Michelle and Dan

Life In Manhattan

2011-09-29T22:48:00.000-06:00

We have now lived in Manhattan for over a month now, and in the month we have

Gone to a pre-season Chiefs Football Game. It was the Chiefs vs the Rams. It was fun. We also had amazing seats. On the 35 yard line 8 rows up!!! We had a great time. Baby reached for everything. Got a hold of a few beer cups, those were immediately taken away, Seriously they just left them anywhere. It was all good the people just laughed and joked about it. We had a really good time. We also saw Sam Bradford play again. I have a weird crush on him and am constantly finding myself cheering for the kid. We also saw that Brady Poppinga and Bryan Kehl are on the Rams team and they sat on the bench close to us so I took my chance and yelled down to them and said "Hi" and that "BYU is the best and wished them good luck!" They said "Hi" back... *side note: Dan and I are huge BYU fans. I know most players names on the team and remember them too, even after they stop playing. I was the one that pointed them out standing on the side line.. I have to give myself some props.. Can I get a what what?.. Anyways, Bryan Kehl was also my Sunday School teacher long long ago.. okay not that long ago, 05 to 07.
Went to Topeka for Labor Day and played at the Zoo and rode the train around the giant park they have there. We also visited the Mall. It's much larger then ours here in Manhattan. We went with some friends from our ward.
Celebrated a 30th Birthday. Dan turned the BIG three zero! It was epic.. not really. It was quiet.
Virginia's gotten 3 more teeth!! :) Final!
Have finally heard sirens for tornado warnings, it was a practice alert, no worries
Have made some great friends here in Manhattan, the Andes, There's Rik, Michelle their kids, Chloe, Hyrum, Kate (Katherine) and Annabelle. Rik works in the program with Dan and is also a photographer here in Manhattan. They are also in our ward. Seriously they are awesome! We love hanging out with them.
Gotten a new computer... My beautiful, lightening fast, mac!! Saved enough of my Photography earnings! Ha go me!
Gone to the splash park several times. It's closed now which is really sad, *cue the sad bottom lip. Cold weather is approaching.. but i love me some changing fall color and I now live in a place that actually gets those magnificat colors!
Dan got to go to a K-State game, for free. I was a little jealous but it was all good. I went over to the Andes while Dan went with Rik and the older kids. Those games almost always sell out and the cheapest seat are 75 buck-a-roos.
We gave talks in church.. I know, right? We had been here for 4 Sunday and we got asked to give talks.. crazy scary!.. I also know a calling is coming. Dan got his, he's in scouts... I'm sure it'll be like nursery or something primary related. I would love to serve in the Primary again.

There is also this amazing park just a stones throw away from us. We've gone several times to play there and the other day I took my film and digital camera and grabbed a few of Virginia. I have not shot with film since school so it was a little nerve racking. I kept trying to preview my images. I totally forgot how much slower I am when shooting film. I love it!! I miss it and don't be surprised if you see some more images with film. There are a lot... again i do many images for my Grandma Cannon. I know how much she love seeing Virginia. I shot the film last so it's a little darker.. If you can't tell which images are film and which are digital.. the film are the first images and the digital images start at her big goofy smile.

She loves to talk and say "uh-oh" and "Wow, wow, whoa whoa whoa!" I caught her in her "whoa" part.

I love my little girls smile. Look at how cute she is! I love her. She never looks at the camera anymore so this was a rare smile caught by me on camera! This is her constantly, laughing, giggling, I love it!

Darth Vader for Tom Tom

2011-09-21T22:16:00.004-06:00

I am the nerdiest of nerds.. okay some people do have me beat by a lot, but I LOVE Star Wars. The best movies ever created kinda nerd.. like, I went to all three of the new movies midnight showings.. camped out with friends.. I even saw the midnight showings of the rereleased digital versions of the original Star Wars.. anyways, we purchased the blu rays of Star Wars the other day and on one of the special feature blu ray discs, they have a Star Wars spoofs thing. It's about and hour and 30 minutes and I watched every one. It was fantastic. Here is where my nerdiness comes in.. the first skit was Weird Al's song about "The Phantom Menace". Yes.. i knew all the words. Sad, I know. They seriously saved the best for last.. and I might have been living in a hole for the last year, cause i had know idea about this video. I was laughing so hard i snorted and then eventually started to cry. It is ledgen... wait for it.. dary.

"You should have seen his face when I told him I was his father".....

Peace and Enjoy

Splash Park Fun!

2011-08-25T14:56:00.000-06:00

On Tuesday, it hit just about 100 here in Manhattan, KS. To cool down, we decided, after Dan got home from work, to go to the local splash park. This has been our 2nd time going to the splash park in.... oh.. um 10 days. It's so cute and just the right size. In El Paso, at the outlet malls, they have a fountain type splash thing but it's not awesome like this little park. El Paso is to cheap to ever make something like this. Virginia loves it! When I pulled out her swimsuit she got really excited. She knows, with that outfit, she's going to have a good time. My little water bug! I also got a little snap happy. Sorry!

Blog Worthy Moments

2011-08-23T13:34:00.001-06:00

I thought that I would share some blog worth moments that little miss virginia has graced us with. I want to remember them so that is why I am putting them up on the blog.

She has started to throw things away. Not random things that shouldn't be thrown away, crossing fingers that never happens, but throwing things we ask her to throw away and she knows is trash. At our place in El Paso, the kitchen didn't really have a good place for our trash can to hide. So we got a bigger one with a lid. The first time she surprised us was right after she got her diaper changed. I was getting it ready to throw away and as I was she stood up took it from my hands and threw it in the trash. It was so so cute. I of course washed her hands and thank goodness it was not poopie. Last week we still didn't have our kitchen completely unpacked and had a few boxes sitting about. She would take trash items.. gummy wrappers, diaper wipes (clean!! she just loves getting in to diaper wipes)... etc and put them into a box cause she thought all that was trash. Dan and I had to go and fish them out and put it in the real trash, which is now in a closet that we can close!! Woo Hoo!!!

She just loves little people. She hugs them all the time, and on our first Sunday in our new ward here in Manhattan she saw a small boy about her age and walked right up to him and gave him a giant hug. He didn't really know what to do so he pushed her away. That usually happens too when she give hugs.

In El Paso, Virginia had these wall mounted bookshelf's that I purchased at Ikea. I love them. I displayed a few pictures, trinkets, as well as some of her books on them. My baby girl loves books and anytime we got her up, whether it be from her naps or getting up in the morning, she wanted a book from her shelf. She'd stick out her arm, grunt, I'd take her over and she would pick her book. ( I do plan on getting her room ready so that she can have her books on display again... eventually)

She is champ at walking now. She is teaching herself to run. It's super cute. She screams as she does it then biffs so hard but gets right back up and is at it again.

She's finally getting teeth. The first one broke through last week sometime. Its her upper right one. Now she has three that are visible.

That girl giggles and laughs so hard when she gets tickled. I love it and can not resist tickling her a few times throughout the day.

At Robert and Sally's place, in El Paso, they have a tramp. They also have put a small stepping ladder beside it to let the kids get up and down more easily. Well Virginia decide that she wanted to conquer that stepping ladder and she did. She loves loves that tramp and before Dan or I were the only ones that could get her up there. Sometimes we didn't want her going up there and she didn't like that, so she choose to conquer and show mom and dad who is boss. She climbs it crazy fast. I made sure that I was around her when she'd do it of course. I just love how fearless she is on some things.. but when it comes to crossing outside door thresholds or a small bump in a sidewalk she is so very slow and uses caution.

About three days ago Virginia learned a new word that she loves. "Uh Oh" She uses it now for everything.

And just today while she was occupied playing with her toys, I sat on the couch and started using the computer about 15 minutes passes and she climbed on the couch and sat on moms lap and decided to take a rest. It was so so cute. I quickly grabbed this shot from my computers camera.

I just love this girl.

Peace

Fourth Of July 2011

2011-07-28T23:21:00.000-06:00

Here are a few images I shot of Virginia right before we took off to the Stadium of Fire, which she loved. Great Grandma Cannon got Virginia and Audrey matching outfits for the festivities. I love the pink Converses.

She just loved Katherine's water jug and wouldn't put it down for about an hour. Wherever she went in the house, it went too. Since this was also about that time that she was truly walking by herself, she was stumbling all over the place caring such a heavy thing. I believe in the last picture she was actually grunting while caring it. Right before we went to Utah, in El Paso, she would walk all the time at our house without holding our fingers (note, for short periods of time she would walk by herself) but if we went anywhere she would want to hold them or she would crawl. The minute, and I am not exaggerating this, we got to Utah, she started walking by herself... without falling every 30 sec. It was so cute. She would also do what my Mom called "The John Travolta" When she would walk she would stick out her arms like a disco dance move to keep her balance and it happened every 3 to 4 sec. She has now stopped doing it. It was so cute.

I love this child of mine!

Over A Month!!! WHAT?!!!

2011-07-12T16:06:00.004-06:00

It's been over a month since I posted.. That is crazy!

Well let me fill you in on what has been going on.

May 2011

Mom and Grandma came out to celebrate Dan's graduation from UTEP with his Masters in Linguistics. While they were here we went to the Zoo and Old Mesilla. I also shot two wedding.

June 2011

Work was busy. Office Manager left for two weeks to New Orleans, her husband needed some intense back surgery and the surgeon out there is the best in the Country. Went to Dallas for four days for one of my most favorite people's wedding, Lisa Sabin. I was so happy that I got to see her get sealed for all time and eternity in the Dallas Temple. I was also able to got through her Endowment session.

Dan also defended his thesis and passed with flying colors. They want him to publish his work and go and get his PHD continuing his work. Exciting and very good to hear for how hard he has been working on his Masters Thesis. I am so very very proud.

End of June and July 2011

Baby and I left for Utah to join the family and Grandma Cannon for the fourth of July celebrations. If you have never been to Utah for the fourth of July, you must go. You will love it and will cry. Seriously, the Freedom Festival makes you super proud to be an American. We went to Stadium of Fire, where Virginia was awesome the whole time, then right before the fireworks went off and while the "Stadium of Fire Dancers" were dancing to "Firework", by Katy Perry, which was very loud, Virginia fell asleep and slept through the whole firework show. It was so cute. We also went to the Freedom Festival Days, Audrey loved all the rides that she went on. She sure is one cute girl. I also helped my Mom with the Bands for the Parade. I got lots of hugs and hello from all the wonderful people and friends I worked with and competed with. I sure do miss working with a guard.

Before we flew to Utah Little sister decided to call off her engagement.

We flew from Salt Lake to Houston for my little brothers farewell weekend. (Which was also suppose to be little sister wedding weekend too.) He goes in to the MTC on Wed July 13, 2011 for the Ogden, Utah Spanish speaking Mission. Matt, I am so very very very proud of you for dedicating these next two years to serving your Heavenly Father. I love you and will miss you so so much, but i will always think about you when I'm playing your Wii.

We are now back in El Paso and got here two days ago. My body is still exhausted from the trip and Baby is very excited to be back home. She is not cranky and more.

Now for some exciting news..... We are moving to Manhattan Kansas. Dan got offered a position at Kansas State University. We will have to be come wildcat fans.... but I will always bleed blue!!! We will be moving in just about four weeks. Crazy right?!!?! We are so excited to start a new chapter in our lives.

Peace

Miss Virginia Update

2011-06-06T16:11:00.001-06:00

I have been terrible at this. I missed her 12 month and 13 month update. So today I am combinding the two.

She is really the happiest, smiliest and friendliest baby you will ever meet. Anyone and everyone gets a wavy "hello" and a giant smile and I mean everyone. If she knows the person or has seen them before, doesn't matter who, she will jump into their arms give them a quick hug then want either Dad or Mom again. I love it.

Everyone loves her. All my Activity Day girls love her and play with her. Dan's Teachers Quorum love her. (It's crazy how much those boys love her.) Our friends who only have little boys love her cause she will go into their arms so freely and play. She's just an extremely liked little girl.

She also is incredible fearless. She loves to climb on everything. Her newest accomplishment, which as been about two weeks now, is successfully being able to climb up and down the couch. She will even get down from our bed which is a good foot taller then her. She just slowly glides herself off the edge of the bed then *PLOP* she lands on her butt and then crawls away.

Fearless! I tell you. I took this on Memorial Day, with my phone, over at Robert and Sally's. They have a trampoline and she saw the kids having such a fun time on it, she wanted to join in on that fun. I got on it with her and she just laughed and screamed the whole time. She was just crawling around chasing everyone.

She loves to dance! Any song that comes on she starts to twist and wave her hands. Now that she is more comfortable with standing she will bounce up and down. Her favorite song. The "Hot Dog Dance" from Disney Channels "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse."

She also loves to crawl under things. Chair legs, Toys that stand up, through Mom and Dad's legs...etc anything that has an opening. She's always loved to do that, now she is getting to big to fit under things and cries cause she usually gets stuck. It's pretty funny.

She's starting to get a little bit of an attitude. If she gets upset with something she will throw herself on the ground. I have know idea where that came from. We ignore it. She will also throw things if she is done with it. I'm trying to teach her not to do that but it's hard.

She still refuses to really talk. She says "dadda" all the time but that is it. She as said other words but not on a regular basis. She mostly just gabs and a lot too. It's really cute. I will talk back to her of course. Don't think that I haven't tried to get her to talk. cause of her lack in interest in talking I've started to use sign language. Not a lot but enough to talk to her. She can do "all done" back to me.

She LOVES to walk holding our hands. She has fantastic balance and as fearless as she is on most things, I think it's funny that she refused/ is scared to take steps by herself.

Still NO teeth! What?!? I think it's crazy that my baby is 13 and a half months and still has no teeth. I believe that she is finally teething.. but.... i could be wrong cause i have said this before. She's drooling a ton and is a little bit more on the fussy side again.

She has chosen her blanket of choice. It's a small little yellow one with pink butterflies on it. She loves it and get so excited when I place it on her for bed and nap time. If I try and put another on her she will kick it right off. She will gather it up, hold it in one hand and place her other thumb in her mouth. Consequently, I've now been calling her my little butterfly.

Last one. If you say to her "Where's your belly button?" She will lift up her shirt point to it and say "there it is."

50 State Callenge

2011-05-23T15:00:00.005-06:00

I'm working full time this week. The girl that usually works in the afternoon is out on vacation and since Dan is not in school nor does he start working at EPCC till next week, May 31, I can come in and fill in that time.

If you don't know my twin or I, we are very very competitive against each other. That slight info makes this an even better little story.

There is a site called addictinggames.com and when I was working full time before my baby came along, Lizzy and I would get on it all the time and challenge each other to do a game better then the other. Today's game and challenge, 50 States and you are to place the shape of the state where it's suppose to go on a map of the USA. Go till you are wrong where the state is suppose to go. *we gave each other a five mile leeway or if you got some random state and you failed on your first try then you got to start again.

So far... I am the winner and it's 16!... my dreaded states... Kansas and Kentucky.

http://www.addictinggames.com/puzzle-games/50states.jsp

I challenge all of you!! I know someone else can do better. If you do do it, I want to know what your number was so comment below.

{Disclaimer} the minute you are off by 5 miles on the state that is it. Count how many you did perfect to that point and that is your number... I got 16 perfect then was off by 50 miles on stupid Kentucky... my downfall!

Here is a screen shot lizzy did for me really fast to show you what we are talking about. She got six perfect then messed up on Nebraska.

Peace.

Crazy Crazy Crazy!

2011-05-09T16:11:00.001-06:00

Our life is about to get a little crazy.

First and by far the most important...Dan Graduates from UTEP with his Masters in Linguistics this week. I am so very very proud of my husband. He as worked so hard for this. I love him so so very much. Thursday is pre-commencement, where it's his schools little thing. He will get his cap and gown presented to him, be able to walk across the stage... etc. I will be there in all glory with my camera!

Saturday is commencement where we will sit for a few hours listening to people go on and on and on and on about how life is amazing and this is a great accomplishment for the students of UTEP. I'm making him do this. We've spent how much for his degree. He needs to give me this. :)

Second, My mom and grandma come in on Wed afternoon to celebrate in the festivities of Dan's graduation. They will be here till Monday. I can't wait to show them some of the better parts of El Paso. When then came out for Virginia's birth we were a little unable to show them things see as how i had just had a major operation to get my little one out of me. I was not in the entertaining mood. Which they both understood.

Third, Dan has a interview tomorrow teaching or tutoring at EPCC for the summer.. or something like that. Then he fly up to Utah this coming Monday to interview at UVU. Cross your fingers we get one or the other. I just want a job.

Fourth, I have two!! that's right two weddings back to back. One this Saturday on the 14th and one on the 21st... I'm so excited to do them and nervous. It's going to be great and I will post a preview on this website then you can head over to my photoblog and check more out there.

Sixth, Dan's sister Lovey and her husband Andrew are coming in for the wedding that is on the 21st. Cousins of ours.

We also have some birthday so celebrate this month within the families.

May is looking to be the most exhausting of them all so far...

Peace

Fashion Shoot

2011-04-30T14:58:00.003-06:00

I just posted a fashion shoot over at my photography website. I am terrible at putting things up. I really need to get better at it. I know i would get more clients.. not just by word of mouth but by online hits.. oh well. :)

If you want to see more check it out here or just click on my side bar photography link.

Comment on the post and let me know what you think. Thanks

Peace

One Year Older and Wiser Too....

2011-04-26T14:47:00.000-06:00

Happy Birthday to Virginia!!

My baby girl is a year!! What?!?!?! Crazy.

I didn't really have much of a theme for the party other then rainbow colors and tried to keep with what the invitation looked like. I thought it turned out pretty good for how limited my budget was... seriously I am super impressed with myself. Thank you Dollar Store!

I also didn't get as many images as I would have liked but it was a little hard once everyone started to arrive. I snapped some shots of baby girl in her birthday suit eating her cake and just barely got a shot of the last piece of rainbow cake I made. I was proud of how it turned out but told Dan he couldn't have the slice till I got a shot.

Virginia loved her party. That's all that mattered and I am so happy for all the support that we got from our friends and family members. Our little girl is well loved by everyone who came. My mom also joined in on the fun through video chat. It worked out perfect and I am so happy that she was able to participate in the event even though she was hundreds of miles away in Utah.

Baby girl made out like a Queen.

Thank you again Everyone!

This is the invitation that i came up for her. I love it and I decided to keep the decorations similar to the invite.

The table is a little barren but I needed space for Virginia's young cousins to eat. My apartment is tiny and our card table was being used for all the other food and things: Hot dogs, chips, soda, plates, etc. Even though it was barren, it worked out perfect.

This was one of her many many outfits that she got as a gift from Great Grandma Cannon.

She loved that cake. She's never really had that much cake by herself before, so she threw up a little after wards.

See, i told you she made out like a Queen. She got so many clothes. That pile is just about 6 inches tall and this is not all of it. After I snapped this shot, Virginia got some additional presents from some co-workers of mine who could not make it to the party.

Happy Birthday baby girl. I love you and I can't believe that you are one years old!

I Have The Happiest Baby EVER!!!

2011-04-26T08:26:00.000-06:00

Spring time is not the best time for El Paso. It's warm, which is nice, but we get stupid crazy up to 55 mph wind for all of March and April. It's terrible. One day in March.. I know I am super lazy about getting these up.. it was a beautiful day. Just right for spring. 75ish degree weather and NO wind, so we decided we couldn't waste the day and took Little Miss Virginia to the park and played on the swings. Everyone else had the same idea and the place was packed. These also count as her 11 month shots. We went around the same time she was turning 11 months.

A dog started to bark and her and she didn't really know what was going on.

It was so bright out that day so don't mind the crazy bright images.

This was the first shot I got of her on the swing. She was just on her way back to us. She laughed and giggled the entire time. Just look at every image.

I love her so much and yes, I really do have the Happiest Baby Ever!

I am now 27!!

2011-04-06T10:11:00.000-06:00

Happy Birthday to me!!... and my twin.

I can not believe that i am 27 now. I sure don't feel like it. I still think that I'm 24ish... oh well... life gets better as you get older... so I've heard.

It was a pretty good day. I was sick, which was not fun but over all I really liked my day of birth. We celebrated my birthday with the family on Sunday in between conference. I got a few gifts that were awesome and then went home and crashed cause i felt the cold/sickness coming on. Woke up Monday with a terrible head cold. Yesterday I was getting over it but still felt miserable but I didn't let that stop me from enjoying my day.

Dan got me a beautiful necklace and some cute earrings with tiny tiny diamonds in them. I love them. It's the first time Dan got me some good and nice jewelry. He also came home from school a little earlier then usual and had some roses in his hands. :) I love me some flowers. Then we went out to dinner to a place called the Japanese Kitchen. It a smaller hole in the wall place not super clean but the food was amazing! Then we went to another place for dessert called Coach's Grill, another small local place, which was much much cleaner and got what they call their Illegal Alien that consisted of.... wait for it..... 1 deep fried Twinkie, 2 deep fried Oreos, 2 deep fried Nutter Butters, 1 deep fried large brownie, with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream and chocolate drizzled all over.... I know right! It was everything you could hope that it would be! We've heard about the place for about a year now and have tried going a few times but every time they were closed. If you can't splurge on your birthday when it comes to treats when can you?

Overall by 27th birthday was a success and lets see what this year has to offer me... my 26th was quiet spectacular.. lets see if it can top it. :)

Peace

11 Months And A Few Carzy Things My Baby Does

2011-03-25T09:17:00.000-06:00

My baby is 11 months!!
What?!?! I'm going to have a one year old in one month.

Seriously... I've been told that time flies when you have children but I never realized how fast the year goes. This has been, by far, the fastest year of my life.

I can't get you picture cause my computer is out of commission again. I believe it might be our battery that is over heating the cord. I've had it now for three and a half years and the batteries are not really meant to last that long. So we need to get another cord and then just take the battery out and have it constantly plugged in. When ever i pulled out the charger the last couple of times before it gave out, it would burn my fingers and i have never had that happen ever.... I digress to often sometimes... so no picture of the cute little girl and her 11 month old smile.

Somethings about her at 11 months:

1. Can babies become faster crawlers? I really thought that she had reached the peak of her fastness but i was wrong. She is faster and faster every day and just loves to crawl. By far her favorite thing to do is crawl around the kitchen just gabbing and screaming at herself. She has no where to go she just crawls in a circle seeing how fast she can go.

2. Still no teeth.

3. She is starting to wavy goodbye and hello to people.

4. She is starting to understand what we are telling her. She response to No and in a good way too. I've had the crying happen when I really say No to her tho. It's usually when I get nervous of what she is doing and tell her really loudly NO.. and it scares her. She's a little scaredy cat. For example the other day I downloaded an app for her that shows a picture of a animal, tells them the name and gives them the sound the animal makes. When it came to the wolf, she started crying so loud. It took a while to comfort her. Like mother like daughter. I was so scared of those wolfs on "Beauty and the Beast" When I was a just about 6 or 7, I remember my Grandma Cannon taking us to see it when it came out to theaters and during the wolf scene when Maurice is getting chased by the them, I had to go and sit on her lap. I really hate scary movies. I have never liked them and never will.

5. She is starting to dance. She will twist her body back and forth when she here's a song that she likes. She also claps at ever tune that she hears. I really do hope that she has a love for music like I do.

She is so funny. I laugh at her all of the time. Here are a few things that she has been doing for some months now but i just wanted to write them down and remember them.

She loves to put a baby wipe in her mouth, a clean one for all of you who some how think I would let her put a used one in her mouth. Shame on you for thinking I left dirty used ones laying around. .... she will put it into her mouth and crawl all over the place with it sticking out. If it starts to slip she will stop crawling and re-stuff the thing back into her mouth. This is in no way new. She has loved doing that since she was about 4 months old.

This one is new. She discovered the oven drawer not to long ago. We have baby locks on all of the lower cabinets in the kitchen and when ever i am in there doing something she loves to pull on them. She then noticed the oven drawer and pulled on it and it opened for her. She was ecstatic proceeded to take out all of the things in there that she could pull out. Needless to say I have now taken everything out except the grill. It's to heavy for her and you need to slant it at an odd angle to retrieve it. Now she will pull out the oven drawer and sit on our grill and just gab/yell at us. It's super cute.

She love toilet paper... well any paper for that matter but this is new too. She loves to pull on it. We have now learned to constantly keep our bedroom room and the second bathroom shut so that she does not do anything in them. I'm trying to avoid the playing in the toilet... gross!

She loves to play a game with me. She will start crawling away from me while we are playing and I'll say "Virginia, you get back here" She will stop turn her head to look at me then laugh and take off at a sprint. I start going after her saying , "I'm gonna getcha, I'm gonna getcha" She then starts laughing even harder. When I finally pick her up she sequels in delight and gives me a giant hug. I love playing this game with her.

Another example of her scaredy cat..ness. When ever there is a noise at the door like, if anyone knocks on the door or even when Dan or I are coming home and are using our keys to open the door, she bolts as fast as she can from the door/noise.

Those are just a few things that she does and I will always want to remember them.

Hopefully the computer is not out of commission much longer and I can get you some images. We went to the park the other day and she loved the swing and slide and I got some awesome images of her.

Peace

Our Glorious Weekend

2011-03-07T10:48:00.059-07:00

Oh my goodness, Life has definitely gotten away from me. We have been so stinking busy. So I am going to just highlight a few things that we did this weekend.

The Corner Street Bakery recently opened up here on the west side. Apparently it's been here in the city for the last couple of years, but it's all the way over on the east side. About a 30 minute drive. We never go over to the east side. Just to far of a drive. So while I was at Ross last week. Yes, I shop at Ross and El Paso's is awesome!! Seriously I have been to several. Houston and a few in Utah and by far this one is the best. I digress, I noticed that the Corner Street Bakery was having a Grand Opening. I didn't even know that they were making one over here.We drive over on that street/area all the time. Target, Best Buy, Barnes and Noble..I can go on and on with what is over there that we visit on a regular basis. So we decided to venture out and eat there Thursday night. I got a few images with my phone but nothing to spectacular. I meant to take my camera but I just forgot. P.S. it was DELICIOUS! I got their Club Penni and it was amazing! If you are ever in an area with one, go! You will not regret it.

Friday nothing to report. Seriously we did nothing.

Saturday night we dropped baby off at Grandma and Grandpa Morgan's a little earlier then usual. She spent the night with them. Dan and I had a wonderful date involving...

One: Going to the grocery store. ( which by the way, is so much easier to do without a baby)
Two: Going to the outlet mall. We grabbed some dinner at the food court. Do not judge, they have an awesome Japanese place. While there we picked up some new things for me cause for some reason I was a little depressed and felt like spending money. Don't worry I had my husband with me so I knew I wasn't going to be able to spend like crazy. I just got a few things for all under 15 bucks. Our outlet mall is fantastic!
Three: We went and saw the new movie "The Adjustment Bureau" staring Matt Damon, yum, and Emily Blunt, who I love. If you have not seen Young Victoria, rent it today.

Sunday morning we got to sleep in till 9:30!!! Woo Hoo. Chruch doesn't start for us till 11:30. I love when baby sleeps over at Grandma and Grandpa Morgan's. :)

Anyways... I have some News....

This is not in anyway news for Lizzy or I but it's going to be new for all of you.... When I first moved down here to El Paso, over two years ago. Lizzy and I started making simple and small designs for things. Nothing big. At first we thought about putting them up on Etsy but then nothing really came of that and then we stopped doing things. We made tons of designs but have done nothing with the. We came up with a name and everything.... We recently started talking about it again and decided to put our designs up for FREE for people to use at their pleasure. We've been loading the site, researching what's the easiest downloading method, and designing the site now for just about a month. We feel it's time to launch the site officially. It's titled...

We designed this logo over two years ago too. Decided to try and redesign something but loved this one so much we just stuck with it. It really is super cute. I drew everything except the fonts of course. We are so excited to be launching this site. New things will be added almost daily. Just depends on our days at work, school and our families. We have tons of them to put up. Start at this post, it will explain it better then I am.

Here is the lastest design we put up today.

There are several colors for you to choose from. Go here to read the post and download this beautiful poster and check out the site here.

I also have a button up for you to click on to take you there. If you love or even like what is up, please get the word out just a small post or blurb about it would be awesome. REMEMBER IT'S ALL FREE!!! While you're at it, might as well become a follower.

We are both super nervous on how people are going to respond to the site.

Peace

Virginia At 10 Months

2011-02-23T14:29:00.133-07:00

Our little girl is crazy ridiculous and so stinking sweet.

Some things she is doing at 10 months

1. New things... not much..... she still is doing everything she did at 9 months, but now she's able to do them with ease.

2. She taught her self how to click her tongue and when ever Dad or I click our tongues she follows along. It's become a super cute game.

3. She loves playing games.. her own made up games too. Those really make her laugh. The other day when I was putting her down for afternoon nap, she pulled her blanket up over her face and quickly pulled it down and giggled at her self. So I decided to play along and every time she pulled the blanket back over her face and down really fast, I had a new funny face and noise for her. She was laughing hysterically. To inform me that she was done with her little game and ready to sleep, she put her thumb in her mouth and rolled to her side.

4. She stood up all by herself WITHOUT any support! She's only done it once and it was just about three or four days ago. She pulled herself up by her fence we have around the TV, to protect it from her crazy climbing abilities... she is a crazy climber... I digress, saw her little " I Love You" fuzzy book decided that she wanted it, squatted to pick it up then stood right back up with out any support on anything. I was so stunned with what she had just done, I gasped really loud, which startled her so much she fell down instantly. I called Dan immediately and told him what happened.

5. She is learning how to wave goodbye. It so cute. She does it with both hand most of the time.

6. She's going to be a little dancer. Those words make my mom happy I just know it. Anytime she hears music she smiles, then continues to brings both arms up and starts shaking them and sometimes shakes and wiggles her whole body. And when she walks with assistance she is always on her tippy toes.

7. I've been teaching her how to give kisses she sometimes does it she some times does not. It depends on her mood.

8. She starting to understand what we say.

9. She's been doing this one for months... when she picks something up, it immediately goes into her mouth.. what's new is she's learned when Dad or I either stick our fingers in her mouth to grab it she clamps her jaw shut so that we can't grab it but what she doesn't realize is that she puts it into her cheeks and she looks like a little chipmunk and we are able to get it even faster then before. It's so stinking cute.

10. Everyone knows the saying... Out of sit, out of mind... babies are pros at that. If they get something they are not suppose to have and you take it and just hid it, they forget instantly about it. Well our baby has learned that we hid the thing. She now goes after it. She never fusses when we take it away she just climbs over us and finds it again. We used to hid things under the couch so that she can't get to it. She has learned that we hid things there. Many times I see her speeding to the couch and diving her little arm under it to see what she can pull out. It super funny. :)

11. Still no teeth

12. When either Dan or I get home, she squeals in delight and comes speeding over for us to pick her up so she can give us a hug/squeeze and a chew on your chin what I call kisses..... sometimes.... if she is gentle with it, then it's a kiss.

13. She is now preferring to be held either by Dan or I. She gets whiny and pushed off people to get to either one of us. It happens about 6 out of 10 times. Before it never mattered who held her just as long as she knew mom or dad trusted them.

14. I don't remember if I put this in the 9 month on or not, but she loves to hit things. LOVES it... I cant emphasize enough how deep this love is. She love the metal chairs at the church. Those and Dad and Mom's faces are her favorite things to hit. She just gets so excited and her squeals while she does it are the best. We are trying to teach her to be soft with the hitting.

Okay, wow I didn't realize how much she has learned in one short month. I thought i was going to maybe get like 5 things but 14, WOW.

Baby girl you are so smart.

Now here is a ton of images I shot of her. I shot them in her crib it's the only thing that we have that can keep her contained long enough for me to get some decent shots.

She is a gabber.

I just love this face she is giving me.

Her posing, chewing on the crib, hitting the crib cause that is what she loves doing while telling mom something, then deciding to chew the crib again.

She loves this stuffed animal wolf thing that Grandma and Grandpa Griffin gave her. She got a ton of them for christmas but that is the only one that she plays with out of the collection.

Well that was an over load of baby, Sorry.

Peace

Out With The Old In With The New

2011-02-21T11:45:00.001-07:00

I decided i needed a new blog header look. So i sat down and made a new one today at work. I know I know, I bet you are thinking... she just changed that not to long ago, why is she doing a new one already?... Well dear friends i will tell you. I was never in LOVE love with my other design.

Here is what the old one was if you do not remember..

And here is the new one....

I have a ton of design ideas floating around up there. Most get put on to paper while others don't. My photography teacher always taught us to have a photo/design journal with us at all times. The purpose; to be able to jot down any large or small idea that comes into our heads or if we found an image that we found inspiring we should put it in there. Some ideas of mine are years away from completing (mostly my fine art photography stuff), while other ideas started out as something super small and tiny then over the next few weeks or even months i would think about it and it would turn into something fantastic.

I digress,

I really love the design. It has a modern mid century feeling to it, for me at least. I love mid century design. I have always been drawn to it, even as a little kid. Any who.. that is all. Hopefully Lizzy and I can announce/launch something very soon. We have been working on it since I moved to El Paso... over two years ago. Yes, we are lame and slow but it takes time which Lizzy and I both have very little of. Cross your fingers that it is up super soon.

Peace

Love Was In The Air

2011-02-15T10:12:00.001-07:00

Dan and I kept this years valentines very low key. We decided not to get gifts for each other and instead use the money on a fantastic dinner out. We choose to celebrate on Saturday to make it easier on us and baby. We went to one of our favorite places here in El Paso, Koze Teppan Grill. It is awesome and so very very good. Their ginger sauce is to die for. Dan loves the stuff. The place is super chic and modern. I love the design of it. Next time we go... which there will be, I will have to snap a few images. We've never sat at one of the tables for dinner, we have always sat at the grill so i don't know what the service is like at a table. At the grill, the cooks are super funny and love to chat up a storm. This was the first time we went for a Holiday dinner and it was packed and our cooked rushed the entertainment... which is fine.. it was incredibly busy that night. I don't think we would have been able to get a spot on the grill if we didn't make reservations.

Yesterday again... low key. I went to work in the morning, Dan went to school early, I picked up baby at Grandma Morgans, did a few errands, then cooked a simple Thai dinner and make some chocolate covered strawberries. That was it. I did get him a card and a pack of Kisses which if he eats one he owes me a real one. Yes i know...cheesy, corny, and lame. But I love it. :)

This is what Dan tells me, he wanted to get me a thing of flowers at the store on his way home from school, but when he went in, he said there was just a ton of Tools getting flowers, so he decided to get me my favorite pack of cookies.. :) I love my husband. A little disclaimer if you please... The only reason Dan stopped off at the store in the first place, was because I needed something for the meal and forgot to pick it up when I was there earlier. It's the thought that counts about the flowers. :)

So all in all our 2011 Valentines was a hit for us. :)

Peace

Fix-It-Friday No. 6

2011-02-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

I'm back at it again. Doing, I heart faces, Fix it Friday.

I've wanted to do one for a few weeks but none of the images made me want to edit it, until today. This little red head is adorable!! I love her.

Here is the original

and here is my edit.

Super easy.

I duplicated the Original Layer twice.

Changed both Layer Bending Modes to Screen. Did not Change the opacity on either one.

On each Layer, I burnt around her and the background to make it black.

I then copied the eyes in to a new layer.

Switched the Layer Blending Mode to Color Dodge.

Then dodged and burned areas to make them pop more.

And of course cropped the images to a 5x7.

All done in less then 5 minutes!

Peace

My Baby Can Be Crazy Sometimes

2011-02-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

I captured these images with my phone over the weekend.

She is crazy!!! But I love it!

Saturday morning she was playing on the floor and decided that she wanted to play in her toy basket not with the toys anymore. So she, ever so gently, threw all her toys out then climbed in the basket and played with everything that was around her. She was in there for about 20 minutes until I left the room and she followed me. I love that my baby follows me. She doesn't need to be held, she just likes being in the same room as Mom. :)

We had a water crisis here in El Paso over the weekend, caused by the frigid cold temps we got mid week. Because of the water restrictions, we went and purchased a case of water for us to drink. We could wash in it but if we wanted to drink anything we had to boil it for 30 minutes.... gross... boiled water is nasty... I digress, we had it sitting out last night and little miss Virginia decided to play on it. She was standing all the way on it, but when mom pulled out the phone to grab a picture she wanted down.. boo.. oh well she is our little climber.

Peace

El Paso Is Weak!! Weak I Tell You!!

2011-02-03T10:01:00.001-07:00

We got hit with the massive snow storm that has swept the nation. Yesterday I got a call at 6:30 in the morning telling me not to come in to work, the office was going to be closed. Closed! I'm not complaining... free day (imagine "free day" being sung in excitement) but... Utah would never close for the weather that we got here. Nor would rest of the nation. Yes is was super super cold for El Paso. 8 degrees when I finally checked the weather in the morning, but.. no snow. We had a small small small layer, did i mention it was small, layer of snow on the ground. I don't think that it was even on the roads. We didn't get much on the west side. I heard that the northeast got about 3 inches....So i just have to laugh that El Paso completely shut down for something like this. Dan and I weathered the weather.. ha... and headed to the Mall. It was cold in the Mall and less then half the stores were closed. Odd right? People from cold places would seriously be rolling on the ground at how silly the city of El Paso and the people reacted. All the schools were closed, including Utep, and the city was closed. They are all closed today too. I can't believe it. I think that I had one, ONE, snow day. It was in elementary school and we got like 4 feet of snow in one night. I do remember another time in elementary where Mr. Porter, our janitor, couldn't get the doors opened and they were about to send us all back. Almost every student was waiting in the front of the school while Mr. Porter plow torched the doors open. They had frozen shut. But then he got them open... dang it.. and school was not closed... boo. But it's all good, at the end of March we always had a day off for our snow day that we never used. :) Last year we got something like this, but not nearly as cold. Our office didn't close, nor did the schools but Susan, my supervisor, was worried about me and my pregnant belly and all the idiot's that drive worse then they normally do in odd weather conditions and told me not to come in. She didn't want to risk an accident. Susan is super awesome! That is all

Peace

My New Computer Charger Arrived!!! Now I Can Post Images!!!

2011-02-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

For Christmas I received a sewing machine!!! Hooray. I have not sewn a project for years. I've done small things here and there. I miss sewing and I love it. So for my first adventure in getting back into sewing was.... a new camera strap.Go me! I have been wanting to make this ever since Amanda over at her blog made a tutorial for it. I spent about an hour at Hobby Lobby deciding what fabric I would want to use for my new sewing machines first voyage.

I apologize for the nasty color that they are. I shot these at about 9 at night with florescent and tungsten lighting. Yuck! I was just to excited to not shoot some images of it. I love it and am very pleased with my sewing ablities, which i assumed that I lost. But I did not. :) I really should have shot some more images the next day but I am Lazy.

I use to sew all the time in High School for people. Katherine my older sister loved to brag... i guess it was bragging, about how her little sisters rock at sewing and so many of her friends asked us to make things. We made several Jedi robes and the drumline asked us to make there stick holders, which they used for years even after Elizabeth and I graduated. I know we made other things for friends and ourselves but i can't seem to remember what they were... anyways i just wanted all of you to know that I did used to know how to sew very well. :)

My baby loves to make messes. :)

Yes there is a Transfer Luggage Tag in with her play things. She loves it.

These next few images are just well..her. She always looks like this. I'm sorry there are so many but I know Grandma is going to love looking at them so technically they are for her. These are also her 9 month images.

I shot these last two yesterday. The first one she had just woken up and her hair was all over the place. She's a little confused looking. This was maybe a minute after she woke up. I sat her down after I got her out of her crib and shot this. She's very much like Mom when it comes to waking up. I'm still super groggy and out of it for about 15 to 20 minutes.

This one she realized mom had the camera in her hands and wanted it.

My baby is AWESOME!!!

Peace

Virginia at 9 months

2011-01-25T11:22:00.000-07:00

We might as well squeeze 8 months in here too. With Christmas and Weddings I never got around to it.

I also can not produce pictures right now. My computer charger gave out. We have not had a working computer for 24 hours now!!! It was working great before we left for Albuquerque but when we got home Saturday night, the light on the power cord was not on and the computer was dead. We fiddled with it for a few minutes and then left it alone. When we woke up Sunday it decided to start working during the night and we had a almost fully charged computer on our hands :) and throughout the day it did occasionally give us some charges. It finally decided to die for good yesterday. Boo...

So Virginia at 9 months. I really can't believe how time has flown by this year. Seriously this had been the fastest year ever! When I was in school life always seemed to be in slow motion. Enough about me this post is suppose to be about Virginia, also have i ever mentioned how much I LOVE being a Mom? Cause i do. I love love LOVE it!

1. She self feeds herself now, just bottle tho. It's actually has opened up my time alot. I just make the bottle put her in the love sac and she good to go by her self. She also gets really annoyed when one of us helps her to feed. She wants to do it by herself. :)

2. She can pick up those tiny, cheerio size, Gerber treats with her index finger and thumb. She doesn't make the fist like she used to. It's quiet the accomplishment I believe. :)

3. She pulls herself up on the furniture and walks around it supporting herself with it. Yesterday we were at the her Doctor's office for her 9 month check up and she loved just standing on the chair. She got so excited. She would stomp her feet up and down on the chair while screaming. It was so super cute. She would also squat and then laughed/scream at her squatting abilities. :)

4. She loves to climb on things. Mom, Dad, Love Sac to couch, down couch to Love Sac. She's getting super fast at it.

5. She's been doing this for months now but I don't think that I have mentioned it. She a little vain and loves to look at herself, weather in be a picture on the wall, image on the cell phone, or seeing herself in the mirror, she just starts to kick her legs in excitement and giggles. It happens every time to without fail.

6. She loves her solid foods. When we first started to introduce her to solids she always gave a face, even if she had it before, but always wanted more. The only thing that has changed is the face. She's stopped giving it on every little thing that goes in her mouth.

7. She is a little talker. Has always been one but she just talks all the time now. I think that her blabbing is now a language. We can't understand it but she sure is saying something with it. :) She also finally said Mama!!! Hooray, It was the other day and Dan and I where sitting on the bed with her while getting ready for the day, when she crawled up to me and went Mama Mama and then proceeded to climbed all over me. :) She hasn't said it again since but that was only two days ago. She's always said mama but always when she was super tired and while crying. It wasn't the real Mama.

8. She loves children. She plays awesome with them. When she sees one she laughs, gives them a smile and kicks her little feet.

9. She loves thrills but hates being scared. It's funny. She loves to be thrown in the air, pretend to be dropped..etc but she hates when I hide and she comes looking for me and I go BOO!! She jumps so high, gives the cutest face, then starts to cry. She is definitely like mom when it comes to thrills and scares. I hate being scared. I hate haunted houses, scary movies... etc. I love me a good thrill, like roller coasters and other dare devil, gut wrenching things.

10. She's so stinking fast now when she crawls. It's insane how fast she is.

11. When she sits, she claps her hands together. Usually when she claps her hands together, she gets really excited that she did it then giggles/screams while she continues to clap her hands. :)

12. She is now playing with her toys instead of us forcing her to play with them and us playing with her. She loves this animal sound one that we purchased for her when we got home from Utah. It's from Great Grandma Cannon. She loves it cause she can smack and hit it and it makes sounds. :)

13. Last one, she loves to hit and smack things and pulls Mom's hair all the time.

These are just a few things that she is doing right now.

Peace

Our Weekend

2011-01-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

Two Things that are happening this weekend.

1. We are off to Albuquerque for a Temple trip. Woo Hoo. We have not been to the Temple in over a year. I feel awful but I am super excited! Our ward here in El Paso has planned the trip. It should be super fun.

2. Virginia turns 9 months! holy goodness, where has the time gone?

We live such an exciting life. :)

Have a great weekend everyone :) I know I will. :)

What We've Been Up To

2011-01-14T11:08:00.005-07:00

I wanted to do a year in review post..... I think that I still will but post mark it before all of this.. so never mind about my lame excuse for laziness was going to be.

I'm back at work now. It was a great two week break. I love that my work gives it's employee's a week and half off for the Christmas Holidays. We didn't have to be to work till the 3rd. Awesome!

We purchased a new car. Hooray! We feel we got a really good deal on it. We purchased a 2007 Mazda CX-7. We love it. We weren't looking at Mazda's at first, what we were looking at were the Honda CR-V's. We wanted a bigger car for our future growing family... No I am not preggers and will not be for a while. We love it. We did a lot of research and exploring and then when we sat in the CX-7 both Dan and I fell in love. It was bigger by far then all of the other small SUV's we had been in and were looking at. It was the first pre-owned car that looked almost brand new inside as well. The others had been cleaned but they were definitely used. This one had to have been owned by a bachelor who had no kids. It's a gorgeous cobalt blue, with no dings scratches... etc.

This one was also certified pre-owned. We actually never even got to go to the Hyundai dealership because of how much we fell in love with this car. My twin got a Santa Fe at the end of summer and she loves it and I've been in it a few times and she let me drive it to see if I like it and I loved it. Oh well. We got suckered. :) We also really liked the guy that sold us the car, Gabe. We went to the dealership that he works for first, told him our situation. He didn't pressure us, he just showed us around and then we left and went to some other dealerships. Before we left, Rudolph Honda, the dealership we were at, they have another dealership, Mazda, on the other side of town with some used cars we wanted to look at. Gabe told us to come back either the next day or the day after and he would drive us over there to look at them so we didn't have to waste the gas, nice right? Anyways with the other dealerships we got hammered with salesman everytime and at one place we had 4 people get on us to get a car that we didn't even want we just sat in it. So after our great experience with Gab we decided to try and stick with him. The next day we went to the Mazda dealership were our car was waiting for us. :) We sat in all the ones that Gabe pulled up on their inventory the day before but decided to take the Mazda out for a test drive. It is awesome. Smooth, quiet and perfect. It doesn't have a ton of bells and whistles but I'm not into all that. I need something that has awesome trunk room, which it does, is roomy for growing kids and car seats, is an automatic, I'm done with sticks for awhile, and gets me from point A to point B.. I'm pretty simple... although i do want an iphone. :) I think that is the only really spiffy thing that I want in my possession. I also want a Dyson and a steam vac thingy. So three things. Anyways... we love our new car and constantly fight about who gets to drive or not.

My supervisor, Susan, just had her first grand kid. Before baby-E was born I told Susan I would love to shoot some infant photos for them to get my portfolio up. It was fantastic. I also did a few family sessions before the holidays but i don't really feel like getting those up.

Baby E was super cute and big. He was 9 lbs. My baby was 7. Big difference between the sizes.

We also went on a date this last weekend. It was fantastic. Baby slept over at Grandma and Grandpa Morgan's for the night while we went to dinner and saw the Tourist. My Dad loved it when he saw it during the holidays, so we thought we would give it a shot. I usually like the movies my dad likes. It was good. I really enjoyed it. It doesn't really take a lot for me to like movies. Just a good plot and some good acting. :) I also do enjoy those super lame movies.. I kinda want to see the Human Centipede. Seriously it exists. See...

The poster says that it's 100% medically accurate. What the?

Dan starts up school next week... Hooray! It's his last semester! Then on to the unknown. Scary.
He's been working really hard on his thesis and getting all the recordings he needs for it over the break. Wish him luck that he doesn't get to stressed about it and that writing the thesis will be super smooth. :)

Babes is being babes. She is super cute and teething. She wakes up sometimes during the night. It's not that big of a deal but it sure does interrupt my sleep. :) Poor girl. She also had some exploding diarrhea last week for about 4 days. We called her doctors office to see if we can giver her some pedialite, on the bottle it said for 1 year and older and they told us that it's going around with infants right now and it last about 3 to 5 days. That we can give her some pedialite and the only time that we need to be super concerned and bring her in to see the doctor is if she has a fever. Which she never got. We just needed to keep her hydrated. During those days she was still as smiley as ever but just more clingy then usual. She's always been a cuddlier but she just always wanted to be in my lap.

That is us for now.

Peace

Our Month Of December

2011-01-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

I am apologizing in advanced for all the blogs i am about to put up.

Oh my goodness. I feel I have not been on this for a few weeks, cause i haven't. The minute we got up to Utah, I honestly had no time on my hands.. I didn't even get to check out the sites i stalk. :( oh well, now I have something to do at work. :) I didn't even get to see all the wonderful friend of mine i wanted. Granted, my sister did get married on the 20th. That put a small damper on things. :)

We were up in Utah for just about two weeks. We got there the evening of the 15th and left the morning of the 27th.

We had a marvelous time and I apologize to all the people that I did not see. Seriously if you had my schedule you wouldn't have seen any body either. I barely got to see Miss Carrie and her beautiful new girl Eli, Miss Bri Guy and Rilo, Alisha and Eric and Miss Pamala. To all the people i wanted to see, Lisa, Allison, Stina, and Amanda.. I am truly truly sorry... there are also reason to why I didn't try super hard to see people... mostly... a car accident that happened days before we took off.

Christmas was fantastic. :) We had snow!! Hooray for White Christmases. :) We started by opening up a few presents. Not all of them, family was not over yet but Dan and I opened up our gifts we got for one another with Virginia. Then we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Griffin's for their very traditional Christmas breakfast. It was crazy packed just like every year. Usually we are some of the last people to get there and are the last to leave but with everyone's different time commitments we settled on getting there right when it started. Then we went back to Elizabeth and Patrick's place to exchange presents with Dad, Veniece and Family. Then it was back to Mom's to help with dinner. Once everyone got over there we finally had our own family gift exchange. It was fun and we had a great Christmas. It was not to bad for Virginia's first. :)

Once we got home to El Paso we got to see Lovey and Andrew for a few days and got together with everyone down here for dinner and gift exchanging before they took off back to Louisville.

But before we left for the Holidays... Dec 10th to be exact. I got in an awful head on collision. It was no bueno. Do not worry about me I am fine. We got x-rays taken of my spin right after the accident and no fractures.. no splits, nothing out of line. Just small whip lash which the doctor said would go away after a few weeks. I was sore for a few days but nothing i couldn't stand. I feel great. I do get stiff every once in awhile but that is to be expected for the next couple of months.

Now for some images.

On the 10th of Dec we also had our Ward Christmas party... Babies first Santa visit. :) I was not feeling so hot because of what happened earlier in the day... the car accident, so we did not stay to long. We went for dinner and Santa. We were there for about 45 minutes. While Virginia was on Santa's lap I snapped these images.

I didn't bring my nice camera nor my little point and shoot. I just spaced it. My cousin Jenny let me use hers and I was so very grateful that she did. What baby gives that big of a smile white sitting on Santa. Most scream!! My niece Audrey's first visit with Santa was the best... seriously it was so funny. I loved it. Go here to read the story.

Everyone did awe's when they saw the smile and so many parents and friends came up to me and said that I was so luck. All their kids cried bloody murder when they were put on his lap.

Here are a few from my sister wedding and visiting up in Utah.

I love her!

She could not crawl cause the dress was to long so we tucked the dress into the bow in the back. She was so dang cute crawling around the place.

Baby loved taking her bath in Grandma sick. It was just the right size for her. She also loved playing with that cup, not her toys but the cup.

I shot these last night. I didn't get many. I want to retry what i was trying to do. Virginia was super cranky so i let her play with her diaper box and she gave me these faces. :)

Here are a few images of the car crash. It happened right in front of my work building. My supervisor, Susan, didn't see it but she was about a minute behind me and came to help and the owner of the company, Tommy, he was outside getting the paper. He didn't see it either cause he was bent down getting the paper, but heard the noise then looked up and saw me with my bright yellow coat getting out of my car.

I am not proud of this but a slue of profanities came roaring out of my mouth to the boy... he was like 19.... but once i got on the phone with the dispatcher I just started crying.

The image above is not the sharpest but you can see the double yellow line and see that he is all the way in my lane. I had not way of getting around him even thou i tried. ( I can talk about this now cause the insurance has determined liability and it was not me. I'm sure i could have talked about it but i didn't want to get into trouble) Apparently though, I didn't hear this but Susan did. When he started giving his statement to the police, he started to blame me but then the police set him straight and said stop lying. Awesome right! Go El Paso Police!!

Even though it was awful and something I hope, wish and pray doesn't happened to my friends or family, we are just grateful it's not worse. It could be.. so count the blessing right?

We have gotten a new car... I'm going to wait to post about what we got and our experience with car dealerships but we are super stoked about it. :)

Peace

To All My Dear Family and Friends

2011-01-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

Dear wonderful people whom I wanted to get this out to,

I sent these out to get printed. When I went to pick them up they looked terrible and I returned them. I had no time to have them get printed again and get them out before i left for my sisters wedding and Christmas and then I got in a car accident that totaled my car... I will explain that later..but for now know that I love you all and hopefully next year you will get our Christmas card.

Things I've Created

2010-12-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here are two things that I created this morning here at work.

One,

I love to design. Ask me to design something for you and I will. On some days I am off, on other days I am spot on and LOVE what I come up with. This is a fast one I did for the holiday season. This is not the card design I am sending out, but I liked it enough to show all of you. If you want to use if for your Christmas card design, I would love to send it to you. Just comment and let me know. :) I'll also change what every you want! Or if you want to see something else... comment too :)

Two,

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

I laughed so hard when i watched it. It's awesome!

Peace

7 Months!!!

2010-11-30T21:52:00.001-07:00

Virginia is now 7 months old!!!! WHAT?!?! I can't believe it.

A few things she can do at 7 months

She can Crawl!!! She crawls everywhere. Its amazing, scary and exciting!!

She's pulling herself up on furniture now. She really only does this in her crib and on the couch when i am sitting on it and she wants to cuddle.. I love to cuddle with her.

She rolls over both ways now. Dan and I never actually saw her do the first left roll, but we one day noticed that she could do it. We really don't know how long it's been, we do know it's been in the last month.

She's now liking solid foods. At first she was not into them but now she really likes them. She is still on rice cereal and formula but we add a few flavors in to her rice cereal every now and again.

She had her first cracker. She seems to LOVE it. It makes a mess but she's super cute while eating them.

She still smiles at everyone and anything. It's so cute to see her personality grow. :)

She is starting to distinguish between people. Before she would go to anyone, and still does but has learned that she can go to either Mommy's or Daddy's arms when she is ready.

She is now teething... I think. She is cranker then usual and she wants to be held by me or sitting next to me at constant.

Here are a few images i shot during the month.

These images are her 7 month little shoot I did. I got the hat at old navy. I saw it and fell in love with it.

She is so awesome!

Bath Time.

I love her look... Mom, what are you doing?

I took these a few weeks back. She was just starting to like her rice cereal and sit in the high chair with out sliding off.

We've done other things then take pictures of babes, although that does take up most of the time. We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. I made a pumpkin spice cake, that tasted a lot like my pumpkin roll, but in cake form. I made a triple chocolate pumpkin pie, thank you Martha Stewart, which was... oh, so heavenly good!!

For Dan and I's two year anniversary, we went up to Cloudcroft, a small mountain town in New Mexico. We stayed at the local lodge which was beautiful! So very quaint. We loved it and it was a nice small get away from baby for a night.

We've put up our christmas tree, images to come later. Diane, Dan's mom, picked us up a tree at Family Dollar for 30 bucks!! Awesome right!?! We want to get a real tree eventually, but for now, a fake one is great for us. We don't have tons of money floating around and can't decorate the way I would LOVE to. For now our small decorations for the Holidays are perfect for us. :)

Now for some awesome... I am proud of my self...news. I decided that i wanted to lose a tiny bit of weight before Katherine's wedding. My pre pregnancy weight was 138, and i want to get back down to that because of the not much money floating around i can't really afford a new wardrobe... I digress, so for the last month i have been on a small diet of NO sugar and small starch. I started this at 152 and now i am down to 142! I have lost 10 pound even with my small Thanksgiving treat of being off the diet. :) I am only four pounds away and am fitting into some of the outfits!! I hope to get down to about 135ish.

Peace.

Two Years!!!

2010-11-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

It has been two years today that i married my Dan. :)

He is the best and i am the luckiest girl alive to have him by my side for the next... eternity :)

Thanks for choosing me darling for this awesome marriage adventure...Congrats to us and I love you more then words can describe and oh yes, lets not forget.....Happy Anniversary!!!

Lazy Days with a Holiday and Birthday in Between.

2010-11-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since i have done a massive over load of photos from our adventures. We really don't have that many.. just lots of image of babes sleeping.

Here she is with Dad. She was watching football but decided it was to boring for her and fell asleep.

I just loved this smirk she was giving me. :)

Happy 29th birthday darling! I got him an Ice cream cake from Baskin-Robbins

She loves to nap in the love sac. She also just loves being in it! She giggles and laughs when she gets into it. Dan also plays a fun little game with her in it and she laughs hysterically during it. :) we need to get some video of it.

At the beginning of October, uncle Robert and aunt Sally took a vaca to Jeruslem, awesome right? and they asked us to house sit for the two weeks. Here is Babes and Dad during a lazy sunday watch/sleeping through some football.

Babes naping at unc's and sally's. I had to take a picture look at that arm... I love it. :) she slept like that for over an hour.

Look how cute this baby is, I love her... she really loves that love sac.

Dad snapped this the other day while baby and I took a nap together. Sometimes... okay most of the time... she wants to be by one of us during one of her naps... so sometimes i just join her.

I do believe the last two images where taken on different days.... Dan usually dresses baby in the morning cause i am at work and that "I love Daddy" onesies is his favorite.

At the ward Halloween party.

That face is so stink'n cute!

Grandma Morgan was a station the kids could go to. She read children's ghost and halloween stories to the kiddos

We are poor and have no moneiez to purchase Halloween decoration like i would love to, so i improvised and have been saving our milk cartoons since the end of August. A neighbor last year had them and i thought they were awesome and copied them. I LOVE how they turned out and am thinking this might just happen every year. I also got several compliments from our neighbors about how they loved our decorations. :) Those made my day.

More milk carton Jack-O-Lanterns.

Our door... I got that door hanging two days before Halloween at Hobby Lobby. It was like 4 dollars, that is why i got it.

Last door image.... as cute as our door was, we only got 2 groups of trick-or-treaters of 2. In total that makes 4!!! in a 24 hour period. We signed up for children in our ward to come and treat-or-treat on Saturday. So 2 on Saturday and then 2 on Sunday. It's all good, we also participated in the truck-or-treat our ward did during the party and we saw everyone then and gave out most of our candies..... Yes, the door hanging is missing half the H... and No that is not why is was cheaper... I never noticed it till i was hanging it up that is was missing. The part missing was never found, so i just assumed I purchased it like that. I'm not very observant sometimes. :)

Peace

Blog Hopping Finds

2010-11-09T09:46:00.001-07:00

While blog hopping this morning at work... super dull this morning.... I really do work, I promise... I stumbled upon a blog.. I don't even remember which one posted about these images, but I wanted to then share them with you cause they are AWESOME!!!

Tilt Shift Photography is become super popular with artists these days and this art student, Serena Malyon, has creativly taken the best of a classic artist and added her twist with modern technology.. I did have some idea floating around in my head of doing something similar to this but Serena's concept is way better then what i came up with.

I LOVE me some Van Gogh!! These just make it more fun to look at...

This is the site i eventually stumbled across, My Modern Metropolis and where i got the images.

Peace

Fix-It-Friday No. 5

2010-11-05T10:44:00.000-06:00

I was going to blog this morning and add some pictures but for some crazy odd reason my work computer is not reading my flash drive.... odd right.. It's saying something about downloading a launcher thing.... i don't have the permission on this computer to install the launcher thing. PS i have never needed to bring my flash drive in. Usually i just email them to myself, but it was taking to long last night... Wow i should have just stuck i with my flash drive is being poopie... but i had to explain I know what was going on.. I am pretty good at computer stuff.. like really funny good..

Anyways I did it again, I Heart Faces Fix It Friday, mostly cause i couldn't get the flash drive to work and was bored. Super busy for about an hour, then all of a sudden it stopped and nothing since.

Original

My Edited

I don't really feel like explaining my process... heck i am still confused at how i did it. I like it. Yet I also feel it's not finished and i can't put my finger on it... I think with my computer at home, and with my better photoshop, i can figure it out. I'm really liking the low contrast black and whites look that is starting to pop up. I believe I have figured out my look. I've been working on this process for a while now. You can do so much to them and so little at the same time. Right now I am digging Sean Flanigan's low contrast black and white look. It's just got a WOW factor to them. Anyway I hope you enjoy.

Peace

For Mom and Grandma

2010-11-04T18:12:00.003-06:00

Here are some images of virginia in her Halloween costume. My mom got it for her because while Audrey and her were in the Disney Store, Audrey saw the dress and said"baby Virginia would be so cute in this" So that is how Little miss Virginia got her Bell outfit. It's super dang cute and I am so happy my mom got it for her. I made the crown and i am quite blessed with the out come.... You surprised i can sew?!! I have many hidden talents. :)

Isn't she just the cutest!!

Peace

Can't Sleep.... So, I Blog of great things in New York, I Love You.

2010-10-30T00:50:00.002-06:00

Dan I just finished the movie "New York, I Love You" I don't think it was nearly as beautiful as the movie they copied, "Paris, Je t'amie." (I'm pretty sure it was created by the same people, but it didn't have the same feel to it) I love LOVE love that movie and my sister got it for me for my birthday this last year cause she knew of my love of it. I'm sure only one or two people know of my love of films, music and the art that goes into making them and the beauty that can come out of some. I'm talking to you ladies :) I miss every minute of your beautiful faces. .... I think those ladies will know whom i am talking about. I'm not even sure they still read this i hope that they do.....

I digress..

One of the stories, the director was Shekah Kapur and it has Shia Labeouf in it... I know right? Shia Labeouf... i actually like a short story that has him in it... crazy. It wasn't his "brilliant acting" that blew me away. It was the directors story, his imagery, his composition, his depth of field, the lighting, the coloring, the feel.. everything. It was beautiful! that word doesn't even do it justice. It was brilliant, gorgeous, breathtaking.. i could go on for hours, but i won't.

Just look at the beauty... I found it on youtube and just screen shot them but you can get the idea of the beauty from them. Watch it on HD TV and you will be blown away.

Look at that depth of field. He had to have had his shutter open to the max to get such stunning looks.

This scene, with the mirror, was my favorite shot. This does not even do it justice!

Look at that beautiful depth of field fall off! It's magnificent. (depth of field is the unfocused areas)

They just moved in and out of the focus area. He had to have had his aperture locked. I don't know how video film works.

This was a cool shot too, she is in focus and shia sometimes, he just kept moving out of the focus plane.

Love the look

stunning

mmmm... i could eat it.

here is the video i screen shot these from.
It's in two parts

Yes i am a geek

Peace

Virginia at Six Months

2010-10-29T10:42:00.001-06:00

I can't believe it's been six months since baby has been born. It's crazy! I know it's been a few days since she's turned 6 months but it's okay, at least i got it up. :)

Things baby can do at six months

She rolls over, one way, all the time and loves to be on her tummy now. Before she hated it. She's been able to roll over since about the time i visited Utah in Aug.
She scoots everywhere and has learned to move about the front room with rolling and scooting
She is just about to crawl. She gets up on her knees all of the time and sways back and forth
A silly thing she does is she gets up on her toes with her butt in the air when she is trying to figure out the mechanics of crawling.
She's also learned to project her self forward from on her hand and knees. She kicks off from her feet flies for about an inch then lands hard on to her stomach.
She sucks her thumb all the time
She sleeps at the drop of a hat. She loves her sleep at can sleep from 8 at night to 8 in the morning most days and loves to sleep on her stomach.
She smiles at everyone! and I mean everyone.
She is starting to reach for me. Yet, i don't think she knows that is what she is doing.
We started her on rice cereal a few weeks ago and she is now liking it. At first she didn't. We want to try and give her some avocado. We would do a banana but it has lots of natural sugar and we know she is going to love it, so we are waiting to introduce her to it.
She love clothes and gets super excited anytime I change her cloths. Like her Halloween costume. I'm not going to tell you what she will be... Grandma Cannon, my mom, bought it for her and we got it on Tuesday in the mail. Just in time for the ward Halloween party. When I opened it up, she smiled so big and kicked those little legs and giggled when she saw that it was for her.
She finally has learned to sit up on her own with out an support. It's so dang cute. This is the most recent things she does.. like Sunday recent. She was always a good supported sitter on the couch or on our laps but now it's great that she can do it by her self in the middle of a room with nothing around her. :)
She sings in the car when we go anywhere.
She talks all the time too and yes, there is a big difference between her singing and talking.
She loves playing with her toys. Grandma Griffin sent her a care package with a yellow lamb in it and when i pulled it out to show her she got so excited. She kicked her little legs, which caused her to fall from all fours to her stomach, giggled, did a few coos, then grabbed the lamb and put it into her mouth. :)
Her favorite toy tho... which is odd, is paper. She loves paper.
She loves to put everything in her mouth, mostly her thumb and her feet. :)
She hates the sun. I mean hates being in it, everything! It's so dang cute and funny.
She loves the song 'Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam' and calms down quite quickly when i sing it to her.
She laughs and giggles to the song, 'If Your Happy and You Know It'
She loves to be thrown in air and played around like that. She will always laugh so hard. :)
She is more curious about objects and will sit and study it in her hands before she attempts to bring it to her mouth.
She's always loved her car seat and driving but now she is turning her head in the car seat so that she can watch us while we are driving. It's a little creepy looking.

There are lots more but i don't feel like boring you anymore then i have.

Over all Virginia is wonderful, healthy and just the best little thing to be around. We love her. :)

An Awesome Find!!

2010-10-26T13:56:00.004-06:00

As I was doing some googling this afternoon while baby slept i found this.. Don't know where i found it, who made it or i would give credit where credit is needed.

I love me some 'How I Met Your Mother' and some Barney Stinson for that matter too.

As in the words of Barney "it's going to be... Legen... wait for it.... Dary!"

I believe this needs to be a "words to live by" side image!

Peace

Thoughts and Things

2010-10-26T11:10:00.000-06:00

Many things have been on my mind. Mostly where the heck are we going to be by next year. It's kinda exhilarating and scary not knowing. Dan graduates next May and we know we will not be here in El Paso. Not that i'm not learning to love it here and that I might just miss this place... seeing how it is the first place Dan and I made our life together, our child was born here, family lives here, our ward is the best ward ever!! Seriously my ward rocks and i will argue with you till the sun goes down at how my ward can out do your ward any day. :) Go 5th ward!!! .... the list is pretty short when it comes to El Paso.

Side thought of El Paso... it's getting down right depressing here with our sister cities violence. This last weekend there was a mass murder of teens. 14 deaths... 19 injured and in the hospital.. WOW! You want to know the way that Dan and I found out... On NPR local news and they just mention it as if it's a regular occurrence, cause it is.

Second... photography has been on my mind... as much as i love/hate shooting family, newborn, children and weddings.. i miss doing my fine art. That is really where i want to make my money.. It's hard but so worth it. I have so many fine art ideas floating around in my head that i just don't have the means to do it right now... I will get to do it. I will show my work in a gallery one day. And my fashion photography, that is a whole other story in it's self. I'm so grateful that my designer friend wants to work with me still. Even though i live a few states away. Thank you Beckie!

Third work.. I LOVE my office but there is one lady that is bugging me right now. Hopefully it will pass but for now i am annoyed by her and its not going away.

Fourth my baby. I love my baby so much. This is kinda a silly thought but it's true. I know God loves me cause he sent me Virginia! She is perfect and I know all parents secretly think that their child is better then their friends or relatives, just like their relationship with their husbands....but my baby... she is beautiful and awesome. I love waking up to her smiling little face and giggles. I love hearing her coo and sing. I love being a mom! She definitely is up to standard with my families children... like Audrey, she is crazy but super cute crazy and steph's kids... i love seeing photos of them they are beautiful!! good job randy and steph! and my cousins here in El Paso, Nick and Jenny, their children are to die for!! sweet beautiful and well behaved. I get to shoot their family portrait later today. I am excited about it.

I also felt like a change... to my blog.. if you don't remember what my other blog header looked like here it is..

Then here is my new one.

I like it and for some reason i am way into bird silhouettes... odd right?

My thought right now

Peace

Family Photo Shoot

2010-10-19T16:28:00.002-06:00

I have been wanting family photos for months now and then one day last week I told Dan that he better go and get a hair cut before he comes home cause we are going to be doing a family photo session later that day. Being the awesome husband that he is he got one. :) I have been bugging him for a while now. :)

Here are some of my favorite ones.

Here are two of my favorites. If you want to see more go here. It's a little surprise if you go there. :) I've been putting off getting this up and ready for awhile now... like a pregnancy, and a new baby.... and no motivation, which has changed. Hopefully you enjoy it. If you go here you see the whole site.

It was a pretty fun photo shoot. I set up my camera on my awesome tripod that my Dad and Veniece got me for graduation and then had to go back and forth between each shot to set the camera off. I believe I did a pretty good job with the images. I really do need to get a wireless release button. Oh well the images turned out fantastic and now I have two hanging up on our new family photo wall.

Peace.

Michelle

Fix-It-Friday No. 4

2010-10-15T09:51:00.001-06:00

I did it again, I heart faces' Fix-it-Friday. I knew i would be working on the activity this morning because all of our principle architects are out today. HOORAY!! I send everyone to their voice mail and no busy work from them :)

Well lets start the show..... i know everyone one is seated at the edge of their seats waiting for my wonderful images.... Na I'm just kidding. (I hope you all heard the sarcasm in that sentence) :) I also have a treat for everyone... meaning the three people that read this site... I have not one image to show, you but two. that is right TWO.... woo hoo...

Here is the originial

Here is numero uno..

Work flow

I did almost the same thing i did with my photo fix No 3.

I duplicated the background layer twice

changed one layers blending mode to screen and the other to soft light

Here is what i added

I used a curves adjustment layer. ( for those of you that don't know... an adjustment layer is the circle at the bottom of your layers palette that is half black and half white.)

and pulled the line, right in the middle up a little to give the straight diagonal line a small curve upwards.

I then created another curves adjustement layer to make the coloring.

I played with the different color channels. Red, Green and Blue

I just took screen shots of what i did instead of telling you. You can go into each channel and duplicate the line.

Red Channel

Green Channel

and Blue channel

Now play with the channels and make it your own.

If you like what you see keep your opacity at 100. I changed my opacity to about 75.

I then, brightened up the eyes with my eye pop effect that i did in my fix it No. 3. This time i duplicated the eye layer twice, so i had two eye layers. I just thought it need more eye pop then what the one layer was giving me.

I then saved the image as a png and psd.

I opened my png

Duplicated the background layer and sharpened the layer by going to filter > sharpen > sharpen.

I thought it was a little harsh so i changed the opacity a little, you decide, then i saved it as a png again.

That's it.

Numero Dos

Work flow

Starting with my psd i just saved.

I trashed my two curves layers then created a hue/saturation adjustment layer and changed the saturation to 0 to make it black and white. This adjustment layer should be your top layer so everything is black and white.

Then i duplicated the top most colored layer and changed it to soft light, (cheat way, ctrl j duplicates the layer).

I then went to filter > other > high pass.. and made the radius pixels about 30ish... you decide. This makes a good what they call... milk and cookies effect.

I then flattened everything and made another duplicated layer changed it's blending mode to screen and changed the opacity to about 25ish. Only do this if you think it's to dark.

And this is what i got. :)

Oh, and I cropped the image if you can't tell. :)

I hope my workflow helps you and they make sense

Peace :)

Life

2010-10-12T11:20:00.001-06:00

We haven't really done anything to exciting for the past week but there were some firsts for us.

Friday was our first real date since baby has been born. We had to premeditated the event, then we needed to ask the grandparents if they were free Friday and if it would be okay if babes could sleepover for the very first time with out mom and dad. We got a reassuring yes... we got dressed up and went to dinner and a movie... Serious and a movie! For anyone who has had small children I now know how hard it is to get these evenings planned... i don't even want to think what it's like with more then one.We actually were kinda forced into doing this date and night off from baby. Next week we are going to UTEP's Dinner Theater and seeing Singing in the Rain. I'm kinda excited about it. Singing in the Rain is one of my all time favorite movies. I could watch it over and over again and never get bored. Dan and I went to Rent last year and had a great time. Since it is a dinner and a show we wont get home till super late and we planned on leaving baby at grandma and grandpa Morgan's to see how well she was going to do when we leave her in November at their place. For our 2 anniversary we are going up to Cloudcroft. A small mountain town about 2 hours away and baby is going to be spending the night with the grandparents so all of these little sleepovers are to prepare her for that. We didn't want to just leave her without having done it before, then if something does happen or she is not okay with it, which my baby is honestly okay with everything, we wouldn't have to drive 2 hours to her aid, just 10 minutes. So instead of giving her one night to get used to the sleepover we decided we might as well try a few times. That is why we got the date night. :)

We went to Chile's... I know so romantic... but we had a gift card from Dan's birthday and decided to use it. We also never see movies in the theater anymore, usually we only see one if someone else is paying like... we got a gift card or are going with parents etc... It's pricey stuff... and we got a gift card for the B-day boy. Dan got to decided the movie cause it was technically his gift card and because i got one for my birthday back in April and I told Dan. "It's my card, so I get to decide the movie" and i dragged him to How To Train Your Dragon, which was AWESOME!!! It was only fair and he choose... drum roll..... The Social Network. We both had been wanting to see the movie. Almost every online rating site like, meta critic and rotten tomatoes was giving it a 95 plus. Up got a 95 plus on those site and that movie is amazing. Pixar never ever disappoints. I digress, The Social Network was a really a well done movie. I enjoyed it and so did Dan. If you want a good movie go and see it.

The next morning baby graced us with her presence at about 7:30 in the morning. Grandma and Grandpa Morgan had to be somewhere early. She was so super cute when we got her into our bed. I love my baby and I did miss her for the night but not enough to be depressed about it. Dan and I loved having the night off. We love our baby but it was nice to have just a minute or two of just us. :)

We also Tivo SNL. The Host was Jane Lynch from Glee. She was quite good. We Tivo SNL cause some/most of the time the skit are super lame and we just don't laugh at them but there are those rare ones that make us just crack up laughing.. and this was one of them.

If you don't already know Dan and I LOVE us some football, more Dan then me, so we watch almost everyone Sunday. And the 49ers are Dan's teams, so this was even funnier. Enjoy

Here is Faith Hills

Here is Jane Lynch's Version

Sorry that the hulu version has a commercial before it. It was the only version i could find of it to embed.

Peace

Fix-It-Friday No. 3

2010-10-01T10:53:00.001-06:00

Today I find myself doing the photo Fix it hosted by I Heart Faces, again. Work was so busy all week long but Friday comes and it's dead....sometimes i hate it while other times i love it. I don't mind it's, super fun and I love photoshop and putting my little twist of creativity into it.

Today i decided to keep it simple. The image was simple and adorable. Why make it complicated.

Here is the orginal.

Here is mine.

My work flow was super easy too. I recently started playing with these settings and I've come to love it.

First, I duplicated the background layer and switched the blending mode to softlight, which adds some nice contrast with out going over board.

Second, I Duplicated the new layer and switched the blending mode to screen.

I still didn't like how the image looked so i duplicated the screen layer and made the opacity on it about 30% So now I have two screen layers.

Third, It was a little blue for my liking, so i added a solid color adjustment layer. The color is a soft orange yellow. Then changed the blending mode to overlay and changed the opacity to 25%
.

Fourth, I wanted to make the eyes pop. I've read some articles about how to do it and have done them, but i never fully LOVED the way they looked. Then i decided to sit down and discover my own way of making the eyes pop.

Here is how i made these eyes pop and use for almost all my eye poppingness.

I copy only the iris on both eyes on my background layer. The iris should now be on it's own layer just above the background layer so it gets all the pretty things i did to the image too.

There are several ways to do this. Quick Mask mode, Lasso tool... etc.

Then i change the blending mode to Color Dodge. I sometimes change the opacity if i feel the eyes are a little intense. But that is all. Super easy right? Way better then some tutorials i have read. It take like five minutes to do their tutorials while my in like 30 seconds.

Anyways that is my work flow for this image.

Peace.

Baby Photo Session

2010-09-29T22:22:00.000-06:00

Here are a few images I shot yesterday while Virginia was playing. I forgot how much I love taking images. I needed a break for a while and my LOVE, which i always had, needed to be rekindled all over again, and it has. Then i decided to play around with different image layouts. I think i did a pretty good job.

It was her nap time but i just love her face when she cries i had to take a few shots. It seriously is music to my ears to hear her cry.

I love her concentration trying to grasp the blanket.

Peace and Enjoy

Babies Blessing

2010-09-27T13:59:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, Sept 19th we blessed little virginia. It was really fun to have my family come out and support us. My Dad, Veniece, my sister Jenny, her husband and son Gavin and my little sister Sammy all came out. We had a very full house during those two days. Thank you guys for coming to the armpit of america that is El Paso. :)

Dan did a beautiful job. I of course cried the whole time and Virginia was being as cute as she always is.

My mom couldn't come, as well as my other two sisters, Katherine and Elizabeth. I was a little sad but i totally understood. So family quit with the apologizing. :) love you guys.

My mom also got Virginia her blessing dress. It was beautiful and everyone loved it. Seriously i had almost everyone in my ward come up and ask where i had gotten the dress cause it was amazing.

Here are a few images from the weekend.

Here's Dad holding babes.

She really does love to suck that thumb... I'm thinking it might be a problem...

Family photo op... while the wind was at it's craziest.

There was so much dress she barely fit in to her car seat.

She really loved being in that dress. The previous picture makes her looked upset to be in it but she was just super tried. She just smiled and giggled the whole time in it.

Here is the detail on the dress. It is really beautiful.

Peace

Fix-It-Friday No. 2

2010-09-24T11:13:00.002-06:00

Again, I had some time on my hands at work and decided to participate again in I Heart Faces', Friday Photo Fix.

Today's was a little simpler then last times. They just asked us to have fun and show of our talent in photoshop.

Here is the original

Here is what i did.

My workflow

first i cropped the images to my likeing
i decided to do a square image
i then duplicated the background layer

changed that layer blending mode from normal to screen

added some brightness and contrast to define and darken the outlines a little with an adjustment layer

adjusted my curves in an adjustment layer, but only the blue setting to get the coloring

merged my background and duplicated layer
sharpened the layer three time with sharpen more

duplicated that layer

finally added a Gaussian Blur to the new duplicated layer on the top and bottom of the image

then erased the blur to my liking

Hope you understood my workflow

Peace

Virginia At 5 Months

2010-09-23T17:07:00.000-06:00

Being a photographer and taking millions of pictures and having more then a few photo session under my belt, there are times when i LOVE the images I created or I'm not so in love with them.

These images are in the category of LOVE!!!

I love these four. It's her smile progression

This is my favorite one

She just found her biggie toe to suck on and that profile is beautiful. Look at those cheeks. I wanna pinch them.

This is her telling me she was done. She was blowing some razzes and talking to let me know.

I gave her a toy to play with and she looks so stinking cute and that look says "I'm going to rule this toy!!".

Happy 5 Months babes!!!

Peace

What A Busy Day Today

2010-09-23T10:55:00.001-06:00

Oh goodness, this day is going to be..... fun, long, entertaining and I might even shed a tear before the night is over...

Why you ask?

One: Today is Dan's 29th B-day if you have not wished him a happy birthday do so NOW, I'll wait for you to do so.... did you do it? Thank You.

Two: Grey's Anatomy starts up today!!! I have waited 4 glorious and long months for it to start back up. It is my guilty pleasure.

Three: My little girl is 5 months today!!!! What?!? Where is the time going! I can't believe it's been almost a half a year since she was born. I will be doing a little photo session with her today. I haven't for a while. To much going on to sit down and plan one. I have taking out my little point and shoot every two secs but that is not the same to me quality wise.

(Not really on my list of my day but) Four: i got as a email from a co-worker.. super dang cut. Watch it, it's like a minute long.

" Help me not to chase the neighbors cat" So dang cute.. Enjoy

Peace

Boss's Humor

2010-09-22T11:47:00.002-06:00

I'm back to work, as most of you know. Working part time in the mornings. It's nice to be back with my co-workers. They are super awesome and I missed them during my time off. My supervisor, Susan,... by the name you can tell she is female... We sometimes like to chat it up a bit if it's not to busy. Well Tommy, the owner of the company I work for decided to send us this email this morning...

Tommy thinks he soooooooo *rolling eyes funny..... It's is a clever cartoon.

Peace

I Need A New Book

2010-09-20T10:51:00.002-06:00

I just finished this series,

and I am still not sure how i feel about the ending... with out giving to much detail.. I enjoyed it but think i need to reread it.

Any who I need a new series, book,.... anything.... Suggestions?

Fix-It-Friday

2010-09-17T11:36:00.001-06:00

There is this website that i occasionally go onto and look around.. being into photography and all.... It's called I Heart Faces and they have weekly challenges with photo assignments to do, they teach mom's and photoshop enthusiasts, how to do photoshop in really super helpful ways if you've never stepped foot into photoshop, which is super confusing.... blah blah blah... I digress, every Friday they have Fix-It-Friday were they give their readers an opportunity to show off their photoshop skills... which is super cool too.

Being bored, just a little, at work this morning i decided to participate. This is the first time that i have.

I don't have Mr Awesome CS photoshop on my office computer. i do have it at home. I have the cheapest one that you can get. Photoshop 7. It's not even elements which lets you play around lots more then photoshop 7. Any who here is the original.

What they wanted people to do, was to make the sky blue...

here is mine....

There are some flaws to mine. 1st when i zoomed up really close to the face it went super pixelated and could not make the blue around the face area right with the limited elements i have at my work computer. There are some others that bug me but again i work with a terrible photoshop.

My work flow process

Made a blank layer to work on

Duplicated the blue reflecting off the car and made a gradient layer on the blank layer.

Changed the layer option from Normal to Overlay

Erased everything on top of the car, boy and landscape.

Burned the sky a little to give some depth

Played with curves to get the cross processed look

Then tweaked some hue saturation and contrast to make it pop just a little more.

I think i did pretty well.

Peace

A Plethora of Photos of Babes

2010-09-13T09:19:00.000-06:00

This is little miss Virginia during church last week. She was being so stinking cute i needed to snap some images. I'm sure Bro Condie, Sunday School Teacher, was not to pleased with the photo session during class.

She always falls asleep during church and the best and fastest way for her is to suck her thumb. This is her completely passed out. I love how the thumb is just barely hanging on.

This is how I usually discover babes during her afternoon naps. Here's babes at Grandma Morgan's the week before we moved into our new apartment. ( pics of our apartment are coming, i'm just lazy about getting it ready)

My baby also gets crazy hair. Her hair is so thin that i had to take this in the sunlight or you would have not been able to tell. Her hair looks like this most of the time. I brush it, wet it but it still does what is wants. I love it.

She loves to give this face. It so super cute. She usually does it when she is concentration on something. She was trying to get the camera.

Here is babes during her first BYU game. She slept for most of it. Then when she did wake she was very content on just sitting in my lap and watching the game on the giant projector Sally and Robert have at their place.

This is baby during Labor Day. We went over to Sally and Roberts for some food and spent time with the family. Family what picture does this remind you of???

Little Miss Audrey in Italy 3 1/2 years ago. No it's not the same hat.

This is babes on Friday. She didn't want to go down for her nap in her crib. She was so super fussy and would only cry when she got in the crib. I let her cry for awhile but she would not go to sleep so i picked her up and placed her by me on the couch. She fell asleep almost instantly. She just wanted to be by Mom. :) I love my baby.

Here's an image I snapped of her during the nap.

All in all, Dan and I love being parents. We love our happy, giggly, smiling baby girl. We love our new apartment and i am excited that i am back to work. Just part time in the morning. It's nice to have some adult conversations.

Peace

I Think I Have A Small Prejudice.... Seriously

2010-09-09T08:19:00.000-06:00

When I was up in Utah this last time, I noticed that people are getting new license plate up there. Any time a stupid driver would do something up in utah, usually i was not in the car by myself either, I'd always yell..... Damn Mexican.... Why you may ask?

Look at how similar these plates are....

New Utah License Plate


Mexico License Plate

You'd do it too. Elizabeth and my Mom can testify, they, people from Mexico, don't know our rules and make things up as they go. Seriously.

Peace

Miss Babes + 4 month shots = Unhappy Baby

2010-08-27T19:36:00.000-06:00

Little Virginia got her 4 month shots today. I can't believe my baby is 4 months now. It's crazy how time flies. Next she'll be starting Preschool.

Miss Virginia did so well. She was really cranky thou. She usually sleeps till 9 in the morning but i woke her up to feed at 7 to get to her appointment at 8:15 in the morning, so it didn't start out to super hot. She cried for the very first time for our Pediatrician when she was giving babes her check up. She calmed down super fast but then the girl came in to administer the shots. Before i go on.....lets back track a tiny bit ...

For babies 2 month shots, we were in Houston and went to the local health clinic and got her shots for five dollars! with no insurance Awesome!!! Where she was so cute and smiley in my arms. When the woman at the clinic was administering her the rotavirus, which they do threw the mouth now, she was giving me the biggest grin and was enjoying herself. Then the shot in her leg came. Her face expression was so sad. It went from pure elation to shear misery. I have never heard my baby cry that hard and loud before. Once she got out of my hands and into daddies she settled down instantly and even giggled with joy when she was getting put in to her car seat, cause she knew that meant she was leaving the awful place which caused her pain. My baby was not super happy with me for the next 48 hours, she only wanted me to hold her to feed. :(

Back to today.... I was expecting the same thing this time and I was a little heart broken going in. When the nurse came in to administer the shots this time, babes was just put on the table and i was to hold her down. She was tried but she was doing great when she remembered what the liquid stuff going in her mouth was... She got nervous and started to cry. Then the shots came again. She cried super loud and hard just like last time but then.... once it was over and she knew that it was, she stopped crying even before i had the chance to pick her up and calm her down. Serious!! She was super great and awesome. I love my babes and she loves me :) She slept almost all day and during one of her naps I decided to lay down with her. At one point she woke up crying but then saw me laying next to her and stopped, smiled and went straight back to sleep. She's just a little crank today, but she has every right to be one. :)

We shall see what takes place during her 6 month shots. :)

Peace

Inspiring Images

2010-08-24T15:03:00.001-06:00

Check these images out!!! They are inspiring. I miss having a studio where i could create such beautiful imagery and such awesome friends who were willing to model for me.

Aren't they just beautiful?!?

I located these at Eliza Magazine. I believe it was in their Summer 2009 issue. The Photographer is Angela Pierce, now Angela Kohler. I love her stuff and have been inspired by her work for several years now. I hope to be her some day.

Peace

What We Did This Summer

2010-08-23T14:38:00.001-06:00

As most of you know we spent the Summer in Houston living with my Dad and Veniece. We had so much fun. Thank you Dad and Veniece for welcoming us into your home. We Love you and were super sad to leave. Seriously I cried like a baby. I had such a good time there.

Before I finish my little thank you rant. Lets start from the beginning. Remember we went to DC with my Mom, Grandma, Elizabeth and Audrey at the end of May to the beginning of June. (if you missed that entry read this one, yes it was only like two posts ago... I am lame i know!) I'll remind you of what we did if you don't feel like rereading it.

After Washington DC, we flew straight to Houston to celebrate and watch Matthew walk at his High School Graduation Cerermony.

We returned to El Paso for a baby's check up on her hips.

After the two days, 14 hour drive later, we were back in Houston from El Paso

We spent the week with Katherine, Audrey and Michaela before everyone took off from their visit.

For Matt and Sammy, who graduated the year before, Dad and Veniece took them on a Cruise in Norway. Sweet right? They were gone for two weeks exactly. It was a nice break for Dan and I after so much traveling and family time.

After that we had a great time getting to be with the Griffin side of the Family.

Here is a small sample of what we did, with what else?.... Pictures!!! Hooray

I love the fourth it's my favorite Holiday, so of course i had to take some pictures of some fireworks. I thought these images turned out great.

We of course went boating many times through out the summer. I got super good at the the wakeboard. I feel more confidant then ever on it.

Baby loved to boat too. She fell right to sleep anytime we were on it.

Dan's doesn't enjoy the sport part of boating, but he love just sitting in the boat and sleeping. My Dad love LOVES his boat. That's him dancing to a song.

This particular adventure out to the lake was a really fan. One of my bestest of friends, Scott, from Orem now lives in Austin, with his wife Abigail. (I can't believe that we have know each other since 7th grade and still keep in contact. I love it.) I digress, one Saturday they came out to the lake, which is half way between Austin and Houston, and joined us in a fantastic day of fun. We also stopped by the Blue Bell Ice Cream Creamery and had a few cups of ice cream that day...... mmmmmmmm :)

The first weekend in August we went up to Dallas and spend Saturday and Sunday with my Uncle Gary.

He put us up in this beautiful, newly renovated 1920's hotel called the Belmont. It was gorgous and had a very Minimalist feel to it.

Here was our view from our bedroom. Awesome right? Beautiful picture of down town Dallas.

Baby!! She loves to suck that thumb of hers. She discovered it around 7 weeks and has not stopped sucking it since. It's super cute. :)

Here's babes with Grandpa!!

She loved him

My little girl also loves to smile, giggle and talk to anyone. Seriously, on our flight to Utah, Baby and I sat next to a very nice man she was smiling at him and him her. When she started to smile at me for a while then looked back at the man and noticed that he was not looking at her anymore, she screamed a little giggle to make him look, once he did she just gave the largest grin to him. Here she is right before we were leaving Utah to come home to El Paso. Our trip to Utah was great. I saw everyone i wanted to see and have baby meet.

Thank you Mommy I love you. :)

This is baby back in El Paso. She had traveled so much this summer i don't blame my baby for just wanting to sleep.

Peace

My new Lover... ssshhhhhhh..... Don't tell Dan

2010-07-27T23:17:00.000-06:00

My celebrity crush has been rekindled for this Man... Why?

We went and saw Inception last night, AWESOME!!!

Leo, you will always be my biggest celebrity crush.

Kinda curious what some of my Friends and Families are, comment and let me know.

Peace

Why am I so excited....?

2010-07-21T11:02:00.031-06:00

Here is a small list that is putting a giant smile on my face....

One, Dan and I found out the other day that we got in to the apartment complex that we both wanted when we get back to El Paso. We won't be able to move in till Sept 1st but that is fine. We are here in Houston for the next month and then we'll just stay at Dan's parents place till we can move in. The best part about the new apartment is we are going to have our own private backyard!! That's right PRIVATE!!! Sweet right?

Also the place is brand spanking new. Construction finished about a year ago. So, clean and pretty. :) One of the best things about this apartment is that it's still with in our ward boundaries. Our old apartment complex, Foxglove, was one of like three apartment complexes with in the ward boundaries when we first moved to El Paso. If we wanted something cleaner and new... cause seriously Foxglove was good and all but not super clean and it is old, like 1970's old, we would have had to move into a different ward and further way from my work. It was like a 7 minute drive to work now it's going to be like a 3 minute drive. Can't get any better then that. :) So when these went up and we finally discovered them, we don't usually drive on the road that they are on.... we filled out an application and were the first on the waiting list!!!

Two, I'm excited for the third installment of these books to finally be available.

They are great reads.... that is all I'm going to say about them. Go read them yourself. They are also super fast reads. I was done with both books in three days, with an infant!!! I just finished the second book, Catching Fire, on this little gadget that Veniece got for mothers day...

I want one!!!

Three, I'm going up to "This is the Place" aka Utah, on Aug 11th.

And Four, This little girl.

Peace

My Morning

2010-07-21T08:20:00.036-06:00

This is how i woke up this morning, to this little girl......

kicking, cooing, smiling, laughing, talking and sucking her thumb.... It was really the best and cutest way to wake up this morning. To bad I didn't get video. I tried, but I first feed her and she is now back to sleep. My mistake. We've tryed to get this video on several occasions but she just does not perform for the cameras. Once the camera is off she starts back up but once we turn it on she stops and has no interest.. I love my baby.

Peace.

Michelle

A life update

2010-06-23T12:55:00.001-06:00

I can't believe my little baby is two months now. It has gone by so fast. We've also done so much in these eight weeks too. This kid is the most traveled kid, i swear.

Washington D.C.
Houston
Flying on airplanes
Going out to dinner
Maryland
Virginia
Penn.
hotels
driving across Texas
and the list goes on~!

Here goes

Had baby April 23,

Packed and moved from our apartment from May 17th to the 22nd. We waited till i was more healed.

Stayed at Unc and Sally's house from the 22nd to the 26th

On May 26th, flew to Washington DC for memorial day weekend with Grandma Cannon, Mom, Elizabeth and Audrey. I don't really wanna write out the experience cause Lizzy already did... Go here to read it.

Flew to Houston Texas on June 2nd for Matt's high school graduation.

Monday June 7th flew back to El Paso for Virginia's doctors appointment.

Since she was breached, she had some hip problems. I'm glad that my pediatrician ordered the ultrasound for Virginia. She had the ultrasound the day after she was born. They came in my room took her and she was gone for about 30 minutes. When they brought her back they told us that since she was breached her hip bone didn't form properly over the joint. Instead of being curved it was flat. It wasn't painful for her and it would not be painful, it would just, maybe, start to pop out when she learned to crawl and walk. It wouldn't be painful until she was four or five and at that point she would have had to have surgery to fix the problem. That is what we were told. I'm honestly super grateful that they caught the problem now. So for the first month of her life, our sweet girl wore a brace.

Here she is with the brace. The purpose of the brace was to keep her hip joints out and in place.

She didn't mind it at all. She didn't know anything else. She was with out it for only about the first 36 hours of her life and then had it on. We couldn't take it off ever!! Only to bath her did it come off. We did have a few diaper explosions because of it. The diaper went over it, which made holes between her and the diaper and that stuff finds those holes. :) It was funny. When the guy came into put the brace on her and show us what to do, It was so hard to fight back the tears. After he left i just started crying and all i wanted was to hold my baby and let her know everything was going to be okay. It was hard. After a few days of me getting used to it..... Just to clarify, I wasn't crying cause she had a brace it was the hip problem that made me cry.. Anyways after a few days the brace was just super cute on her. :)

Again she had it on for a month. We saw the doctor on May 24th and he told us to take the brace off cause it was to small for her now and just double diaper her or wrap something around her legs to keep the hips apart. The doctor ordered another ultrasound and since we were leaving in two days they got us in for the next day.

We went to the ultrasound the next day, man the timing was tough to work around but they were great and super helpful, but since we were leaving, we had to wait till the 8th to find out what the ultrasound was all about. Thank you daddy for flying me back out to El Paso for little miss Virginia. :)

Tuesday June 8th was the doctors appointment at 8:30 in the morning. Okay this is what kinda upsets me.... He was in the room for, seriously, 30 sec. He tells me everything is great and we don't need to worry about her anymore!!! WHAT??! you couldn't call me and tell me that. My dad had to fly me back out to El Paso to learn that!!!!! Oh well.. I can't really complain seeing as this doctor is the only pediatric orthopedic surgeon in the area. Don't really want to get on the wrong side with them. Nope nope nope.

Anyways after that, we went to the office of an apartment complex we want to move into when we return from Houston and put in an application. Cross your fingers for us that we get the apartment. Then started the 13 hour drive out to Houston.

We stopped in Ozona, Tx for the night. It's exactly half way between both cities.

We have now been here in Houston for two weeks. Dan's working at my dad's office and really liking it. I'm staying home with baby. :) I love ever minute.

That is life for us right now.

Peace

The Delivery Story and My 1st Mothers Day

2010-06-23T11:49:00.000-06:00

I started this post on May 10.
I am super terrible....

Yesterday,(six weeks ago) was my 1st mothers day. :) It wasn't eventful in anyway but I will always remember it. Dan was amazing and he treated me like a queen. He cleaned the house, made me breakfast, even if it was just a bowl of cereal and some toast. (We haven't gone to the grocery store for a little while) Dinner was brought to us by a sister in the ward.

I cant believe that Virginia is here and has been for two weeks now. I feel she's just on loan to me and I have to give her back anytime now. I love being a mom and LOVE my baby girl. Motherhood is a very special calling god has given to woman, i never believed it till two weeks ago. I never believed i could instantly fall in love with something just by seeing her. She really is beautiful and I love ever second of this experience even if I don't get much sleep right now, I know it will get better.

Delivery day:

Dan and I had to be at the Hospital at 6 in the morning. I was scheduled to have my delivery at 8. We got there and after signing my life away to the doctors and nurses, I was brought into to the prep room. They prepped me and Dan got into his little surgical outfit. He was super hot in it. :) Right before i went in to the OR my doctor, Dr. Phipps, did her last and final exam on me, to make sure Virginia was still breached. During the prepping i was put on two monitors, one to check my contractions and the second to watch babies heart rate. Apparently i was having contractions and they were 3 minutes apart by that moment. I had no idea. I felt some light pressure and my stomach would get hard but it was not painful at all.... crazy. Dr. Phipps said if I wasn't having this C-section I would have delivered her sometime that weekend. I was walked into the OR and sat on the table and was given a spinal tap. It hurt....my anesthesiologist, Mike, started to laugh at me a little cause instead of a yell or being silent like most people I went "owe...that hurt" Then I started to laugh cause my butt instantly was numb. My nurse, Irene, who prepped me said lets get your legs on the table before you can't feel those. I was laughing so hard, it was the funniest feeling ever. She had to lift my right leg on the table cause i couldn't feel it anymore. I was pretty calm and good up until they started to prep me on the table, putting up the curtain, i could tell they were cleaning my stomach...etc. Dan was still not in the room with me and at that point I really was freaking out. Mike tried to help me calm down but it wasn't working. Once Dr. Phipps saw my face, she yelled out, "Get the husband in here" I must have looked super frightened cause Dan came in and I felt tons better. Since the NFL draft was on the night before and Dan and I watched it, he started to talk about that to get my mind off of what was happening to me. Dr. Phipps was great and told Dan and I what exactly she was doing. I will never forget those few sec before i heard Virginia scream... what a rude awakening right? All content and then BAM her life is turned upside down. Dr. Phipps said " I see a butt, a cute little butt and now here she is....." then screaming :) I have healed beautifully, at least that is what my doctor tells me. I never needed to use a narcotic. They gave me one in the Hospital but i hated how it made me feel. After that they only gave me 800mg of Mortin. I'm surprised i never needed anything stronger. I was sent home with a prescription for a narcotic and prescription strength Ibrophan. I only used the Ibrophan and now I am just on over the counter drugs. (Remember all of this was written six weeks ago. By this point in my recovery it was two weeks after my c-section)

The C-section was super intense and scary for me. The experinece has been a little hard to adjust to. I'm not ready to do it anytime soon. At least with then next one i will know what is coming and not be so scared. I really think i was more scared of the recovery then then the surgery it's self. It was not fun nor was the soreness right after the surgery. The two days in the hospital were awful/good too. I loved my night nurse. She was awesome and i had her both nights in the hospital. The worst part of the stay was when they made me start walking around. That was the worst thing ever!!! EVER ever!!! I was so sore and they made me walk around the unit, who does that?!!! I just wanted to sit in my bed and do nothing but heal. I understand why they do it. I always felt so much better after I walked around a bit. Sore but better sore feeling.

Jumping to now...

Now that it's been 2 months, I can't believe how great i feel. No more sore nothing. It's been wonderful for about a month now. The first week was the worst. The second week got better and going into the third week the soreness just kinda lingered, not getting better nor getting worse. It was not so fun. By the fourth week i only had a small amount of soreness, i only felt it when i was sitting and not doing anything and by the end of that week i felt nothing. I was excited. I can do it again.... but not for a while... i need to kinda forget most of it. :)

Peace

For Carrie and Bri

2010-05-30T16:51:00.001-06:00

Yes, I have been terrible about getting pictures of my beautiful baby up for all to see. I would just rather hold her and spend time with her then take picture and sit and edit them all. I also was busy with packing up my whole house to move to Houston for the summer and getting ready to go to Washington DC, which is where we are at right now and I'm loving every minute of it. I digress, I love my baby and I do have the story of her birth written out and I wanna post it, it just needs a little tweaking. Anyways here are some cute cute images of my baby. :) I love her!!!

The image on the left was taken when she was three weeks old and the image on the right was taken yesterday in the car with my moms Iphone... She is so beautiful!!! I love my baby.

When my family time settles down, which not going to be for a while, we are here in DC till Wed, then we fly out to Houston for my little brother Matthews High School graduation. Hooray for Dad and Veniece they are finally going to be empty nesters!!! Wooo Hoo!!! Then after the graduation we are heading back to El Paso for a final medical examination for Virginia. She had some hip problems at birth. Then we drive to Houston to stay for the summer. I'm not neglecting my blog i just don't have time.

My Baby...

2010-04-29T12:32:00.002-06:00

Here she is....

Virginia Rose Morgan

Born April 23, 2010

7 lbs 4 oz and 20 1/4 inches long

Quick Update

2010-04-22T08:56:00.002-06:00

Michelle has not felt like updating this thing in awhile, so I'm just gonna write a few things. She's has not gone into labor yet, but she is going to see her OB this morning. Hopefully everything is going smoothly. Then, tomorrow will be her c section some time around 9 o clock in the morning. We are both kind of nervous, but we are sure everything will go according to plan. Your thoughts and prayers would be greatly appreciated.

Doing a Little Dance

2010-03-29T10:32:00.001-06:00

Doing a jig and singing...... "4 more weeks, 4 more weeks.... la la la......."

Just come out already.

Life Update

2010-03-22T14:23:00.004-06:00

Our life for Dan and I has not been that exciting.... really. We are just waiting, patiently might i add, for this child of ours to finally pop out of me.

Last night we went over to a couples house and joined them for dinner with another couple from the ward. We played a few games, talked and played Wii. We all had a great time. The Dorney's, the couple who hosted, are leaving in about a month. Shane got in to flight school with one of the military groups. Laura is just about to start her 3rd trimester. The Tuckers were the other couple. Jessica and Gordon are expecting too. Jessica is just about in her 15 week. We served in the nursery with the Tuckers all last year and when we got called out of it, the Dorneys replaced us.

Everything is going great. We couldn't be happier with how this pregnancy is going, besides the constant sickness I had for 12 weeks straight back at the beginning, the getting up to go to the bathroom twice a night now.. how the nausea is back and how constantly uncomfortable am, the constant hip and back pain and pressure... ooo i also get, on occasion, some lightning pain just surging through my back. That is fun. All in all, it really couldn't go any more smoothly... I'm healthy, she's healthy and that is all that we need.

I'm on my final two weeks of work. Crazy! I have been at this office for over a year and have loved the people that I work with. It's going to be sad to leave but super exciting at the same time. They really have become my El Paso family.

This last week was Dan's spring break. We got what we wanted to get done and that was to paint the ugly bookshelf that we have, into an adorable bookshelf/dresser for our little one. We picked up the supplies and paint the weekend before and when I got home Friday at 12, Dan had everything out and ready to go so we could start painting. I really wish he had this kind of excitement last year when we painted our kitchen table and chairs. Granted we did paint those during NFL draft time but heck we were painting during NCAA march madness... kinda the same thing.... right? He's just a little excited to be a daddy. Anyways, I'm so sorry i didn't get a before shot of the bookshelf. It was really gross. Old fake wood, with stickers and blue paint randomly splashed on it. We never really worried about it cause it was in our junk/office/storage room. We never really needed it to look fancy. It served it's purpose well, to house all our books. Now that we need to get a room ready for Virginia and since she supposedly going grace us with her presence in just under 5 weeks. *fingers crossed*We better start cracking.

It took most of the afternoon to paint the bookshelf but it looks fantastic!! Holy goodness.. It's all new looking and just gorgeous. I'm so happy that we did this.

here it is.... all painted white and cute and almost ready for her. I purchased some fabric baskets, 6 of them, that i'm decorating to match somethings i wanna put in the room. I've gotten 1 and some of another done. ooooooo *light bulb on* actually something just came to my mind that I wanna do to them....I have none done now. We are also collecting, slowly, some books for her. I wanna go and get some of my favorite ones growing up, like, all of the Don and Audrey Wood books and other various books. I loved to look at books when I was a child and we had a ton of them. My mom loves books too.... seeing as she got her Masters in Reading....hmmm....... where did my love for books come from?

This is the detailing up on the top. It's beautiful and we really never noticed it till we painted it white. What a glorious find on the furniture.

When i finally get the finish product done i will post it. I have a few art works that are in progress that i want to frame and hang in her room. Since we are still unsure what we are going to be doing for the summer, I don't want to decorate her room to much and then have to redo it some where else. Besides she's going to be sleeping in our room for the 1st couple of months. There is really no rush to the projects. Just the bookshelf so i have a place to put her clothes and other things.

Peace

Decisions Decisions ...

2010-03-02T16:16:00.015-07:00

I think my favorite part of being pregnant so far is looking for thing to purchase for the lil' bundle of joy....who is constantly kicking now. Even as I'm typing this she's furiously going and strong too.

I have looked high and low for the basic essential that every little baby is going to need, and i have finally, fingers crossed (I change my mind every two mintues), picked out what I want.

The bedding and the crib have been the worst search for me. When it comes to finding the crib, not only am I trying to find something that I like and can use for all my children, I am of course trying to keep it at a reasonable price. Why oh why oh why do, i really like the cribs that are like 650.00?!?!
I'm so sorry Husband, i have expensive taste...

I found this one at Walmart.....

really?!?, I can't believe I found the one I want at Walmart of all places. A major factor in choosing this particular crib is that the couple at Young House Love purchased this crib and made a fantastic review and love it. I'm not saying that they were the ones that found the crib for me, it was on the list of many cribs i was deciding between and they just helped me to choose this one. It's also under 300 bucks and it comes with the toddler rails. Most of the cribs that i have seen, you have to purchase the toddler rail separately and those can cost up to 100 bucks. I'm thinking this is a great deal on an awesome crib.

I love the clean modern look of it. :) so beautiful!! Thank you Daddy and Veniece for purchasing the crib for us!! And Diane and Danny, Dan's parents, for purchasing the mattress!!!

This is the bedding that I'm thinking I am getting.

It's from Land of Nod and it's on sale!!! Wooo!!!! Again, I have expensive taste.

It's super cute. Not OH MY GOSH!!! that is bright! It's perfect!! for me at least. Again, I love modern. I also love that you don't have to get the whole set, which would cost a ton. You can get thing separate. So I'm going to get the bumper and quilt of this set and get cute pink sheets at target.

Thank you Mommy for this purchase!!!

Then there is the stroller. We have opted to get a travel system. Elizabeth got one and loved it. She also got a Graco brand stroller and she took it to Italy and back and still uses it. It's in fantastic condition and If something can hold up the way my family travels all the time, then it's a great brand to keep with.

We wanted something Neutral. This one is brand new. About two months in production. It's exclusive at Babies R Us. Which is kinda a bummer seeing as the closest Babies R Us to us is on the East side of town. We live on the West. It's about a good 40 minute drive out there. It's all good. I called yesterday to see if they had any in stock because online they seem to fly off the shelfs. They are always saying it's out of stock. Anyways, Diane is headed out to the East side for a lunch thing on Thursday and is totally willing to pick the stroller up! She is awesome!

Hooray for the Relief Society sisters and wanted to purchase a large group purchase and this is what they are all pooling together to get me!!!! I love my ward!! I really can't wait to have the stroller.

Those are the mighty purchase that i have decided on.

We have a bookshelf that Diane and Danny gave Dan and I. It's not so cute looking now....but a fresh coat of new white paint and some cute little fabric bins, which I purchased a few weeks ago, will make for awesome chest of drawers/bookshelf for Virginia. We plan on painting that during Dan's Spring break. I will do some before and afters pictures of the project.

Again Dan and I just can't wait for Miss Virginia either Rose or Katherine Morgan to be here!!! We love our baby!!!

Peace

Baby Update

2010-02-23T10:38:00.005-07:00

I'm just about 9 weeks out!!! HOORAY!!!! I need her to come. I'm just constantly uncomfortable. I don't think our family body types were made to handle child baring to well. We are just super petite people. Anyways, little miss Virginia (99% sure that's her name) has still not flipped.... she does have 9 weeks to flip but if she does not... it's an automatic C-section. If it comes to that I think, no, I know I'm going to be upset never to get the chance to have a vaginal birth. I do know that you can have one after a C-section but most doctors don't wanna do it. To scared that things can tear. Other then her not being flipped yet. Little Miss Virginia is healthy and doing everything she suppose to be doing. She moves constantly which according to my Doctor is very very good, but not to comfortable for me. My Doctor, Dr. Phipps, whom i love, is a little worried about the amount of fluid surrounding baby. Baby did have a full bladder when she was measuring this morning and said that she's sure once baby empties it, the fluid should be the perfect amount. She wants to check it again next appointment and if it's not correct to her, she going to have me come in when the ultrasound people come into her office.

Dan and I can't wait for her arrival. These next 9 weeks are going to go super slow...but i bet when i look back at it, it's going to go super fast. Having an appointment every other week does help with the time.

Peace

Best Commercial EVER!!!

2010-02-17T10:06:00.002-07:00

Saw it for the 1st time during Lost!!! Laughed my butt off

This should have been a super bowl commercial. It tops all of the lame ones that were on this year.

As always Enjoy

Peace

I might be having a Benjamin Button Baby.

2010-02-17T09:35:00.004-07:00

I've read and heard from several people that your dreams become super intense and odd when you are pregnant and that is definitely the case with me.

I must be nervous about what my baby is going to look like, cause last night was def the top odd dream that i have had.

I dreamed that she was a Benjamin Button bady. All old manish, gross looking and super wrinkly. I understand that the kid is slightly pruney when they come out, she's been in liquid for 9 months. Seriously it was a Aah!!! moment in my dream. I just started to cry when I saw her. Super sad right?!? It's all good, my subconscious figured out I did not wanna look at that and with in a few hours she was super beautiful...

We also didn't have a car seat for her when it was time to leave the hospital. We lied to them and on the way home purchased one..... Not a good start, I think.

Peace

Art

2010-02-12T10:39:00.004-07:00

I was doing the blogging thing this morning and I've been coming to a certain site for a while now. I think it's hilarious and very clever. It's titled That is Priceless. Just click on the link and you will see for yourself how funny it actually is.

I started thinking about one of my favorite pieces that I'm sure most of you have never seen. Katherine got a print for her birthday way back when, I had to have been in jr high, from one of her best friends and I have loved it ever since.

It's titled The Kiss by Francesco Hayez.

I just love how much passion is in the kiss and how they must be secret lovers. He must have been waiting for her in the dark doorway in the back corner and when she passed him, he comes out and lays one fantastic kiss on her......oooo to be her.....So beautiful....i wish i could paint like that. That is my take on the painting. Come up with your own story of why they are kissing. I love doing that to paintings. Art is so much more fun when you create a story behind what you are seeing and not just looking at it because some one put it in a museum, so it must be important attitude.

Peace

Cruising

2010-02-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

As a getting preggers gift from my Dad and Veniece, we got a cruise. Awesome right?!? and I know ya'll are slightly jealous.

This cruise was the mother of all cruises....well that i know of.. It was my second ever. My 1st was for our honeymoon. It was a quick four night cruise down to Capo San Lucas, Mexico on Carnival.

This cruise was a 9 night cruise on Celebrity. They sure did make you feel like one too. It was awesome we ported from San Juan, Puerto Rico and sailed to 7 different islands around the Caribbean. It was beautiful and well needed. More needed for Dan then Me. He's been working so hard on his masters and it's been super stressful for him and it was nice to have a long long and awesome vacation in between the semesters.

Dan and I flew out to Houston on Dec. the 31th to spend the New Years with the family and on the 1st at 11:59pm we flew down to San Juan. We got in at about 5:30 San Juans time. I did not sleep to well on the plane, nor did anyone else for that matter. When we landed we were all exhausted. We got a taxi and he took us near our port because apparently there was a luggage storing place around there. We couldn't start to board the ship until 12:00 so we had a few hours to kill. After the taxi, who was kinda of a rude man, dropped us off and we still had know idea where the luggage hold was, we decided that we were hungry and there was a Embassy Suites right there. We figured they would have some type of breakfast thing going on at 7:00 in the morning. When we showed up to the bell hop, he told us that he would hold all our bags for a small fee of 15 bucks. Awesome!!! We finally had a place to put our luggage and a place to eat and it was a small 5 minute walk to our ship terminal. After our small/expensive breakfast, thank Daddy, we were told that there was a free trolley that went around old town San Juan. We decided to take that and just get off at one of the forts that lines the coastline. After waiting for like 30 minutes, Veniece got out her handy dandy iphone and searched how far everything was. It was super close, the fort was, so off we went, on foot, following Veniece iphone. (ps. I really want one) When we got there and finally decided to walk up the slight incline to the visitors center being super tired, hot and sticky, we discovered a free movie about the forts around San Juan. It was not so awesome, but the movie theater was dark, and it had AC. We decided to park our butts and watch the movie. 1st in Spanish for 15 then in English for another 15 minutes. Then we just stayed for about a good hour and half sleeping in there. It was fantastic. After that we took the trolley, it was finally operating, and rode around and saw rest of old town San Juan. Do not judge if you only had about 2 hours of sleep you would be doing the same stuff.

There was a trolley drop off right at the Embassy Suites. We got off, tried to find a restaurant that we were told we had to eat at, but couldn't find. Then we picked up our bags and walked the 5 minutes to the ships terminal and boarded the ship.

The 1st thing we did when we got onto the ship was, go to our rooms and slept the afternoon way. We then all got up and started walking the ship to see it. We discovered the food area by that time, it was afternoon tea and treat time. There were dozens of different desserts and treats in the area and an ice cream bar. We got some ice cream and continued our ship tour. We sailed on the Celebrity Millennium. It was beautiful.

Our stateroom was also awesome. My dad splurged and we got a room with a balcony. We definitely had a great set up.

Sun Jan 3rd

The next day we were ported at St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. St. Croix was quaint and very very beautiful town. Since it was Sunday and there wasn't much to do with the excursion, we just decided to walk around the town and see all the church that they had. They were beautiful and all so very close to one another. Because it was Sunday they were all in church and singing such beautiful music. It was nice to walk around the Island and here it on Sunday. Very appropriate for being on vacation.

Mon Jan 4th

We ported at Philipsburg, St. Maarten, the dutch owned side of the Island. Again a very beautiful tourist trap place. That day we booked an excursion called the Americans Cup. Where we got in teams of 12 and raced each other in sail boats. If you go on a cruise and they offer this as an activity, DO IT!!! You will not regret it. Dan, with the help of Dad, picked a great excursion. Being preggers and all I couldn't really participate. I was the time keeper and the bar tender. Woooooo

Tueday Jan 5th

Our port was Basseterre, St. Kitts. We rode a train around the island for about two hours and then the last hour we finished our tour around the island in a van. St. Kitts is a super poor country. The poorest that we visited. They used to harvest sugar cane but now they do not and we rode the tracks that the sugar cane was transported on. Even tho the country was incredible poor, our tour guide for both the train and the van were very very proud of their small country and you can not make fun of that. Every time we past one of the schools, all the school children would come running to the fence and wave. It was the cutest thing ever. As cool as the people were and how proud they are of what they have accomplished, the train was super boring. It would have been a lot better if we were on it for 30 minutes instead of along 2 hours of squeaks, bumps and not really understanding the person over the intercom.

Wed. Jan 6th

The port was Roseau, Dominica. This island was the most beautiful of all the Islands that we went to. Remember we went to 7 different Islands. This day Dad and Veniece went scuba diving, they heard it was the best place to dive on all the island that were going to be visiting, while Dan and I took a van up to two beautiful waterfalls. It was not a very strenuous excursion and that is why we choose to do it. Amanda, our tour guide, was beautiful and by far the nicest person that we had contact with in all the Islands. Even tho on every excursion they were nice, she was the best. :)

Thursday Jan. 7th

We ported at St. George, Grenada. That day we just decided to take a quick water taxi over to the closet beach and chill.

Friday Jan 8th

Scarborough, Tobago was our port. Again we didn't book anything with the cruise and decided to head out by our self and see what we could do. We got a taxi and Evan, our driver took us to a local cafe/eating spot on our way to the beach. Again we just walked around and we finally got a drink called Mabi. On every Island we were looking for it. It's a Caribbean drink we were told we had to have. It was good. It tasted like flat root beer.

Saturday Jan 9th

We were off to Bridgetown, Barbados. Since it was our last port, we decided to book an excursion. We booked a "swim with the turtles" excursion. We snorkeled with them. It was so fun. I have never seen a sea turtle that close before. They swam so close to us. I kick one, on accident, when it swam underneath me. It was the biggest one too. I felt awful. We then were put back on the boat and taken to a ship wreak and snorkeled that for a bit.

Sunday Jan 10th

This day was our day at sea. We really didn't do much, but sleep and go to the pool. That night we decided to book the restaurant were you had to pay an extra 35 bucks to eat at. I have never had service like that. It was a five star quality!! That dinner, if it was not on the cruise, would have easily cost about a good 150 a head. It was fantastic.

Monday Jan 11th

Our cruise is over. What a sad day. Since our flight was not till later in the day. We booked a excursion with the ship to see the rain forest on Puerto Rico. They took our luggage and held if for us till we got to the airport. It was beautiful. Before we were taken to the airport we stopped at a local eating place again. It was really really good. I am surprised that my little stomach handled it.

All in all the cruise was awesome and we loved every minute. The entertainment each night was fantastic and well worth staying and seeing. The workers were on top of everything. It was a magnificent ship to sail on. I suggest, if you are looking to book a cruise, do it with Celebrity. It will blow your mind and you will have no choice but to enjoy every minute of it. :)

Sorry for the long post

Peace

Photos of the Cruise

2010-02-03T10:02:00.004-07:00

The fort in Puerto Rico.

St. Croix, just walking around

Our sail boat.
It seriously looks like our caption is looking at my butt.

Dan and Dad being super bored on the train

All the adorable children coming and greeting us as we rode by.

Twins!!! Which one is which?

On a platform looking at the waterfalls.

Was having some fun.

More fun

So clear and beautiful. Every Island was like this, with the super blue water.

more fun

I liked the clouds in the reflection.

Just chill'n

Tobago, at the beach

I found this sea shell. I didn't take it home cause it smelled awful and made our room smell of something fierce. I threw it out later that night.

Another angle.

Our last formal night on the ship. I was to cheap to purchase the picture so i took a picture of the photo.

Almost every night after the big entertainment in the theater, we went to the piano bar. We meet John, the piano player and made friends with him quick. This was our second night on the ship and our 1st night there. By the end he got us doing a kick line. It was awesome. Then another night they were having a name that tv show theme and we won!!! We rock and we got cheap ship pens (say that fast) as our reward.

Me snorkeling with the turtles

Dan doing his thing

Turtles, look how close we were to them.

Last day of the vacation and back in Puerto Rico. We were on our Rainforest excursion at this point.

Thanks again Dad and Veniece for the an amazing and unforgettable vacation.

LOST!!!

2010-02-02T16:00:00.003-07:00

Lost starts it's final season tonight. I need no thank you ladies. I know I was the one that got you into it. But something tragic, I start my Lamaze class tonight for the next four weeks........WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE ON LOST NIGHTS?!?! Why oh why oh why?
or WHY DID LOST HAVE TO COME TO DREADED TUESDAY NIGHT INSTEAD OF WEDNESDAY?!?!

Oh well, in my anticipation for this beautiful show to start I found this.... as always...Enjoy :)

Peace

Jealous!!!!

2010-01-26T16:57:00.002-07:00

Just watch!!!!

I want this talent!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQkBoGJ-07c

I can't embed the thing so you have to go to the link.

Here is another video i can embed.

Peace

Helping Haiti

2010-01-22T09:50:00.006-07:00

It's incredible tragic what has happened in Haiti. This pregnancy makes me more emotional then I have ever been and every time I read something about that country or what people are doing to help, I get choked up and some times tear up.

I love what cell phone companies are doing with the Red Cross and how easy it is to donate money. You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti.

I then found this shirt where 100% of the proceeds go to help in the effort. I wanted to help in some way. We really don't have much, so I purchased this shirt for 15.00 with a 3 dollar shipping fee. I can't wait to get it. I won't be able to wear if for a while, I got a small so I could fit into it after the kiddo is born.

I love it.... Also.........

The Church (they ask that we write The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when we are referencing them for the 1st time) kinda rocks...... Read what they have done. It's amazing. They have sent thousands of pounds of supplies down to aid in the help. They also have sent Teams!! of Doctors down to assist in Haiti. The few church buildings that are there got only small damages to them and are now housing thousands of people. I love this church and everything that it stands for.

I hope that this all gets worked out quickly with the relief and I pray that everyone else remains safe.

Peace

What's Making Me Happy Today.....

2010-01-19T16:08:00.004-07:00

1. My monster girl growing inside me!

{I love her but she's a monster! I've had every symptom you can think of. I hate being pregnant, but i'm so excited to have her here with us soon}

2. These outfits!!!

{my child is going be dressed better then me}

3. Knowing I get to go home at 5 today instead of 6!!!

Short list but it makes me super happy

Peace

A Request....

2010-01-19T10:27:00.003-07:00

I've gotten a few request from friends and family to see my little belly.

Here I am.... at 26 weeks. The picture was taken this morning, right when i got to work. So, it's what i look like as of 8:15 am.

Enjoy

Peace

We are finally Home!!!!

2010-01-14T15:07:00.003-07:00

We have been away from home in El Paso now for one solid month!!!

Crazy!! But , Oh so much fun.

Lets start back in December shall we?

(More details to come with each event, but for now a brief explanation should suffice to let you know what has been happening)

Friday, Dec. 18th: Drove the 4 hours up to Albuquerque for Dan's sister, Lavinia (Lovey for short), wedding. I shot the wedding for her. I told her i would rather do that then be a bridesmaids when Andrew and her started talking marriage and asked Dan and I for some advice. Sealing at 7pm.

Saturday, Dec 19th: Drove 4 hours back to El Paso for reception.

Sunday, Dec 20th: Drove 13 hours to Thousand Oaks, California for Christmas with the family.

Wed, Dec 23rd: Disneyland!!!

Mon, Dec 28th: Drove 13hours home to El Paso. (granted i was home for two day but i do not count this as being home)

Thursday Dec. 31th: Flew to Houston to spend New Years Eve with Dad and Veniece. I got to see Mr. Scott Wiest and I finally meet his beautiful wife Abigail. He lives in Austin. (More on that in later post)

Friday, Jan 1st 2010!!!! at 11:59pm: Flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Saturday, Jan 2nd: boarded Celebrity Cruise ship Millennium.

Saturday, Jan 2nd to Monday Jan 11th: Sailed the beautiful seas of the Caribbean!!!

Monday Jan 11th: Flew to Houston

Tuesday Jan 12th: Flew home to El Paso.

And now to Thurday Jan 14th: Back at work :)

It was fun and i can't believe it's over and It's back to reality now!!!

Favorite Clip for the Fall TV Season..

2009-12-09T13:18:00.007-07:00

Elizabeth and I were talking about shows and what we are liking this new Fall season and i remembered this clip. This scene is the only scene that made me almost pee my pants.

I hope you like it.

"Donaghy saves GE comma marries your mom. "
"Laser Shield"....hahahah :)

Oh and Alec Baldwin has the sexiest voice EVER. Just FYIing you. :)

Peace

A few things I'm excited for this month....

2009-12-07T15:40:00.003-07:00

I get to see my family, that includes, Mom, Grandma, Lizzy, Patrick, Audrey, Katherine, Dad, Venice, Sammy and Matt. Hopefully: Jenny, Jason, Gavin. { we are driving through Phoenix}
California
Cafe Rio {again driving through phoenix}
In and Out
Found out my babies sex.....It's a girl. :)
CRUISE
all my grandma's awesome Christmas treats hmmmmmm

It's short and sweet but I'm super excited for it all.

Peace

Christmas time is here!!

2009-12-03T14:14:00.003-07:00

Update on what is happening with us.

Our Thanksgiving weekend was fantastic and a well needed break for both Dan and I

We had a wonderful thanksgiving day, spent with Dan's family and eating awesome food prepared by Sally.

I made my usually thanksgiving day dessert, a pumpkin roll, which everyone loved. :)

Friday, we spent the day relaxing and went shopping for Christmas specials. We didn't find anything that was really worth purchasing at this time in our lives but we did get some gifts

Saturday, we went to Sally and Roberts to watch the BYU game. I will admit it's not as fun to be here in El Paso and watch games cause i don't get to gloat to anyone. I miss BYU football. :(

Monday, we found out that we are having a little girl. Dan and I are super excited and can not wait for her to arrive in April. Even tho we hope to have a name picked out soon, I'm still going to call the thing a little monster cause all it does is make me want to pee all of the time and it kicks when i find a comfortable position and it is not.

Monday, it also rain/snowed here in El Paso and Tuesday morning we woke up to find a small THIN!!! layer of snow on the ground. But for some reason people here freak out and they closed the schools till 11 in the morning and no one was on the roads. Seriously people, The world is not going to end because of a snow storm. I don't think in all the years I lived in Utah and went to school there we ever had a snow day. It was just funny to see my co-workers freak out because of a little bit of snow and some of them didn't show up till about 11 in the morning "cause the roads were icy..." Liars!!! When i got on the road at 7:30 in the morning it was wet! No ice! Nothing! They just wanted an excuse not to come into work.

Anyways i'm going to leave you with this.....Have a happy fun time preparing for Christmas!!!
Here is a awesome video for your enjoyment to get you in the christmas cheer.

Peace

Michelle

Beige or Burnt Sienna?

2009-11-24T11:04:00.003-07:00

One show that Dan and I started to watch this summer was the "Big Bang Theory" on CBS. Dan's uncle, Robert, his wife, Sally, ( you following me?) got the 1st season for him for his birthday. When we were over at their place this summer, we sometimes would watch it with them. After some viewings we thought that it was a worthy show to start watching.

It really is cute and funny. I really really like it. Anyways, it airs on Monday nights and thank goodness for TVIO or i wouldn't have been able to read this....

At the end of the show they have what is called a vanity card... don't know what it really is suppose to be, but this is what i read last night....It comes up for about 4 secs and then goes away and in those 4 sec i read this.... "Frankly, every time I hear someone comment on America's...." It was in the middle of the paragraph. I'm a very curious person. Leave me in a house for 10 minutes, by myself, and i will be all over it looking at things. Yes, yes it's also being called a snoop. Dan always tells me i am the biggest snoop ever. Back to story, because of my curiosity i decided to rewind it and stop it to read what it said and this what it said.....

I have long believed that part of our problem with resolving race issues in America is our inability to accurately name what we are. Aside from the occasional Johnny and Edgar Winter, there are no white people. Any child with a box of crayons can tell you that white people are, in fact, beige. The sickly ones are gray. Following this crayon logic, one can easily see that there are really no black people. They are brown. Or perhaps raw umber. Or maybe burnt sienna. Frankly, every time I hear someone comment on America's first black president, I can't help thinking, "No, he's not. He's more like caramel." Which is why I think we should all get in the habit of calling each other what we really are. How can you racially slur a man by calling him "beigey" or "umber?" The answer is you can't. Because that's exactly what he is. The melanin doesn't lie. Buy a box of Crayolas and see for yourself. We are all members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Can I hear a kumbaya?

I was dying. I thought is was very clever

Hope you enjoyed my funny find.

You can read other ones here.

Peace

Michelle

I'm a closet who?!?

2009-11-18T14:24:00.002-07:00

This might come as a shock to some friends but......Yes....I am a Star Trek closet fan. I have always loved them. I think it has to do with my uncle's obsession of them and always watching something trekieish during the holidays. And their obsession comes from my Grandfather who worked for NASA.

Anywho...I am one and I love it and the new Star Trek is just as awesome as the other ones.

Did I go and purchase the new Star Trek last night right after work so Dan and I could watch it on our fantabulous new Blu Ray....yes!!!

Is Blue ray that cool? Yes!!

Did I work some magic at Best Buy and instead of getting the blu ray for 24 bucks, i got it for 20 bucks? Yes go me.... (if you see a product of theirs online for cheaper then at the store, just tell them and they will change the price.)

Is my Dad super jealous that I have a blu ray? Yes.

If you have not seen this movie yet, i suggest that you do.

Peace

Michelle