Many Apologies

I am so sorry to have been such a lame blogger this past year. I fear I have lost many faithful readers due to my lack of posting. I am back blogging now and plan on posting much more often. Now that I am developing my photography skills, I won't be as ashamed of showing off the pictures I take. Now catching Dallas in a mood to be photographed is another story!!! She's not always the most cooperative when the camera comes out. My Mom says it's payback because I did the same thing to her when I was younger. Here is a picture I took of her last month. She was tolerating me sticking the camera in her face!!!

Look What I've Been Working On!!!

I just realized that I have forgotten to post some of my Digital LO's I have been working on. I haven't done any lately because I just haven't felt like it and I have been doing other things, like learning how to use the camera!!! Here are some LO's I have done over the past several months.

Photography Course and More Pictures

I've been taking this online photography course over at the Spraground for the past 4 weeks and I am loving it. I have actually taken the Nikon out of Auto and put it into Manual!!! I don't always know what I am doing but I love it. Dallas and I went to the airport last week and you should have heard hear scream DADDY as she ran to Skip's arms. She is such a daddy's girl and has him wrapped around her little finger. The first picture is the original straight out of of the camera. In the other four I was playing around with different actions I purchased from Mindy.

Can You Guess What She Did Today!!!

Dallas got more chalk on her than the patio!!! As you can tell, she really gets into her work.

My Poor Baby was BittenToday

Dallas hadn't even been at preschool for 2 hours when the phone rang. Her teacher was calling to tell me that another little girl had bitten Dallas on the arm. She didn't break the skin but she did leave her bite mark on Dallas' arm. Dallas was crying but she was okay and they had ice on her arm. It was a totally unprovoked incident according to the teacher who witnessed it. When I picked Dallas up later that afternoon the director mentioned that the little girl had done this before. Kids will be kids and things like this unfortunately do happen so I didn't make a big deal out of it. If something like this does happen again I will ask that more be done. Dallas is fine now and hasn't even mentioned it tonight. Give her a few chocolate chip cookies and she's happy!!!

New Camera and of Course Pictures

Dallas is getting more used to the idea of being in front of my camera now. I bought the newly released Nikon D90 last week and I love it!!! I am also taking a photography course finally and am learning how to take it out of "Auto" mode!!! Here are some of my favorite pictures taken over the past few days.

Post-Hurricane Update

We all made it through the storm. It was bad but not quite bad as it was supposed to be. We went to my parent's house and stayed from Sunday to Wednesday. I don't remember much about the hurricane because I took a tranquilizer and went to bed!!! I slept for a while then a big branch came off the tree in the front yard and hit the bedroom window. Thank goodness the windows were boarded up. The electricity was off for about a day and a half but it didn't bother us because we had a generator on the refrigerator/freezer. My parent's have a motor home so we took turns relaxing in there with the air conditioning and satellite TV!!! There was no damage to my parent's home, our home, or my little brother's home. Our home lost power for 2 days and we are still under a "Boil Water Alert". I lost the entire contents of my refrigerator and freezer because things had started to defrost. I can't complain because we could have lost much more. I just can't restock it yet because the grocery stores also lost everything and it will take at least a week to restock them. Somehow all 3 of us have managed to become sick. This is a first for all of us to be sick at the same time. Coughing, sneezing, sore throat, headache: you name it, all the good stuff. So we are at home resting and doing nothing much. I am closely watching out for the next hurricane and praying that it doesn't come near here(IKE STAY AWAY!!!). I managed to take some pictures during the daytime when the curfew wasn't in effect.

The pecan tree in my parent's adjacent lot. Took out 2 neighbor's fences!!!

Snapped power line downtown.

My brother's neighbor lost an old oak tree.

Mulate's world famous Cajun restaurant lost it's roof.

Pulled the pumps out of the ground at the service station.

It didn't take long for the hummingbirds to return.