Black N White Wednesday: Nuthing But A Good Time

This week is our school vacation.  We so needed it right now.  The only thing that stinks about Feb vacation is that it is too cold to do much of anything.  It’s not like April vacation, where the weather is usually nice, you can spend a good amount of time outdoors & you don’t need to spend much money doing that.

We didn’t have much planed for this week, other than going to a fun place with Nicole & her two cuties.    Yesterday we went to an indoor playground place called Nuthing But A Good Time.  When we walked in, it reminded me of CoCo Keyes with the whole tropical theme.  The kids were excited and couldn’t wait to go run around.  Overall, the place wasn’t bad.  The kids got to run around and play on numerous things & numerous slides, Nicole & I were able to enjoy some adult time, I ran into Julie and she hung out with us for a bit, the food was ok, and the bathrooms were clean.  The price wasn’t to bad, but I do wished that I didn’t have to pay for myself, that parents were free, like other indoor playground places.  That’s the cheapness in me 😉

I love how close our kids are.  Her daughter is in Squishy’s grade and her son is in school my with Berrianna. I love how well our kids get along and truly enjoy each others company.  They were so cute together.  A lot of times Ari is fighting to get Alyssa’s friend attention but with Mia it’s different.  There isn’t that fighting, since they are all friends.  All 3 of girls had fun together, holding each other making a train zooming down the slide.  The little man either followed along or went on his own.  It was a good day.  So, if you get a chance and you have kids 7 or under, check out Nuthing But A Good Time in Merrimack NH.  Doesn’t this sound like a paid advertisement?  But I swear its not.

Life Through The Lens: Cure For Sadness

The other day, I put some time aside and decided to write a great about me page.  I am not a very good writer, so it took me awhile to write it.  I concentrated on writing a little about myself as well as my blog’s mission and what I don’t my blog to become.  I put a lot of work into my page.  If you have time, please check it out.

Anyways, I wrote about my illness-condition-disease- what ever you call it but I am sick and will be for the rest of my life.  It could be worse I know but it takes a big toll on my family and I, dealing with what we deal with daily.  I wouldn’t have been able to get through as much as I did if I didn’t have such an amazing & caring husband & 5 awesome kids.  I wrote about how excited I was that I didn’t need to be hospitalized in 2013 at all (YAY me!!) and was hoping that 2014 was hospital  free, well overnight  free.  But that wish popped today…….of course I was sad & upset when the Dr told me the best option is for another surgery.  I have had around 10 (and no stretching I’m exaggerating it) or more over the last 10 yrs, tons & tons of testing (of all kinds), & numerous procedures done.

I left in tears, feeling like such a baby.  For over a month, close to two, I have been having back pain.  It started in front and moved to the back.  To make a long story short, I went to get checked after it wasn’t going away and has been so painful, it was effecting my life.  I thought I had a simple kidney infection, give me medicine, and on my way I would go.  But NOPE.  They did a CT scan and found kidney stones in my left kidney, one was 1.1cm and the other one was 1mm super small.  Today I went to see the Urologist and I find out that the stone is  a little bigger than it was last week (I had an x-ray done before my appt) and I have 7 1mm stone in my right kidney.  He looked at older reports and finds that I have had this stone in the same spot since 2011.  He said there are 3 options but the best one, the one he recommended was surgery with 1-2 nights overnight.  He told me about the surgery & having tubes put in & a stent in my kidney.  As I was walking out, I was so upset.  I know this isn’t a major medical thing but after how much I have been through it is very upsetting because I thought for sure no more hospital stays….After dealing with a chronic illness, hearing something like this is hard to take because I am afraid of what comes after……the pain…….the throwing up……..the extreme migraines for almost a week……..It’s just awful.  I live with pain almost everyday of my life.  I have learned to deal with it because I had no choice but to deal with it.  But the pain that comes after the surgery is overwhelming and I know what’s ahead.  And I’ve already got my date in 3 weeks on March 19th and hopefully I will recover fast.

At home, I told the kids and they were sad.  Alyssa decided the best way to fix that is doing a photo shoot with her and her cute faces.  She knows how much I like my pics and thought it would cheer me up.  She was exactly right because it did.  She’s such a cutey pie.  So what’s the best way to cure sadness, is having Alyssa as my daughter…….to have her care about her mother the way she did, at such a young age.  Don’t you agree, that’s the best cure?  What’s you cure for your sad times, your sadness?

Sunday Scripture: Proverbs 4:26

 

my son Ben walking in Lowell Mass

Our Beautiful World: Soft Dog

Along with my Sunday scriptures & snapshot, I decided to do a beautiful world.  I think that this will be an ongoing event for my blog.  And if time allows I may decide to do sunday scavenger hunt with the kids.  I thought that would be a fun way to incorporate my children and photography.

Jason had the day off so he and I took the girls and Rosco for a walk while the girls helped me find the words we were looking for.  It was lots of fun and the girls, especially Squishy, had fun doing it with me.  I told them we could do this every Sunday as long as the weather and my health permits.  Here’s what we found on our photo walk today for our post.  ~ENJOY~

My interpretation of  the weekly word SOFT:

We love Rosco, he is the best dog EVER!  We got him 2 years ago at the local animal shelter, after months and months of searching.  No one would even consider us for adopting a dog since we had 5 kids.  It was rude and crazy.  Talk about being descriminated against.  Finally we found an animal shelter that met us and let us look at the different dogs that just came from down south.  Rosco they said wouldn’t fit our family but we met him and took him out for a walk.  Now, Squishy and I are afraid of dogs so we had to find a special one, a needle in a haystack.  Low and behold, Rosco was our dog.

The previous owners gave him up because he kept running away, which he still does sometimes today.  But what a dog they gave up.  He is really well behaved, we can take him anywhere or leave him at home.  The worst thing he does is he gets into the trash sometimes and occasionally pees on the floor.  What a wonderful addition to our family, he made.  Rosco is def my dog since I am home with him all the time.  And I couldn’t have found a better dog.  We love our Rosco!!

 

Ice Bits

This winter has been crazy………last night’s ice storm was short but long enough for me to take a neat picture of my walk way. Ice bits all along my walk way.  Neat huh?  Well, I thought so.

http://blackandwhiteweekend.blogspot.se/2014/02/friday-21st-february-2014.html

Backroad Beauty

This morning I got up bright and early in hopes that an important meeting that I have been waiting for, was still going on.  Disappointed that because of the delayed opening for our school district, I took a detour home.  With my camera in hand, I traveled down one of my favorite backroads in hopes of finding something, something worth capturing.  And then I found this……..backroad beauty.

Life Through The Lens-Sledding Adventures

Over the last few days, we have gotten snow over and over and over again.  I swear we must be close to 20 inches out there.  I know I know but Sera you live in New Hampshire, so I should be prepared and we are.  Even so, it is unusual for this much snow in this short of a period of time due to numerous storms, this close together.  We should have known something like this was going to happen when we had 50 degree weather in January.

What are we to do with all this snow?  We could complain about it, which I have done my share of.  Or we could go out and have fun in it.  And by that I mean, go out with my kids & hubby and take pictures of them (since I can’t go sledding because of my stomach) having fun.  It doesn’t sound like fun for me, but don’t worry I really do have fun.  Here’s some pics of our latest sledding adventures…………..Enjoy ~

daddy snuggles needed

cousin fun

down the hill on daddy’s back

taking a much needed break from all the heavy work up & down the hill

my snow babies

Sunday Scripture: Psalm 127:3

 

 

 

 

 

Ice Cold Valentine

Life Through The Lens- Lighting & Texture

This post is late because of all the snow we got.  We got slammed a whooping 15 inches last night, which isn’t all that much for my area.  Still within the last few weeks we have been getting hit again and again and again.  So in order to get my post published, I combined it with another.

Lighting is one of the most important things in photography.  It can a snapshot and make it into spectacular piece. I have taken some blah pictures and then rethought the lighting and voila……my masterpieces are born……below are of my examples….some photographs that I just love.

I love each of these for different reasons (and not just because my kids are so darn cute but that helps),  lighting in each of these makes these pictures awesome.  In the last 2 the lighting is obvious to anyone who looks at them,but the first one I did play around with lighting a bit to achieve my ultimate picture.  I gave you different examples of different ways you can play around with your lighting within your picture, natural and/or through editing.

This week over at Four Simply Living  (click on the original pic to bring you to her site), a blog that I have just started following over the last few weeks,offered  us to take her pic and finish it.  I am just a hobbyist, in which I have a TON of areas and a million things within them yet to learn.  Textures is one of them.  I don’t know much about them, since I haven’t used them in my photography yet.  Actually, I think I used it once, just as an experiment.  With that being said, the second picture you can see my changes: adding texture, adding a nice quote and increased the brightness a little……..nothing too dramatic…changing it slightly.

the original picture

I forgot how much fun it was playing around with my editing tools.  It’s has been a long time since I used my camera and download pics from it since I lost my 2nd battery charger.  I was determined to find it and wouldn’t buy another one.  But a month later, I broke down and tomorrow I will FINALLY be able to use my camera again.  My cell phone just doesn’t do my pictures justice.   So expect to see an increase in photos over the next week.