Singing Primary Songs

When my grandfather passed away last year my cousins and I were invited to sing together at his funeral. Since then I have loved the song "I am trying to be like Jesus" and I love being able to tell Daphney all about him. I am so grateful for the choices and examples of my grandparents. 

Just in case you think Daphney is perfect and easy to get to sing more than once...

Understanding Frustration

Sometimes I think I must be gigantic and intimidating to those tiny kids.... but sadly not to my own.

Yesterday, I was trying to load and start the dishwasher and failing to do so, because Demitri kept unloading it faster than I was loading it. To help the situation Daphney decided to come over and close the dishwasher so Demitri could not play in it.

You can imagine how easy it is to load the dishes when it is repeatedly being unloaded and closed right?!

During this malfunction of communication I could not see my children's frustration as clearly as my own until finally Daphney turned to me and said, "You are killing me! You are really killing me, SMALLS!"


That kind of made my day. Me- someone who has had the nickname of "the beast" and "amazonian", being called "smalls" really made me chuckle.

Painting a Personal Gift

The Initial Sketch

This last Christmas I had the opportunity to paint two identical paintings for brothers. This scene is a combination of 6 different pictures from a camping trip they use to go on in their younger years. 

At a check point with the commissioner even though they gave me lots of artistic freedom.

The final finished product.

Orangutan Baby

 The kids and I recently fell in love with a 2 week old baby orangutan named "Surianna" at the Omaha zoo.View Birth Announcement Now Daphney feels like we have some kind of ownership over the baby and always wants to go back and see how it is doing and growing. She is also my biggest fan, because anytime anyone comes over she asks them if they want to come and see what her mom painted recently.

Both the giraffe painting and the orangutan paintings are getting framed and will go in Demitri's room shortly.

I also painted a jungle like scene on Demitri's wall. Still putting on the finishing touches to finish the wall but here is an updated picture. Stay tuned for pics of the whole room make over coming soon!

 Pictured is the original photo and then my painting that I took a few artistic liberties with .