Reflections of the past.....

This will be a pictureless post. Which, is very difficult for me not include some picture of something I think might relate, but I will control my photo OCD and leave this one alone.
A lot happened and changed in 2009. There has been a lot of hardship and sorrow for many of the ones I love and ourselves. In some respects it was a wonderful year, with trips the beach and some of the best experiences. Simply look through my blog posts of 2009 and you'll be able to see what I mean. In other ways, it was a rough and tumble year with the economy being the way it is and as always, the family drama. I do want to add something here, that some of you may or may not know. We had to say good bye last year to the little one who is now one of our angels watching over us. I mention it only to try and say good bye and move past the loss. It was harder on us, well me in particular, than I thought it would have been. I am blessed with two awesome children and the best hubby, and in a sense that's what makes it bitter sweet. I know what a wonderful addition we would have had to our family.
In any case, I look back further over the past decade and realize how far we've come, how much we've grown up. I started out the decade a teenager and ended it a mom of two. Crazy, how quickly it all happens and flies by. So for the next (and I suppose current) decade, I hope to continue to live life as full as possible. I hope for us as many amazing experiences in the future as there were in the past.

Randomness of the Martine mind

So here goes. Just some random thoughts and pics from the past couple of days.
It's been a reoccurring thought lately about my weight loss. My mind still has a hard time accepting the fact that I am no longer 80 lbs heavier. Although, obviously, I am well aware that those lbs are gone. I look at size 6 clothing and can not BELIEVE that my butt is that small. I wear a medium top (small in t shirts) and again don't really believe that they will fit until I try them on. I'm wondering how long it will take for me to accept the new body I have? I still get really excited when I look in the mirror and see a slender version of myself. I look now how I only dreamed I could look 6 months ago. I've talked to others who have lost a lot of weight and they all say they've been through the same thing. So hopefully, it won't be so shocking to me anymore soon, and I can get over it. LOL It also shocks me that I let myself get as big as I did. I really didn't think I looked that big, but hindsight is always 20/20 right? I can only hope for the future, that I've learned my lesson and will never again head down that path.


So anyway, on to other things. I am getting my new and much awaited portrait lens today. Which means you can be sure to see a lot picture posts coming in the future as I get to play with it. What is this new lens you might say, well I'll tell you even if it may not mean much to you. It's an 85mm 1.8 lens. Supposed to take beautiful portraits in the right hands. So I'll be testing it out. Next weekend I am headed off to Berry College for a North Georgia photographers get together. We'll be practicing on models and learning from each other. It should be AWESOME and I am really looking forward to it.


We took Katie to the park yesterday, since it's getting beautiful here, and let her ride her bike around the park. She did amazing! Riding over a bumpy bridge and learning how to stop with the pedals and even using the pedals to slow down. Once she fell off the bike, but did she cry? Nope. She got right back on and kept going. Next step (in a year or two I think), no training wheels!




And then just because they are too cute and sweet. A couple of pictures of Kim and Brad's dogs who are often there in the gym to cheer us on through the workouts. :) Did I ever tell you guys how much I like to take pics?




Ok. Ta ta for now...I'm off to clean...

IPod, my friend

I hope you all had a spectacular V-Day. I did. Miguel managed to surprise me by buying me my own pink IPod Shuffle. It's actually for running, since one of my goals is to run a 10k by the summer. Just as an FYI, I have yet to run with it. ;) But we'll blame that on my strained plantar fascia (arch), which by the way I am pretty sure was caused by my incredibly tight ham strings. Stretch ladies, stretch, 'cause trust me, all kids of nasty things happen when your hammies are tight. In any case, I have already loaded it up with some songs. Only 3 hours worth and I say ONLY because this little thing holds like 400 songs. Do the math, that's like 3 days worth of music. Anyway, you can see my current playlist here. Say what you want about the music. It's my music, that I like. So there. Oh and this is stuff for me to workout to. So, no, this isn't what I might typically listen to in the car, but still stuff I like.
Ava Adore - Smashing Pumpkina
Bad Cartridge/Remix E-Pro - Beck
Beasty-Boys_Sabotage - Beastie Boys
Bring Me To Life - Evanescence
Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!) - Garbage
Cherub Rock - Smashing Pumpkins
Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
Different People - No Doubt
Don't Phunk With My Heart - The Black Eyed Peas
Even Flow - Pearl Jam
Everlong - Foo Fighters
Everything Is Everything - Lauryn Hill
Everything Zen - Bush
Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) - Aerosmith
Feel Good Inc.- Gorillaz
Feels Just Like It Should - Jamrioquai
Friday I'm in Love- The Cure
Gettin' Jiggy Wit It - Will Smith
Give It Away - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Heaven - Live
Intuition - Jewel
It's Only Me - Barenaked Ladies 1
It Wasn't Me - Shaggy
King Without A Crown - Matisyahu
Korn-Got The Life
Lay Down Sally - Eric Clapton
Let Me Go - Cake
Limp-Bizkit_Rollin'-
Meet Virginia - Train
Mr. Jones - Counting Crows
No Diggity - Blackstreet
One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds Five
Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend
The Rascal King - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Phrenology - The Roots
Roses - OutKast
Sleep To Dream - Fiona Apple
Stay (Wasting Time)- Dave Matthews Band
Summersong - The Decemberists
Summertime - Sublime
Traveling Song - Will.I.Am
Buddy_Holly - Weezer
White Shadows - Coldplay
Beautiful-Disaster - 311
32 Flavors - Ani DiFranco
66 - The Afghan Whigs

For those of you who haven't read this...

It's so true.....

TELL ME ABOUT IT ®

By Carolyn Hax
Wednesday, May 23, 2007; Page C10
The Washington Post

Carolyn:

Best friend has child. Her: exhausted, busy, no time for self, no time for me, etc. Me (no kids): Wow. Sorry. What'd you do today? Her: Park, play group . . .

Okay. I've done Internet searches, I've talked to parents. I don't get it. What do stay-at-home moms do all day? Please no lists of library, grocery store, dry cleaners . . . I do all those things, too, and I don't do them EVERY DAY. I guess what I'm asking is: What is a typical day and why don't moms have time for a call or e-mail? I work and am away from home nine hours a day (plus a few late work events) and I manage to get it all done. I'm feeling like the kid is an excuse to relax and enjoy -- not a bad thing at all -- but if so, why won't my friend tell me the truth? Is this a peeing contest ("My life is so much harder than yours")? What's the deal? I've got friends with and without kids and all us child-free folks get the same story and have the same questions.

Tacoma, Wash.

Answer:
"Relax and enjoy. You're funny.

Or you're lying about having friends with kids.

Or you're taking them at their word that they actually have kids, because you haven't personally been in the same room with them.

Internet searches?

I keep wavering between giving you a straight answer and giving my forehead some keyboard. To claim you want to understand, while in the same breath implying that the only logical conclusions are that your mom-friends are either lying or competing with you, is disingenuous indeed.

So, since it's validation you seem to want, the real answer is what you get. In list form. When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, clean, dressed; to keeping them out of harm's way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any one of which produces the kind of checkout-line screaming that gets the checkout line shaking its head.

It's needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15.

It's constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier.

It's constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends, well-meaning and otherwise. It's resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone's long-term expense.

It's doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything -- language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything.

It's also a choice, yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, every day, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 minutes to yourself, wanted to be alone with your thoughts instead of calling a good friend, a good friend wouldn't judge you, complain about you to mutual friends, or marvel how much more productively she uses her time. Either make a sincere effort to understand or keep your snit to yourself."

Ok, so while I really don't have any friends who I think think this way, I have seen that look in people's (acquaintances) eyes when I tell them I am exhausted after going to the grocery store and running errands by myself. I am pretty darn good shape, you would think I should be able to handle it, but it's not that it's physically exhausting. It totally wears you out mentally. Anyway, I just wanted to give the answer in this article a good, "Here, here!! Well said!".

So dear Christmas, why is it you hate me so?

My worst sicknesses always come around Christmas. Normally the stomach flu And said stomach flu had no intentions of letting this year go. So here I sit with a LONG laundry list of things to do and no energy to do it with. Not to mention having to try to do them in between bathroom trips. Sam had it first Thursday and Friday. I started coming down with it on Friday and hit me full blown today and yesterday. My only hope is that I will be all better tomorrow. Or at least mostly. I don't care about the eating part. I just want to be able to function. So my Christmas wish is this....Please, oh Please let me feel better tomorrow.

On a side note, if I hadn't already mentioned this at some point. Sam is officially crawling. Like a across the room and down the hall crawling. Like crawling from the play area to mommy and pulling up on her pants leg. I did manage somehow last night to get video of the said crawler. But have also somehow managed to lose the cable that connects the camera to the pc....le sigh. I'll post it when I can. It is totally cute.

Just quick before I go to work out

The gas lines are horrendous. Or at least they are here around my house. Only one gas station has gas within a few miles of the house. I went there this morning to get gas for the truck since it only had a 1/4 of a tank. How long do you think I sat in line? 20 mins? 45mins? Nooooo....that would have been an easy wait. I sat in line for ONE HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES. With both kids in the car no less. At least I was lucky enough to get gas I suppose. What struck me most, as does it most times when things like this happen, is people's complete lack of consideration or common decency. I saw people completely bypass the obvious and long line and drive right into the station and pull up behind someone else already at the pump. You know it's only right that everyone should wait their turn like Katie has to do in preschool. I mean seriously, how hard is that? Sorry that you have to wait, but so do we all. There were other things I saw, but that was the one that irritated me the most. I'm over it now, I've ranted, I'm good. Oh and if the gas supply problem goes on much longer, I wonder if we'll see an epidemic of gas siphoning?

So after our experience with Sears

We planned an impromptu trip up to Helen yesterday to go see Ana Ruby Falls. The picture above is of the stream as it flows down from the falls. It was nice, but it was hot except for when we were at the falls. I'll post more picture and info about it later. But I did get Sears in here to fix the air once and for all first thing in the morning yesterday. I ended up calling the tech on his cell phone (he had called us from it the night before) and nicely explained to him why it was he need to be at the house by 10am. :) I am sure he thought we were the biggest pain in the butts, but I really don't care. The A/C is finally fixed. I am content. Still mad and irritated with Sears though.

This is totally not photography related at all...

LOL But I had to mention it. It was interesting to find while I was reading CNN.com this morning, that they had an article about ratings being low on the major networks. In the article, it sites the writer's strike and nice weather as a reason for low ratings. Well, thank goodness. I do watch some tv, but for the most part, there just isn't time in the day. And not to mention I much prefer the internet to gather and read information. At least I am reading and it's fairly interactive. :)
And yes, with the beautiful weather most of the country has been having, shouldn't we all be outside? Enjoying the day instead of sitting on the couch staring at the boob tube? Maybe the writer's strike was just what we needed. That little bit of prompting to get up off of the couch and find other things to do.

Easter Eggs and Spring is Here, Officially

I finally got to coloring the Easter eggs with Katie tonight. The cool thing is Miguel was able to join in the fun. :) They are so cute doing stuff together. Here's a view of all the eggs we did tonight. Miguel and Katie enjoyed mixing all of the colors. Silly gooses. We ended up with at least one gray egg that I know of. This one is Katie's favorite egg. She put stickers all over this one. It actually looks pretty cool. Katie will take any excuse to stick stickers all over anything. And for all of you northerners who are still experience snow and cold and well, basically winter. It's officially spring. :) I think spring really came here about a month ago. Which is crazy. The daffodils are already dying out and the barber pear (I think that's what they are called) are all in bloom. Soon the whole city will be painted with yellow dust. Fun, fun, fun.....

My current favorite song

I love all kinds of music. But my current cds that I am listening to include the Beatles, Amy Winehouse, Regina Spektor....... I also really like that song that they use on the MacBook Air commercial, so I looked it up yesterday and it's call New Soul by Yeal Naim. I really like it. Here's a link to her Youtube video. I just really get a kick out of listening to it. Does Apple's PR people and advertising people know what they are doing or what? It seems every time they bring out a new product they have a really good song to go with it.
Oh and for anyone wondering, the battery on my camera is on the fritz and died on my again yesterday. I am going to leave it on charge today and see if it will stay charged for some pictures. :(

So exhausted!

I swear I think carrying a baby even early in the first trimester is like running a marathon. I feel like I've been up for days and days, yet Miguel could tell you I have been sleeping A LOT. I haven't even taken any pictures all week. I know, unusual for me. Maybe I am saving it up for tomorrows shoot for Samantha's birthday party. :)
Did anyone hear about the woman who is suing her fertility doctor for $350K, because she had twins? She says that she only wanted one child and the doctors office implanted two embryos, so she had twins. So she is suing for the amount of money it will cost to raise the child. It just irks me beyond belief. As someone who has to take a bunch of meds to get pregnant, I would think she would feel nothing but doubly blessed. Instead she considered giving up one of the twins for adoption. How would she decide which one to toss aside? Flip a coin? How are those kids going to feel if they ever find out that this is what their mom thinks of them? That she didn't really want the second one? And what if they had been naturally occurring identical twins? Meaning twins split from the same embryo? Would she have felt the same way? I think the woman is loony as a toon. If they had enough money for IVF (in vitro fertilization), then I think they can probably afford to raise two kids. I'm thinking that maybe this woman shouldn't have even had one kid, let alone two.

The Moon

I love the moon, and the stars. Tonight was an almost full moon. I think tomorrow must be the full moon, but I'll have to double check it. I love looking up at the sky. I can't do it so much now because you can't see anything. Well except the moon, and some planes, and the occasional star or two. Oh and maybe just maybe a planet. Too many city lights to see much of anything. I love that about cruises. You can go out on deck in the middle of the ocean and when the boat lights aren't on, you can see stars forever and beyond. When we went to Alaska I think that was the most amazing sky I'd ever seen. Anyways, really I'm just rambling. I thought I would take a couple of shots of the moon tonight. I've had my camera for almost 5 months and not one picture of the moon or the night sky have I attempted. So here are two. Without tripod. Maybe tomorrow night I try with a tripod and see what kind of shots I can get. :)

climbing climbing climbing, lying lying lying

Katie's new thing is to climb everything everywhere. It's getting her into quite a lot of trouble. She's been climbing stuff for a long time. But now every two seconds she's asking if she can climb something. I can't wait for fall so we can go to the park again and she can get it out of her system. It's just too hot right now. The playground equipment is too hot. Oh which reminds me of a story I saw on the news about a playground spontaneously bursting into flames because of the heat. To see the video, check it out here.
Katie's has been pretty good at going to the potty when she needs to go when she's naked at home. But today she sat in the chair in the office and pee peed all over it. Aarrrrgghhhh!!! When I asked her why she didn't ask me to go potty, she said "I told you". Hah! I KNOW that she didn't, because she was sitting in my lap the whole time before that. Not even two yet and already lying to me? I don't even think she understands that's what she did though. LOL What am I going to do with her?! :)
Anyway, here's a little slide show of her climbing a rock the day of the rehearsal for Dave's wedding.

A Wedding

So Miguel was in one of his good friends wedding this weekend in Athens, GA. We both went to high school with the groom, David. We decided to take Katie with us, which ended up being a little crazy. But she provided plenty of entertainment for the everyone else. LOL I didn't get to sit through the ceremony, because I couldn't get Katie to understand the meaning of be quiet, but she just wanted talk. We tried playing the quiet game, that worked for all of 30 secs. She liked the harpist's music alot. Every time she stopped playing Katie would start clapping and say "Yay!!" at the top of her lungs. Which was pretty embarrassing, especially when she did it when Jill, the bride, arrived at the end of the isle and the music stopped. It gave everyone a giggle and of course they all turned around and stared at us. Oh well. The wedding was beautiful and Miguel got to see a lot of his friends from before we started dating. Who, incidentally are also people we both went to high school with. It was interesting to see everyone as full fledged adults. The last time I saw most of these people, they were anywhere from 15-19. I didn't recognize half of them. LOL Katie loved the dancing and the cake at the reception and if you asked anybody there, they would say she was the life of the party. What do I have myself in for? :) So here are some pictures. The first few are of the rehearsal and the chapel before the wedding.



These next ones are all of Katie and her day at the rehearsal and then the wedding.

There were several times during the night that she tried to get naked, this is one of those attempts.

Things to talk about

Good grief! We went out last tonight to the grocery store and we could hardly breathe. It's going to be over 100 degrees, with the heat index, here over the next few days, and although the heat is horrible, the smog and pollution hanging over almost the entire state is what makes it completely miserable! It was like trying to breathe water, dirty water. Right now it says that the air quality is relativity good. But they are saying that at the peak times of day the air really isn't fit for anybody to breathe for any length of time. Hmmmm....makes one wonder if it's going to keep getting worse every summer.
On another note. The Duggar family. I know that they feel that God is only giving them as many kids as they can handle and that they seem to have a system that works for them and the brood of kids. But, 17? Just the thought of being pregnant 17 times, going through labor 17 times, going through the newborn stage 17 times. The thought is overwhelming. For me my memories of Katie's days and first moments are really important to me. How well can she remember each individual and keep all of her life's moments straight? I'm glad that they are happy and that this is what they feel is meant for their lives, but 17 kids is not for me. I have to wonder how the kids really feel being part of such a big family, being homeschooled, and being all over television. I guess thinking about it they wouldn't know any different, so they are probably perfectly happy. For me I think anymore than 4-6 kids would be too much. Miguel would tell you that number could be 2 depending on the next one. LOL Some people would say 4 kids is too much. To each their own. If you want to read more on the Duggar family, check it out here.
Here's another cool idea. Which Robin so nicely reminded me of. :) Micro-lending! So people, mostly, in third-world countries only need small amounts of money (well what is small to us) to start a business. And by small I mean anywhere from a couple of hundred bucks to a couple of thousand. But you can lend in small amounts like $20. And they use it mostly to start food markets, clothing stores, fish selling, and other retail stores. The payback rate is amazing. There is very little risk of losing your money and you are helping to advance countries and people that otherwise might not have the opportunity. You can check out Kiva.org here. Here's a little bit about how it works.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform for the poor. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle. The below diagram shows briefly how money gets from you to a third-world borrower, and back!

So here's a funny blurb

So my dear husband ordered a computer, well really a server, that we were expecting delivery yesterday. After waiting all day, he checks UPS's website and discovers that not only does it say delivered but that an A. Roache signed for it. When he calls UPS, they assure him that it was delivered to our address. Ummmmm...No. I think I would know if it had been delivered and unless someone is secretly living in our house, there's no one here by that name. But UPS keeps insisting. It takes more than an hour for them to get in touch with driver, who realized...duh...he did deliver it to the wrong house. When he gets here with it, his only excuse is that the "..hot day made me go crazy..". So I guess if we learned any lessons from the experience it's to not order things to be delivered on hot days because it makes the UPS drivers "go crazy". LOL

About the rise of infertlity

(This is an old post, that for some reason never got posted. So I am posting it now. :) )
So it amazes me how many people are unable to conceive without help. I come across people literally EVERYDAY. I was looking online on why it seems the infertility rate has gone up so much. And the theory is because people are waiting until later in life to have kids. And as you get older your body and reproductive system changes making it harder to conceive. Here's an article I found that was interesting.

The Infertility Epidemic

We are in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of infertility. Ironically, even in countries with severe overpopulation, one of the most common reasons for a visit to the doctor is the inability to have children. Twenty-five percent of modern couples in their mid-thirties everywhere in the world are infertile. From our teen years (when the last thing we really want is a child) to our midthirties (when we finally feel emotionally and financially secure enough to start a family), there is a twenty-five-fold decline in our ability to get pregnant. Let me explain.

Ironically, the incidence of infertility in teenagers is rare. For women in their early twenties, still only 1 to 2 percent are infertile. By their late twenties, however, 16 percent of women are infertile, and in their mid to late thirties, 25 percent are infertile. By age forty, more than half of women are infertile, and pregnancy beyond age forty-three is very uncommon. If you are in your thirties, have been working hard to establish yourself, and are now just casually thumbing through this booklet at your doctor’s office because you’re thinking maybe in a few years you might like to start a family, you should realize that there is a 25 percent chance you will not be able to do so without medical intervention. What accounts for this dramatic increase in infertility over the last forty years is just the woman’s biological clock, which correlates with her declining store of eggs. Even by the time you are just in your midtwenties, there is a 10 percent chance (of infertility).
The decreasing follicle pool and age related decline in female fertility you will have become infertile, even though five years earlier you would have had no problem at all getting pregnant. The biology of fertility in humans has not changed in the last forty thousand years. What has changed in the last few centuries is our life span and the age at which we first try to conceive.

Men and women are now able to obtain fuller educations, develop themselves in their careers, and contribute dramatically to the intellectual and economic prosperity of the modern world. This would not occur so readily if we were saddled with children as teenagers or in our early twenties. But this change in society is also the reason for the epidemic rise in infertility.

-- From Treating Infertility
by Sherman J. Silber

I don't post this to make every one get up and say, I really should have kids young. It was just an interesting thought. I am sure that in addition to being older, that the increase in refined sugar and super processed foods and the rate of obesity have a large part in infertility too. But that's just my thought on it.