Not me! Monday November 23, 2009

So I’m feeling like the Not Me! Monday fun is winding down. I haven’t done it for the last two weeks and I’m not that excited about doing it right now. So that’s probably a good indication that I’m officially bored with it. I guess we’ll see.

Anyhoo…this blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

A week or two ago while we were at the park I wasn’t playing on my iphone instead of watching my kids. I am an extremely attentive parent at all times! Anyway, hypothetically speaking…let’s say Mikey somehow got his knees strangely stuck between the bars around the top of the slide. Let’s say that he started crying but my brain didn’t even notice because…well…he kind of whines and cries off and on all day long. Anyway, I wasn’t so busy playing on my iphone that I didn’t hear him and a little girl didn’t have to say “Um excuse me but I think your little boy is crying.” I didn’t say “Oh I’m sure he’s fine.” Meanwhile he was not completely stuck in the bars and I didn’t have to finally yank him out and leave bruises on either side of his knees. Yeah, those scenarios might happen to other mothers but NOT ME! Promise.

On Sunday evening Mikey didn’t have ice cream and cake for dinner. Nope. Tonight he did not have the entire family’s left over pizza crusts for dinner. Again with the nope.

Jack and I didn’t just decide to take a nap today for an hour while we probably should have been reading about Ancient Greece or who knows what. Um… didn’t happen that way at all.

I didn’t call a driver a “stupid idiot” today with my children in the car. Jack didn’t defend the (stupid idiot) driver by saying that he looked “tired and beat up.” I didn’t then say, “Yeah well, he’s still an idiot.” Uh….what? No way! Not this quaint homeschooling Jesus loving happily married mother of two. You’ve got me mixed up with some psycho mom I’m pretty sure.

Oh my gosh!! I almost forgot…I DID NOT take Mikey into Sonshine Books, our local Christian bookstore wearing his “Handsome Little Devil” t-shirt!! HA!! HA!! How awesome would that have been though had I done that? Pretty awesome, right? I thought so.

Last but not least, I did not just watch Dexter and am now not blogging while I should be working on photos which will in turn cause me to stay up much too much too late again and will not require another unscheduled middle of the day nap tomorrow.

Alrighty then, take it easy. I wish for you a good week of not only happily noticing your many inadequacies but pointing them out to others so they can laugh at you. It really is fun.

Things that weird me out November 21, 2009

I did a shoot last week with some friends of ours. Jim said that he would like to see a list of all the things that weird me out. Apparently I say that a lot. Who knew?

So Jim, this is for you.

- Raw chicken! Touching it, seeing it, smelling it, knowing about it…

- People walking in step (for no good reason) weirds me out. Especially if they’re trying to stay in step with me.

- When women call their husbands “hubby” or “hubs”….

- Putting clothes on dogs weirds me out. (We just bought a shirt for Scott, btw.)

- People wearing matching clothes weirds me out. Especially when it’s grown-ups. That’s just wrong, in my opinion. Prisoners wear matching clothes and it is NOT cute, people.

- The way Jackson pulls his pants up to his belly button. Weirds. Me. Out.

- Really long toe nails.

- Seeing our names in our State Farm calendar really weirded me out.

- That red truck that drives around the L.J. area that is COVERED in Jesus bumper stickers weirds me out.

- Aaron Sanders kind of weirds me out.

- Dentyne gum.

- Wearing skirts weirds me out.

- People hugging me sometimes weirds me out.

- Those pre-packaged ranch dressing packets that don’t require refrigeration GROSS me out!

This whole marriage thing November 11, 2009

Phillip and I have been married now for over 9 years. And we are no experts on marriage. We’re not experts on our marriage even. We’re not experts on each other. We’ve still got a lot to learn. So keeping that in mind and knowing that we are not experts at all, I just want to talk about some things that have helped us to have a stronger marriage and also some things that we struggle with.

It seems like I’m hearing about more and more marriage lately falling apart. And it’s so heartbreaking. First and foremost we have never spoken the word divorce as an option. It’s just simply not an option for us. Now if one of us was being abused by the other (which he’s not b.t.w.), then the abused spouse would have every right to leave the marriage. That’s my opinion. I’m sure there are those that would disagree with that but whatever. Anyway, we have had some strong disagreements and some very hurt feelings over the years but ending this has never been, and I don’t think will ever be, an option.

Earlier in our marriage there were things that we both were not 100% honest with each other about. I think that’s probably normal for young married couples. But we eventually had to get that stuff out in the open and out of the way. I believe for the last several years, we have had an honest relationship. We are extremely real with one another. There is no person on this earth who knows me better than Phillip and vice versa.

We compromise on a lot of stuff. We yield to each other’s ideas and needs. Do we do this 100% of the time? Uh…no. Does he compromise on movies that I want to watch but he doesn’t? Uh…no.

We respect each other in front of other people. Does this include friendly banter? No, we certainly pick on each other. But we do not degrade or make fun or belittle each other to other people. We are each other’s biggest fans. Do I occasionally maybe drop a line about him forgetting to take out the garbage on facebook? Yeah, I think I’ve done that. But I won’t do it again. Promise.

For the most part we support each other’s parenting decisions in front of the kids. Usually if we don’t support each other’s decisions it’s because we were tricked by a very smart child. There are some instances where we disagree about parenting stuff in front of the kids. We don’t make a habit of it and when we do, it’s not heated and we resolve it quickly.

We spend as much time away from the kids together as we can. We have had a “date night” once a week for the past… like…5 years at least. We are fortunate enough to have our parents in town and they love having our kids. If we had to pay a sitter each week, I doubt the date night thing would happen very often. This is our favorite night of the week. We’re able to sit and eat without getting up from the table 100 times. We’re able to actually have a conversation without being interrupted by stupid knock knock jokes or the dog whining or Mikey throwing food on the floor. Is it romantic? I don’t even know what that means so I would have to say no. But it is just a time for us to talk about stuff that’s been going on. We tell each other funny stories about things we’ve seen or heard. We usually end up talking about those darn kids. But talking about the kids is much better sometimes than trying to talk over the kids.

We are both fairly quick to apologize when we’ve done wrong and we are both quick to forgive. I would say that I am the better apologizer and Phillip is the better forgiver so I guess that works out. We both probably need to work on our weaknesses in this area. We really don’t let things fester. In these 9 years I can remember very few instances where we went to bed angry. We went to bed sad a lot because we’ve gone through some really hard stuff. But we rarely go to bed angry with one another.

We let a lot of things go. Earlier in our marriage we used to nitpick a lot of stuff. We used to just kind of pick little insignificant fights with each other just to be mean, especially me. I would get it in my head that “he doesn’t love me” if he didn’t unload the dishwasher when I thought that he should. I would give him the cold shoulder for hours or days for something he didn’t even know he did or didn’t do. Now thinking about that stuff seems so ridiculous. After going through some of the stuff we’ve gone through, whether or not the dishwasher was unloaded just didn’t seem all that important anymore. Now to be honest, I still do get unnecessarily gripey at times when I feel like I’m behind on house work. But I’m blogging now instead of cleaning it, so it must not bother me that bad, right?

We want each other to be happy and fulfilled. We encourage each other to have hobbies and we are supportive of each other in those. I genuinely want him to enjoy his life and he wants that for me. And we do what we can to help each other have a fulfilled life.

I cook chicken for him and he handles most of my internet needs.

So this all sounds lovely and perfect, right? We sound so put together, right? Well, we’re not. We still have lots to work on. We aren’t great communicators. Phillip keeps stuff bottled up and I like to let stuff just blow. Neither one is healthy. We are pretty good at talking about things that are easy to talk about. But neither one of us is real keen on bringing up hard stuff. We need to be more intentional about having meaningful conversations about stuff that really matters and not just like a funny billboard we drove by. And while we are both Christ followers, we don’t invite God into our home and our conversations nearly enough. We need to work on that.

So I guess those are just some of my ideas of things that have helped us with this whole marriage thing. Take it for what it’s worth. If you’re married, I hope that you find and have a beautiful life together. If you’re divorced, I hope that you are able to find healing and maybe one day find love again. Love that will last. And if you’re not yet married but want to be, I hope you’ll hold out for the right person who’s holding out for you.

Stellan’s having surgery today. November 9, 2009

I follow MckMama’s blog and that’s where I got the the Not Me Monday thing from. I know today is Monday I was starting on Not Me! Monday but MckMama is in Boston with Stellan and he’s having surgery today. You can read about it over at her blog. I might still do the Not Me! Monday thing later today but that baby needs prayer! Lots and lots of prayer! He is a very sick little boy.

You’ve GOT to be kidding me! November 8, 2009

That is what I was telling God this afternoon at about 3:15 when I got my main camera out to begin taking pictures at a wedding. My 5D totally and completely crapped out on me this evening right before this wedding. I have had this camera since March and have had absolutely no problems with it it whatsoever. And this was a night wedding and my back-up camera does not handle low light situations as well. So for about 15 minutes I fiddled with it, took the batteries out and put them back in, messed with switches….and nothing. The thing just simply would not work. The digital display on top would come on and I could adjust the ISO and the shutter but the LCD would not work at all. And the camera wouldn’t focus or fire. And the lens was not on manual focus, just in case you were wondering.

So after allowing myself about 12 seconds to panic, I finally put it away and got out my backup camera. Thank God I have a backup camera. I shot all of the formals and the wedding with my backup camera and a lens that was not quite wide enough on it. After the reception started, I had a few minutes so I tried again to magically get my main camera working. I did the same fiddly things that I did before and would you believe that it started working perfectly?!! UNBEfreakingLEVABLE!!

Now I know some of you are thinking that the camera was fine and it was just my nerves or some screwy setting. I hear you. I would think the same thing. But every setting was as it always is and I was not even slightly nervous until the darn thing wouldn’t work. And what totally confuses me is how one of the displays was working but the other one wasn’t. My menu wouldn’t come up or anything. And then just like that, when I could have lived without it, it worked just fine.

But… I did live without it. And now I’m looking through the pictures and I have to tell you that these are probably some of the best wedding pictures I’ve taken so far. About a week and a half ago I was debating buying another lens “just in case” I needed it for this wedding. And instead of getting new stuff for the wedding, I was forced to use even less stuff and it worked out just fine. So I guess I’ve learned my lesson about “needing” new stuff.

I’m sending my 5D off to Canon to have it looked at. My guess is that they’ll find nothing wrong with it but I really hope they do. And I hope they fix it and it NEVER happens again. So basically I worked with the worst lighting conditions I’ve encountered so far and my go-to camera crapped out. So I feel confident that any other wedding that comes my way will most certainly have to be easier than this one.

So I’m hoping this is my only equipment failure experience. It’s really quite terrifying. I’m just so very glad that it all worked out. But I’m pretty sure I’ll be having nightmares about it for the next week.

I put up a sneak peek on my photoblog if you want to take a look. The last one was taken with my 5D once it decided to work again.

A tough night November 5, 2009

Last night was tough. While I was at Target with the boys I got a call about a family at our local hospital who wanted pictures of their little one. Those aren’t happy calls. I never look forward to getting those calls. I went to the hospital about an hour later after the baby was born. Last night’s session was the first time that I have cried while with the family.

Being in that room surrounded by a family brought together and torn apart for the love of a baby was just a bit too familiar. Brokenhearted grandparents, hugs where people hang on, a big brother still too little to understand…just all too familiar. And it was tough. I couldn’t help feeling like an intruder on this family’s precious time together. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of just…Holiness. The presence of God was thick in the room and I’m sure everyone there must have felt it. I didn’t want to disrupt it or interrupt it with my presence and my camera but I knew that some of those moments had to be captured. Their sadness and love for this child is, in a way, his legacy and his impact on this world. And he deserves to have his impact seen. The world outside that little room carried on unaware. Unaware of his life and unaware of his death.

So I took the pictures that I wish I had of the moments with our son. And I hope that I was able to capture a glimpse of the presence of God in the room. And while last night was tough for me, I got to walk away. I got to pack up my stuff and go back home to my sleeping boys. But this family doesn’t get to walk away from this. They will carry yesterday with them for the rest of their lives. They will feel pain deeper than most people can imagine. And they might have moments where they feel completely abandoned by the One whose presence enveloped us all in that room last night.

New Lens day November 4, 2009

So today is new lens day. I’ve gone through a few wide angle lenses that just didn’t seem right for whatever reason and I think maybe I’ve landed on one that I’ll use for a while. Maury suggested this lens probably a year or more ago but I didn’t go with it then. I wanted to go with Canon and I didn’t think this lens would work on a full frame camera. I finally got the lens I should have gotten in the beginning and that’s a Tamron 28-75 f/2.8. It’s a great and rather inexpensive lens for the quality. Sometimes you get what you pay for and other times more expensive doesn’t necessarily mean better.

Blah, blah, blah….anyway, when I get a new lens that means the boys must be photographed. Jackson already knows this rule and Mikey will soon enough. Enjoy!

Real men wear purple. November 2, 2009

Mikey’s secure enough in his masculinity to feel comfortable wearing purple. He’s okay with being called pretty. He knows that his eyelashes are gorgeous. He knows he’s the apple of our eye.

more on my photoblog.

Halloween 2009 October 31, 2009

This posts contains a bunch of not-too-pretty-good Halloween type snapshots of my children. These first few not-too-pretty-good pictures are from Thursday night when we went to a festival thing at the L.J. Historical Museum.

And the rest are from tonight. We went to a carnival at the 1st Presbyterian Church. I have to point out the pony pictures to you. I didn’t really realize that most of the parents of the little kids were walking the track beside their kids to keep them from falling off. I didn’t really realize that there was nothing keeping Mikey on that pony except his own hand until he was already on his way. So instead of running to catch up to keep him safe, I just took pictures. The girl pulling him probably thought he was about four so she probably wasn’t worried about it. Anyway, thankfully he didn’t fall off and get trampled by the stallion he was riding.

This week’s couch finds October 31, 2009

On Fridays, or at the very least every other Friday, I pull the couches away from the wall and gather the many toys that Mikey has put back there during the week. Here is what I found yesterday.

And here just for you I have posed Santa Claus and Kit Fisto in a pile of fake puke in front of a charming white picket fence.