel incredible. Please also pray for the financial side of this. We are doing this at NO CHARGE. Everything will be a gift ~ the make-up, the time, the disk of images, the print - EVERYTHING! We are stepping out in faith for God to provide for this, and trusting Him to be faithful. We both believe the idea has come from & been guided by Him, so please just pray for J & I going forward ~ that we would keep listening and get it right for J's clients and for God!

And on that note I'll leave you with some Sunday afternoon snapshot cuteness...

A Morning Glimpse

I'm hopeless at 'real' blogging these days, 
but I thought I'd share a little snippet of Wednesday morning with you...

Chip decided it was a puzzle day. 

He hasn't done too many puzzles up until now, but has suddenly got the right idea

And today it was hard to get him to move on to anything else!

Above was an attempt to do so, he did it for a short while, then back to the puzzles.

Problem with puzzles and Chip ~ he still requires an assistant and if there isn't one available launching ensues!

In other parts of the room TP was reading, & DD was reading to me.

A little after this Minnie took over with Chip and I did "All About Spelling" with DD and Lilo

Spelling is still a constant struggle for Lilo, but at least we have phonetically correct spelling now and she is making good progress. Most days she gets more spellings right than wrong now :D In the end, on this test they both got 20/25 with only a couple that they both spelt wrong ('oyster' being one of them, 'while' being another!). At the moment we are just running over a few of the more difficult-to-spell words, but when we are done we will be already on Level 3. 

In the study, Bugs was working on some editing of shots he took whilst at Focus On Imaging on Tuesday ~ which is really another post in itself...

Most of this time Stitch had been working on the laptop (probably on Reading Eggs) and at this point something required a LOT of attention... (there are a good many of these moments in our days!)

And all that before snack-break @11am, when I put my camera down and it disappeared for some time!!

Probably after snack I did some maths with DD & Stitch, DD worked on Explode the Code (Online) and before lunch we did Geography  all together. We were looking at 'Geomorphological Processes' this week ~ they all loved learning that word :D!  For Bugs and Taz it was a quick revision of material they have already covered (in more depth) in their Science this last year, but not for the others. I often get groans when it's time for Geography, but in reality they all find it quite interesting, so I ignore the groans!

I've no idea what happened the rest of the day, but there'd have been some older kid's maths and English going on, and Taz did some Science I think.  He did his end of module test today (Thurs) and got 100%, so now he's moving onto the next level course ~ he's chosen Biology, which I must admit surprised me rather. When I chose Biology at school it was because it was the only science I really understood, but I know he's chosen it because it genuinely interests him ~ which is a much better reason! Scarily like his dad, who did Maths, Music and Biology at college, Taz would like to do Music and Biology too (and said so before his Dad told him that's what he did!). Actually Taz could probably also manage Maths if he wanted to, but I'm almost certain that won't be a choice he makes!

So there it is, a bit of a morning here - in pictures.