It has been over a month now since I’ve written a real post here – one with actual words and thoughts and stuff. I’ve kept up with Facebook, but I’ve gone days at a time without posting on Twitter(!) and my other blogs are crying because they think I’ve forgotten them. The good news is that I’ve been living life in the real world and enjoying nearly every minute of it.
Over the holidays, we had a house full. Hubby’s mom and dad came up from Alabama and his brother and his family drove all the way here from Utah to spend Christmas with us. We don’t get to see them often, so it was really nice to get to spend some time together. I was bummed to have to work most of the time they were here, but when you do bookkeeping for companies that run on a calendar year, year-end is not the time to take vacation. We ate lots of yummy food, saw Avatar, braved a snow/ice storm on Christmas Eve, enjoyed a chaotic Christmas morning, watched the Chiefs get beat by the Broncos, made an “adults only” trip to Lawrence to meet up with friends, had an early birthday celebration for my niece, and had a blast watching our four kids all play together. It was a lovely two weeks and we were so sad to see everyone head back home.
While our company was still here, Zach and Evie both managed to come down with a nasty stomach bug. Zach was down for an entire week with it and Evie for about 4 days. Just when we thought Zach was getting well again, he started up an awful sounding cough. After three days of that, I took him to the doctor and found out he had a sinus infection. Hopefully the antibiotics will get things cleared up and he will start feeling well again.
Also over the last month or so, I’ve put my web design cap back on. I somehow agreed to create a new web site for the church we’ve been attending. I’m doing it the easy way, using WordPress as a CMS with a pre-made theme, but I’m having fun customizing it. I still have quite a bit to do, but I do like the direction it is going. I’m just really nervous about showing it to the team. It has been a while since I’ve done anything other than my own personal sites. I did get good feedback from a screenshot of the main page, but no one has seen it live yet.
Throughout all the craziness, I’ve been spending every free moment I have trying to learn how to use my new camera. I was able to buy a few accessories for it, including a 50mm lens, with some Christmas money I received. Plus, my boss loaned me several of his lenses to play around with. Straight out of the box, I could tell a difference in photo quality but I can’t wait to see how much better my photos get after I learn more about what I’m doing. Starting at the end of January, I’m going to be taking a short basic photography course with a friend. Hopefully that will give me the little push I need to start shooting in manual mode more often.
That pretty much wraps up the last month, unless you want to hear about all the snow we’ve been getting and the frigid temperatures. Seriously, I can’t remember ever getting this much snow at this time of year (those pics are from before the last 2 snows!). It really makes me wish I had a garage that I didn’t have to drive down a slippery slope to get to! My poor car is hating me for parking it outside.
It’s time for my first iheartfaces weekly challenge of 2010! This week’s theme is “Best Face Photo” and they are asking for your best face photo from either December 2009 or early January 2010. I took a ton of photos during December thanks to my awesome new camera, but this is the one that has stuck out as my favorite!