shopping

happy shopping: Last year, my friend Angie gave me a cool little purse that was made by some design student at Savannah College (I think). I have been carrying the purse ever since (except for walking through the greater LA area because it's not what I would consider secure) and love love love it. I love it so much that it's starting to wear out. I have also had a minorly catastrophic pen leak in it and have had to start considering the sad thought that I would have to replace it. Before I became too maudlin, however, I thought I would Google her (since she considerately put her name on my bag) and hooray! She has a website! And hooray! She has some cute purses on sale! Her name is Claire Sanchez and if you are interested in a unique purse or bag, I recommend you check it out.

not so happy shopping: I have been anxiously waiting for Canon's annual fall DSLR and accessories rebates so that I can treat myself to a new zoom lens. Turns out that I need not have waited. There are four lenses that have similar specs (the differences are small but critical) and three of them are on the rebate list. The one I had decided to buy... well, it's not. Now I am torn... do I still buy it? Or should I get one of the less expensive ones? The rebate wouldn't have been a huge impact, honestly... it would have gone from crazy ridiculous to just crazy. But it would have helped. No, I won't tell you which one it is.

blood drive update: Jerry came in at 3:47. Bruce, 3:72 (you do the math). Beth scratched. Luella, 4:26. Me, 8:26. I'm slow but steady. Betty came in at 5ish? I'll check with her on the number.

photography: I've been contemplating jumping on the blogging bandwagon on my photography site (like you don't have enough blogs to watch) so that I can post pictures there instead of making you look at them here. I mean, I'll still give you pictures of my kids here, but maybe you don't want to look at other people's kids. I've just finished shooting an awful lot of pictures around the church and would like to share some of my favorites. If I start one on that site, I'll let you know, and both of you can add it to your RSS feed.

techy: And if you are wondering what on earth that is, I actually don't really know. You can ask David (my brother). What I use, and I totally recommend it, especially for all you gmailers out there, is Google Reader. See, what happens is you tell Reader what blogs you visit (it may work for other things too, I honestly don't know), and it does all the checking for you. All you do is click on the link for Reader (which is under More on my screen right now) and it tells you who has posted since you last were on Reader. It's fantastic. I mean, seriously, do you get tired of visiting a friend's blog day after day after day... she doesn't post for like three weeks, so you don't check for a week, and then you discover that she posted five times or something while you weren't looking? Not that I've ever done that to you. Google Reader totally takes care of the watching for you. And you can sort the blogs you visit into categories, like photography, family, church, etc. It's pretty awesome. An RSS reader does the same kind of thing, I think, but I am not sure on the details. Try it, though, it will revolutionize your blog reading life.

happy birthday

Hard to imagine it, but my baby brother is 30 today. I feel pretty sure that he was a gawky teenager just yesterday. Or at least last week. But 30? I started to do the math in my head for his age and wanted to pinch myself that it's really 2007. Amazing. I'm sorry I don't have a recent picture of him to share with you, but that's not a problem I can correct until Christmas. At which time I will take care of that. No longer a teenager... he has a lovely, intelligent, and creative wife now, and two cute-as-a-button kids, a house, a real job... the only thing missing is a dog. Hmmm, Rabia, did you get David a puppy for his birthday? Because I'm thinking that's what he's really missing here. Me, I gave him an awesome compact flash card months ago for his new camera, because it's really important to me that he take lots of pictures of his cute children and send them to me since I live thousands of miles away from them and can't shoot them for myself. Talk about a self serving birthday present. Do you even want to know what I'll give him for Christmas?

Sunday: blood drive at church. Stay tuned for times!

rock star

This just in, citizens: Jenny reports that not only did she donate a pint of whole blood in a near record time of 4 minutes, 57 seconds, but she also got a free Bengals t-shirt signed by actual Bengals. Even better, she is officially signed up for the National Bone Marrow registry! Sounds like a lot of action packed into one morning to me. But I guess you can get more done when you bleed quickly.

Great work, Jen!

And to the rest of you: have you donated blood lately? Have you asked about signing up to be a bone marrow donor? Get on it!

miscellany and random

history: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet." (my kids, studying the beginnings of Islam)

overheard: "I really don't understand why she's acting like this. I mean, she's in school, it's not like she's at home all day. She knows how to listen to a teacher. Why is she doing this?" (a grandmother, talking to the mother of said child, who steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the group activity in question. My children, who are home all day, were managing just fine.)

response: "That kind of freaks me out a little bit." (Andy in response to the shahadah)

creativity: The girls have industriously been making tickets for Elanor's class at church. The big kids' Wednesday night program is a camp, complete with camp store, which uses tickets as currency. Elanor has been very put out that she doesn't get any tickets at church. Not sure if this was her solution or Caroline's but we have a big ziploc baggie full.

space: Did you know that apparently it is no longer necessary to leave two spaces at the end of a sentence when typing? It's because computer fonts are smarter about spacing different size letters than typewriters. I can't seem to stop myself from automatically hitting the space bar twice, though. Does that make me an old dog?

response:"Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself." (The Jesus Creed, or adapted shemah (sp?), which the children learned after learning the shahadah)

family pictures

Mylissa's family, not mine. I had a lot of fun shooting them and figured Mylissa wouldn't mind too much if I shared some favorites with you:






I have officially finished up the post processing work from this trip... I was surprised by how much it was! Although I supposed I shouldn't have been, since it was actually 4-5 events wrapped into one weekend. That is one busy weekend, if you ask me! It was a ton of fun, though, and I am hoping to be invited back for another round... maybe next year, when I've recovered.

more traveling for me!

I'm not sure what happened, but I think it means our kids are growing up. Suddenly, I am doing things and going places by myself. I have almost forgotten how. Exciting side note here: I am going to see the David Crowder Band in concert in November! Have never seen these guys perform and boy am I excited. And it's one more thing I'm doing sans kids (and hubby, poor guy, I know he would like to go too but it was his idea for me to go). Yippee!

I just got back from a fun fun weekend in Cincinnati with Jenny... hard to believe that we have been best friends for 2/3 of our lives at this point. That seems like a pretty long time to me! Thursday, I drove north with my dad (getting up at the truly ungodly hour of 3:30 am to hit the road without coffee until 6) and landed at Jen's in time for a delightful homemade pizza. For a late dinner.

Dad left Friday morning and Jenny and I started in on a fun weekend... which kind of felt like being back in high school, but on an extended slumber party, and more fun. Jenny also loves to shoot (you should see some of her rockin' pictures from travels in France), so we planned on "playing pictures" a.k.a. shooting whatever looked good to us. It's a different thing for me, shooting scenery instead of children, and I kind of feel lost doing it, but we had fun. (there are pictures on the sadly neglected flickr link if you click that: see, it's right up there on the side. I labeled who took which ones because Jen's still shooting film, but she played with my camera too). We hit Ault Park, which is a beautiful place somewhere in Cincinnati... Jenny's camera tried to scare us with a lockup so we detoured by her friendly camera store and spent a good half an hour talking over all kinds of fun photography subjects with the friendly guy there... then we headed downtown to her office and the newly renovated Fountain Square. On to Dilly Deli for a tasty dinner and then we tried to go see The Bourne Ultimatum, but yours truly suffered a serious attack of motion sickness (I'd like to know who thought that video style was cool, because it's really not), so we bailed halfway through and enjoyed the pleasant evening outside of the coffee shop nearby.

Speaking of which... let me tell you, the weather was awesome. We had the windows open all weekend... almost warm enough for tees, but cool enough that a jacket sounded good, especially in the evening... wow, that weather was just amazing. I came home and it's still in the upper 90s, no end in sight.

Saturday was a leisurely breakfast at First Watch, followed by a delightful ramble through the fabric store (don't even ask), ice cream at Graeter's, and a relaxing afternoon baking cookies and working on the fabric (again, please don't ask). It was just like being in high school again, except we are (supposedly) grownups. Jenny cooked a scrumptious dinner for her parents and my dad, so we spent a fun evening eating and hanging out!

Early, but not too early, flight home on Sunday, which was crazy easy. It was on a budget airline I'd never heard of and I was a little nervous about flying on it, but the price was too good to pass up. We actually left early and landed even earlier, plus they gave me a front row seat. I got off quickly and was able to have lunch with my family! I missed them, but boy was it a fun trip. Very relaxing, too!

walking in memphis

Sorry, I just had to say it.

I had a great weekend in Memphis with Mark and Mylissa, but I have to tell you, it was tiring, too! I knew they were working hard, but seeing them in action added a whole new face to it. I came home completely exhausted and this is after Mylissa told me it was a light weekend! It was such a fun weekend. I got to take some fun pictures, both portraits and candids.... I was a fly on the wall at a birthday party and a minor league baseball game (for pictures, visit the HFH blog). I feel like there's a lot I could say about the time I spent there, and I probably will say more, but at first blush, it was neat to see this little community of people gathering together, supporting each other, and becoming a kind of family as they are all going through these illnesses together. Mark and Mylissa are crazy busy, and they do have stressful things going on at times, but at the same time I felt like they just have this peace about them... that they know they are where God wants them to be and that they are doing what God wants them to do.

It was an awesome trip. Here's a sneak peek of some shots: