Welcome to my blog! I'm a wife, mom, photographer, scrapbook designer, writer, singer, piano player, movie lover, small town girl living in Michigan with my husband and two kiddos. I started this blog waaaaay back in 2005 to share my photos with family and friends and it's become so much more than that since. I've made so many wonderful friends through my little corner of the web and connected with so many photographers and scrapbookers.
so THANK YOU so much for stopping by and taking the time to follow this little blog o' mine. ;)
Today is Cowboy/Cowgirl day at school. Caught a quick picture this morning of my little cowgirl. 
For anyone interested, the vintage look I used on the photo is from Pioneer Woman’s free action set.
Have a happy Wednesday everybody! Yeeeeeeehaaaaaa!
After the strange week I had last week, I was so ready to get away to Traverse City this weekend for my cousin’s wedding. If you are facebook friends with me or follow my twitter updates, then you already know that I witnessed a car accident last Wednesday. I was waiting to turn left onto our street, completely stopped and waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, just minding my own business. A woman in the oncoming lane put on her blinker to turn left across in front of me. I thought she would stop before turning to see if any cars were coming around me in the lane to my right, but she didn’t. As she turned across, I glanced in my side mirror and saw someone coming full speed and I screamed (and scared the kids to death!) because I knew they were about to hit. I don’t think either of them expected the other to be there at all and the car coming around me smashed right into the side of the woman’s car. I just sat there for several seconds, completely shocked that she had actually turned without looking and afraid that I had just watched someone die right before my eyes. I pulled safely out of the way while others ran to help and called 911. The emergency vehicles and police were there in minutes and I waited to tell the officers what had happened. I just stood there watching for about twenty minutes. I think I was in a bit of shock and I was very shaky. When the officer spoke to me, he told me that everyone was going to be OK and he thought the woman who had turned had a broken leg. I was so happy to hear that. That is the closest that I have ever been to a car accident and I thank God that neither of their cars touched mine because it happened literally a couple feet in front of me. So scary! I was pretty shaken up for the rest of the evening and into the next day.
That next day, my mom was coming over to my house and she called me and told me that the bottom of her car had fallen off. I was like “What do you mean?” She had turned onto the same road where I saw the accident the night before and as she turned there was a clunking sound and something dropped and she lost control of her car. Luckily, she was driving slow enough that she stepped on her break and got it to coast to a stop against the curb on the opposite side of the street. A city worker passed by just then and parked his big truck in the lane in front of Mom so nobody would hit her. She said there was another car coming in the lane when she started swerving over into their lane, but thank God that car was far enough away that there was no danger of her being hit. I guess some kind of bolts came off that hold the engine up or something. I don’t know much about cars, so I’m not positive on that, but she totally lost steering. She was pretty shaken up. I went and picked her up and was her chauffeur for the day.
Needless to say, it was a crazy couple of days! And we’re avoiding that road for a while. 
So I was really looking forward to Friday! I packed up, Jake got out of work early, we picked the kids up, and took off for Traverse City for my cousin Brian’s wedding! The drive up was so nice. We’ve had glorious sunshine for the whole month of March so far. It’s been awesome! And this weekend was picture perfect … literally! It couldn’t have been more gorgeous out. When you think of a wedding in March in Michigan, you never know what you’re going to get. There’s always that fear of a big snowstorm or something. But it was just beautiful weather. Couldn’t have asked for a better weekend! I’ll share some pictures soon.
The kids had a blast swimming in the pool at the hotel every chance they got. I took full advantage of the jacuzzi tub in our room to take away some of my wedding aches and pains. We had a lot of fun!
On Sunday morning, before heading home, we took a drive up to the Old Mission Lighthouse and took a walk out on the snow/ice. Then we drove across town to Moomer’s for some ice cream. The kids loved everything! Chloe said it was the best adventurous day she had ever had. hehe! So cute. Jake and I both took the cameras out with us and got a bunch of pictures of our walk. Here are a few!
Speaking of cameras … something interesting happened to me at the wedding. I had just finished shooting some pictures of the bride & groom before we headed over to the hotel for the reception and I took a picture of the hotel and heard a strange click. Through the viewfinder it looked like something was blocking part of the picture. I carefully removed my lens to see that the mirror in my camera had detached from the tray it normally sits on. What? Now what do I do? This was my main camera, my beloved 5D, the one I use the most at weddings. I have two backups, but I was determined to somehow attach that mirror just enough to get me through the rest of the night. And what did I use to do that, you ask? Scotch tape. haha! The funniest thing about that was that it raised the mirror up higher than it normally would be so anything I wanted in focus appeared to be out of focus, but if I took the photo and looked at it on the screen, it was perfectly clear. So I had to make sure that my subject was always out of focus to my eyes. Thank God for auto focus. I made it through the night and got all the lovely photos that I wanted with my 5D. Now I have to send my camera to Canon to be fixed. It seems I am not the first person to have this happen. Something to do with faulty adhesive. So Canon is paying shipping to and from their repair facility, where they will fix and reinforce my mirror and make my camera work right again. Yay!
Poor Jake is going in for a root canal today. He’s needed one and has been putting it off, but he has been in a lot of pain for the past week and was in terrible pain at the wedding. I felt so bad for him. Glad he’ll have this taken care of finally!
Man, last week felt like the longest week ever. Just one of those weeks, I guess. How was your week?
Jake brought home some gifts from NY. He got the kids each a couple t-shirts and a 3-D puzzle of the Empire State Building. And I got this mug. I <3 my NY mug. And the guy who gave it to me!
Last Sunday afternoon (feb 21), Chloe, Mom and I went to GR to Joann Fabrics and Michael’s. A girl trip, which Chloe was very excited about. She had a little money from her birthday, so I let her look around to see if there were any little craft projects she would like to buy. She saw these Rock Bands bracelets at Michaels and snatched them right up. She also picked out this American Girl craft sewing kit. It’s these adorable little orange and pink owls that you sew and stuff. Very cute.
After meeting Jake in GR and sending him off to NYC for a business conference (his first time in NY, btw!), we went back to my parents house and played games. Chloe decorated up her bracelets, we had some dinner and then played Blokus for a while.
Had a ton of snow that night, so Monday was a snow day. No surprise there. I spent a while shoveling that morning and cleaning the 8-10 inches of snow off our cars. I think I must have pulled something in my back because I’ve had a pinch every since. ugh!
Jake was so excited about this trip to New York, and they almost didn’t get to go because of flight delays in Chicago. But a nice travel agent found them a direct flight to Newark on another airline so they were out of GR before the snow storm on Sunday night. He called me every night to tell me about his day and where he went and what he saw. I’m so happy he got to go and experience that. He wants to take me now, so we might have to plan a trip later in the year for our anniversary. I’ve never been to NYC, so I’m looking forward to that someday soon. After more mixed up/cancelled flights on Wednesday, he made it home safe and sound. I am glad he had a wonderful trip, but we missed him so much and it’s good to have him home again.
Friday night, in the midst of more nasty snow, we headed to my parents house to celebrate! My brother Tim got a new job! We are all SO HAPPY since he’s been looking for a job for a while. I keep saying that 2010 is going to be a good year for our family and it’s starting out to be just that.
We recently decided to get Dish Network after having struggled with the stupid rabbit ears on our TV for the past couple years. The guys came for the installation last Saturday. One of them was inside with us getting stuff set up. We were chatting with him and Zach walked in the room and held out this little Lego guy (the one on the far right below), pointed at the satellite guy and said “This is you.” It was hilarious. It looked just like him. He was wearing a hat and an orange jacket. Then the other guy came in and a few minutes later, Zach returned with another creation of them getting the dish hooked up on our garage roof. They loved it! Even got out their cell phone and took a few pictures. I love this kid!
Been practicing my knitting. I’m getting pretty good at it. Nothing I’ve made so far has come out perfect, but I’m still working on it and just sort of playing around. My only finished projects so far are a washcloth and a little case for my iPod touch (picture above). That was kind of fun to make. I learned how to stitch two pieces together and how to make a button loop. Having fun with this new hobby!
Well … I performed surgery on my iMac yesterday with the help of a couple tutorials I found online and my computer made it through with a brand new 1Tb hard drive beating steadily in its chest.
I’m kind of proud of myself for doing the research, taking the thing apart without breaking anything or tearing any wires (not easy, let me tell you) and getting that new hard drive in there. I use my computer for everything in my business as well as just personal stuff, so I was antsy to get it done since I have a wedding coming up.
I have to say THANKS to the two sites that were the most help:
TwistedMac on YouTube
Jason Tomczak
I found them both doing searches on Google and YouTube. If I hadn’t come across these sites, I don’t think I would have had the confidence to do it. They were both very clear with their instructions. The only snag I came across was that the layout of my hard drive is slightly different than what Jason showed on his site. Yikes! I panicked for a minute, but thought it through and took a chance on a couple of screws that looked like the easiest option and they were the correct ones. Phew!
My computer is back up and running and I restored the entire thing using Mac’s wonderful Time Machine program, which is the greatest creation ever, in my opinion. If you have a Mac with Time Machine, go buy an external hard drive big enough to hold a backup of your entire computer and run this program ASAP. Now. Go do it! I’m not kidding! You won’t be sorry, especially if one day your hard drive decides it doesn’t feel like working anymore.
OK, that’s my advice for the day: BACK UP your important files!
Well … the hard drive in my computer finally died. I knew it was coming. I had trouble starting it a month or so ago, so when I got it up and running, I backed everything up using the Time Machine program on my Mac. I’ve been so concerned with it not starting that I actually have left the darn thing on continuously and backed it up daily. Finally, I couldn’t get it to respond and when I tried to restart it … well, it decided it didn’t want to do that any more. I absolutely hate that I don’t have my files or Photoshop or anything. And because I hate blogging without a picture, I looked one up from February 2008. I figured this picture was appropriate since we’re supposed to get 6-10″ here today. ugh!
So, what’s next for my computer? I ordered a new hard drive. A nice big 1Tb hard drive. Mine’s been so full for so long that I’ve had less than 10Gb left for some time now. It will be nice to have the extra room. Jake and I are going to attempt to install it ourselves with a little help from some tutorials and videos I found on the internet. I love that about the internet. So many people willing to share their knowledge. So hopefully we’ll be able to figure it out without completely rendering my computer useless. My brother’s an electronics repair technician, too, so if we need help hopefully he’ll be able to assist us. I’ll be relieved when the new drive is in and formatted and restored using my handy dandy Time Machine.
Until then, I’ll be on facebook and twitter on Jake’s laptop or my iPod touch.
Had a pretty nice weekend. Jake rented The Time Traveler’s Wife for me. Pretty good movie. I almost wish I hadn’t read the book, because I knew what was coming and, toward the end of the movie, I started anticipating when it was going to happen. Having not read the book, Jake said there were certain scenes that left him with questions. I told him they left lots of things out that were in the book, which probably would have helped him understand a little better, but it was understandable why they cut things for the timing of the film.
Last week, with the help of some YouTube videos, I taught myself how to knit. I took a few pictures of my first test projects, but they are on my dead hard drive for now, so I’ll share some things later. I picked up a few more knitting needles today. So far, I’ve only made a couple washcloths and some random sections where I practiced different stitches. Jake said it looks like a section of highway where they’ve tried out different types of cement. I’d like to make a scarf and maybe try my hand at some socks. Yikes!
Crossing my fingers for a snow day tomorrow. Snow is supposed to fall at .5-1″ per hour. It’s already snowing out there right now. We shall see.
Have a wonderful week! Hopefully next time I blog, it will be from a newly replaced hard drive.
I think this is the best Valentines Day we’ve had in a long time. It’s such a blessing to be able to spend a quiet evening with the man I love. I surprised him by asking my mom to watch the kids for the evening and I picked him up from work. We went to dinner at Olive Garden (had a Christmas gift card to use! yay!). Then I told him that he could choose between seeing any movie he wanted (even a “guy movie”) or renting some movies and hanging out at home. He opted for renting. We got The Invention of Lying and Julie & Julia and vegged out at home. The kids spent the night at my parents’ house, so we had a quiet house, which was wonderful.
Saturday was a lazy day around here. We watched movies, played video games and were just … lazy. It was great!
On Sunday, Valentines Day, we went over to Mom & Dad O’s for the day. Took along a sled and attempted to go down the hill beside their house. The snow was very wet and thick and not ideal for sledding. At one point, Jake rolled himself down the hill thinking it would crush the snow down and make a sledding path for the kids. Didn’t work quite how he wanted, but it was funny to see. Took a few pictures outside and met their new dog, Honey, before we went inside to warm up.
Mom prepared a delicious meal of spaghetti and meatballs and garlic toast. So delicious. Then Chloe opened her birthday present – a warm pink hoodie and a cozy nightgown made by MiMaw. She loved it and wore it around for a while. So cute. Then she helped MiMaw frost the cute (yummy!) heart-shaped cake, which we had later for dessert. A wonderful Valentines Day!
Growing up, my mom always took us kids to Showbiz Pizza Place, which eventually became Chuck E. Cheese’s. We went there for all our birthdays and had parties there with our friends. It was a fun tradition that we continued even into our twenties, much to my brothers’ embarrassment. But then Zach and Chloe were born and we had an excuse to go without looking like a bunch of crazy adults there with no kids. ha!
We took Chloe on Thursday for her birthday. She had such a blast running around playing the games and making friends. And even though the place isn’t as nice as it used to be, the pizza’s not as tasty, and it’s all around sticky and germy, it’s worth it to see how much fun it is for the kids.
AJAXed with AWP
