For A Moment Photography

What Being a Mommy is About...

It's been a long couple of nights.  Presley has been sick, for the most part during the day she seems to have a common cold.  But at night her fever soars and her body aches.  I've slept with her and cooled her down with a wet wash cloth and massage her legs and body until she falls back asleep.  We've given her medicine to lower her fever but her temp still seems to rise so the cool cloth has helped.

We've been lucky that she doesn't get sick often and this is the worst we've seen in quite some time.  With her recently turning 6 years old I know my days of being needed in a way only your  baby does, is numbered.  The past two nights I have not had much sleep but I'm pleased to tend to her and be able to soothe her.  I'm optomistic she will feel better tonight, but if not I'll be there.

 

 

A Day in the Wild...

Hudson so pleased with his treasures!

Head first, obviously the best way to enter the car!

She is such an sweet heart...  Stole my heart!

I had the most fabulous time with my friends and their beautiful family in the Arizona desert.  I adore the photos and them (the family) so looking at these photos makes me feel so incredibly content and fulfilled.  If there is a chance these kiddos remember this adventure it will be filled with fun memories running wild in the the desert.  Long gone are the days of studio family photos with strange bright lights, crying kids and frustrated parents!

Our little adventure was not trouble free, we got off to a much later start than expected but we decided to go for it (because I knew it was going to be soo fun).  The beautiful drive and weather helped shake off any frustration.  The desert is so beautiful this time of year.  I'm not sure if it was the kids or the environment but I didn't have any problems with them warming up to me.  Hudson was quietest of them but far from shy.

The kids found animal bones, a tin can, sticks, climbed trees, explored, played in the water and picked flowers.  I got to to run around and take pictures of them doing it!  Not a bad way to spend a day...  I am looking forward to going back with Presley and have an adventure with her.      

 

Food Allergy 56 day Detox Complete

 

Presley in San Fransico... Why this photo for this blog?  I'm not feeling very creative today and I just like this photo.

So my 56 days are over (for a few weeks now).  How did I do, meh.  I think I may of had unrealistic expectations on this whole process.  During the process I didn't stay allergy food free and paleo for the full 56 days.  I had brown rice, corn and wine 2 twice before my 56 days were up.  Click here to see my blog on my allergy test results.   

 Surprising to me the hardest part of this isn't not having the foods I'm allergic to.  It's trying to maintain a social life with friends and family around these foods.  In the beginning I just avoided situations where I would be around the food I couldn't have.  This became increasingly harder as I had guilt about taking Presley and Mark away from our weekly pizza dinner with our dear friends.  

On several occasions I sent them to do things without me.  This is was disheartening, but it's almost unavoidable at times.  Being at social events can be tempting and it can be awkward too.  There's nothing like going to someones house for dinner and not being able to eat any of the food they have kindly prepared for you.  It was not until then that I realized how much food is a part of our human experience together.

I ended up having brown rice (I'm not allergic but it's not paleo) about 3 weeks in.  It would be easy for me to be discouraged and beat myself up about this.  I decided I would just suck it up and keep moving with the process.  The main objective was to heal my gut from the foods I have an allergy to.    

Recently I've had people ask me, so do you feel different?  I could tell when I said no that they were disappointed.  I felt sort of bad too, I was trying to pin point any changes I had felt.  I'm lucky in that my food allergies are at a very low "reaction level".  But even though I don't feel any changes doesn't mean my body isn't having an inward reaction.  Another thing I should point out is that before this I already limited the amount of dairy and gluten I ate.  If I was someone going from eating bread and dairy on a regular basic the reaction would be similar to the one I had when I first started paleo (leaning out and getting use to the never feeling full or heavy after a meal).  

In the recent weeks we've we had a few parties, at the last minute before one of our parties I bought some sliced cheese from Trader Joe's and made a tray with crackers.  I decided to have 1.5 pieces of cheese divided up with 3 crackers- I loved it!  Oh man I don't know if I'll ever lose my love of cheese.  Fast forward an hour later, my body was totally having a reaction.  I had stomach pain and ugh it just didn't get better.  Before I started on this journey I had hoped that my body would no longer have these cravings (for french bread and cheese).  For now I know that it's something I like and will enjoy occasionally.   

What have I eaten since this 56 days ended, french bread, lasagna, Coca~cola and cheese.  The only big reaction I have noticed is with cheddar cheese.  With the other food I just felt, bloated and it never tastes as good as I imagine.  Yes, I even had Coca~cola!  Do I plan on returning to my daily habit no.  Do I look back at the blog I wrote about Coca~cola for motivation- absolutely.  To check that post out click here.  

The journey continues...  

 

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Patio Design: Part 1

 

Image #1.  View of the patio from the living area in Oct. 2010

Image #2 looking out the glass door to my left. March 2013

Image #3 looking out the patio door straight ahead

Image #4 Looking ot the right of the patio

Image #5 Presley (&Lenny's) portion of the patio.

Image #6 fire place seating

Image #7 facing the house (the small table on the left is where the dinner table would go).

 

Like everyone my house is a work in progress and I think always will be.  At times I wish it was all done the moment we moved in, but it is not and that's ok.  For the past several months we have been working on our patio.  It was just completed this past week and I decided to blog about the process and show the transformation.  The post will be done in a few blog posts, as this quickly got wordy...

We started out trying to solve a few problems.  Our friends and neighbors moved out and we had new (friendly) neighbors but a different dynamic, we now wanted a little more privacy.  We also wanted a safe place for Presley and Lenny to play without constant eyes on them.  We wanted to save our patio furniture from the harsh Arizona sun and occasional rain...  At night we would talk about what we would do if money wasn't an issue and dreamed on from there...

I'm a pain in the rear because I don't want stuff you can find "anywhere" but I also don't have an unlimited budget either.  If that were the case I'd have rustic pieces from France that I hand picked on one of my many shopping trips (we all have dreams).  With a budget I had to do a lot of research and have a lot of patience (Mark was more patience I assume ), thank goodness for the internet.

As a visual person as many times as I had drawn the space I had a hard time spacial relations, the end product was not the original design.  I had always thought we would just have one sitting area under the patio and move it around based on our use (parties, or just for us).  For others like me I'd recommend going into a project like this with an open mind and a lot of imagination.  We still have a dinner table in mind for the space.

As I was putting the furniture on the completed patio I realized I hadn't bought any decorative items to place outside.  I ran around the house pulling items from other places in the house or using items that were shoved in a drawer.  I'm lucky that my favorite colors, white and blue are colors used through out the house.

If you have any questions post your question or private message me and I'll address them in my upcoming blog posts.  For now I will say this is a list of some of the places I purchased from, Ikea, Target, Costco, Lowes and antique stores.  I even found one item- I love- for free on the side of the road. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whale Watching in San Diego

Best dolphin photo of the day

These photos do not give this experience justice- at all- not even close.  I highly recommend this to everyone with or without kids.  I can't believe I've never done this before.  Whale watching may have to become an annual activity.  Presley had a great time, Mark and I had a great time we all were wishing the trip didn't end so soon.

During the months of December and January the gray whale can be found in San Diego on their way to Mexico.  Often they can be seen from land, but it truly is amazing to view from the water.  We were on a sail boat and were able to get very close and sail along side this whale for 15 minutes.

Presley watched a movie, Big Miracle with Drew Barrymore on our road trip to NY last summer.  It was a sweet movie and left Presley so enchanted by the sea and these lovable big creatures.  I started my research thinking we were going to end up in Alaska in order to watch the whales.  The good news was I always wanted to go to Alaska but the better news, they were coming through CA to Mexico.  

I first googled whale watching and found huge ships that charge $50. a person.  This sounded reasonable to me and I almost booked it.  Next I wondered how good my photos would be on these big ships with hundreds of other tourists (with cameras).  This is when I decided to google "whale watching, small tours"  not to be confused with "small whale watching tours".  It was then that I found, www.sailsandiego.com.  

I called on my cell and asked a few questions.  The woman who answered turned out to be the owner and she let me know their price was $85. per person.  Their sail boats are 40 feet long and they take a max of 8 people out at a time.  This sounded perfect to me, I was ready to book and tried to hang up because of a bad connection.  She was so helpful she must of kept my on the line another 5 minutes, giving me directions on how to get there, where to park, asking about Presley (her age etc).  I really appreciate great service and judging from that call I was pretty sure I'd like the sailing with them even if we didn't see any whales.  She was careful not to promise we would see whales but she did say it would be highly unlikely if we didn't.

Ok the tour, it felt way too short!  It was suppose to be 3 hours but we followed the whale for so long we ended up being on the tour for 3.5 hours.  We saw a few whales in the distance and saw this one up close.  Having the sail boat we were able to cut the motor and follow the whale for about 15 minutes.  The whale never breached (coming fully out of the water).  But the small glimpses we got were so thrilling. Even the captain who had done this for years was caught up in the excitement of the chase.

Presley was as excited about dolphins as she was about the gray whales.  We had a few dolphins swim along side the boat, she was tickled by that...  Just being in the open water on such a beautiful day felt like a gift to me.  It was fun to have this time away, together with no distractions doing something we all enjoyed.  

While on this trip I realized how hard it is to photograph sea life.  They (whales or dolphins) don't come out of the water for long and trying to spot them, focus and hope the boat isn't shaking you was quite difficult.  Composition wasn't something I could even think much about while out there.  But I don't think I could ever leave my camera behind...  There will always be hope I will get that one breath taking shot!...