Ramblings, Senseless and Obsolete

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Yes, I am resorting to that old wives' tale that if you don't have time to really blog, posting a few pictures will do instead. Insert embarrassed smirk here.

These pictures had a color pop on them, but between saving for the web and posting here, the boost of color was lost. How did that happen? Very sad. Very sad indeed.

I had a couple interesting things happen yesterday--probably only interesting to me, but whatever.

Last week I took off work Tuesday through Friday. It was nice to be home. And by "be home" I mean BE HOME. You know, like not working, just doing home-like things and thinking home-like thoughts and not working.

But yesterday, I was up early and realized I was really excited about going into the studio. You  know how it is, after a vacation you often dread getting back into the saddle again. Not this time. It was exciting to me.

Then at 3:30 I had a photo shoot with a family I've shot before so we were chit chatting, catching up on what has been going on in the last year. And she said her DH was thinking of changing careers to be a yacht captain or something. And we laughed about wild sounding, over the top sounding dream careers. And then I realized, I already am doing my dream career. And that is pretty cool.

Okay. Off to eat a bowl of Super Sugar Crisp. Breakfast of Champions.

The joys of Thanksgiving

Did you ever wonder what it must feel like to be a photographer's child?

It must feel something like this:

Twas the night before Thanksgiving and all through the house

Thanksgiving is my holiday.

I have hosted Thanksgiving every year except one for the last 15 years. The reality, in my opinion, is that cooking Thanksgiving dinner isn't that difficult--at least it isn't if you already cook for 11 people every day. What is 2 or 3  or even 4 more? It's nothing!

The hard part is making the house presentable. That is because we have 11 people in the house every day and most of them are home 24 hours a day! So in the past, Thanksgiving has sneaked up on me and we find ourselves very busy cleaning up the morning of before MIL gets here.

Not this year. This year we cleaned completely a week and a half ago and only have had to maintain during the interim. Which we have done quite nicely. And last year because we had just opened the studio, we barely got any Christmas decorations up in time for Christmas. So this year we already have up the important mood inducing decorations--mainly garland on the stairs and a couple mini-table-top trees. See?

And we have only had to do the tiniest bit of last minute cleaning. We've had lots of helpers. Who have been helping wash all the incomplete sets of china I inherited. It is so much easier to be thankful when we aren't rushing around last minute trying to do what should have been done weeks ago!

I am thankful for this wonderful family of mine and every single thing we have cleaned and scrubbed and hunted for the last few days. I hope you have as wonderful a holiday as we plan to have! Look around. There is so much to be thankful for!

Little Suzie four eyes

The terrible happened last night. My glasses broke. One ear piece broke off. Then a couple hours later, the second one broke too! Very very strange.

Must be someone telling me I need new glasses!

Which I did.

The old ones were very old and tired.

So off to Lenscrafters this AM because I HAD to have glasses today. I believe the technical term is "blind as a bat."

So here are the new ones. I really like them. I am going to work really had to NOT apologize for the pic. Why do we always hate pictures of ourselves?

The Education of Little Tree

DH and I watched the coolest movie. It's not even a full movie. Only 52 minutes long. But I ought to tell you the important part first. It's called the The Hobart Shakespeareans,

It's about this fantastic teacher in LA who teachers 5th or 6th grade. It is obvious that he truly cares about these kids. He is so committed to them. And he teaches them the important things in life. And he says, and I agree, it comes down to "be nice" and "work hard." And it does, right?

If you homeschool or have kids in the public school system, or just have kids or neices or nephews or neighbors with kids or teach Sunday School or are just a human being, I think you should watch this show. We rented it from Netflix. And was a worthy hour indeed in our lives.

You know, we've been homeschooling for years now. And this really inspired Eric and I to recommit ourselves to the process yet again. Seriously. If you ever doubt yourself or people or the potential of people, this might just cure what ails you.

I watch a lot of movies. And I could recommend quite a few. But this might just be a MUST. 'Kay?

You know I like reality tv, right?

I just found out this week about a show on TLC called "Kids by the Dozen." Have you seen this? Finally something I can relate too!!!! But it is making me a little sad. It makes me want just one more.

Just one more.

Maybe I need to talk to Eric about this.

I might have my Christmas list ready.

Well, it's over

And it was successful.

The fund raiser for our local hospital was last night. For my first time organizing anything like this, I think it went very smoothly! While we didn't raise a HUGE amount of cash, everyone involved was happy. There was a period of time when my studio was PACKED with people. It was very heart warming to see.

But MAN was I tired when I got home! LOL!

And I'm still pissed about that nurse practitioner. I'm trying to be the bigger person. (Ha ha! Now everyone who read the last post knows I'm an 8 lb bigger person!) Seriously though. She was probably jealous. She had on REALLY tacky shoes that frankly clashed with her outfit. I guess she was understandably bitter towards me.

I'm got really good shoes. REALLY good shoes!