Grandma

My grandma has had various heart tests which all point to the same thing, that she needs a valve replacement. She visited the heart surgeon yesterday, and both the surgeon and my grandma agreed that she is not strong enough right now to handle the surgery. The surgeon suggested coming back in 6 weeks and my grandma thinks that she'll be feeling better by then and can have the sugery. I disagree with this, reluctantly, but I can't imagine how she is going to get stronger. I feel like I've been smacked in the face with this and yet I knew somewhere in my mind that this was going to happen. She said nothing tastes good to her, she's too nauseous to eat, she's having nosebleeds, her mouth is dry, etc. She thinks that this is due to the radiation, and maybe it is? but she's been feeling worse and worse each day, and it doesn't sound like the radiation is the culprit.

So, for now, we wait, pray, enjoy our time together, and make sure she's comfortable and has the support she needs. If you have any suggestions or thoughts for me they're appreciated. At least before I felt like we were working towards something, and the "work" gave me something to focus on. Now, when faced with the stark reality of things, I feel helpless and sad.

I know my blog title is "Things that make me smile" and this definitely isn't something that makes me smile, but I felt like this was the best place to share. I promise to get back to my regular posts, pictures, etc. soon!

Ethan 2/5/12

Ethan walked out into the garage (the doors have small windows on the top of them) and said "Holy Smokes! Jack Frost's been here!" and then in a quiet voice he said "He's magic."

MLK Day

How do you begin to explain this to kids? Of course, you can tell the basic story of who MLK is and the context behind it, but when they start asking questions about WHY people did that or didn't do that and WHY some people hate other people, it really trips me up. Sometimes I think the wonderful things about kids' minds is that they see things much more clearly than we do; they see the solution as simple. Unfortunately there's so much history and context that's hard to explain in terms that he understands. And I guess it's more of me wanting him to know the answer (excuse?) to WHY it went on so long and WHY it took 100 years after the Civil War for real change to happen. But I want him to know, even if it makes me uncomfortable and even when he gets that look on his face where he's disappointed in what has happened. Disappointed in Adults. Who let it happen. Sometimes being a mom is tough.

Christmas

We had an awesome Christmas. It started with a wonderful Christmas Eve service at church and then led in to two days of the most relaxing fun we've had as a family in recent memory. A few pictures:

Beautiful table setting at my aunt's house. Her house had such a cozy vibe with a real Christmas tree too!

Moira with our cousin Sarah, a senior at Webster University.

"Mom, I got the BEST gift ever!!! A Toys R Us gift card!" LOL

So excited for Santa!!!

She loves her new baby doll!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and has a blessed New Year!

F stop and Holiday trains

F stop is how wide open your lens is. When it's wide open, you let a lot of light in, but it also only allows for a fairly shallow area of focus in the picture. Compared to shutter speed and ISO, F stop seems to be the most complex of the settings. A small adjustment can make a big diff in how the pic looks.

Today we went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens annual holiday train display. This has become a tradition for my family and this year I was particularly excited to bring my camera along and try out my skills. It ended up being way more difficult that I imagined. It is an inside exhibit but there are huge windows so the light was all over the place (meaning it was really dark in some parts but really light in others) so some of my pictures ended up way over exposed. And I also sped my shutter speed way up to try tp catch the moving trains. I did a fairly good job w/ this and I'm pretty proud of myself for that :)

Train looks good here, but way too much light.

I love the colors they used this year. And the flowers as always were gorgeous.

No clue what I was trying to capture in this one. Too much going on, too much light, it's like Christmas overload.

This is the only pic I got of the boys together. When we first got there I thought, I should bring them here every year to take a Christmas card pic (which I'm not even doing this year since life is so crazy). About 10 minutes into the visit it became obvious that I'd be lucky to even get one picture of them together. Josh was too busy chasing some random kid around and Ethan wanted to finish searching for all of the hidden items in the scenes first. And some of them were extremely well hidden this year!

So for the rest of the pictures I stuck with subjects that stayed still and didn't fight with their brother...



A few thoughts

I've been practicing alot (more than I thought I would have time for actually) and I am getting more comfortable with my camera. However, I do have a few things to share related to what I've experienced/learned the past week or so.
1) Natural light is way better than artificial light.
2) Right now daylight is scarce.
3) When it's cloudy, grey and dreary, there's hardly enough light, especially when you are indoors taking pictures by windows (because it's too cold to be outside w/kids).
In summary, I'm looking forward to taking pictures in SPRING!!!
Oh, and something else that's been an unexpected side effect of all of this picture-taking: I'm getting really critical of pictures I see i.e. pictures I spent lots of $$ on from a "professional" portrait studio aren't actually very good. Like the focus is off, weird shadows, etc. Am I becoming a picture-snob??? I hope so, LOL!
Here are a bunch of random pics that I've taken and I don't have much specifically to say about them except they are the best of a HUGE amount that I've taken. Be glad I'm not showing you all of the bad ones. And thank goodness there's a delete button...

Yeah, she's showing that pig who's boss!

This one's funny b/c it looks like she's telling Josh something like, "what's the deal with that guy over there...yeah, the one who's always screaming and throwing stuff..."

Ethan "teaching" Moira how to use the iPhone.

My favorite picture! It seriously took me 100 tries to get this shot. This photography stuff is tougher than it looks!

Moira with my aunt Pris.

Keep your fingers crossed for a sunny day!

Ethan and Josh Nov 26 2011

Josh: I wonder why it's so cold at Christmastime?
Ethan: Because that's the way God wanted to do it.