Michelangelo

I have a new found
interest in the Renaissance Arts.
One day I would love to
travel to Italy and see first hand
these beautiful treasures.
One of my favorite artists from
this time is Michelangelo.
Some of my most admired
works of his include:
The Creation of Adam
Angels of the Sistine madonna
and the statue of
David

Michelangelo
An incredible scene from
the Sistine Chapel
ceiling, God creates Adam.
The touch of God's hand
awakens the newly created
Adam and thus begins
the life of human kind.

Mother

Me & Mom
May 2004

Mothers ARE angels
in disguise!

Nothing like a trip to the cider mill

Michigan of course is loaded with all kinds of cider mills. Apple Charlie's cider mill was the one that we picked to go to on this day in 2003. I took this picture with one of those disposable cameras. Jason was off in the pumpkin patch picking out his pumpkin so he didn't get in this shot. I had not realized that this was the last shot in the camera. This same day we bought some apple cider and some fresh donuts. YUMMY! They also have an animal farm that we visited. Along with that the boys got pony rides, and we all took horse and buggy ride. It was a good day. We left happy, with 4 pumpkins to carve the day before Halloween.

Follow your dreams

Here we have my sister and her oldest son Ted (T.J.) at his highschool graduation (June 2004). Ted has since gone on to college and is working on being a teacher. Ted is a great guy, he is like a walking encyclopedia. He can remember every little fact, especially about space, he loves it.

School Dance

This was Rona's very first school dance. She was in the sixth grade. They presented the class honors and then we went to the gymnasium afterwards for the dance. It was actually pretty fun. We both had a good time, even though I pretty much stayed back and let her do her thing. Although I did get out and do the chicken dance with her and her friends. NO, I did not embarrass her, at least not any more than I normally do, haha.

World's greatest mom

Well I have realized why I am getting the shadows on my pictures. The silver studs on the page are just lifting the photo so that the light doesn't distribute evenly on the page. The original pages do not look like that.

These pictures were taken at Christmas 2003 while I went to visit my parents at their home in Florida. I probably haven't told you guys enough, but I have an awesome mom. I couldn't ask for a better one. I just wish that she lived closer to me.

That's my boy!

This was taken on Mother's Day 2004. Joey is always good about having a photo session for/with mom.

Stars & Stripes

This picture had to be taken sometime in 2001. I am very proud to be an American, I couldn't imagine being anything else.

NEVER EVER AGAIN!!

Last summer my friend Danny took all of us to Cedar Point Amusement Park. For those of you not familiar it is in Sandusky, Ohio (right off of Lake Erie). We also went with his best friend, daughter and his girlfriend. We decided to take his boat there. On the way home we realized how much of a mistake this was. After rollercoaster rides, eating junk food, walking in the sun all day long we should have realized what was about to happen on our way home. We left the park at about ten that evening. The waves were rough on the water by then. Rona was the first one to get sick, I was about two minutes behind her. Joey lasted about 15 minutes after me, then he apologized to Danny for getting it on the side of his boat, my poor baby. NEVER EVER will we do that again, from now on all trips will be by car.

Merry Christmas Boys

Christmas 2000

Christmas is my favorite
time of the year.
There are so many wonderful
reasons, but the one
I love most is the
memories I have with
my children.
How could faces like these
not fill a person
with love?

Jason & Joey

Dreams

Rona Leigh
May 2004


"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Live the life you've imagined."
~Henry David Thoreau~

Captured in Time

This again is my maternal grandmother. Her short lived life is the inspiration for my scrapbooking. She died when my mother was just twelve years old. She was just thirty-six years old. It kind of makes me think, since that is my current age.

She was a beautiful woman, and took some wonderful photographs. I'm not sure why there is a shadow in the middle of the page, it must have happened during scanning, but it is not on my original page.

She was cheated by time, but at least it captured her beauty.

Twins

Here is a picture of my boys Jason (L) & Joey (R) taken about three years ago. This would have made them about seven years old.

The text read....

TWINS

You were bonded together in the
Heavens before the came to the Earth.
You heard each others hearts begin to
beat and you shared your day of birth.

If one of you began to cry the other
joined in. To show how much they cared.
You began learning about your differences
and about interests that you shared.

You have doubled a mother's love in so
many ways and in all the things you do.
I am truly grateful to have received such
a special gift, for I was blessed with two.

by Wendy Silva

Yes, I do feel truly blessed to have had twin boys. My maternal great grandmother had several sets of twins. Her twins were all fraternal, mine are identical. I'm not sure if I have given details about the twins birth in my blog, so here I go (possibly again).

I was two months pregnant when I found out that I was pregnant with twins. It was a shock to me, especially since we had just gotten out of the military and we had both just gotten our jobs. Remember I already have a daughter so we were not exactly prepared to another child, let alone two more. That didn't stop them from coming and I am so happy that they came.

I was in preterm labor for a long time before I actually delivered them. The doctor gave me some medicine to stop the contractions. I had an appointment with the doctor at 36 1/2 weeks. At that time he said that I was far enough along and told me to stop taking the medication. The last dose of medicine was taken that moring before the appointment. Within hours after stopping the medication I started having my contractions. I remember sitting there eating dinner when I realized that this was not what I normally felt, these were getting stronger and closer. My ex was at work at the time, so I had my mother call him and take me to the hospital. There was a bit of a mixup at the hospital with the positions of the babies, so they had to bring in the ultrasound machine at the last moment to check the positions. See Baby A (Jason) was in the birth canal, but Baby B (Joey) was breech. The doctor actually thought that the babies were reversed. I know this of course because that made my 5th ultrasound that I had seen, so I knew exactly how my babies were positioned. Anyways after figuring that out it was about time for me to deliver. Off to the birthing room...

As far as I know they always do epidurals on twins just in case they have to go to a c-section to get the other baby out. I have never worked in a civilian hospital, but this is how we always did it in the military. I worked in the operating room, which is who did all the c-sections for Labor & Delivery. Although they also called us for twins, just in case, but never did I ever come across a case of twins having to go to c-section. So I have seen many vaginal deliveries because of this. Anyways, this is what they did with me, they gave me an epidural. Of course for some reason mine didn't take. I kept telling them that I could feel everything, and they kept asking does the pain feel any less? NO!!!! They found out the next day that it didn't work when I had my tubal ligation and they had to use general anesthetic instead of the epidural they had planned on using. They kept the setup in my back to use the following day for my surgery.

So my delivery went on with me FEELING EVERYTHING. I pushed Jason out and the doctor was trying to get me to push out Joey. I told him "no way, I already gave you one baby you're gonna have to go in and get that one yourself!!" Especially since this was after I pushed one baby out and he had two arms up there trying to turn the second baby around. OUCH!! Eventually I surrendered, I let him have his way, I PUSHED. Actually I thought I was having triplets the placenta was so large. Because they are identical they shared one huge placenta instead of having two different ones.

Well finally my little ones were here. After bringing them home from the hospital we were afraid that after taking their wristbands off we would not remember which one was which. We decided to paint the oldest baby's toenail with nailpolish. When they were infants it was very difficult to tell them apart, but as they have grown older I look at them and see two totally different boys. I know when others see them they think they look identical, but to me they do not look identical at all, I know....because I am the mom.

Oh yes, they both weighed 5 lbs 6 ozs. Funny how they weighed exactly the same, usually one is larger than the other. There shared equally while in my womb, unfortunately I can't say that now. Also they were born 2o minutes apart, it took the 20 minutes to turn Joey around and convince me that I needed to push him out. I was just a bit stubborn.

Also I was lucky that I was able to have my mom and husband both in the deliveryroom with me. Of course that was along with what seemed like the entire hospital staff (okay I'm exaggerating a bit, but the room was packed). There was me, anesthesia, two doctors, my mom & husband, many nurses, and who knows maybe even people passing by to visit other expectant mothers. See they left the door wide open, so that everyone walking down the hallway could see the delivery, I was not sure why they did this, but at the time it didn't matter to me. I would not have cared if CNN was there covering the event. I just wanted them out!!! Of course later seeing it on television would not have made me very happy, but at the time who cares.

Oh one more thing to point out about my delivery. Actually it was about their names. See when we had my daughter they never told us what we were having, but we just had a feeling that it was a girl so we never picked out boy names. Well with the boys I went to see a specialist for one of my ultrasounds, and I asked him two questions. #1. What are their sexes? He said for sure one was a boy, but he couldn't be sure about the other one. #2 Are they identical? He was not positive but he thought that they were identical, but he couldn't tell for sure because there was like a seam down the placenta. This could have been just one large placenta, which would have made them identical, or it could have been two placentas fused together, which would have made them fraternal. Well again, we just knew in our minds that it was two identical boys, so we picked out two boy's names. Of course as I was sitting in the delivery room waiting for the staff I thought to myself "Oh my God, what if I have a girl." How can I have babies and now know what to name them, so we all brainstormed and tried to come up with a name. I knew that I wanted the initals to match, and that the first boy out would be Jason. So if a girl came out I would have to come up with a name for her, luckily it wasn't a girl because I never came up with a girls name that started with a "J". So here I am with Jason & Joseph (Joey).

Latest scrapbook page

As I said I worked on my scrapbook the other day. This is my finished page. The picture and the text were taken from this blog. The picture was taken this sweetest day, and the text was taken from "Me @ 36...Life's Little Lessons."

I finally learned how to merge two pages together. The program was from my old printer a Canon (photostich). No wonder I couldn't figure out how to do it, because I no longer had it on my computer. My nephew finally remembered and told me, so I pulled out my old discs and copied it again to my computer so that I could scan the rest of my scrapbook pages. Once the program was found the rest was pretty much easy to follow.

A little bit of the edges have been cut off in the process of scanning, but overall it worked out pretty good.

I'll try to work on a few more this weekend if I get the opportunity. Sharing my computer with all the kids and my nephew has made it difficult for me to get a turn. Since it is getting colder outside they are not as interested in playing outside all day. Although the past couple of days have actually been pretty nice out.

Halloween Pics

A neighbor's yard all decorated for the holiday!!

Our candy tray used for passing out candy to the lil' creatures
of the night. Actually this guy is pretty cool, when
you push a button he will move his
eyes from side to side and give out an eerie moan.
FRIGHTENING!!

This is the same neighbor's yard. This doorway
leads to the haunted house that they created.
They did a great job, the kids loved it.
They had to pass through this to get their
treat at the end.

Carved pumpkins leading up stairs to haunted house.

Okay, so I'm not the professional
photographer,but you get the idea.
My daughter was passing out candy, so I called her
and told her to come over to this house so she could
go through it. She chickened out so
neither of us went through it.
The boys were brave, they went
through it twice.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2005!!

Where have I been??

What? Did you think I left? Not a chance!!

I've been kind of busy lately. Lets see.....Went to Greenfield Village on Friday with my boys' class. I think that last time I went there was either when I had gotten married or about the time I was pregnant with the boys, either way a long time ago. We had a good time though. Then Saturday... I had a date, which went well. Sunday....I did housework all day. Monday....was suppose to be my first day back to work in two weeks, but I had to go for jury duty instead. Luckily I wasn't picked so I was home fairly early. Of course Halloween with the kids that evening. Today was my first day back to work, my wrist is killing me. My body needs to get use to working again, other than that it was a good day, and I am glad to be back.

Another reason that I have not really be posting is that my nephew came to live with me as of Thursday. He is a computer freak, so between the two of us and my children we have to divide up computer time. I actually did write a post yesterday, but I went to plug in the pumpkin and managed to unplug the computer instead. I figured what the heck, I'll write something tomorrow. I took a couple of pics from last night. If I get a chance to I'll post some soon.

*Quote for the day "You can't build your reputation on what you're going to do." Henry Ford
Since I took a trip to Greenfield Village that seemed appropriate.

Life's Little Lessons

Learn: to gain knowledge of a subject or skill by study, experience, etc.

Me @ 36...little things I have learned in my lifetime.

* Be careful of making promises to your children. If you forget they will always be there to remind you. * Always check to see if the toilet seat is down before sitting. * You do not have to see friends often to know that they are great friends. * If my child wants to wear a sweater in the summer, no need to argue, when he is hot he will take it off. Sometimes you have to let them make their own decisions. * Pay attention to how other's treat their children (even strangers). You may see exactly what you do not want to become. * Take lots of pictures, memories should not be forgotten. * Always check your shoes before walking out of a public restroom (or even worse the back of your pants). * Any man that hits a woman deserves to be out on the curb (my words of wisdom). * Tell your family every day that you love them, there may be no tomorrow. * Never expect that a man will always be there to take care of you, learn to take care of yourself, but appreciate him while he is there. * Be careful when birds fly overhead, sometimes things fall (this I know from experience). * read, read, read, you're never to old to stop learning. * communication is vital in a relationship, learn to do it. * laugh often, out loud. * a smile really does make you feel better. * my mom is awesome. * kids say the funniest things, write them down, you will forget. * keeping kids away from another parent for no reason other than your own selfish reason is just a shame. * kids need both parents. * respect your children, and they will respect you. * take classes, learn anything you want. * If someone tells you a secret, keep it a secret (I've always been good with this one, but I have seen it do some damage). Always check both shoes when purchasing new ones. It stinks to find out you have two left feet, or a size 7 and a size 9. *

Would someone turn off that damn internal clock?

GEEZ, there is nothing I would love more on my two weeks off of work than to have a good day of sleeping in. I mean REALLY sleeping in. I usually get up at 5 am for work, and these last two weeks I have been getting up between 6 am and 7 am. THIS IS NOT SLEEPING IN!!! I believe that I am naturally more of a night person. I am the type to set the clock for the exact time that I need to get up in the morning. Unlike my daughter I don't need to have some advance wake up time to let myself adjust. I am not a morning person, but I jump up and get myself out the door. I don't sit around and drink coffee (I don't drink it at all) or read the newspaper early in the morning. Although the thought of this is interesting to me. I would love to be a morning person, and get up and have that quality time to myself, but I just can't seem to get my lazy butt out of bed. I just am not a morning person, probably never will be. I cherish every moment that I am there in bed, especially since I am a restless sleeper. Maybe one day I'll adjust and learn to be more of a morning person. Until then I'll be a night person trapped in a morning person's body.

What else is going on? Lets see......In about an hour I am going to pick my nephew up from the airport. He is flying in from Florida. He has been raised by my parents, and has now decided to come up here to live with me. I don't mind this, even though Nathan is quiet, he is a good guy. He wants to get a job and he will need to get his driver's license. Unfortunately my transmission went in my other car last week, so he won't be able to drive that, unless of course I pay to get it fixed. I'm still deciding on that one, lots of money.

Yeah, my trans went out while I was on my way to my favorite restaurant last Saturday. It died right in front of the Michigan Stadium, so I parked it. The walked the rest of the way into town and enjoyed my meal. I didn't see why my day should not have some pleasure in it. I was also going to see a movie at the theater, but that was a bit too far for me to walk. So I settled for lunch, and then went back to the car to get it towed. So right now it is sitting out front waiting for me to decide what to do with it. Luckily I have another car, that is probably why I have taken it so lightly, otherwise I would probably have been upset. Life is good.

My man Marvin

Marvin Gaye just happens to be one of my all time favorite singers. Something about his music soothes me. I remember several years ago when I was on afternoons. I would stay up into the middle of the night, and I would turn down all the lights, light a few candles around the house and listen on some Marvin Gaye tunes. I haven't done that in a long time. Usually I am in bed by 9 o'clock so I don't get that peace and quiet that I enjoyed so much. Although lately I have had some alone time in the morning while the kids are in school, but nothing compares to sitting with some lighted candles and listening to some great tunes. Huh, maybe I just need to make myself stay up a bit later, at least on the weekends.

I remember watching about his death on the news when I was a teenager. What a tragedy to be killed by your own father. Marvin died on April 1, 1984.

I have been meaning to but haven't quite gotten around to visiting the Motown Museum. This is a shame since I am close to Detroit. Maybe soon I'll break away from my hectic schedule and go (haha).

Beautiful Smile

People tell me that I have a beautiful smile, what do you think?