Fill In Flash

Shutter Sister's daily challenge today was fun. The subject was fill in flash - you shoot your subject with the sun to their back, but you also use your flash, so they are lit on both sides. It's always so interesting to see what the Sister's share. I get inspired and try not to get too intimidated.
Sarah agreed to be my subject. Not sure how I was able to talk her into it again. I've probably taken more photos of her in the last 4 months than I took in her entire life previously. Did that sentence make sense? I hope it made a little sense. I looked up photography classes at the jr college, but they are all full. Dang. Oh well, I'll keep doing what I'm doing. Today I actually went off the manual shooting - messed with some settings. It was fun.
Sarah has been playing with her Game Boy quite a bit lately. She has a vet game and she plays Pokemon. She played Lizzie McGuire, but that's a pretty quick game, as I remember from Bay's Game Boy days. She's wearing one of Bay's old tops here. She lucked out when Bay cleaned her closet the other day. She was thrilled - nothing cooler than your teenage sister's hand me downs. I can remember that from when I had an older stepsister.
Well, I better get to bed now. I don't know how I'm still awake. I did a long (for me) run today - felt like barfing when I was done. Ugh. And of course I had a whole busy evening ahead of me - dinner for Max, dinner for me and Sarah, laundry, dishes, and .........well, you know if you are a Mom.

I hope you enjoyed your weekend. What did you do?

Wordle-ing

I found this thing called Wordle through How About Orange's blog. Here's what they came up with from some of my past entries.



You can make one at http://www.wordle.net/

Leah Came To Visit!

Today, my friend, Leah, came to visit. I talk to her all the time on the computer, but this was the first time I'd seen her in person in about 24 years. We had a good visit - she is very easy to talk to and both my girls really liked her. We laughed a lot and she brought a yummy treat - can't get better than that.


Bay came out and talked to us for awhile and she was so charming that I decided to let her off her grounding. We've had a lot of talks - we are both tired of talking about what led to the grounding and I feel like we finally got some things settled. Ugh. Raising a teenager is so much harder than I ever thought it would be. I'm not sure how my mom lived through it.
Something odd is happening to the spacing on here. When I try to click between the pictures, to start a new paragraph, the stuff I wrote previously appears to have jumped down to a lower picture. I do not know what happens on her sometimes - it's like the composing box likes to mess with my head. And my eyeballs.

Leah is going to take me out for my birthday. I haven't been out to dinner in a long time. I'm trying to talk another friend into coming down and going with us. She lives a couple of hours away, so it's not as easy for her to make it. I hope she can make it. She and Leah were best friends in the 8th grade - I found that out today. I was friends with Leah in the 7th grade and with Jackie, the other friend, in the 12th grade. I found them both through MySpace. How funny is that?
Leah brought photos from our 20th year reunion - it was held in 2004 - and it was fun to see how people had changed. I didn't attend the reunion, but I'm definitely going to attend the next one. I vote for a 25th. Looking at the photos, it dawned on me that it was like looking at a room full of my old classmates parents. When did we all get to be such grown-ups? Weird.
I want to take a nap. I have no energy right now. I'm blaming PMS. I have a lot that needs to be accomplished, but ..........nothing. I've been good at the snaking though. Just finished a bowl of leftover rice and edamame. I would love some ice cream, but that would require putting on my flip flops and going to the store. Too much effort. Sheesh, even these sentences, I'm writing them like one word at a time. And they are boring to read, I'm sure.

Love Thursday - Chance and Casey

Check out the look of love on Chance's face as he watches his silly brother. :D

Happy Love Thursday to you!

Wordless Wednesday - Big Boys Like Bubbles, Too

Ruby Tuesday - Owen Playing

I had fun shooting Owen yesterday. He's such a sweet little guy. Here he is in the Little Tikes car that all the kids have loved. Here he is in a different sort of car on the playground. I got some shots of Ashlee and Trinity on this car the day before. Ashlee sat on the steering wheel and sang this little song. It went, "Butt driving, I'm driving with my butt.... butt driving." She's such a funny kid.
And he's off............

Two Days With the Boys

I just was able to spend most of the past two days with my favorite guy and his sweet boy. We had a great visit. With his new job, he's able to get two days off in a row, but he's got a 6 hour drive down, then a 6 hour drive back home, so the time we spend together went pretty quickly.

I came to this wondeful realization though this weekend. I wrote about it in my Dating Dames.com column. It's basically this - after one year (today is our anniversary) I am finally feeling "just fine" right where we are at. I'm not in a big hurry to have more, these visits, they are all I can handle with things the way they are at my house right now. Someday things will change and that will be fine, but right now, I'm good. I miss my guy, but these kids have me pretty busy right now.

Sarah and Owen had fun today. She's pretty good with little guys. We got out the bubbles and the kids loved them, but not as much as Steve did. I'll share a photo of him bubbling later.
I turned on the sprinkler for him and he wanted the water to go stronger, so he grabbed the hose and shook it. Hard, really hard. That kid is really strong.
S was playing with his new phone. It's got some pretty cool features. I think he was golfing on it here.
I tried to fit us both in the shot.
Those boys should be just about home by now. I hope their drive went well. Owen got about 4 hours-nap worth of play in before they left. That kid, he's adorable.