JUST HANGING AROUND

I know I havent posted for awhile. Just no motivation recently, plus I am thinking that no one is reading these anymore besides preston.....

We are at the beginning of another week, with everyone finally healthy, and Preston in Virginia.

We are glad to finally have everyone healthy. Caiden was SO sick with the flu this last week, it is such a nasty bug. He really struggled for awhile but seems to be bouncing back ok. We will keep our hopes up that no one else gets sick, esp with Preston gone and Spring break just a couple of weeks away.

This is day 3 of being on our own without Preston home. I know that a couple of weeks without him home is nothing, compared to our friend who will be waiting for her husband to return in 16 months, but for me right now, every minute seems like forever. I usually do better than this when Preston is traveling, but I am really struggling this time. Not really anything that anyone can do, just where my brain is right now of not handling anything.

Hopefully Preston will get a chance to post from where he is. He was unsure about the internet provided, and spent some time sitting in a parking lot last night trying to get a strong enough signal to get some stuff sent off to work for today. He will be working hard attending classes and learning tons of new music stuff. He will also be working hard to adjust to the 3 hour time difference after being on planes all day yesterday. Stay tuned for more from Virginia.

The big girls are back to a regular school schedule since their early morning advanced class got cancelled last week. Our district is really struggling and with the poor leadership and the deficit of millions of dollars we may be looking at school closing as early as April. It is a constant worry for our students and teachers. I have attended board meetings the last few months just to come home completely disgusted and discouraged that no postive avenues are being explored to save our students and our district from great harm. My single voice every month is drowned out by the fact that the deficit is so monsterous and that very few parents or staff are attending or taking a stand. Again, it looks like the board is going to do whatever they want, which in the end, will only end up hurting our students and teachers and families. Will have to wait and see what happens, but for now, things are not looking good at all. I may need to seriously look into home school options if things go from bad to worse.

We spent our days off this last week taking TONS of picts of the kids and making cakes. I like to do birthday photo shoots for the kids and since it was ceana's and colton's birthdays AND Kels is almost 10 months it was time for everyone to get picts. For the most part everyone cooperated - except Kels. I did not get ANY picts of her smiling or laughing or anything. She sees my camera and it is like she becomes hypnotized, even with the big girls there to play with her and try to get her to smile and laugh at them. The big girls were great helps, JaNay even came over to help, but to no avail. Most of Kels's picts will be of her crying or staring straight at the camera. I took so many that I havent even had a chance to look at them yet. Hoping to do that in the next few weeks, along with the 2 December shoots I did for "fun". Hoping to get more picts posted soon too.

We spent Saturday making cakes. Our RS had a service "auction" this last summer. My "service" was providing desserts every month for a year. I missed January because everyone took turns being so sick. I tried to make up for it this month by doing an extra special cake. It is called a choc heart box cake. It is a chocolate, heart-shaped cake, with choc frosting and topped with real candy chocolates. It took some doing as I am out of practice with piping and extra decorating. I didnt think to take a pict of it until this moment, so I guess you will just have to use your imagination - think of looking at a choc colored heart shaped, open, box of chocolates. I think it turned out well, and the girls were a big help. Hopefully the family we gave it too enjoyed eating it as much as we enjoyed making it. We also made a cake for us (though only 9x13 pan - nothing fancy) and enjoyed the rest of the day just working on misc family projects and taking turns napping. It was nice to just have some time to do some fun things.

This week we are looking forward to a mostly quiet schedule. We got 2 invitations to the kids' schools announcing that both Kaeli and Colton have been selected as "Student of the Month" at their schools. It is a fun thing for them, and now all 4 of the big kids will have gotten these awards this year. They are all working hard and it takes quite a bit for students to be selected by their teachers. It will be fun to go to the awards breakfasts and I will be sure to take lots of picts to post.

Photography seems to have taken on a life of its own. I am still frantically trying to get things finished from the high school play. It has definately been much more than I could have ever expected. Preston is being kind enough to help me build collages in Photoshop (I just cant get it figured out) so we can get orders filled for families. I am hoping to have this all squared away in the next 2 weeks so we can just enjoy Spring break with the kids. Plus Spring break is going to hold its own photo opportunities as I will be offering "The Best of Spring" photo sessions with LIVE animals (bunnies, lambs). I will be sure to get info out to everyone soon on that.
I have also found that my hard work to be flexible and affordable has lent to some interesting opportunities - like doing a family photo shoot at 1030PM at night to accomodate some special circumstances for a friend. It was hard to believe people could be so wound up that late at night, but I think we all had tons of fun and got some great shots too.
I will be heading to SLC next month for a photography workshop too. It was supposed to only be one session of shoot/lecture, but it looks like I will be getting the chance to play with some extra opportunities of taking picts for family members and participating in a special group practice shoot with others from the photography forum that I joined recently. It should lend to TONS of fabulous picts, esp if the weather is nice. I will for sure post samples of all the fun things I will be doing.

Well, guess that is all for now. Will hopefully have more to post very soon. Please be sure to visit my photo blog too and check out all the fun prints and collages we are doing for the high school. I will also be posting picts from the last few shoots I have done in the next few weeks.

I would love to hear from all of you. Seems my email is just full of junk these days. Would love to get a note or even a comment on my posts - just to know someone is out there. Hope you are all doing well. We will post more soon.