Clouds, Pups, and Turning 17

Seventeen years ago today (actually, it's after midnight now so it's actually yesterday) I brought my firstborn into the world. Can't believe so much time has gone by.

We celebrated today. She's a great kid who's turning into a great young lady. Happy birthday sweetheart! I hope you had a good day.

Another cloud picture taken a couple of nights ago - they were very impressive clouds that night.

Two beagles on a deck just laying in the sunshine - doesn't get much better than that. Who doesn't love hydrangeas. The color is amazing!!! Turning in for the night. Oh, saw the pediatric eye specialist today - great birthday present for my daughter. Her eyes are still aligned properly and it seems that her brain has accommodated to seeing double. We're good to go for another year, although she probably needs a prescription change as she's having trouble reading/seeing the blackboard in school. We'll just add that to the list of doctors' appointments that need to be made......

Just Because

I love clouds and just because I saw the most beautiful clouds upon leaving class last week, I had to take their photos.......just because God painted them there.

What I learned at my class in dSLR

I had a great instructor who also has a photography business. As a result of his terrific instruction, I am now stepping out the box - the green box that is on the dial of my Canon Rebel XT. I am now officially converted from shooting every single photo in automatic. I will be daring now and actually adjust the ISO, aperature, and shutter speed for my photos!!! Life is so exciting!!!!

Avalon, NJ

Here's a sampling of photos taken earlier this month while visiting a friend's home at the bay in New Jersey. The home was completely surrounded by water and was beautiful!

So Much to Catch Up On!!

I've been taking a photography class and am learning so much about my dSLR. I've taken some pretty neat shots that I will be posting within the next day or so, plus lots of other shots that have absolutely nothing to do with the class I took.

Kids are at a mini band camp right now for two days in preparation for the week-long away from home band camp coming up next month. Dan's doing well on the saxophone and Coll is doing great with clarinet. I hope Dan loves marching/concert band as much as Coll has these last two years. It has been such a rewarding experience for her - lots of new and good friends and lots of music!!!

A bit taller than mom now!

Here is a photo taken in December. He's grown almost a half inch since then but this gives you an idea of the difference between March of last year (in my previous post) and March of 2008.

Spring will be here soon!

Although today is revving up to be more wintery-like, spring is just around the corner and as of this coming weekend, we will begin daylight savings which I look forward to every year. I spent all of last weekend backing up every single photo I've had stored on my PC. Unfortunately, this backup was a few weeks too late as our external hard drive crashed a few weeks back and I lost a lot of very meaningful photos. I have the dead, only 6 months old external Moving Star hard drive sitting near me, knowing that it holds a couple hundred photos, in the hopes that one day we can maybe get that data retrieved. Until then, I'll just wistfully look at this little black box. If anyone has any inexpensive ways of retrieving this data, please let me know. We've already tried to the freezer route and although it worked for the prior drive, it would not work for this one.

Top two pics were taken last year. Please note the photo of me with a level on my head. That's because I had a feeling my son, who at that time was the same height as my daughter and me. I asked my husband to take a photo to capture the moment to record that my son had reached my height. That photo was taken March 31, 2007 - fast forward to March 5, 2008, and add 4.5" to his height!!! Yikes!!!

The other few pics were taken in Jan and Feb. Making the most out of what's left of our wintery days and enjoying brand new family members!!