Avi - 6 Months

Well I am stuck in Rochester for a month now and actually have some extra time to work on some pictures! Hopefully when I get back to Wisconsin I will be completely healed, our house will be half way done with remodeling process and I can get back to normal activities.. or should I say normal way of doing things. These are a few of Avi's 6 mo. pictures I have been working on. She's looking absolutely adorable.. like always! More to come! 

From the 16th floor of Peds.

View from 16th floor

The Mayo Plaza

1 week ago I was headed to one of the most famous hospitals in the world. The Mayo Clinic. I ended up having to stay there Wed. and Thursday night and man was it the worst ever. Most people wouldn't believe me when I say that this was a terrible hospital but really I did not like it. I was planning on being there only wed night- thursday but they made me stay and get a test done on Friday where they injected radioactive liquid in me and then I sat around for 3 hours waiting for it to "soak" into my bones. These pictures I took on Thursday before our lunch break. We were on the 16th floor in pediatrics all day Thursday and I think here I was in the waiting room to get a blood test done. How fun... Friday I was in Nuclear Med. all day but there were no windows in that area.

Monarch Butterfly Chrysalis

Our neighbors gave us a jar of caterpillars that were in the process of turning into butterflies. These were some that were already in the chrysalis which was connected to the crocheted jar topper. If you look close there are little specs and on top a line of gold. Pretty neat!

Summer with the girls

These two little girls, who I have known for a very very long time, keep me veryyy busy! Last summer babysitting wasn't nearly as energy consuming as this summer. Lexa is 17 mo. old, can walk, gets into everything and is starting to talk, except really her only understandable words are  "uh-oh" (usually when she's dumping her lunch on the floor) or "mamama" (and yes in 3 syllables everytime). She's definitely a drama queen, even more so than Karli. Karli hates when Alexa tries to play with her toys, needs to hear 1-2-3 before she will even think about what you said, and loves food almost as much as me. But besides being a little harder to do this summer I still enjoy watching these two. We have quite a bit of fun together.

 We are not always happy.

 Stella, the "bull puppy". She causes LOTS of trouble!

 Here I braided her hair, she fell asleep while I was braiding it.

Jumping of the bench... naughty naughty!

Out and About

I'm heading out to the hospital in about 2 minutes now so I gotta hurry with this one.  ....I'm still getting out and taking pictures! In fact, I think I have a slight issue. I feel like I always have to be taking pictures. I'm not sure why but I just try to think, some things you just have to see for yourself and can't capture it in a picture. But that excuse doesn't work too often.  The top picture, just a leaf off the tree by the dock as you can see. The second one, my aunt found some rocks so I could stack them like this. I saw a picture sort of like that and wanted to try it out... and I like it! The corn field was taken at a friends house while out taking pictures, I like how as it gets farther away it curves down.  We lost my shutter release remote somewhere in this field but I've got another one on the way so I can take my star trail picture ASAP!

Photo shoot with Katrina

We have been planning on taking pictures for a while now and yesterday we finally got to it. It was very hot and humid and we were dying out in the heat but it wasn't as bad as a few days before. Earlier in the day I was out trying to get more pictures for the fair but it was too bright out for what I was trying to accomplish. Katrina was with while I took those ones too. I told her, lets get 500 pictures by tonight. Well I underestimated a little and ended up with over 1000 pictures. These are a few from the pictures I took of and with Katrina, just for fun of course.

More heat and storms!

Monday morning I woke up to the power flickering on and off. Then I heard thunder and looked outside and it was very very dark, and lots of lightning bolts. I had to get up and babysit anyways so I went and watched the storm and got a few pictures of the rain pouring off of the roof! It was really raining! I like storms like these though, they are so entertaining!

Rainy Day!

Its getting closer and closer to fair time, and fair means fair projects. I'm entered in I think about 45 photography projects so everyday I feel like I NEED to get pictures so I have enough to pick from for the fair. Yesterday I got out in the rain and took some pictures of things in the yard. Some of them turned out really neat. I used my close-up filters almost the entire time which didn't make anything easier but I needed them to get pictures of the tiny water drops!

Lost photos

         This summer hasn't been as I would have expected it to be, lets say 2.5 months ago. I've been spending some long, dreaded days in the hospital. And I really really dread having to go back week after week, knowing what to expect but yet never knowing how it will go or what will change. So I sit here with an ice pack trying to find relief but I realized I get the best relief when I keep myself occupied, which is easily done while looking through, editing and uploading pictures.
          As the title says, I found some pictures that I knew I had but didn't think they would work as good photography type of pictures. Those pictures end up in their own "event" in iPhoto and usually aren't looked at again for a few months when I get a chance to go through them. With all the free time I have now, resting and trying to heal, I seem to be finding a lot more pictures that have potential that I never knew of before. I have figured out that these pictures usually take a bit more "fixing up" than ones that I just look at once and see it will make a good picture. Here's a few.

Fourth of July Weekend!

A visit down to the river

Well between Dr's appts and babysitting, I managed to get out and do some fishing/picture taking. Not very much but a little. I saw the orthopedic surgeon's last week and they could not find anything wrong in terms of broken bone, torn ligament, pulled tendon etc. Every single test they took the week before came back completely normal. So now that they can't find anything wrong and have ruled out nearly everything else they have come to the conclusion of calling it Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Now I will have 5 procedures done starting in July and going into August. I think the worst part is not being able to eat from midnight the night before and then not being able to eat until at least around 3:00 the next day when I'm in recovery. But I am going to eat at 12:01, maybe 12:02 :P

A few more!

 Keagan had surgery a few days ago, which is why he has what looks like a cut on his eyebrow. Its acutally stitches though, poor little guy.