Meet my nephew

We got to meet our newest nephew this weekend. Baby E is four months old. DH's brother and his family live in the D.C. area and came up for my other BIL's surprise 30th birthday party.

I always say I don't do people pictures, but I want to get better, so I'd really like CC on this one. One thing I think is that I blew out the right side of his face? The details: shot with my 24-70 lens at 70mm. Custom white balance, ISO 400, F3.5 and SS1/100 (although I took it in P mode so I didn't do the work of setting the f-stop or shutter speed). This was a shot of him sitting on DH's lap that I cropped. I can't remember exactly what PP I did on it now, but I did use an eye pop technique I learned in a tutorial. Oh, how I love to cuddle babies! You can CC this one if you want also, but DH took it so be gentle please (although I think he does better with people photos than I do most of the time):
Tomorrow I'll show you baby E's big brother. He's also adorable! It was great to see our far-away family!

Fake spring

Editing my post to try posting bigger photos. Thoughts? I think it's too big, that you have to scroll around to see the whole photo maybe? I chose the "website (640 X 480)" option on Photobucket, but I don't have a clue how to resize it optimally in Photoshop and tell Photobucket what size I want other than their defaults. I've always just posted my photos directly to Blogger from my computer so I'm pretty lost here. Any and all help appreciated.



Not from today, but I finally got around to editing some more hyacinth photos. There's no spring around here to be seen.

A brag and a birthday

A bad photo, but caught the moment. DD was so proud she requested a brag on the blog. She won states in the 240-yard race Saturday morning.And on Friday night we celebrated DH's birthday:
DS and his pretty girlfriend. (She really is pretty but I don't want to post her face here without permission.)
Our improvised 41 cake:

My Christmas Bunny

This bunny is very special to me. He is not an Easter bunny, he is a Christmas bunny. Many years ago DH had taken the kids out to buy Christmas presents for me and told them, "Remember, it's a surprise for Mommy so don't tell her." When they returned from their shopping trip DD came straight in to the kitchen where I was standing at the counter, climbed up on her stool, looked at me with her big brown eyes, chubby cheeks, and big smile and said in her sweet toddler voice, "I got ya bunny!" It is one of my favorite memories, and I can see it all clearly in my mind's eye and still hear that voice. "I got ya bunny" has become part of our family lexicon, and I smile and get all mushy whenever I look at my little Christmas bunny.I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I want to thank you all for the comments you leave me. I appreciate each and every one of them, and you can't imagine how you stroke my ego when you tell me I'm funny. :-) I think God gave me payback for laughing when I got "Faith" stuck in all your heads, though. I woke up to several inches of new snow. And then I had to go to the gyno. Joke's on me now!

More faith

Is the song stuck in your head now? You're welcome.

I'll let you laugh at me to make up for it. Faith came out in 1987. Here's me around that time. That is NOT a perm. I was made for 80s hair. We won't even discuss the thick eyebrows and the dress, which was one of my favorites. Of course the dress may have been fugly even back then; I've never been a good dresser. I did ditch Mom jeans several years ago though.

Faith

I call this "Palm on a Psalm" because I'm clever like that. :-D
I love Psalms. Some of them are so poetic and beautiful. Actually I think there's a lot of poetry and beauty throughout the Bible, even if you're not a believer.
Thanks for all the comments on my posts! The snowwoman in yesterday's post is 122 feet tall. And the man with the horses said they're Belgians (actually he said they're "Belgiums" but I think the correct term is Belgians.)

Olympia

Took a drive to see Olympia, the world's largest snowwoman after school yesterday. About a month after being dedicated, she's looking a little snirty (to borrow a word from Angela), one arm is broken, most of her rope hair is gone, and most of her mica necklace has fallen apart.
She's a big girl, isn't she? That's DD and her friends in the photo.Her ski eyelashes, wreath eyes, and tire mouth are largely intact, though.
My friend and I got a kick out of her cheesetastic-ness.

And here are the beauties who took us for our wagon ride on Easter. The sunlight was awfully bright. Did I do an okay job post processing these?


Dd gives him a pat:

The end.

Maine Maple Sunday and Faith

Get ready for photo overload! I just couldn't decide what one to show you. I'll save my horse ones for tomorrow. Photos from our sugar shack visits for Maine Maple Sunday.

Hey, random lady, you made my blog!You'll see all kind of things used for sap collection, like Gatorade bottles, but I like the traditional buckets:


Maple syrup on snow. You really need that spoon in there for perspective or else it just looks like yellow snow--yuck!

Click on this to see it bigger if you want to know how to operate a sugar shack. I didn't read it.
Probably this is important, though:
And this too:
Here are some taps you might see used:
The good stuff. I liked the colors in this but was bummed it came out blurry.
And these two bummed me out because I forgot to reset my white balance and they look bad in color, but I like them anyway:


And now onto the theme of the week, but with old photos. I feel closest to God among nature. Is there any nature much more beautiful than this?

Taken at the Grand Canyon April 2007.
And now I shall go hug a tree.
P.S. Don't forget Red Sox Opening Day Tuesday 6:05 a.m. Eastern on ESPN2! What, you're not going to get up to watch?

More Easter

Our Easter didn't go as planned but was still very nice. My dad and stepmom were supposed to be up from Florida but got the flu and couldn't come. We went to church on Saturday evening and then had a quiet morning at home today. Then we visited a couple of sugar shacks and took a horse-drawn wagon ride for Maine Maple Sunday, which I thought had occurred a couple of weeks ago.

A banner at church:
Another one of my Easter decorations, my "chocolate" bunny from TJMaxx:And we finally got our eggs dyed, and not in Photoshop.
Hope you all had a nice weekend!

Easter

Happy Easter to you or, if you don't celebrate Easter, happy peaceful early-spring Sunday to you.

First Day of Spring

I'm posting super early because of my Blogger problem, which is that it takes a million tries to get one photo up--I keep getting a connection timed out message. Maybe it's just too busy at the time I try to post in the evening. These went up pretty fast.

I love this Peep's crooked eyes (and little "mole" between his eyes.)
Why I'm glad I got the point and shoot to keep in my pocket. Some deer in the neighbor's yard yesterday. Baxter didn't even bother them--because he's too short to see over the snowbank he didn't even notice them.
And this is what the first day of spring in Maine is like. It was 22 degrees today and wicked windy. This is a photo of my cheek after my walk today. Color is SOOC, I just cropped it. There was no way I was showing you the photo of my whole face. And I promise this is my face cheek, not my butt cheek. :-D My butt cheek isn't hairy like this (see the strands of hair on the lower right), although it probably was this red after my cold walk.

Hyacinth

If I can't find spring, I'll go out and buy it. And looky, there's some green in there. I had a green Peep photo for you too, but it won't post. Is Typepad hard to navigate? Because I'm getting pretty sick of all the problems I'm having with Blogger

Eggs

Green schmeen. It snowed all day today :-P It's all white here. I boiled the (white) eggs that we'll dye in the next couple of days. But I guess you can turn anything green in Photoshop.
Not sure this is the photo I want for today but since Blogger won't let me post another, this is it.

I forgot to tell you guys this thing about my phone going off in church. I was telling my DD about it, and she said, "It would have been worse if you swore when it happened." Cracked me up; she knows me so well and knows that's a distinct possibility.

What a croc!

It is really, really hard to find anything naturally green in Maine in March, so I bring you DD's green Crocs. And what do you do when you have a boring, I-can't-think-of-anything-else-to-photograph-today picture? You Photoshop the heck out of it. I have a confession to make, and it's not that I wear Crocs, because I don't--they're ugly and uncomfortable. That isn't the real color of my eye in yesterday's photo. I made it more green than it is in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I feel embarrassed about that now that so many of you complimented my eye color. But not as embarrassed as I felt on Sunday when my phone started ringing during quiet prayer time at church (I was SURE I put it on silent). I was mortified and my face just turned red again typing that out.

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

My Irish Eyes Are Smiling (at you). They also need some browscaping, an eyelid lift, and some microdermabrasion.
Baxter put up with the glasses in yesterday's post because DD put them on him. As you can see, they adore each other. Here they are with her in her "Everybody loves an Irish girl" shirt and him in his shamrock bandanna:I can't remember where I got this little St. Paddy's decoration. It's super ugly but I still put it out --I like a little tacky in my holiday decorations. Hope you had a fun St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

DH says thanks for all the comments on his photos! (I think he may have blushed a little.)

Baxter is going to end animal week and kick off St. Patrick's Day/green week.

Balloons

Today's POTD is brought to you by DH. He was in Phoenix for work this past week, and one evening he took a sunset hot air balloon ride. I was so jealous but so happy for him to get to go. Of course I sent the point and shoot with him and begged him to take photos. Didn't he do a good job? We have a local balloon festival here every year, and this past year I went with my camera but only got to see one balloon actually launch. Maybe I'll show you those photos tomorrow and have you vote on who did a better job, me or DH . ;-)





And speaking of Pi Day yesterday, I had a lightbulb moment. I had heard in past years about Pi Day, but I just thought it was like all those other randomly picked days like Talk Like a Pirate Day and never made the connection that it was on March 14. So yesterday my son's girlfriend came over and brought leftover pie because they had celebrated pi day in her math class. I was thinking Pie Day still, and then she explained it to me and I was all, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...I get it....3.14!" And then immediately got up to take a picture. And still speaking of Pi, have you read the book Life of Pi? It's really good.