Happy Thanksgiving

It's been almost six months since I lost my grandma, and every so often, something reminds me of her and I get emotional again. The plan was for us to go to Blythe for Thanksgiving and spend it with my family on that side, and especially to see my grandpa. When I woke up Monday morning with a throat so sore that I could barely swallow, I knew my strep from three weeks ago had returned. Not being able to find an appointment that day with any doctor's office in Surprise, I went to urgent care to make sure that I wouldn't be contagious and we could still visit with my family. So we were all prepared to go, I had made enough dessert to feed an army, all we had to do was wake up Thursday morning and drive. And when we woke up, Bailey's throat was really sore again and her glands were swollen. So of course we had to skip our family celebration. Jason and I rushed off to the grocery store to get components for the meal because, of course, all I had was dessert. We were able to pull off a pretty nice meal. We had a roast chicken wrapped in bacon (which kept the chicken really moist!), green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and rolls. And although it was just the five of us, it was nice to talk about what we were grateful for and to make our preparations for the Christmas season, most importantly I think, to make our plans for how we can help others. And even though we gorged ourselves on desserts (well, the kids did; Jason and I were actually pretty reasonable), we haven't made a dent in how many goodies we have in our house.

Today I took Bailey to the doctor, and of course it came back as strep. Talking with the nurse practitioner, she suggested we bring the younger two in to have them tested as she thought they might be asymptomatic carriers. They of course were closing in 10 minutes and the kids were at home, but they were nice enough to stay open long enough to have Jason bring the kids down. Sure enough, Lindsay tested positive for strep, so she's probably the reason Bailey and I keep coming down with strep. So now we just need to get Jason tested and on some antibiotic, and then our whole family will be on antibiotics. 'Tis the season for sharing, right?

Long time gone

Wow, I was just looking at my dashboard account to get some information about a post I posted to my business blog and realized the date on my blog for my last post was back in September. That's so sad! So just a quick post today, a little update about everyone. Bailey is still in band and loving it, she's playing the clarinet in advanced band and going to be starting the trombone with beginning band. She writes all the time and has her own tumblr page (don't ask me what it is, she changes it all the time and I can never remember what it is). Cole is doing marginally better in school this year. He's still having the same issues and we don't know how to help him, and I'm still fighting with the school to get him help. He sees a psychologist and psychiatrist often to help him work things out, but that's a long drawn out process so progress is slow, frustratingly sometimes. He really enjoys video games, which we use to help him work on things that are hard for his brain to do in other environments. He started band this year and is doing percussion and is doing really well. Lindsay also started seeing a psychologist for her anxiety, it had gotten to the point where it was just interfering with her life so we wanted to help her with it. She also started band this year and is playing the clarinet just like her big sister. The band teacher loves our family because we have such talented musicians.

Jason is just busy with work and tennis a few times a week. He doesn't have a lot of down time, and when he does it's usually to help me out with housework. My business has taken off this time of year. I've heard this time of year is comparable to a CPA's March and it really has been for me, two to three bookings a week until the middle of December, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I've been very surprised at how quickly my business has grown and I've gotten so much positive feedback from my clients and their friends about the quality of my work. I love my job very much. I do have trouble learning how to balance the new found work with taking care of my family and the house, but it's nice to be busy. If you want to check out my work, you can view it in one of three places, my website, my blog, or where I post most of my work, my facebook page. I'll be taking our Christmas card photos this weekend so hopefully I will have the time to post them here soon.

Bad Mom

 Of course I didn't forget my little girl's birthday, but I did forget to blog about it. I'm definitely finding being a work from home mom challenging and my blogs have been put on the back burner. This week, though we celebrated Lindsay joining our family 10 years ago. I think she always hits me the hardest because she's supposed to be my little baby girl. I still remember her being this little thing snuggling me with her thumb in her mouth. She is my little spitfire and the one I know no one will be able to talk into doing anything she doesn't want to do. I have been so blessed to be able to be this one's mama and I can't imagine my life without her. Happy birthday Lindsay, I love you to the moon and back.

Birthday girl

I haven't posted in awhile, but I couldn't let the day go by without wishing a happy birthday to my sweet teenage (yikes!) daughter. I can't believe I'm old enough for a teenager, but she is the best thing I've ever done. My life would never have been the same without her. I'm not looking forward to the next few years, I've heard it's pretty rough with teenage girls, but I know our bond will survive. Love you with all my heart.

Cutting back

I know there are some of my Stampin' Up! customers that follow my blog, so I thought I would update here. After much thought, I've decided to give up my website. I'm not getting enough business from it to justify the cost so I've decided to let it go. I'm going to remain a demonstrator, in fact I just celebrated my 8th anniversary, but I'm just not going to have a website. If you need to get in contact with me, you can comment here or email me at mommymauss at yahoo.

Some things are hard to say

Jason has been giving me a hard time about not posting lately, but I've been having a hard time, which makes it really difficult to talk about on a public forum like this. At the beginning of June, I got a phone call that I've been fearing: my grandma was in the hospital and they were going to have to put her on a respirator. I dropped everything that weekend and drove out to see her and to be with my family during the crisis. I had my moment alone in the hospital room with her to say goodbye and tell her how much I love her, but we all knew that she was ready to go so we all had to be strong for her. I came home the next day knowing that I'd had my chance to say goodbye and really needing the strength of my husband to get me through. My grandma passed away on our 12 year anniversary, and really since I got home from my trip, I've had a hard time. I know that I will be with her again, but I think it's just hard for us to say goodbye for now. As selfish as it is, I really miss her and wanted her to stay on the earth for awhile longer. I think we always think that we have more time, so there were times when I didn't go visit for one reason or another, and now all I have are regrets that I didn't take the time to see her more often. It was very cathartic for me, however to be able to create a collage that we will display at her memorial this weekend. I will share it once we get home, but I would like my family to be able to see it for the first time there and hopefully it will make them happy and sad like it did me when I was creating it. And I was really happy to be able to put my growing photoshop skills to work in a way that made me really happy (like restoring a photo that had been cracked). I'm grateful for the knowledge that I have of the future, that I will see my grandma again and that she was greeted by all her family when she got to the other side. And most of all, I'm grateful that I had this amazing woman in my life who loved me as I loved her, the way only a grandma can. And as she always said to us when expressing her love, I love her 2 pieces.

Photography final

My inspiration for my photography final this semester came from a couple different places. Throughout the semester, each of us had to give a presentation on a different artist. The artist that I was assigned, Nan Goldin (just a warning, if you google her to see her images, some of them are explicit), takes a lot of self portraits. And while I don't really like her style of photography or her subject matter for the most part, I admired her courage in taking photographs of herself. So towards the end of the semester I started wondering if I had the courage to do the same thing. Then, right before we got our assignment, Jason starting giving me a hard time about my "difficult" life and how I basically just sit in the loft all day and play games on my computer or scrapbook while occasionally working on my photography. So when our professor gave us the assignment, he talked about how a montage can be an elongated narrative, and I immediately thought about taking photos of myself in the loft doing all the things that I do. Well, logistically that didn't work out because my loft is just small enough, or the areas that I sit are small enough, that I would have been sitting in front of myself so I would have been blocking myself in the photo. Instead, I started thinking about a photograph that a friend of mine did in our class at the end of the semester of her laundry and it got me thinking about all the things that I actually do around the house that my husband doesn't always see me do. I decided to focus on the kitchen because it is the room in the house that I spend most of my time either with, or doing things for, my family.

I'm blessed to have a big, beautiful kitchen that gets incredible light during the day so one day I decided to just see what would happen if I tried. Jason was working from home that day so he got to laugh at me getting all giddy when my test shots looked like they were actually going to work--I know, I get really silly when I find a way to produce the art that I see in my head. So this was my end result (if you click the image, you can get a larger view):

When assembling a piece like this, the point isn't to get it to line up perfectly, by creating repeating patterns (in areas like the cupboards and the chairs) it adds to the sense that time has passed, so when you're telling a story like mine, that is a good thing. Another deliberate choice that I made was that while my upper half was never broken up, my bottom half was. In this choice, I was trying to show the movement that I make as I go all over the kitchen working during the day, but keeping up my upper half intact shows the strength I have as a mom to get my chores done and take care of my family. 

When I think back about the short amount of time that has passed, ten months since I first set foot in a photography class, I am incredibly amazed at what I have accomplished in such a short amount of time. Next semester I'm going to be challenging myself in a whole different way as I take my first film class, so I'm excited to continue to grow as a photographer, and I look forward to the challenge.

The thing about photography is

There's always more to learn. One of the last assignments we had of the semester was to create a narrative with six photos on one page. I struggled for awhile coming up with my concept, but eventually I was inspired by something my professor said in class about street photography and I decided that it was something I wanted to try my hand at. There are a lot of really great things about growing up LDS, but in some ways it hinders me as a photographer because I was always taught to respect people and rules. In street photography, you are often taking photographs of people without them knowing, sometimes in places where you shouldn't be. This is so far outside of my comfort zone, and I knew it would be a challenge, but I embraced it because I knew it would make me a stronger photographer. Working through a few ideas, I ended up taking photos at the mall. Another thing my professor said in class made me realize that it would be a great place to take photos because there is always something interesting going on (and my grandmother, who is an avid people-watcher, would be proud). I ran into some technical problems right away, first off that it wasn't very light at the mall. I know it seems like it would be really light, but I needed a larger depth of field and a fast shutter speed, which all decreases the light I'm allowing into the lens, so it was pretty dark. I upped my ISO as high as I could without getting too crazy on noise, but I still ended up with a great deal of noise in my photographs. My second obstacle is that this was the first time I would be trying to compose a photograph without looking through the lens. I held the camera down in my hands so that people wouldn't realize I was taking photos of them, but that made it infinitely more difficult to come up with a nice photograph. I joked around that my percentage of decent shots was reversed, only about 10% of what I shot was even worth looking at (although towards the end of shooting, I was improving that percentage). The next issue was focus. When you're not looking through the camera, you can't decide what to focus on (and the auto-focus is either too slow or doesn't focus on what you want to be useful), so I had to pre-focus and then try to get my subjects into the space in front of me that I had focused for. Finally, I had difficulties editing because of the previous problems, so my photos weren't anywhere near as sharp as I normally have, and there was too much noise for me to edit out completely. In the end, however, I was extremely pleased with what I turned in for class.

This project pushed me in so many ways, and it is definitely a style of photography that I want to be more proficient at (maybe I'll choose an outdoor location next time though so I can have more light). Overall, though, I think I'm a better photographer for having attempted and succeeded at a new type of photography.

Falling in love

 

One of our recent assignments was to work in the studio with the strobes. Our professor said that this transition is often difficult as it takes some time to become comfortable with the equipment to get the look that you want. For me it was just love at first...shoot? I could work in the studio with strobes every day of my life and be content. I really wanted to try my hand at a fashion shoot and I had so much fun.


 The biggest problem I had with this was actually narrowing down what I got to choose one to turn in. My model was wonderful and gave me exactly what I was looking for even though I don't have the experience directing her. And I had two wonderful friends who gave me so much help, I didn't have to do anything other than direct and shoot. I'm thinking of ideas to work in the studio again because I can't wait to get back in there.

Finally a non-photography post!

Sometimes I feel guilty about not posting so much about the kids, but when I think about it, there's really nothing new to post. They do their activities, homework, school, etc, but it's the same old day in and day out. But I thought I'd highlight a few things.

Bailey made and performed in both the all-district band and all-state band last month. I'll have to post pictures later because they haven't been edited (the only bad thing about shooting everything in RAW is that I have to have the time to process them before they're usable). Of course we're so enormously proud of her and her growing talent. She really is a budding musician and it's so much fun to watch her perform. It's also really great for her because she has become incredibly self-conscious, so much so that she does not like to draw any attention to herself whatsoever, so I love seeing her in the spotlight in a way that she feels okay about.

Cole struggles every day. Every day is a new set of challenges for my boy and sometimes he deals with them well and sometimes he doesn't. He is such a happy kid at home, it's so hard for me to hear how hard school is for him, but it's definitely a work in progress. His school still hasn't put an IEP in place for him, so I'm still battling them on that front, but I'm hoping for a resolution soon (at the meeting next week we'll either have a resolution I like or I'll be getting an advocate to help me get him what he needs). In good news, he has been doing really well with the piano. For as much as he fought me to begin taking lessons, he tells me all the time now how much he loves it, so I'm glad I stuck to my guns.

Lindsay is doing well. She's sick at the moment, so we've spent a couple days together (even helping her mom miss school today). She loves activity days at church and just went to a daddy-daughter dance on Friday and had a blast. She is also doing well at piano and she loves choir at school. They're getting ready for their final performance of the year and they're doing a sort-of play and she has a pretty big part, so she's very excited.

My mom has had two rounds of chemo now and has been really struggling. Her body is just having such a hard time with these harsh drugs. I know she was really hoping for an easy time, bu the side effects have just been awful for her. She's been in the hospital the last couple days, every day they say she can go home the next day if x, y, and z, but x, y, and z are never under control, so we're praying for her that she can get through this. Every time a new round of chemo comes up too, they're having to delay it because of other factors in her body, so I know that's really frustrating too for her. She feels like she's missing out on so much, but we all really hope she just takes care of herself first. I guess as a mom, it must be really difficult to put yourself and your needs first, and my mom has never done that, so she's really out of practice, but my brothers and I all hope she'll learn to take care of herself and stop worrying about all of us.

Jason finally got his employer to allow him to work from home a couple days a week, so he has been so much happier with his commute lately, even though the other three days really bite. But he's getting to work on things and learn things that he wasn't getting to do before. He's also been doing a really good job at trying to be healthier with me. He and I take a walk every night that we're not playing a sport, so it's been really nice to exercise with him and spend time with him several nights a week. I think we both really look forward to our walks together.

I have been having a blast playing sports. This last weekend was the ultimate when I played something three out of four days (tonight was supposed to be four out of five days, but practice got cancelled). A slow pitch team asked me to fill in for them one Friday night a couple weeks ago and they liked me so much that they practically begged me to join their team. This last weekend was a little nuts when I filled in for someone else with their double-header and then played my own double-header, but it was so much fun. I love that my instincts on the field are beginning to come back, I even dove for a ball this weekend without thinking about it, it just happened (and even better, it didn't hurt!). Fastpitch on Monday nights is still my favorite, and I pick up a game whenever I can (if we have the late game, I go early and see if I can fill in for a team or I'll stay late when we have the early game to see if I can fill in). Yesterday was fun because I played for the team of younger girls that plays in our league (they have girls from 13 all the way to 23), and they were all in awe of my skills (so funny because I'm about half the player I used to be), but it was fun to try to teach them a little of what I know. If I had more time, I'd definitely try to coach a team because it's great teaching this next generation of softball players. Finally, this last weekend I played soccer again for the first time in probably about 15 years. I was pleased to see it's a little like riding a bike, my instincts are still there when it comes to tracking the ball on the field and defending my goal so I wasn't totally embarrassed. The only bad part is that we lost 1-0 and the one that scored on me was a 'tweener (a ball that goes through the keeper's legs), but in my defense, it was a ricochet off one of my players from a corner kick and those are the hardest to defend against, the play just happens too fast (or my reactions are so much slower now!). But we play on a really small field, so it's more like indoor soccer that gets played outdoors. The good thing is that means less diving for me, so I'm sure my body will thank me for that. The bad thing is that it is a really different game, so it will take me time to get used to it. My team seemed happy with how I played though, they were all anxious that I was going to keep playing for them, so I hope I didn't embarrass myself too badly. The best part about playing sports three nights a week is that I get all this activity, but it doesn't feel like exercise because I love every minute of it. I'm almost at the end of my weight-loss journey as well, so the activity helps with that, but the weight-loss has most decidedly helped with me playing sports because I'm not lugging around as much weight as I used to.

Sorry this is so long! Maybe if I do this a couple times a year I can get by with not writing a Christmas letter again this year. :D

Becoming more comfortable

Until the last six months of my life, I truly believed that I did not have an artistic bone in my body. I thought I was "crafty" but not "artistic", a distinction that I still think is very important. Then I fell in love with photography and discovered that I had some talent at it, and all of a sudden, I was thrown into this realm of trying to produce fine art without knowing what fine art really is. I'm not the most self-assured person, so this insecurity has been really difficult to work through while still trying to produce what I need for class and try to grow as an artist. So I ended up having a really long conversation with my professor yesterday about this and other things related to this, and I have to say, I feel so much better. Sometimes that doubt and insecurity gets the better of you and prohibits you from growing, so I'm really determined not to let that happen.

I think it's interesting, too, the way talent works. I may not be really old, but I definitely feel set in my ways. But as a youth I was taught that we are all given talents and that there are some that you are able to develop. I just never thought that I would stumble across a new talent in my thirties. I guess I thought that all of my divinely given talents had manifested themselves before this point and it was up to me to develop any other talents that I wanted to cultivate. But that's contrary to how I feel about my talent in photography. Of course I need to develop this talent, it's not as though I'm producing artwork that is worthy of a gallery or museum, but I strongly believe that I have a talent in this that has been given to me that I'm stumbling upon at this point in life. So it's been a few interesting days as I've been pondering over these thoughts and working to improve my photography.












Throughout the semester, we have some assignments where we're not given an assignment, we just have to produce five photographs of whatever we want. They can stand on their own or be part of a series, we have to decide. There was recently a horribly tragic accident on the highway near my home in which two 16 year old boys lost their lives. Driving by the accident site the next day, I wanted to go out and photograph it as a way of honoring them.

Always learning

I had the opportunity to do my first paid shoot last month, and I was very excited for the end result, especially since it's a newborn and I'm anxious to please her parents. I was all done with the editing and burned a cd to give to the parents when I came across some fun new editing techniques in photoshop that I just had to try out. Well, needless to say, I had to re-edit all the photos before I give them up to the parents. My plan had already been to post them here in a couple days, but my husband started giving me a hard time about the fact that it's been a couple weeks since I've posted. I hesitate to post because all that I have to post about is photography, but it really feels like that's all I do, so I guess that's going to continue for the next couple of months until I finish this photography class.




 

Back when I was having babies, it wasn't the trend to do these beautiful photos of your new baby, but I really wish it had been. This is a phase that lasts such a short period of time that I absolutely love to be able to document it for the parents in such a beautiful way. I certainly hope this mommy and daddy love the photos of their baby girl as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Controlling Color

 Every time we take a photograph, we think about color. More precisely, our subconscious tells us how we feel about the photograph based on the colors in it. In order to become a better photographer, we then have to learn what the colors mean and then learn how to control the color in a photograph in order to get the feeling we desire from that photograph. So our assignment for color was to take 20 photographs focusing on each color on the color wheel. I will be the first to admit that some of my ideas fell short, but such as it is when you have to come up with six different ideas for one assignment, at least half of my ideas were pretty decent. The biggest challenge is that we were not allowed to take a photograph of something that was the color we were working with just for color's sake, we really had to bring the right feelings to a photograph with the color in it.



Green was one I had a hard time with as you can see. Green is supposed to be soothing, refreshing, and evoke feelings of peace, harmony, ecology and nature. I really couldn't come up with anything interesting, so I just went to a place that I knew was really green and tried to take some interesting photos. It works for the feelings I was trying to go with, but it's pretty literal as well, so I'm sure my professor wasn't too thrilled with these ones.



While I was working on this assignment, we were at my mom's house visiting her after her surgery, so I thought I would get my blue done. Blue is supposed to be peaceful, confident, cool, trustworthy, and remind us of the sky and ocean. I knew I couldn't just take a photo of the ocean itself, so I took some interesting photos of the jetty that separates Long Beach from Seal Beach. While out shooting for this one, it was quite an adventure too as I ended up slipping on the jetty while my camera was over my shoulder (and a lens in my pocket). Luckily I fell to the other side to protect my camera, but bruised my hip and shoulder pretty badly. My dad teased me about worrying more about my equipment than myself, I just told him that at least I have insurance for my body, not my equipment. After all that, I was pretty pleased with my photos, only to have my professor say that the ocean and sky weren't blue enough (and joked about how I should have gone to Hawaii--uh, yeah, he's hilarious). I guess that's what you get in So Cal when all the beaches are dirty and you have to wait for the marine layer to burn off in the morning before you get a blue sky. Maybe I should have just slept in.



I had trouble coming up with ideas for purple as well, but I found this great textured blanket at the store on clearance for real cheap, so I thought about having Lindsay dress up as a queen. Purple is calming, royal, eccentric, spiritual, wealth, and well liked, so obviously I was going for royal here. I thought it was kind of a cute idea until my professor took a look and told me it was too literal. Oh well. Lindsay had fun posing for me here (for the first few minutes anyway).





Now getting to some of my better ideas, I saw this bright orange shirt and sunglasses and knew I had to buy them for Lindsay to pose for me in since she's such a cutie (not that the other two aren't, but she's more likely to pose for me than they will). So orange is warm, energy, flamboyant, happiness, stimulating, and attention-getting. I was going for flamboyant here with her sitting in a chair in the swimming pool in February, but after taking a look at the photos, I realized they didn't work as well as I wanted to because February in Arizona looks like summer in other places so you don't have any indication that it's not a nice summer day here. For the record, the pool is absolutely freezing in these photos and I know that for a fact because I had to get down into the pool in order to the the perspective I needed for these photos. So, good idea, but it fell flat a little.



Yellow I came up with the idea for pretty quickly, but struggled a little with where I was going to do the photos and who I was going to ask to pose for me. I ended up asking my friend Tricia to model for me (who you might remember from last semester's photos as well). She's so beautiful it makes it easy to take nice photos, and we had a fun time out there making each other laugh so it was fun (for me anyway). Yellow is positive, optimistic, happy, energetic, sun, and it fatigues the eye. I wanted to go for something happy and sunny, so we ended up with some yellow flowers and my friend. I'll have to post more of her photos in another post because so many of them turned out nice, but I haven't had the chance to edit them yet. This one is my favorite though.




Finally is red, and this is the one I did the print of and turned in. This was the one I came up with the idea for almost instantly and I knew I wanted to light it with mostly candles, so there's very little light in these photos (which, unfortunately blew out the back of the photo where the candles were in the frame). I wanted to go back and shoot this again to get the candles out of the background, but I messed up the lighting the second time by trying to add too much light which really changed the way the photo felt. I thought that I'd be able to replicate what I had done before since I had done it once and learned that it's almost impossible to take the same photograph over again even if you control as many of the variables as you can. In any case, red is intense, love, attention-getting, confident, hot, and a stimulant. I thought this photo fit the bill on all of these counts and added a few elements that made it just a little different than a standard love photo.

So now that we've learned more about color, hopefully I can really start paying attention to color in my photos and make them better by making better choices about what color to use in different places. As challenging as this assignment was, I was really happy that we focused on this.

A special day

Eleven years ago today, I woke up in all kinds of pain. And even though it was my hardest and longest labor, my little boy has brought so much joy to our lives every day since then. Happy birthday Cole buddy, I hope you have a great day. I have so many hopes for you this eleventh year, that you will be able to control some of the forces that are bringing you down and that you'll be able to learn how to shine in school again. Mostly, I just hope that you are able to be happy and be more of the sunshine that you have always been in my life. I love you more than words can say.

More Photography

I thought it was interesting to find this Gatorade bottle half filled with dirt among the dead branches here.

  It seems that all I've been doing lately is photography. This class is so much more intense than the last class, and so much harder, so all I've been doing is working on my assignments just to get them turned in on time. Well, that and a fifth grade biography project that we've been working on every day for the last three weeks, but I digress. These photos are for my second Flickr assignment that we had, and I really liked some of these images. This is an area I found near my house and I loved just finding all this stuff out there.

I thought this was really interesting with the building falling down and the sink in the middle, like this building has just been left to return to nature.

This I thought was interesting because it's just this big slab out there with no building around it

I really liked the color here and the end of the railroad tracks.

This was my favorite. I love how the stick is coming out of the pole like a "tree" and the colors were just beautiful. It had a great sense of irony with this one.

Mom update

I haven't posted in awhile because things have just been too chaotic around here for me to keep up. I've been out to So Cal twice in the last four weeks to visit with and help take care of my mom as she recovered from the surgery to remove the tumor in her colon. She recovered really well from it and has been in really good spirits, so that's been really nice for us. After biopsying all of her lymph nodes around her colon, however, the doctor updated her diagnosis to stage three because of the amount of lymph nodes affected. This means that she will need to have chemo for longer than we originally anticipated. And while she was hoping to return to school shortly, she has had to make the hard decision to be off for the rest of the school year and having the principal tell her class about her condition. I know that she cares very deeply for her students, so this was a really hard thing for her to do, but I hope that it allows her to concentrate on her own health and recovery. This weekend I took the kids out to see her before she began chemo and she decided to go ahead and shave her head now (she has been reading that it is much less traumatic to shave it versus waiting until it falls out), so she had fun allowing her grandkids to do it for her, and of course, with the two of us being scrapbookers, we documented the whole event. All in all, I would say that as we gear up for this next chapter in her healing, my mom is doing very well and is in really high spirits. She knows that all the prayers on her behalf have really been helping and she is grateful to everyone for thinking about her.

The first assigment of the semester

Well, this is the first assignment that has to be turned in anyway. I'll have to post our first official assignment later as its due date isn't until next week so I haven't finished editing it yet. Anyhow, this is what I did for our first assignment this semester. We were given the choice of anything we wanted to do, it just had to fall into the category of fine art and not include pets or animals.

I was really challenged by the idea of not having an actual assignment, so it took me a few days of thinking to figure out what I wanted to do. I finally decided to do oranges for two reasons: they're visually stimulating and they have meaning throughout my life. When my grandparents first moved to where I grew up, it was orange groves everywhere you could see. As a child, I loved to eat any kind of fruit and oranges were in my top five favorites that I could eat whenever. The childhood home that I have the most fond memories of had an orange tree in the backyard and I remember going out there to pick oranges only to get stabbed by the thorns more often than not. We have some distant relatives who own an orange orchard and so every few years we end up with a ton of the most delicious oranges and I just can't get enough of them. Now as an adult, trying to lose weight and be healthy, I have discovered a kind of orange that I'd never heard of before (Cara Cara) and have fallen in love with this sour sweet variety. I probably eat at least three oranges a day right now, and whenever I'm craving sour candies, I can eat one of these to satisfy these cravings. Sour patch kids have nothing on them.

So with my idea settled, I had to figure out how I wanted to photograph them. I had decided to do a series, but I think you can see I was torn between two ideas and so one photo doesn't fall into the category of what the majority of them were and it doesn't fit. Although my professor didn't seem to like my second idea as much, when I have time I might have to edit some of those images and throw them up here to see if it works as a series. If I had more time, I might have tried a few more things so that all five fit the theme I was going with, but I ran out of time. At some point in the future I might try to add to the series of four I have here with other fruits and play with them to make beautiful still life photos with them as well, but that idea will have to go on the back burner for now. I also have to say that I was a bit disappointed with the one on the bottom simply because of how the orange looked when I cut into it. I shot what I wanted before class and then got feedback from my professor and there were a couple I needed to re-shoot, this being one of them. Well, the orange I used the first day to shoot was beautiful inside (it's the one right above it), and I really didn't think I would have a problem getting this shot. I had to purchase more oranges because I'd eaten all of the ones from the first shoot (getting my teased by my class mates about eating my props!). So I purchased more oranges and cut into them with that result. I thought that was pretty odd, so I cut into another one sure I would get a good looking orange on the inside. Same thing. When the third one I sliced into looked the same, I gave up and used the first one I had cut into (mostly because I really didn't think I would be able to eat four oranges in a day and I didn't want them to go to waste).

This shoot was a challenge for me for sure since I was just using window lighting. Whenever I used the flash, it blew out the orange, but in order to get the detail I wanted (especially in the really close up one), I had to really close down my aperture setting so the camera wasn't getting a lot of light. And then I had to figure out how to maneuver my tripod close enough to the table so that I could get super close to the orange in order to use my macro lens. The best part about it being a challenge, though, is that I learned from the experience and that is really all it's about for me right now is just learning as much about photography as I possibly can. I knew after the first day of class that this semester was going to be a huge challenge, but I also know that it will just make me a better photographer in the long run. Here's hoping anyway.

More play time before school

These days I have to get my play time in when I can, between school assignments, my kids, and a husband working more than 60 hours a week. So when I made the cards the other day, I knew I had to follow it up quickly or I was going to lose that creative spirit. This time I used one stamp set that has never had ink and then another that has had little ink. I've also been trying to use my markers more just to get more practice in. On the second one I really tried to get out of my comfort zone a little with the embellishments. I'm not sure I really like them, or that they add to the value of the card, but it's different from my norm, so that's good. Regardless, I had a nice day stamping yesterday. And today it's back to the grind...

Stress Reducer

Sometimes life is so stressful that it makes it difficult to be creative. Lately I've been so wound up that instead of taking the time to make cards or scrapbook, I've just sat around and done a whole lot of nothing. Well, this weekend was really stressful with my mom's surgery on Friday, but I forced myself to start something at least to take my mind off the worry, and I'm really glad I did. I always forget how soothing it is to create something. I don't have anything in mind for these cards, just that I haven't made cards in forever and my card supply is getting pretty low. But I've had this set for awhile and haven't inked it up yet so I thought it was about time to change that. I love the simplicity in these cards but they're still cute. And I really love changing up the colors and getting a card that's a little more whimsical, definitely more my style. Now I think I need to go be creative again so I don't lose my mojo.

Practicing avoidance

I'm really good at avoidance. It is very easy to assume the position of an ostrich with my head in the sand when life gets hard. It's especially easy when the problems are occurring for family members who don't live nearby; since we don't have to see them often, it gets placed in the back of my mind and pushed to the way side. But there always comes a point where you can no longer avoid reality and it all comes crashing down. That moment began for me last night. At the beginning of December, my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer. She is scheduled for surgery this Friday to remove the tumor and remove the lymph nodes for biopsy which will determine how aggressively they have to treat her after the surgery. Schedules being what they are, I pretty much only talk to my mom once a week, and other than the days that she's had that have been really bad, it's been pretty easy to avoid thinking about the implications and get on with my every day life. And now, of course, with the surgery so close, it's become too difficult to avoid and I'm discovering all these emotions that I had buried.

My mom and I didn't always get along. Like most teenagers, I really detested my parents. At the time, I was angry at them for not being perfect. That all changes when you have children and you struggle to do your best. It definitely gave me perspective on all that my parents were able to accomplish with the five children they had. My mom was responsible for a lot of the good things about me: my intelligence, my foundation in my beliefs, my compassion and drive to be a good mother among other things. Of course she also passed on the scrapbooking gene, so I definitely have to be grateful for that. I know from talking with her that this journey she is on has really shown her how much she is loved. I may not be as eloquent as I would like to express how I feel about my mom, so I will just keep it simple. I hope that she knows that I love her with all my heart.

And now a request. I would ask that you keep my mom in your prayers this week. We may not all believe the same things or practice the same religion, but I believe that our Father in Heaven doesn't care how you come to Him, as long as you do. My family is going to be fasting and praying for her on Friday for her surgery to come out well and for her to recover quickly both from the surgery and cancer. If you feel so inclined, please join us. I know that through faith all things are possible and I have the greatest faith in my Father in Heaven that my mom will be cared for and will be restored to full health.

Christmas

Christmas this year was fairly difficult for me. I'm normally pretty enthusiastic all during the month of December, going all out to decorate and doing a bunch of fun things with the kids. This year I just didn't have it in me. We decorated a little, but definitely not anywhere near what we usually do. As we approached Christmas, it seemed to bother me more than normal to have the kids start talking more and more about what they were going to get. Every time Jason asked me what I wanted for Christmas morning (since I'd already gotten my big gift), I would get irritated at the thought of him buying me anything else. Finally I came to the conclusion that what I wanted most for Christmas was for him and the kids to make something for me; I wanted them to really put some thought and effort into it. At some point I will have to photograph what he came up with because it was really great, and I'm really lucky to have such a wonderful husband. The kids attitudes got much better and so Christmas morning was really enjoyable. As we were going to bed the night before, I told the younger kids that I didn't want to be woken up until 7 am at the earliest. Well, my alarm went off at 7 and right behind it I could hear my door banging open and Lindsay telling me it was time to get up. Jason and I got up a few minutes later but Bailey was a little harder to persuade. The kids had a really tough time entertaining themselves while waiting for their pre-teen sister to rouse herself out of bed.

 
 
In our family, the kids aren't even allowed to go downstairs to see what Santa left them until they're all together and mom and dad are ready so they're always pretty anxious before then. Finally they got to come down and open their stocking gifts and I popped our traditional Christmas breakfast into the oven--cinnamon rolls. After we ate, we had to hurry up and get ready for church were I really enjoyed the program that morning. I've always been inspired by music so hearing our wonderful choir sing Christmas morning was a great treat. After sacrament meeting, we were heading out the door when the relief society president pulled me aside to inquire about my mother, and poor Lindsay had just about had it. She was just beside herself in her desire to get home and open her gifts she was literally pulling me away from the conversation.


I think when it came down to opening gifts, she was not disappointed as our kids each received some pretty cool gifts.

 
 
Jason had also received his Christmas gift before Christmas, but I had a few little things for him to open and then had each child make something for him that I framed so that he could have things from the kids on his desk at work. Lindsay illustrated a picture of our dog, Charlie, begging for food. Cole made Jason a Star Wars comic that was short but funny. And Bailey took a photo of her dad and put a troll over his face which had him almost in tears he was laughing so hard.

 I think my favorite part of Christmas is getting to spend the time with my family goofing around with each other. Another of our traditions is that we put silly names on the gift tags, so before someone opens a gift, they have to read the names on the tag out loud. This is the first year that I had the kids come up with the names on their own and it was pretty entertaining. One year I really should write down the silly names we've come up with because it is pretty hilarious sometimes. We also try to be funny with our gifts. For instance, the last few months, Bailey and her friends have begun watching a "My Little Pony" cartoon on television, so of course we've been teasing her mercilessly about it. As I began wrapping gifts, I found some old "My Little Pony" Christmas wrapping paper that I had bought years ago for Lindsay and wrapped all of Bailey's presents in it. And of course I gave her Pinkie Pie, her favorite pony from the show. I know that all too soon my kids are going to be grown and won't be with us each year on Christmas, which makes me enjoy these days so much more to just laugh and be goofy with my little family.