Month: September 2015

Here’s a Story of a Trip to Mermet

Put the title to the theme of the Brady Bunch tune!

Yes, yes I just said that.

Last Thursday after I got out of class, we had plans to meet up with some friends and head to Mermet Springs for a weekend of scuba diving.

When I left the school I was supposed to be reading/listening to The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and all I could do was sing the Brady Bunch Theme Song.

When I got to Jared and Karen’s house, I mentioned that and the rest of the weekend, EVERYONE was singing it. We met up with a bunch of friends at Mermet Springs (Metropolis, IL) and they got involved singing it. Craziness!

Half of the larger group left different times on Thursday, the rest left on Friday. We left around 11:30 so we didn’t have to haul tail to get there.

Once we got to Springfield, everyone in our truck (there were 6 of us… Hubby, Jared, Karen, Memaw, Abug, and me) was hungry. I started listing different restaurants we could eat at. Eventually we chose Red Robin, YUMMMMMM! 🙂

Now our trip was 6ish hours and I drank at least 2 glasses of Sweet Tea. Not my smartest move :).

Now unless people are just meeting me for the first time, they’ve learned that I take pictures of everything. But I tried not to get on people’s nerves this trip so I mainly just stuck to pictures of my food and/or hubby’s food. I just try not to annoy people too much. Just because I like blogging and pictures doesn’t mean others do… (more…)

5 Years = The Wood Anniversary

I wonder where they came up with the traditional Anniversary gifts…. Not going to lie, some of them are just a bit…. weird…. but hey whatever.

When hubby and I got married, as we approached our first anniversary I just knew we needed to keep gifts based around traditional gifts. This year I got lax on that though… hubby did good, me…. not so much. I really couldn’t decide what to get him. I thought about being a smart alic (sp??) and give him a log… you know, you could burn it in the fireplace? Weird right….

Anyway I wound up buying him this…….

Why yes, we are Chiefs fans at my house :). I still thought about going out and getting that log or a stick, but I didn’t.

The night before our anniversary everyone at dive club meeting gave hubby a hard time about forgetting our anniversary. Especially because I put up my facebook picture of our wedding picture and my grandparents wedding picture (same anniversary!!) earlier in the week. They said either

A) I was trying to remind him or
B) it was there to scare him and make him look at a calendar.

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9/11 – 14 Years Later

9/11. A date that lives on in the lives of many Americans and people world wide. A day that we thought that our world and our lives were coming to an end.

A date that I remember so vividly in my mind, where I was, especially that I watched that second plane hit the tower. Thinking that my dorm mate was watching a movie but definitely NOT sure what movie she’d be watching.

Sitting here typing this post in about the same time line as the date it happened is giving me goosebumps.

And while instances like this one happen from time to time, and people remember those dates, December 7, 1941, April 19, 1995, September 11, 2001, people remember where they were, people know them by heart, the best we can do sometimes is just cope with the date, remember the lives that were lost, remember the feelings we felt, and Pray to God for healing both for those involved, their families and our country.

This morning while I was on Facebook I saw a commercial that I remember watching during the 2002 Superbowl. For one I absolutely have a love for the Budweiser Clydesdale’s (I want to own one!) and for 2 it was such a great tribute to our country. I didn’t realize that it had only aired just once, but I wanted to share that video with you if you never had the privileged of seeing it, or if you just want to see it again!

Here is the interesting backstory to the commercial if you’re interested.

Never forget!

Labor Day Monday!

Labor Day… defined as a day to pay respect to those who worked so hard to make our country what it is. It’s a day of rest to honor them.

It’s also a day to mark the end of summer, which summer isn’t technically over until later this month… but that’s besides the point.

What else is it? A day to ride horses.

And we only had a slight rodeo that ended with road rash. OUCH! Karen hit the ground hard, but let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on the target that Jared painted on Karen’s horse. It’s pretty and purple!! And I never did hear the story of why it was painted on there…. hmmmm maybe I should ask again.

Then it was time to play with cows. Not cutting though, nope, this was Team Roping. Don’t ask me anything about that… I don’t know much about that sport. The most I know is most team ropers don’t like me. I’m not sure why… I promise I shower… ha!

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Tips & Tricks: Help with a 365 Photo – a – day Project

Let’s do a Project 365. Wait, what is a project 365… So glad you asked! It is a challenge to pick your camera up at least once a day, every day for a year.

What kind of camera do I need? Do you have a dSLR? Super! Do you have an iPhone or Android Camera? Great! A Point and shoot camera? Fabulous! That’s all you need!

A year ago I set out on an adventure to do a 365 Photo a day project. Truthfully I didn’t think I’d make it. In previous years I’ve tried to do a 52 week Photo project and while I accomplished this, it was soooooo hard. Then another year I thought maybe, just maybe I could do a 365 project that focused on me. Well turns out I’m not that self centered, or at least that’s how it felt taking that many pictures of myself! Oy! And I’m guilty of taking a lot of selfies. Sometimes that’s the only way people know I exist because no one really ever takes my photo, but that’s another story/rant for another day.

So back to that 365 photo a day project… last September I decided to start it. Most people choose to start their photo journey on January 1st so that they have 1 year and it’s a calendar year, however I decided to start on September 1 because if I was going to do it, I was ready to commit and I needed to get it started.

That’s all it takes. The commitment.

Let’s start off with the Q&A session:
So what’s the purpose of a 365 Photo a day project?

  • It is a way for you to enhance your photography. You have a starting place and an ending place. Hopefully your ending place is better than where you started. And this is an opinion of yours, not of other people. Keep that in mind!

So what do you take pictures of?

  • Anything you want. You can start out and take a photo a day of the exact same thing, choosing something that you will have on you or have access to for 365 days. In fact on flickr there are groups that focus solely on taking a photo of the same thing, ie dog, sunglasses, sky, yourself, (the sky is the limit…).

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Just Laugh

Happy Labor Day. This supposedly marks the end of Summer even though we don’t officially hit fall until the end of this month… figure that one out!

Just for a reason to make your day and help you laugh on a Monday (even though if you’re a lucky one you have the day off so you’re already happy)…

My Saturday, let me tell you what!

I was abruptly woke up around 7am Saturday morning with a head crashing in to mine and a giggle from the baby. I should have known that was just the start of things.

We all laid in bed and watched a few episodes of Pioneer Woman until hubby started getting up and getting dressed. I thought we were going somewhere so I quickly got myself up and dressed and the baby. Turns out, we weren’t.

So baby girl and I went in and made Pancakes for breakfast.

Around 11am she was getting cranky. Hubby finally fixed my fog light on my car after 4 years of begging but he and his friend Robert had to drive to town to get something to fix it. When he got back he brought me a Sweet Tea from Sonic. I was laying on the bed with the baby trying to get her down for a nap.

I finally got her to sleep, tucked a pillow in on my side of the bed, moved her into the middle of the bed and tucked a pillow into hubby’s side of the bed, you know create rails for her. (remember we were laying on my bed because I was laying with her. I don’t fit in the crib….)

I was quietly backing away from the bed because moving her over into the middle of the bed she started to wake up but quickly went back to sleep. And that’s when it happened. I backed into the Sweet Tea sitting on the corner of the night stand and knocked it all over our {white} carpet and into the hallway. It was loud too.

First thought was crap I just woke up the baby. I didn’t. Then oh crap I have to get this tea up NOW! I didn’t get even one sip of that tea. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be for me to have Sweet Tea Saturday. Oh well…

And on that note I’ll leave you with one last comment… I just heard a Kmart commercial playing Christmas music. While I love Christmas and Thanksgiving and am totally waiting, kind of impatiently, I’m not ready because of Comps. I have to get through those First.

Happy Labor Day! Peace out!

5 Years

5 Years… Wow-what a ride it has been. We’ve seen our shares of ups, our shares of downs, our shares of bad attitudes and bad tempers and lots and lots of laughs. We’ve been through job changes, losing jobs, nights apart due to jobs, starting school, graduate school, and that’s only the beginning… remember comps are coming up!

And if that wasn’t enough, we decided to start a family, only we didn’t realize that it would go off so quickly and then the scares we had involving that all while trying to keep our heads afloat and not lose sight of the day to day tasks we had to do… ie work and school… but we got that gorgeous baby girl who calls both of us dada even though she can say, mama. That’s a real head-scratcher there.

We’ve cried, fought, screamed, laughed, prayed, and every other thing you can think when it comes to this marriage, and sometimes when we’ve almost been ready to just say screw it all together, we come through for each other and proceed forward. I guess that line for better or worse, richer or poorer holds true to our marriage and even though it is difficult sometimes, it definitely makes us stronger. (more…)

Weekend review – Better late than never!

This last weekend started off with celebrating my grandpa’s birthday Friday night. On our way down to pick my grandma up my dad got a phone call from a friend asking him to come over and ride horses Saturday morning.

I knew hubby had plans on cleaning up around the house… no specifics were know, just the knowledge of it. So when dad asked if we wanted to go ride with him, Tbug, Abug, and I jumped at the chance. Come on, ride horses or work… you decide. Hubby is a good sport and said, “well you girls have fun.”

We got up early enough Saturday morning that we could run through town and get breakfast, then we headed to my parents house. Dad decided we could eat breakfast before we unloaded horse/cow feed (don’t worry we got him some too) so I sat Abug down on the dog food for a place to eat her breakfast. If you want to know how to keep a toddler still for a photo, give her food! :). haha.

Then it was time to unload feed. Tbug decided to help Grandpa carry the feed into the barn so I drug the sacks to the back of the tailgate so they could grab them. I stayed at the truck though to watch Abug and make sure she didn’t decide to nose dive off the tailgate.

Then Abug and I jumped in the front seat of the truck and moved it over to the trailer so we could hook it up, load up the horses and head to Wayne’s house.

Once we got to Wayne’s house Abug and I stayed on the outside of the fence for a few minutes while they warmed horses up. Our horses hadn’t really been ridden in about a month to a month and a half so I didn’t want her on one that might act up.

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Family Celebrations

Finding pictures of my grandparents seems to not be an easy task. That’s a funny statement for someone who loves photos, but this is also why I say take pictures with your family even if you hate having your picture taken because they’ll cherish them!

Anyway… off that rant… Last Friday would have been my grandpa’s birthday. “Would have been,” past tense, because he passed away Saturday November 13th 2010.

Circa September 2006

I was a lucky kid though… While my mom didn’t get to be a stay at home mom, I got to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. I even was lucky enough to have my great grandparents in my life (My great grandpa passed away in 1998 at 108 and my great grandpa passed away in 2002 at 101). But I got to spend a lot of quality time with my grandparents, something not everyone gets to claim. I definitely wouldn’t have traded that time for the world!

And one thing that we do in my family, which might be a little bit crazy to some people… We still celebrate their birthday. I’m sorry, these people lived and we’re extremely happy that we had them in our lives, so why not celebrate their birthday?!?! They are every bit a part of the reason I’m here today!

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