Days 69-73

Day 69

Feeding Nikolai his Rice Cereal and this just was perfect. He is still not sure about it! I caught him with his mouth open!

Day 70

I made spaghetti sauce all by myself. No jarred stuffs no canned food stuffs, just from scratch! And it was really good! I am proud of myself!

Day 71

Nikolai was playing with my shoes. I was taking pictures of him, doing my "10 pictures, 1 subject" thing, and I like the way this one turned out. Too bad it was late and the lighting in the house isn't that great! But, my little boy has pretty good posture! Maybe it is from watching me do yoga? Probably not...

Day 72

I should have seen this for what it was, as sign he was going to pull himself into standing while in his crib. He did that later that day too!

Day 73

Our day 5 of actually sitting at the dinner table to eat dinner. And, actually having a meal worthy of sitting at the dinner table to eat dinner! This was the asparagus parts that we did not give Nikolai, homemade re-fried beans (which I accidentally left the burner on so they were burned to the bottom of the pot) and a drumstick with Kellog's Corn Flakes coated on it. It was actually pretty good. Too bad I don't like eating chicken that has not been de-boned. It's a psychosomatic type thing... Now if only we can keep this dinner thing up...

Days 64-68

Day 64

Can you see the baby? we were playing hide and seek behind the curtain... then I had to take a picture of him...

Day 65

Crawled under the table. Wound up getting stuck because when he went up on his knees to get out from under it, his head hit the lip that hangs down... Poor thing, but it was pretty funny!

Day 66

Got his shots this day, and poor thing was falling asleep on his daddy!

Day 67

Hera was letting Nikolai pet her! She even laid down next to him! Nikolai eventually lost interest, but I had to take a picture of her. She is such a good, sweet kitty!

Day 68

I walked into his room because I heard him making noise while I was starting laundry (rooms are right next to each other) and there he was sitting up playing with his music box, wave machine thingy. So I decided to turn it on. It's more interesting when the parts that move are actually moving!

I am still here...

After our trip to California, my camera has been doing some funky things. When reviewing some pictures on the camera's LCD screen, it shows "card read error". Then after uploading the pictures onto the computer, they look a little like this...

I am a bit discouraged from any photography at the moment. I am still taking pictures everyday, just not specifically for anything in particular. No agenda, no nothing... My camera does this and I do not know why. To top it off, it takes a 5 second delay to actually take the picture once i hit the shutter release button. That then is even more discouragement. And my trial of lightroom 3 has ended. I no longer have that fantastic program to edit pictures! I feel pre-production just isn't as good as post-production when it comes to sharing, and nothing seems as good as lightroom 3!

So, despite my discouragement, and I going to try my hardest to get back into this actively. I am just really upset that my camera is doing what it is doing to pictures! :( But it is an old camera (10 years?) and it has treated me well.... perhaps it is time to start looking for something new? Until then I will try my best to get stuff on here!

California: Days 54 - 63

Vacationed Days 54-63. Did not get the opportunity to update while we were gone so here is up through Sunday...

Day 54: Friday

This was my Granfather holding Nikolai. My Dad placed him in his lap and I was surprised because he hasn't seemed interested in holding him before.  Nikolai and I visited before leaving and my camera was in the car, so this was taken with my phone...

Day 55: Saturday

The morning of our arrival. accept this was at 1 am. We stopped at a rest stop for Brandon to take over driving so I could sleep. We figured it had been a while since Nikolai had eaten so we woke him to let him eat. Since he was up, might at well let him get some standing time in before putting him into his carseat again.

Day 56: Sunday

This was our second day there, but our first full day since we arrived in the afternoon on saturday. Gatlin (my cousin's son) and Nikolai spent some time playing together on the floor then went swimming in the pool. It was busy and limited pictures were taken by me.

Day 57: Monday
These were some pretty flowers at a vineyard.

Day 58: Tuesday
This place had pretty good burgers!

Day 59: Wednesday
Saying a momentary goodbye. Gatlin was coming back, but his daddy and some cousins were leaving. In this picture they were looking at one of the dogs.

Day 60: Thursday
The beauty of the redwoods. Giant trees, and these are just the babies!

Day 61: Friday
My little frog prince. The day before we left. We were to go swimming, but instead just chilled...

Day 62: Saturday
Our old mailbox infront of the house in which we lived in California. My Dad built that post! Amazing that it is there over 18 years later!

Day 63: Sunday
Almost home, this is on the side of the road on the way into Phoenix on I-10.

Week 8: Days 50-53

So this weeks theme is looking in. I kinda took last week off because of being sick. Trust me, it is probably better that way. My writing may not have been understandable, and the pictures may not have made sense. Fevers have a tendency to do that to people. I am not sure if that fits into the rules or not, but oh well...

Day 50

So this first one, I tried to take a picture of the inside of a flower. The wind kept moving the flower so the focus is on the leaves on the tree instead...

Day 51

Can you guess what this is? I was making a smoothie using orange and pineapple juices, banana and kale. I find it hard to get in my green leafies still since Nikolai came along. This is a yummy way to do it, and kale is one of the best green leafies there is. This is looking into the blender from the top. I think it looks cool.

Day 52

I hate spiders. I saw this one in the bathroom, I was cleaning and getting ready to change out the trash when the darn thing ran out from under the trashcan and across my foot. I hate spiders. Needless to say, I freaked. Poor Nikolai was napping and I woke him up because of my freaking. I was so terrified I couldn't even use the vacuum to suck it up. Luckily, Brandon did it when he got home. I probably could have done it myself if it hadn't gone across my foot before that. But because it touched me, forget it... It was huge too!

Day 53

Brandon has been borrowing his Dad's electric car to help with saving gas money so we can save for going to California. It has helped so much these last few weeks. Which is good since we leave tomorrow night once he gets back from work. I am so excited to see family, and see how Nikolai and his little cousin Gatlin (6 weeks older) get along! Most of the pictures starting Saturday will probably be of our trip.  But this is such a wierd looking engine. It seems like it is nearly missing and replaced with batteries. One bad thing about it, no A/C... yuck...Good thing we aren't taking this for our trip!

Week 7: Days 47-49

Day 47

I had to, this is just priceless! Nikolai, "hmm, tempting..." to a rattle I was jiggling before him. His interest was more in the camera and it worked for a few moments. :)

Day 48

Brandon has been working on his Bronco. Current task, sandblast the frame so it can be painted. Here was what had been completed after a mornings work...

Day 49

A quail walked right passed our side door, right in front of the door. I ran to grab my camera, but of course the moment I opened the security gate, the darn things dashed away. This was the picture I was able to get...

sickly...

I have been sick and unfortunately, that means the photo a day needed to take a back seat. I will update the moment I can...