last days of summer break

Little J had an allergic reaction today, we're not sure what caused it - seems like it may have been the mulch, or something in it. We had benedryl, gave it - and it cleared up. This scared me because of my own personal history with anaphylaxis, and with my brothers death by anaphylaxis. We have intentions of allergy testing at his 3rd year check up. We keep a journal of each occurrence, and in 2 years this is #6 and one of the smaller ones. Today was hives, and swelling. Thank goodness the benedryl did the trick, and he was not at all bothered by any of it.

I've realized that the summer is coming to a close for weekly outings w/ the boys - so this week we tried to make the last week of summer - fun. It turns out that the planets didn't align and I had chaos... flat tires, toddlers with busted eyes, computer problems... anyway - Friday and Saturday were dedicated to park hopping... so that's what we did.

I have been playing w/ photoshop recently. Big J uses it all day long, every day - that and Illustrator, but I wanted to learn some basics, so I checked out a very informative book, found some terrific tutorials and am officially screwing up pictures by the dozen with my new found love for photoshop! The red leaf picture in the slideshow is my favorite so far... I removed the color, and added back in the red leaf. I found this amazing strand of red leaves hanging in a perfectly green tree at the park today; one of the leaves had fell to the ground and was so glossy and shiny that I had to take a picture. I wish I'd have taken a photo of the woman who thought I must be insane to take a photo of the ground.... HA.