When it rains...

I was having some trouble with one of my new lenses so Canon offered for me to send in my camera and all of my lenses in for a check and calibration. I freaked a bit, at the thought of sticking all of my expensive and much loved gear in one box and shipping it off to who-knows-where, but in the end, I did it. Hopefully I'll have it back within a week and everything will be fine and dandy.

ALSO, my monitor color issues are still plaguing me. I spent a few hours on the phone with technical support for my color calibration device, and later Apple. The verdict is that there is probably something wrong with my video card. I'm bringing my computer in for service tomorrow and it will hopefully only be gone for a week or so, as well. As you would suspect, I probably won't be posting again for a bit. So, I decided I'd better get one last post up before my MacBook goes on vacation.

Important news...

My handsome hubby made a big potato haul from the garden. 68 lbs, if memory serves.



It has been terribly hot, so we have been trying to keep Lily cool.



My friend Lex surprised me with this BEAUTIFUL piece of artwork. She (or maybe her husband, I can't remember for sure) took this photo of us back when Lily was only a month or two old. It is hard to see the detail and dimension in the paper cuts with this photo, but I took another one to try and show it a little better. I love it so much!





I hope these photos look okay, I can't tell what they will look like due to the weird color casts on my MacBook. Yuck!

Adorable site

My old college friend, Paully Wog shared this with me. I LOVE IT! What an awesome use of photography.

http://milasdaydreams.blogspot.com/

Berry cute

For the kids and kids at heart...

A recipe for homemade playdough:

1 cup water
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbs cream of tarter
food coloring
1 cup flour

heat water, oil, salt, cream of tarter, and food coloring in a saucepan on the stove. The directions said to "heat until warm" but I cooked it a bit to dissolve some of the salt. Not sure if that made a difference, but ours turned out fine. Remove from the heat and add the flour. Stir than knead until smooth. Cool slightly until safe to handle and play! Let children play with warm and cool playdough for different sensory experiences. If you keep it in an airtight container, it is supposed to last for months.

Here are some photos of Lily playing with hers.

Getting into it:



and slightly sleepier, with more hair...

Towers

Let's hope she doesn't always take disappointment this badly. If she does, it's going to be a long 16+ years...

Some new posts

I have some new posts up on the photography blog. If you've checked this blog out much, you've seen comments from my friend Laura. Her daughter's session photos are up on there, as well as a new post about the cost of custom portraits and how it is like hamburgers. You'd just have to read it...



P.S. Corey made this awesome burger plus a veggie version for me. It was awesome!

The little things

It's hard for me to put into words how happy I am to be a stay at home mom, now. There are so many little things that I was missing and now a treasure whole-heartedly.

For one thing, getting to see Lily wake up. Before, every week day, I would leave the house before Corey and Lily woke up. An hour or so after I left, Corey would have to wake Lily up and bring her bobbing little sleepy head to the babysitters. On the weekends, I would be sad when she would wake me up because I so badly wanted to catch up on missed sleep.

Nowadays, I usually wake up to her rustling happily around her crib. We moved her into her own room recently and so I peek in the door to see her standing up, chin on her hands on the railing, crazy bed head raging, with the most gigantic grin you've ever seen. At this point, she usually starts laughing and falls over because she is not quite awake yet. The other morning, she was starting to wake up when Corey left, so he gently settled her in bed next to me so she and I could get another hour or so of sleep. When I woke up again, I heard her laughing. I look over and she is fully asleep, smiling and giggling to herself. Her eyes opened as she slowly woke, smile still on her face. Could there be any better way to wake up than laughing? I just want to bottle up her cuteness and keep it forever.

Speaking of sleeping, here is my favorite recent picture of Lily sleeping.



I am guessing that the animals are really enjoying the fact that I am staying home, too. This means all day air conditioning for the dogs. We used to keep them outside while we were gone because they can't always be trusted when home alone.

Kabob

I know, I know. You can't believe what an amazing artist I am, right? You never knew I was so handy with a pen! We'll now you know.

I had no other way of illustrating the fantastically crazy thing that happened today. Lily went behind the old LazyBoy Recliner that Corey insists we keep in the living room even though it doesn't fit. So she is back there where I can't see her, and all of the sudden she starts whining. Like, an "I'm stuck" kind of whine. I know it well.

So I walk over there, and this is the scene I find. Her diaper stuck on the reclining handle, all the way through both legs. She looked like a kabob. What made matters worse (much worse) was the diaper. You guessed it, it was poopy.

Stay at home mommyhood ROCKS!

Seriously, it does :)

Phone obsession

For a month or so, Lily has been pretending everything is a phone. Be it a playing card, TV remote, book, whatever. She picks it up and holds it up to her ear with a casual, "Whoa" (Lily's version of "Hello"). I have to say, it is pretty adorable. Generally, we don't let her talk on the cell phone because my mom has me worried about the radiation and its unknown effects on kiddo's brains. Today was an exception when I was talking to Corey's mom and as I said "bye", Lily said "bye bye". I had to call Mamaw right back so Lily could tell her bye bye. She never actually said it again, but she sang "Row Row Row Your Boat" with her and talked (mostly listened) for a bit. Too cute. I had to take a photo.

Mom's little helper

Lily has been helping with the laundry. Seems fair since she creates quite a bit of it, with her diapers and all. Here is a video Corey shot with his cell phone showing the girl in action.



I'll throw in another shot of her wearing daddy's shoes:



And 2 more of the homemade bagels we made tonight.

Before boiling and baking:



and after:



One little note. If you decide to follow the link above and make these bagels, be prepared to eat 4, or 5 or all 10 as soon as they come out of the oven. It is incredibly hard to stop yourself. We made lots of different versions: poppy seed, onion, salt, sesame seed, everything, cinnamon/sugar. Of course I had to try them all. Next time I will at least double the recipe and freeze a bunch.

Like a fish!

Our little girl loves the water. No doubt about that. Sorry for the dark beginning to the video. I'm still learning how to use the video mode on my new camera.



One time she jumped in just beyond my fingers and went all the way under by my feet. I pulled her up sputtering and coughing but she didn't shed one tear and immediately wanted out of the pool so she could jump in again!

Tap tap tap... anybody still there?

Things have been kind of quiet on the blog front lately. The month of June was just about the craziest month of my life. It felt like we had something going on every second of every day. On top of that, I've had lots and lots of images that need edited for clients and then my monitor decided to get out of whack. Ugh. Bad month.

Luckily, the forecast for July calls for lots of pool time at the park and play dates with friends :)

Right now, we are on a much needed weeklong vacation in Tennessee with my parents and my brother's clan. We rented a cabin in Townsend, just outside the entrance of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. Our cabin is overlooking a pretty river where we have spent a lot of time hanging out in tubes and splashing around with the kiddos. The men folk have been fishing for trout, among other fish, with fair success.

Today, my parents babysat while Corey and I went on a hike together in the park. We are pretty out of shape, so we only made it about 5 miles. To our credit though, 2.5 of those miles were uphill. The hike followed a picturesque cascading creek. See?



See again?



We stumbled across this guy on the trail.



*rattle rattle* Yikes!



Then we happened upon this butterfly party.



And finally, I'll leave you all with some lovely cell phone video from our hike to enjoy...