Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Michael :)

 
I thought I'd do a post on Michael.  He's getting to be quite creative and such a good big brother.  :)
 


 He's been cooking a lot!  He's always been a good cook, but now I think he's better than I am!  He makes pizza from scratch. 


 He loves Si, from Duck Dynasty :) But his all time favorite show is The Andy Griffith Show, we watch it EVERY DAY!

 He takes good care of his little brothers and sisters....most of the time.  ;)

 He makes venison jerky totally on his own.  I would have had no idea how to make this, but my 11 yr old can do it and it's SO good! :) 

 He loves the show 'Chopped' so we have 'Chopped' lunches around here sometimes :)  He can put together a good soup in minutes.

 Valentines Day :)

 He loves to play bingo.


He especially likes to WIN at bingo :)

He took these plain squirt guns and 'Steampunked' them,
 They turned out so cool!!


He plays so nicely outside with Toma, who is afraid of the snow.



He made these lemon drops one night, they were so good :)

And this hat...he took a plain purple felt hat...
 Glued foam pieces to it....






Painted it... (he walked up to the hardware store in the snow to buy the paints to do this)

And Steampunked it!  I loved the way it turned out.


 More pizza, this time showing Alex how to do it too...

 I don't know what this is, I found it on the camera ;)

 Or this.


the leprechaun brought these cool glasses...

Flarp, his favorite :)
 
                                He made this entire turkey dinner by himself too...good thing I checked though, because he almost put it in the oven with the 'innards' bag and neck still in!  Now that would have been an unpleasant surprise!! 

 
Now if I can download it, I'll include a lego stop motion movie he made the other day, it's really neat! 

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

4 years ago today....

Four years ago today we were in Ukraine meeting Artiom.  4 years!!  I can hardly believe it.





These were taken last night, you can see how much he's grown and changed in the last 4 years.  Although I think he will always be 'small'.





Now that's a big smile!






He normally isn't too fond of the camera, so it was nice that he actually wanted me to take these.



He's a handful alright....he's gentle natured, but I've learned in the last 4 years that raising a child with profound autism is not easy.  I've learned to take it day by day.

I'm still trying to navigate around the blog/pictures since I haven't posted in so long I've forgotten how to!  But here are a few pictures from the past year.  
Christmas 2013






Sisters birthday fun :)


Very curious about his big sisters baby when they came to visit :)

 His 9th birthday :)



And I'll end it with the only baby picture we have of him, along with his baptismal necklace that we were given at the orphanage.