Katie's Summer Portraits

So I thought I would go back through the pictures and re edit the ones I didn't like and look at some more. And these are the ones I came up with. You can really see Katie's personality in some of them. And in some of them you can see how much of a little actress she is. I wanted to add a couple of the ones that I took today while at the park. It was a cool but windy day, Katie and I walked from one park to the other. Which may I add is a round trip total of about 3 1/2 miles. > I had previously thought it was 2 1/2, but after taking the pedometer with me, I realized I was off slightly. LOL And yes, my 36 week pregnant butt was able to do it, and no Sam doesn't seem to be on his way yet. :) Anyway I digress. There was no one around, so Katie was really enjoying herself. Not having to deal with the big kids running over her and such.

"Foxie Staredown"

So I named the mommy fox. It's lame, but I call her Foxie Staredown. LOL I hadn't seen her while it had been raining over the weekend. But as soon as the sun came out today, there they were. Her and her three pups. They have gotten so big it seems in such a small space of time. When we first saw them they were tiny. They have lost their grayness now too and are getting more of their moms coloring. I think they are beautiful. Today, they happened to come out while Katie and I were outside. I think we surprised her a little because she barked at me and then ran away. In other news, Katie made me paint butterflies on her wall on Saturday. Well, she didn't make me, but after the frog I painted for Sam, she's been asking for something on her wall. So I painted. And while I had my back turned, Katie decided to do some painting of her own on the wall. I think maybe she was trying to paint grass. Who knows for sure. But there were green streaks all up and down the wall. So being that it was acrylic paint, and there wasn't anyway THAT was coming off of the wall, I tried to cover it up with some flowers. Not sure how I really feel about it, but it's better than green streaks. :) It is located underneath a light, so kind of like the sun is above them. Sigh....where it's located would not have been my ideal place to have painted flowers.

36 weeks, Baby!

So as of yesterday, I am 36 weeks. I took this picture today at 36 weeks 1 day. This coming Saturday, Sam will be officially full term! He could come now and everything would be good as long as he didn't have any problems. But it would be best if he could hold off until next weekend. I have been having some cramping on and off, but no real contractions yet. So we'll see. I also tried to get Katie to take some pictures today. Kind of her last portrait photos before Sam gets here. She was not very...well...we'll just say cooperative. I have some more on my flickr, but I think I may need to re-edit some of them. Not crazy about the editing I did on them. But check the rest out here.

Ranked 1 out of 1,920,000 results?

How's that happen? I just happened to be checking out my flickr stats and checking out who had been looking at my pictures, when I realized this picture was coming up on Google. So here's the link to the search. Check it out, it's the first one out of 1,920,000.

...because I liked them.

So nothing particularly exciting to report on today. But I took some pictures anyway. And I got some ones I really liked so I though I would share them. The first one, I took while spraying Katie in her pool this afternoon. She wasn't too thrilled, but I thought it was funny. And this one I took, and couldn't help but giggle everytime I look at it. Katie is such a goober. The rose one I love, well, just because. I love flowers and this is one of the first roses to bloom this year.
The last one I took, because I love yellow flowers. And I just think the overall structure to these flowers is cool.

They are actually from a cabbage plant that made it all the way through the winter. I didn't know cabbage even sprouted flowers. Always learning something new.

Mommies and babies must like it around here....

Because they seem to be everywhere around us. This morning I heard some chirping which I though was in the laundry. When I went to check it out. I discovered a daddy cardinal feeding his three baby chicks. Awwwww......it was so sweet. I tried all day to get a good picture of them, but they are in a tree right outside the mudroom window, at a very difficult angle. So here's the best I could get of them. :) And then of course you know about the fox mommy and her pups. We were out on the driveway after dinner letting Katie ride around on her tricycle, and they just came out. I tried to get a picture of them, but it was already so dark. But here's another one of the mom and two of the pups. As for the rest of the day, Katie and I set up the pool in the backyard and spent about 3 hours outside playing in it. Katie had a blast and it was the first thing she showed Daddy when he got home. :) Glad I could make her day. We also spent a good portion of that time in the sand box of course. Can anyone tell me why little kids love sand so much? And we also spent some of that time dodging the stupid carpenter bees. They are just a pest. The male ones like to stare you in the face, as if that will make run away. I happen to know the males can't sting. Ha! Ok, but honestly, a bee of that size whether it can sting or not, does make me run away. LOL

Things that Katie can do.....

Katie can now blow bubbles all by herself.



Katie can climb the rock wall at the park.


And Katie can play swords at the park with branches. LOL

I'm gonna get you bee!

And I did! For all of you moms who know Starfall, you'll know where the title comes from. :) Along with an ant in a flower. And one of the fox pups sticking his head up over the embankment at me. :) Can you find him? Yes, I have been enjoying my new lenses. Hopefully, I'll get the hang of my zoom/macro lens better soon. But I liked these pictures.

Happy Birthday Michelle! And some pictures from the past couple of days....

So there are no birthday pictures really, but I just wanted to send a birthday shoutout to my sister. Even though technically it's only her birthday for 40 more minutes. SO here it is, Happy Birthday! And don't worry, I won't tell everyone how old you are. You're 20 twice over right? ;)
I have taken a few pictures over the past few days. This first one I call "The cutest five little piggies". I just love little feet. Katie is getting to be such a little bossy boots. In the second picture, she is trying to tell me we can't rest in the hammock for a minute, I HAVE to get out. She won't give me even a ten second break.And then she turns around and laughs and giggles with me and is the sweetest little girl. What am I going to do with her? Her newest thing when she really wants something is to say, "Please, please, please, please Mommy? Can I?", in the sweetest, cutest little voice. Katie is also becoming really attached to Molly. She spends a lot of time with her. I think really even though Katie always says that her mommy and daddy are her best friends, that Molly is her best friend. It's really cute. Look Katie will even share Cheetos with Molly. She won't even share them with me or Miguel. Lucky dog. LOL
And I will leave you with this last one. Because I really think it is very cute. Katie loves to give Molly kisses, which Molly puts up with. I wonder how much longer Molly will put up with this abuse? LOL Hopefully Molly is used to it by now. I can't wait to see what abuse Sam will inflict upon her. Poor little doggie.

Playing with lighting

So the night of my birthday Miguel and I were playing with the lighting stuff I got for my birthday. And Miguel was able to get this shot of himself. Pretty good huh? And then today I got this one of myself. Hey at least I could get some nice passport photos. LOL For anyone interested, I am using a softbox with a monolight flash, a continuous light, and a hot shoe flash for fill in from my camera. I'm fairly happy with it so far. I just need to get the set up exactly right. Time probably to take the time to read up more.

The Foxes and Us will coexist.

The mommy fox and the four pups that are living in our backyard are probably going to be with us until at the latest August, according to the Chattahoochee Nature Preserve. We looked into having them humanely removed, and no one does that apparently. Poor mommy is just trying to raise her family. I am hoping to get a better picture of them some point. This one was overexposed, but it was such a cute scene, I tried to bring it back.


On another note. I decided to try out the Sigma zoom/macro lens that my Mom and Dad bought for me. It's very cool. I took Katie on a flower picking walk around the neighborhood as an excuse to take my macro lens with me. ;) There's a little slide show of the pictures I have taken with it so far. :) There's one of Katie with her basket. She had just put her flowers in the basket. Katie would have kept walking if I had let her. She enjoyed it that much. I think it's time for a trip to the Botanical Gardens. She is such a cutie. Always surprising me with what she likes to do. She's a lot like me, so maybe it shouldn't surprise me too much.

Testing out one of my new Birthday lenses!

I love the wide angle Tamron lens that Miguel bought me. This first one, I was walking right next to them. Of course whenever you ask Katie to pose these days, she turns her head or does what she's doing in this picture. Oh my little Katie....way to be girlie. This next one, I was sitting right next to Miguel and Katie on the park bench. You can even see part of my leg in the picture. To be honest, I was surprised you couldn't see my belly too as far as it sticks out now. And this last one because it shows how fast the lens is. For moms in the know, you all know how hard it is to get a focused picture on a swing. Almost every shot I got of Katie on the swings was for the most part in focus. Pretty amazing really. It's super fast "glass" as they call it. LOL Oh and by the way for anyone interested. It's 12:32am and I am officially one year older. One year closer to 30. Eeeekkkk!!! Scary....... "Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me....."

So, I did do other stuff over the past few days....

I tried to take my own "professional" maternity pics, but when your as big and pregnant as I am, you really need someone to do it for you. Even with the remote, the tripod, I just couldn't get the shots the way I wanted them. I might try again in a couple of days. The one I posted was the one I liked the most. The only editing was fading me into the background, and cropping it. Which I think I need to redo the cropping.

Don't give up on new posts yet!

I have been a little bit busy, and very very tired lately. But I decided to take on a project before Sam was born, that really has nothing to do with him so much as I just won't have time for it when he gets here. :) I redid my website, again. It's still a work in progress. A lot of the new links don't work yet. That takes some time. But in general, this is what it will look like. So check it out, let me know if you have any thoughts on it. www.childofminedesigns.com
The gallery has not been updated at all yet. but it's on it's way in the next week or so. It's a little bit more of a difficult project.

Silly Cousins and Happy Birthday to Us!

We had a very quick impromptu photo sessions yesterday since we had the four cousins (my sisters' and my kids) all in one place. It doesn't happen all that often, so gotta seize every opportunity. :) This was their silly one. They are so funny. We also celebrated four birthdays yesterday. My Dad's, which was at the end of March, mine-next week, my oldest sister's-the week after, and my other sister's-the week after that. It was fun, and always nice to have most of your family around. Only my brothers were missing from the fun yesterday. My sister is turning 40, so of course we did the separate cake with the black icing and the candles that were the number 40, and also all the over the hill 40 birthday gags. Who can resist that? I was able to open all my birthday presents early, thank you, Miguel :), and I played around with them a lot yesterday. I got two new lenses for my camera, a remote for my camera, and also a strobe flash, that I still have to learn how to use. LOL I am really excited and hoping that soon after Sam is here, I'll be able to start making some money at this hobby. :) The picture of the azaleas was taken with the wide angle Tamron lens I got. Pretty huh? It was a cloudy day, so I can't wait to get it out there on a beautiful day.

A Cold , no shall I say, freezing trip to Amicalola Falls

It was a ton of fun, and so pretty. But it was really cold here yesterday. We went north to Amicalola Falls, which incidentally is also where the Appalachian Trail begins. It was so cold that my niece and Katie needed sweaters, and they were still cold. Being up in the foothills, and the clouds were so low, we were actually walk around in the clouds, which was a totally neat experience. To put in Miguel's words it was like being in a toilet paper commercial. LOL I totally enjoyed the trip. I wish we'd been able to hike around a bit more, but being 33 weeks pregnant, that just wasn't about to happen. :) Katie enjoyed it. She wasn't so sure about the heights, but otherwise she was alright.
I have a few more pictures that I took in Flickr, but I didn't get to take as many as I would have liked because my battery died on me in the middle. Bad battery......

A trip to Stone Mountain

So the boys, Miguel, Jeff, and Jared, plus Katie, hiked up Stone Mountain today. They made good time, by the time Maxine, Sydney, and I drove around to the cable car, went up on the cable car, and walked around on top of the mountain for a few, the boys and Katie had made it up. It was over 1 mile straight up, so they made it in 25 minutes or so, I was impressed. Miguel of course had to carry Katie most of the way, but Katie had a blast. It was a pretty nice and warm day too. We even got a little sunburned. And for those of you not familiar with or from the south, the carving on the mountain is of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. Did you also know that the steps to the White House were quarried at Stone Mountain? As well as the base of the Lincoln Memorial and the gates to the Panama Canal. It's neat to me anyway. If you want to see a few more pics from today, check out this link.