We're baaaack...

Well, we've BEEN back, but I just haven't had a chance to sit down and blog! Work is busy, and we are in the process of moving our office(which sucks...both the fact that we are moving AND the actual moving part) and I just haven't had time in the evenings to sit down.

Vacation was everything I wanted it to be. L had SO MUCH FUN. He really was in 7th heaven, just as I knew he would be. The weather was GREAT, sunny and 70's. A bit windy on 2 days, but that was okay; L got to fly a kite for the first time, which he loved! It stormed during the night one night, which was cool, but never rained during the day. L also loved going on our friend's boat; he loved being on the 'river', lol...Of course, it was a lake, but as we see the river at home everyday, that was what he was calling it. He also went for a ride on the Ranger (4 wheeler type thing with a bench type seat) and loved it, which was surprising since he won't even sit on the lawn mower with Daddy or get on the 4 wheeler with Papa. He didn't master riding his trike, but did make some progress :0) He had tons of fun running around with the bigger boys, he actually tackled a 5 year old!!! He is a brute. He really enjoyed the merry go round, which makes me dizzy just watching him go round and round! He also was climbing up the playground equipment all by himself, which just made him seem TOO big and independent...It was very fun for W and I to see him interact with other kids.

L also seemed to turn a corner in his speech...as soon as we got there he just seemed to blossom! He started saying MANY words that we had never heard him say before, and also started copying (or trying to copy) most everything we would say. The new words he learned on vacation and now uses are: heavy, in, out, off, on, boat, kite, moon, fire (he REALLY got the hang of the idea of HOT, and that it means an owie, and that you need to steer clear of hot things such as the grill and the fire ring), many names, volleyball, house, horseshoes, morning (as in 'good morning')...and my favorite thing he started saying on vacation is "I want that"!! And, of course, he wants EVERYTHING! LOL...We went to the grocery store and it was 'I want that' every 3 seconds! It's funny too, cuz he will experiment with putting the emphasis on each of the three words...It makes me want to eat him up even more.

I am sure that I gained the required 5 lbs, if not more...usually my friend and I are great about keeping up our walking every day, but we were lazy this year and only walked twice...in 9 days! UGH!! Oh well.

I got some very sweet photos that I can't wait to download and edit a bit and post and print off for my new office wall.

Oh, and we found out that they are tearing down the cabin that we rent and building a new one for next year!! YAY!! The new one will be much more spacious with a much better layout. Of course, the price will go up a little, but not much and I will still be able to make it work so we can go.

I will upload some photos soon for your viewing pleasure :0)

Hasta Luego!

We are heading out the door in about 10 minutes, just thought I would drop in and say G'bye, internet :0) I will see you when we get back next Sunday. Here's a little something from L...

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Hope everyone has a great week and Labor Day weekend...Hope you all get to do a little relaxing :0)

A wandering post about photography and reconnecting with the past...

I have been so busy lately, I haven't had much time to let my brain wander and think about things (which can be a good thing) but I feel my posts have gotten a little boring lately. So here is something a little more interesting :0)

I LOVE taking photos. I am the photo taker in our family, and amongst my friends. I can pretty much always be counted on to have my camera with and snap RIDICULOUS amounts of pictures to remember every ocassion by; from big important milestones to 'just hangin' out' moments.

There is something about looking through that viewfinder and freezing moments in time. Somehow it makes me feel like I have some control over this ever accelerating passage of time. I can capture people and places and feelings and file them away for safe keeping. As I move through life I see a landscape, or a bird, or an emotion and I want to see it through my viewfinder, frame it just so and record it forever as it is right then and there.

I would love to someday do it for a living...I only wish I would have realized this sooner. But I didn't; C'est la vie, I am where I am. All I can do is hope to make it happen by taking the long way around since I didn't take the direct route. So for now, it is a hobby that I someday hope to turn into something more.

A recent encounter with my friend Dana made my soul YEARN for more time to spend on my photography and made me, to be quite honest, a bit jealous of her :0) She is a couple of years younger than me, and is the sister of my BFF R (I really hate that expression, but it really does perfectly describe her, lol). I hadn't seen Dana in quite awhile, and we talked photography and caught up. I then also got turned on to her blogsite, which gave me an even deeper glimpse into her life as an adult, which is kinda weird, in a way...Ya know, up until recently in my mind she was just still little Dana...I grew up along side her, saw her quite often, but haven't seen her much since HS, and so she was just stuck there in time as little Dana. Now, she is unfolding into this REAL person, this ADULT person before my eyes. I have always liked her, but am finding that she and I seem to have more in common than I would have guessed. She has different interests than I might have thought she would...It feels good; to have a bit of a reconnection with someone whom I grew up with, especially at this time when I feel a bit short on and disconnected from female friends.

Dana and her SO are into mountain biking, competitively, and she is an amatuer photography nut, not unlike myself. She is "the photographer" for the men's circuit this year, from what I understand. She has been able to build herself a sweet little camera (which I am totally jealous of :0) ). Her and her SO travel around to all these wonderfully beautiful places, and she takes amazing photos on her travels. They have their group of riding buddies, with all kinds of experiences they have had together that give them a special camraderie. She is working toward making her passion, her photography, more than just a hobby.

It makes me miss the days before L when we had a group of friends with a camraderie like that...granted, our ties to each other were of a very different nature (something I may touch on at some point...not ready to blog on that part of my life yet) but it was there none the less. Makes me yearn for those days when we were financially able to pretty much do as we pleased (to an extent...we weren't rich, just didn't have the financial obligations that we have now such as mortgage, car payments, a child, etc), when I could have built myself a sweet little camera of my own (why didnt' I? Where did all that money go back then?) When were able to and could up and go somewhere on a whim. Makes me wish we WOULD HAVE done more traveling and exploring before we had L. I guess seeing her just made me yearn for that different time in my life again.

Seeing her and her work ALSO inspired me to MAKE more time to focus on this hobby. Which I have been. I try to not go anywhere without my camera now, because SO often I am going about my daily life and see things I want to capture, and the first step to being able to do that is actually having my camera with me. I have also been working with my camera and figuring out how to use all those options and manual settings I paid for :0) I am very much enjoying it. I have been wanting to share some photos that I have taken that I really love. So here they are.



This is actually an older photo, but it is one of my first 'babies', Hera. I actually have this photo published in a book of pet photos. It is the first really sweet photo I took with my camera. When you see it blown up it is so detailed; you can see cat hair on the blue blanket, lol...That's when I was like 'Whoa, this is a COOL camera!'








This one I took the other night, and I still need to crop it down a bit, I want to get those vehicles out of the frame. I love the feeling this shot gives me though. My little man running in his little toddler way.












This one is older too, and I didn't have the hang of focusing yet, it's a little fuzzy cuz the auto focus had trouble with the fur, but I am still proud of it. And it is my sweet little Simone.








This one needs a little editing with the coloring yet, but I like it.












Of course, these two have much more of an impact when they are printed out on a larger scale :0)














And, of course I think this is a great photo.















And that's it for now. This is probably the last post I will get to really put out there until after I get back from the cabin. I am still wondering how I am going to survive for 9 days without checking in on the blogs that I have gotten used to following!! UGH!! LOLOL... But you can BET I will be taking lots of photos at the cabin and 'making time for my hobby' :0)

Oh, and Thanks, Dana, for inspiring me. And I AM going to take you up on that offer to get together and play around taking photos...I am thinking this fall when the leaves are turning...I will get rid of L for a day and we can go somewhere fun and just take photos. I am very much looking forward to it!

I got it...

Okay, so instead of linking to the photos on my photobucket site I just linked to the file saved on my computer and viola, it worked like a charm. Don't know why, but I didn't want to link to my computer files, but just gonna do it I guess. Probably my lack of knowledge leading to a fear that linking to the file on my computer will lead to someone being able to access my personal files and steal my identity or something...You never know, it COULD happen, I think...LOL.

So anyway, check out the photo of L I took the other day.---------------->>>>


I never cease to be amazed by how cute he is. I mean, I think W and I are decent looking people, for sure, but WOW, L turned out way too cute :0)

A co-worker said of the photo "Huh, is that a hint of what's to come?" referring to L being "behind bars" and I wanted to smack him for putting that bad ju-ju out there!

I give up

Okay, I give up. Blogger sucks. I guess I get what I pay for, which is nothing. I cannot get it to load my photos off of photobucket for the life of me. I guess I shouldn't expect much for free.

So you guys won't get to see any more photos of my little man unless someone can tell me what I am doing wrong.

This thing is pissin' me off!!

Okay, I have been trying to add more pics of L, and the stupid thing either says "Please specify an image" after I put in the link to my photo on photobucket, OR it says "this image has been moved or deleted" which is BS, cuz I just downloaded the damn image...

ARGHHH!!

Okay, gonna have to try again tomorrow, it's past my bedtime. Nighty night.

9 Days

In 8 days, I will officially be on vacation, and in 9 days we will be settling into the cabin for 9 days of relaxation, friends, food, nature discovery with L, camp fires, wheeler rides through state forest land, bean bag tourneys, food, lazy afternoons in the chair reading, coffee on the dock at sunrise (watching the otters play), photography, more food, pontooning, fishing....ahhhhhh sweet, sweet vacation. Did I mention food?

(That may be the only drawback; the 5 lbs I am guaranteed to gain while there...but what they hell, it's worth it!)

Our annual trip to the cabin (I say 'the' cabin like it's ours...it's not, we rent one at a resort, but it really has become 'ours' the last week of August through Labor Day every year!) is something I look forward to as soon as we arrive back home every year :) It is so wonderful to escape to the great north woods, away from the hustle and bustle of every day life for over a week. We never took week long vacations when I was growing up, we just took long weekends at the lake (Friday through Sunday) and it just isn't the same as getting away for 9 days...When you take a long weekend, about the time you are fully relaxed and getting into the 'vacation life' then you have to pack up and go home. When you go for 9 days, you really get to relax. By the time it is time to go home, you actually WANT to go home. It is amazing. And I can't wait!

(Not to mention that when I was young we were tenting it, mom and dad had the camper on the back of the truck but K and I stayed in tents. The toilet was an outhouse, no running water, etc etc. Now I go to a cabin, which is SO COOL, LOL. It's the awesome camping feeling and experience with the luxuries of home like a bed and running water! I do still enjoy a good tenting weekend though :0) )

L is going to have SOOO MUCH FUN this year! I can't wait to catch frogs with him and feed the striped gophers (these little buggers are so tame they will crawl right up in your lap for peanuts and let you pet them), feed the ducks corn, watch the otters swim, take nature walks with him, feed him his first 'Smore', and all the things I loved doing while camping as a kid. He is going to be able to run around with the other kids this year, which I know he is going to LOVE. He is going to be on cloud 9 when he gets to be outside 90% of the time for those 9 days...My little nature boy cannot get enough of being outside. He isn't going to know what to do with himself!

I love these pre-vacation weeks of anticipation; they make me feel like a kid again. Just like I did before we would head up to the lake for the weekend. That feeling is one of my few REALLY GOOD memories from my childhood.