… and I found this.

I made dinner in silence. I’m paying for it now. It’s almost 4am and Bailey is showing no signs of slowing down. Getting her back on schedule will be my first project as soon as everyone here is over the killer cold that Brandon brought home last week.

I’m finally getting to see how sharp my Tamron lens can be when it’s not wide open in low light (where it doesn’t excel like the 17-55 does). Did some stuff with flash tonight to test a new flash bouncer I’m going to make now that I’ve worked out the pattern.

Some of the random shots I took while testing. Nothing special, just seeing what it could do with no light.

Just one more week of school. This week we really NEED to get Brandon early and run him over to what we hope will be his new school. If he feels good about it, it’s a go. One more thing checked off the list.

Still conflicted about the pros and cons of church membership and the idea of jumping through the hoops of converting to a new denomination when I know it doesn’t change one single thing about what I believe. What’s the advantage? Lower tuition? Not a big deal — it’s a steal compared to Rock Prairie. A sense of belonging for Brandon. A very good thing, indeed. But at what cost? The commitment to a new church and the guilt of inevitably falling short of my obligation to the church, maybe to the detriment of Brandon’s good standing. So much pressure.

I thought it would be fun to put together a quick Flash movie to show the differences between the original and processed files. Roll over the finished image to reveal the unprocessed file, then roll out again to restore the edit.

I took a few of our Mother’s Day lunch with our parents today, but nothing worth sharing. I guess I was just having a low key day, recovering from my 6 days of being solely in charge of these little people. Brian’s flight was canceled and he didn’t make it home on Friday. He got here today with no time to spare. He hadn’t slept all night, so he spent a lot of the day pretending to be awake.

We went to the park again on Friday after school. JUST TWO MORE WEEKS OF SCHOOL!! This time we hit a small park near our house. It’s one of those parks where teenagers hang out on the basketball courts not playing basketball. I’m never comfortable there alone with the kids, so when the only other family left, we followed along. We were only able to play for half an hour, but it was cold and I had stuff to do.

Brandon looks forward to his playdate all week. I do when I can leave Bailey at home. When she tags along, it’s more like a workout for me. I lie. It’s nothing like a workout. If it were a workout, I’d be enjoying a good book… ALONE. I just get tired of chasing her.. up, down, around, up, down, around… but it wouldn’t occur to me to leave the camera at home no matter how much easier it would make it for me.

Brandon begged me to take him “somewhere fun” after school, but I could sense he was not in the mood to stay near me. I know he really tries to stay close and not disappear, but he “just likes to explore.” We had a long talk about the difference between really, really *wanting* to stay close and stick with Bailey and actually doing it.

Just 2 more days until Brian gets home. Just one more load of laundry to fold and I’m free to… create more laundry.

So, the backyard it is and some pretty terrible snapshots.