Columbus Zoo Trip

We had So much fun today. Abby wanted to start a little tradition for her and Rees to do every year so she came up with a zoo trip. Of course I wanted to go too so we loaded up today and took off! Rees was a complete angel, I could not believe it!!! I was expecting a little fit or two along the way but nada! He had a great time and the weather was perfect 70's with a breeze and no rain I'm so happy she came up with that and so glad we just took off and did it! No stress just complete fun! He was really interactive and paid some attention to the animals and ALOT of attention to all the other kids! He really enjoyed the amphibians the most..Yuck! He got to pet a snake (Abby had to take him to do that I can't deal with snakes!) and he had no hesitation he didn't want to leave it. But the zoo was really lively today most of the animals were all out and about being frisky so that was nice. Somehow me missed the giraffes and bears? Not sure were they were hiding the giraffe but we didn't see them :( So a big ol' thanks to Abby for going with us and being such an awesome aunt! It is a big undertaking to take a one year old anywhere so I really appreciate her enthusiasm about going to the zoo! Love ya sister!

I cannot stand Internet Explorer

Is there anyone that is still using IE??? I absolutely hate it, well my momma taught me never to say the word hate but I strongly DISLIKE it to say the least. I work on Firefox, I LOVE it so much. There are so many wonderfully life changing add ons (I am not exaggerating; if your on the internet as much as I am and use as many different pc's as I do it really does make a huge difference) Any who... I was sailing around on the net tonight and I decided I would check out my blog using IE to make sure everything looked okay, surprise surprise it DOES NOT look okay! Stupid IE must not recognize png files because around my signature and the sidebar titles I see a light blue block around them, on Firefox it doesn't. Just another reason it's on my crapper list.

On a serious note, I know I've harped about this before but people please for the love of god download Firefox at Mozilla and start using it! it is Soooo much better. I bookmark (add to favorites) almost everysite I visit seems like with FF you can sync them so that they are the same on all the computers you use. So I put all my business ones for the store and my scrapbook stuff, photography stuff yada yada yada but point is I can access them from any computer in the world! To me that's huge. I know I am beating a dead horse but seriously make the switch. Worses case scenerio you don't like it and you delete from your computer to go back to using that outdated, problem filled internet explorer :)

I don't know how to fix the blog so it appears right on IE, nor am I going to worry about it because I am never clicking on the "E" again! I wish I could delete it from my computer but Mat would have a heartattack, he opposes change so I just think I'll keep the "E" to avoid conflict...but I am never clicking it again! Take that microsoft..LOL! Night all, I feel much better since I got all that out!

Brotherly love

Last week I spent the evening with the Roe family taking pictures as BE. I brought Rees in hopes I would get a couple good shots of him but turns out that 3 boys together creates some chaos and they seem to fuel each others fire if ya know what I mean! But all in all I think it went really well. I got some great family shots for them here are a couple

I think they turned out cute, I added some vintage effects to some and this is just a small sample, I ended up with 300 on my card when I got home! I love to take pictures!!!! I am on the lookout for a set of railroad tracks in a country setting if anyone knows of any please let me know I have got some great ideas for them. I am really enjoying shooting pictures outside with natural light I am learning so much about my camera settings. I think I enjoy outdoor more than studio shooting, maybe because I haven't got to use my studio for a while. Don has taken it over to use a bidding room since Trimat is bidding on a lot of work this month. Good thing it's nice outside I would have withdraws not using my camera for that long.

Great food...all day long!

Oh my gosh, I feel like a little piggy today! We had a picnic today with fried chicken, pasta salad and pie down at Celeste's house and it was sooooo good, right down to the sweet tea! So I stuffed my belly full of that then we went to Nana & Papa's (Maurice and Patty's) for another dinner and we had hamburgers, hotdogs, mac n cheese, corn on the cob, baked beans, fried potatoes, cucumbers etc. etc. etc. boy does Maurice know how to cook and I was down right miserable after that wonderful dinner. Then Trish came out to take Rees swimming and I was so stuffed I couldn't even get in the pool! So they swam for an hour or so and Rees had a great time with his aunt! Then we visited with Ma for the rest of the evening. It was a nice day. We stayed on the move and the day flew by as all Sundays do. Every day with Rees is such a wonderful adventure. In case you didn't notice my new little button on the right hand side it's a new link to another thing I started just for reipes, so if you like to cook check it often! I just made up the recipe cards on the Pc so you can just print and cook! Enjoy

Yummy recipe

I have a cooking club meeting this afternoon and the theme is picnic. I picked a dessert to bring and after careful consideration I chose this recipe:

It's a perfect recipe for a hot summer day. I fixed one earlier and it was so yummy and talk about easy. I made it with Rees in the kitchen playing in the floor. So it only took me about 15 minutes from beginning to end! Time is hard to come by these days so fast is always good! I think if you right click on the recipe and chose 'save image as' or something to that effect you should be able to save this to your pc then print it out as a 4x6. I do all my recipes this way, it makes it easier to cook when you have something pretty motivating you! Celeste is making homemade fried chicken today I am so stoked for that, fried chicken is a personal fav of mine but it takes forever to make so we rarely eat that at my house!

Quickie

I just ran onto this and wanted to share The Polka Dot Alley their stuff is adorable. I love anything personalized! The momathon weekly planner looks pretty neat.

I am Loving the new blog

It's still a work in process, if anyone finds any errors or links that don't work please let me know but I am really loving Blogger. Wordpress was much harder to use and I couldn't customize anything myself so you all will see changes much more often now that I can do it myself! I am addicted to blogging and now that I am learning how to do code I'm going to be dangerous! HTML is so interesting but it's a slow process learning it! Once again anyone that wants/needs any help at all with setting up a blog, I'm no expert but I would be happy to help with anything I can! This blog theme came from Sweet Shoppe Designs and was $5. It took me a while to install it but it did come with instructions that where VERY easy to follow and taught me a lot about the "behind the scenes" aspect of blogging. so I encourage everyone to BLOG...you'll LOVE IT!!!!!

I'm going to post again later today! I have more to say but Rees just woke up!

Oh, give Gretchen some blog love.... click HERE ***Nice job Gert***

Blog make over

I am tired of my old blog so I gave it a makeover. I learned so much in the process. I switched from Wordpress to Blogger and so far I am liking it, other than the fact I can't import my previous blogs from Wordpress which is a bummer. The platform is so much easier on Blogger than it was on Wordpress though.

THE SANDBOX!!! I played in my sandbox a lot when I was little, Patty said that Mat lived in his all summer and the tradition continues! Rees spent forever in his sandbox tonight. He carted water from the pool to the sandbox all evening to sink his little feet into the wet sand it was so cute! He even put the cat in with him, silly cat didn't even care! Rees (as I'm sure most kids do) Loves to be outdoors. When we go in for a diaper change, dinner, nap the fit starts. It's terrible. Tomorrow is supposed to be 90 and it just gets unbearable outside for me, but it's like it doesn't even phase him.

Don't ask cause I don't know!

He concentrates so hard on everything he does

I have been so behind on my pictures. I don't have my Saturday session edited yet, totally unlike me. Especially since they were such a fun family to work with. I got a ton of cool pictures! I have been working on creating my own templates for photo books. The ones that you have professionally printed and your picture is on the cover and it's bound. They are so neat. I made Sophie one and it turned out to be Soooo cute! So I am putting together more templates, I can't find any premades that I like to just one more project I got on my plate. We have a cooking club picnic on Sunday and I'm trying to decide what dessert I want to cook, so many greats to chose from. Maybe a sampler is in order! I'm just rambling now, I better go. I think I'm gonna take a nice long bath and watch So you think you can dance (my guilty pleasure) I love all those silly dance shows! Later all!

Finally...I got the pictures edited! I am really happy with how they turned out too. check em out....

Edit Posts

This is how much fun they where!

Today is my idea of the perfect summer day. It was gorgeous outside today, too bad I had to flip burgers at the Korner! I shouldn't complain it was only a couple hours but still prevented me from swimming today, I only like to go in the heat of the day by the time I could get to the pool it would have been 5:30 (Rees took a 3 hours nap this afternoon I had to wake him finally) so we just went out back to his little pool. Well it's a Sam's Club pool and even blow up pools from Sam's are bigger! I hooked the hose up to it and it has a huge set of sprinklers on the sides...it was too funny! This pictures sums up our day...

Oh by the way, I have been meaning to beg you all to start blogs too. I am reading complete strangers blogs because I am addicted to it, I would LOVE to read a blog of someone that I actually knew! It is easy, free and SOOoooo much fun. Anyone that wants one email me and I'll help you. You can be up and going in literally 15 minutes! It is really a great way for busy families to keep up with each other. Blogger is free (it's through google) and the website cutestblogontheblock has free adorable themes that you can change daily, so please start one and send me the link!!!

Saturdays

I can't believe that Saturdays over already. It seems like I just got up a couple hours ago. I had t ball pics this morning, grocery store trip, come home make a dessert, go to cookout, come home for Rees' nap, go take pictures for a family at Bob Evans, pick Rees up and then put him to bed. Sounds like a lot of stuff but it went by so quickly. I had a wonderful time this evening with the Bishop family. There were so fun to work with. Young, hip couple with 3 kids. They were up for anything and we had a lot of fun. I found some beautiful spots at Bob's. There is a pond behind the restaurant that has a dock in the middle of the pond, such an awesome spot for pictures. When I get them edited I will post a few. Speaking of editing I better get started!

Too funny!

CAUGHT IN THE ACT!

I stay on Rees about being rough/mean to the animals, poor Bernie is a Saint he takes soooo much off Rees and NEVER barks, snaps, jumps nothing! But the cat is different. I'm not really sure how much the cat will take from him, so I watch that carefully. This makes Rees want to hurt the cat even more though, so I'm not really sure what to do about it now? I was taking pictures out at the flower bed and the cat tagged along as soon as I turned my head I seen Rees take after him, so I correct him and ran the cat off... stupid cat came back, just glutten for punishment. So I was taking pictures and caught this

He did make the aghhhh sound as he pounced on him too! He is so ornery! I have to admit I just love it though. Such a boy! I do feel a little sorry for the cat though. Everyday is such an amazing adventure, I feel so lucky to be his mom. He has taught me so much over the past 15 months (can you believe its been that long, I sure can't) Off to bed, so I can rest up for tomorrow's adventures.

I've been reading my own blog

It just occurred to me that I have never went to my blog and read through my past posts, so I took a look and realized they are ALL about Rees. LOL, I'm sure that's expected because he is the best thing ever but I thought I would try to incorporate a few other aspects of our lives in from now on too!

So let's talk gardening (how many will I lose with this subject hehehe!) I have really neglected my poor little garden. The rain just makes everything so muddy and the weeds have gotten really bad yada yada yada I think I am just making excuses because I really don't love to vegetable garden except for my cucumbers and dill I have to make my pickles ya know! But, the strawberries are doing good, I have one that was ready to eat so I waited until Rees got up from his nap to let him pick it, darn thing was gone when I went back out. Now I remember why I don't try to grow strawberries the stupid birds beat me to the ripe ones every time. So off to McCains we'll go! If they still have em, probably not :( My tomatoes are doing great too of course I hate tomatoes but little man ate 6 cherry tomatoes off my salad the other night so hopefully he will enjoy them. And to the most important thing in my garden....MY CUCUMBERS they are sucking! Isn't that the pitts. All the rain has made them a yellowish green color and killed 2 of them. I am really hoping they will snap out of it, I need my pickles! I have the most amazing dill pickle recipe and it is secret family recipe that my Grandma Rees used, I don't give it out but I am making so many pickles for people now that I am thinking of sharing it. If I do I will post it and post pics on how to make, very easy and they are truly the best pickles I have ever ate.

I am really excited because this weekend I have a family from Wheelersburg driving down to meet me at Bob Evans for family photographs! I am really looking forward to these. I love outdoor stuff. You can do so much with it and the natural light is fabulous! I will post these after I edit. So now that your up to date on my super exciting life (LOL) let me share a picture that came out of my garden. I love these flowers and I can't remember the exact name but it's something like Rudbeckia and they are 3 feet tall and very pretty.

Busy

This week has been pretty hectic between picture taking/The store/ Rees/ and life..... there's not been time for much else. But, I did get some cute snaps of Rees on his 4 wheeler (yes it's a big boy one, but we ride with him, which is Hilarious..I'm glad I don't have pictures of that:) ) But look at my little boy...he thinks he's such a big kid.

I can already tell I'm going to have my hands full!

Then I got this pic of Ming, what a life! I just fell in love with this picture, too bad it's of the Cat!

Stupid Humidity

On Tuesday we went out to Bob's & the park in town to take some pictures of Rees, since the minute he walks in the door of my studio be busts out in tears!!! I thought this might be a better option, he did really well but the humidity destroyed his adorable little mohawk...which lead to a big blob of hair (with gel) that I couldn't do anything with ruining our pictures. I didn't think that it would matter while I was taking the pictures then after some constructive criticism (you know who your are) I agree, they don't look so great! But my little man is still adorable but I guess I won't be hanging these in my wall gallery, I'll have to try again. I will still share some though, cause they're still cute just not wall material.