Autopilot

Sometimes I'm so thankful that my body has the ability to go on autopilot.

Reason number one:
Despite the fact that my daughter is 4 years old, she's decided she doesn't need to sleep through the night. That's just fine for her. Not so fine with me. Thankfully, last night, we both made it through the night. Every time I would wake up, I'd whisper a quick prayer of thanksgiving and go right back to sleep. Thank you, Lord, for rest.

Reason number two:
I signed up (or was forcefully requested) to make a dessert to sell at school. I really love to bake, so I was excited about doing that. UNTIL I realized how busy this week would be. I decided I'd just make a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread. UNTIL I completely forgot. At 9:45 last night, I remember. Way too late to start bread. So I scavenged in the cupboard and found a box of cake mix. I ended up with a delicious coffee cake, after borrowing eggs from the neighbor. Who needs sleep? Autopilot is good, right?

Reason number three:
Emotionally, I'm done right now. School is zapping me. I'm worried about M's appt with the urologist today. There is much brew-ha-ha at church. I'm in a place of coasting and not dealing with any of it. There is nothing wrong with living in this place of avoidance. I occupy it well.

I'll update later about M's appt.

Much ado about...much

OVERWHELMED.

Will return to the regularly scheduled program tomorrow.

The author of this blog is overwhelmed.

Values and Goals

I'm taking Jessica Sprague's FREE Holiadays in Hand class. (You can register until tonight at midnight).

Our first assignment is today is to Refocus on Holiday Values.

The problem for me is that I've never focused on holiday values to begin with! Perhaps that's why we don't have any set traditions in this family. So, I'm staking a claim on some values for the Benson family. No more flying by the seat of our pants.

Our new Christmas Values will be:
1.) Family (the three of us, H's family, and my family)
2.) Creating memories
3.) Sweets

The task is to turn those three values into goals. How can I turn those values into tangible goals that we can accomplish?

Beginning this year, we will:
1.) Choose one fun way to celebrate Christmas. (Going to Callaway Gardens or Stone Mountain for the light festivals) This will take care of family and creating memories.
2.) Schedule a Saturday to make sweets to deliver to our neighbors and friends. This will take care of creating memories and sweets.

Not a difficult task for today, but did require a tad bit of soul searching for me. Defining values is never easy for me. Setting goals, much easier. Look for more blogging related to this class. I'm really looking forward to it--I've enjoyed so much the other two classes I've taken at www.jessicasprague.com.

Trees and Christmas Cards

We took a family walk tonight. I've got about 65 pictures to document the 30 minute walk. H and I were able to talk M into sitting in a pretty fall-ish tree to take some pictures. After hoisting her onto the branch and forcing her to smile, she actually loved it and wanted to take lots of pictures up there. Here are two that I randomly selected to post without editing a single picture yet.

That's because I'm having too much fun figuring out this whole digital scrapbooking/card making thing. Boy, oh, boy, do I have tons to learn. But I had a ball tonight. This is card attempt number two. Still not even good, but it's getting better.

Anytime I design anything, I have a problem with too much "all the same thing"ness going on. see how there isn't really a dominate feature on this card? I need to learn more about design so I can learn to balance all of that out. I'm very obviously out of practice with actually paper and glue. My real scrapbooks are super creative and have plenty of contrast. Too bad I haven't scrapped in more than a year and really need to get back to it so I can revive my skills!

Also, I've noticed that I've changed some setting on my camera. All of my most recent pictures have a lot of noise. I wonder if I'm shooting at the wrong ISO. I don't think I've changed it, but I need to play around with my camera and figure that one out.

What do you think about this card vs. the first one? Do you like this one a little better? Have any suggestions?

Golden Sun

Oh, my sweet goodness.
Two sweet families in one day!

How did I get so lucky? Look at these precious girls.

No, your vision is not blurred. There is not one, but two of the most precious girls I've had the priviledge to photograph. When M heard I was doing their pictures, she proclaimed, "Mama! I need to be your helper! They are the sisters that look JUST ALIKE!" And they do!

Do you not believe me?

I told you! IDENTICAL! And too, too precious.

Here is the entire family. Good looks abound.

I'm not including the best because I'm saving those for them. They're good. Trust me. Very good.

Camera VS. Sun

Today I did a photo shoot with a sweet family I know. When I say sweet, I mean the whole entire family is sweet. I had to do a little bribing (jelly beans and bubbles for the little boys and a beer for the biggest boy), but they were so EASY to work with. I need to add a bunch of poses to my repetoire to keep everyone engaged and make sessions go a little quicker. I'm a little too laid back, allowing things to just happen. I need a plan.

My camera and I fought the sun.

The sun won.

I just don't have enough tools in the arsenal to fight it. I'm still learning to make the camera work for me!

Anyway, here are three shots from this morning.

The two brothers, sweet as can be.

Another sweet picture of the brothers.

(Darn that sun! Wouldn't this be perfect if not for the blow out?)

The whole family. Sweet like peppermint.

I hope they'll let me do it again another time when the sun will submit to my whims!!

In a few minutes, I'm heading out with my smallest assistant (that's M), to do a shoot with two little friends of hers. When she heard I was going to be taking their family picture, she INSISTED on assisting me. It's late in the afternoon here, so I'm hoping for golden light, not glaring sun.

Darn, Darn, DARN!!

I hope I'm not kicked out of NaBloPoMo. I can NOT believe I missed yesterday!! A.R.G.H!!!

I did post twice on Thursday and I'll post twice today. Can that make up for my dropping the ball?

I'm home alone. H took M to pick up our Christmas tree from his brother's house. (My sister-in-law's brother drove to NC to pick up trees for all of us!!!) I'm listening to my music on the iPod. Ahhh...it's a good morning.

I've washed dishes and folded two loads of laundry. I'm going to download a few pictures, charge my camera battery and grab a quick bath.

I think it's going to be a good day!