I hope you don't get tired of seeing my pictures :)

Because I'm not tired of taking them!

I took Andrew to his post op appt today. Every time I take him to the Dr. I want to stop at the marsh and take pictures. I'm usually tired, in a hurry, it's not the "right time of day" or just have too many things to do.

Today his appt was at 9. I made sure to grab my camera as we walked out the door. We were in and out of the dr's office in just a few minutes, so.....we stopped!



We went to Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge . Andrew did get out of the car with me but just sat at a picnic table while I walked around taking pictures.

I can't tell you how much fun I have while I'm out taking pictures. I could get lost in my own little world, trying to view things in a different perspective. I know I have a LOT to learn but I'm just so happy and feel so at peace when I'm taking pictures. Well, landscape & action pictures that is. Portraits are a whole different ballgame with me!

So here are some pictures I took today. I hope you enjoy. Took out my bendy lens and started shooting :) I actually like the lensbaby photos more than the "clear" photos!

I showed Andrew two photos of the same red building, one taken with my 50mm lens and one with the LensBaby. He looked and said "the one looks boring, the blurry one looks more interesting"

Something about them being imperfect, and blurry but the beauty of the scene still shows through. I like that, perfectly imperfect!

A taste from my youth!

MMM Ceviche!

I remember every Saturday for brunch my dad would either make me Mexican Hot Chocolate Abuelita or Ibarra with bolio bread & butter OR he'd make shrimp ceviche.

I remember helping him chop up all of the ingredients making sure to put in extra avocado AND chilitos. Even though he usually made it with canned shrimp, it was still TO DIE for. Oh and even though I was just a little girl I made SURE to add the extra hot sauce on top.

I still frequently make this dish, although my husband is usually the one chopping the veggies :) It's still one of my all time favorites!

So, this one's for you Apa! Aproveche Y Desfrute :)

BNM Challenge!

Wow, two posts in one day! I guess since I've started adding photos to my blog it's been a lot easier to to post.

Here is one of my BNM Challenge for this month. You can read about all of the challenges here. This one is my Scrap with Fourth of July embellies on a non Fourth of July page. I don't really have "themed" paper and honestly didn't have much in the way of "Fourth" embellies, but I did what I could. :)

Join in the challenges, they're so much fun and freeing! Take them at your own time, level and pick and choose what you want to do. Gotta love scrappin like that!

There is hidden journaling behind the photo. I talk about being able to take pictures at our night baseball games with no fear! I've come a long way baby. I used to leave my camera home on night games, now, I look forward the challenge of getting good shots under the lights!

Here's another "star filtered" photo for my gal pals :)

Just for you Lara and Rene. You asked!! :) Love ya girls!!!Q!!!!!!!!

I got bored tonight

Haven't even been off of work for 24 hours yet and I'm already getting bored!

Well, I had stuff to do and I could have scrapped, but I really didn't feel like cleaning my area. So, Little Willy & Ben joined me to take some pictures.

I really wanted to get some night pictures somewhere. So we hopped in the car and went to Jack London Square at the Port of Oakland.

The boys were good sports and Willy even gave me some great ideas.

Here are some of the pics we got. I got to play with my star filter, FINALLY!

Night pictures are really good practice. Alex told me before I left "make sure you use a fast shutter speed or you'll get blurry pictures mom" LOL he's got the lingo down but he's got the "technical stuff" confused!

More water fun!

Some more pictures from our trip to the beach. The boys had so much fun playing in the water. Not me, I actually HATE sand, can't stand it, especially combined with water! Ick

Life's a Beach!

It's been so hot, I'm dripping! Here are a few beach pictures to take us to a "cool" place :) Actually that ocean water is FREEZILATING!

I love watching and listening to the waves crash against the rocks and the shore. Something about that sound is so comforting and soothing.

We were at Pescadero Beach and the boys found lots of starfish and clams just washing up on shore, this starfish is one of the smaller ones! Don't worry they threw it back into the ocean.

My poor Andrew :(

Well, he went in for his second ear surgery. This one was to make sure all the disease was gone and reconstruct the bones in his inner ear.

It only took an hour and fifteen minutes which was really fast! The doctor came out to speak with me and told me Andrew handled the surgery well. He had a lot of scarred tissue from the previous surgery so the Dr. Went ahead and cleared and cleaned up as much as he could.

He removed the scarred tissue from around the bones in his ear and said they looked ok. He then tried to remove some more scarred tissue from around the surrounding area but stopped because some of it was right on the facial nerve, a very dangerous place to be.

He didn't insert any prosthetic in his ear, he pretty much made the decision to stay with as much of Andrew's "God given hearing bones" as he could. He stated it was a tough call but wants to wait and speak with another Stanford Dr. Before he does anything drastic since Andrew is so young and some of the natural bones are still intact.

I just pray that he can hold out as long as possible and that no more scar tissue builds up.

Here are some pictures of the events of today. Andrew didn't want me to take pictures of him in recovery, so I respected that. Although he was acting REALLY weird, it would have been fun!

We treated ourselves to Jamba Juice after his surgery, but it was too stinkin hot to take pictures once we left the air conditioned hospital!



"X" marks the spot!

Fingers of God

I LOVE LOVE LOVE seeing the sun's rays through the trees. There's nothing more beautiful than this sight and it always makes me think that God is reaching out to me.

We went for another drive today, this time a little later. We ended up in Santa Cruz, which was so nice and cool! As we were walking back to the car I saw this image and HAD to quickly set my camera to capture this sight. No time to crop out the signs or the street, just grab and snap before the light changed!

Here's this perfect picture waiting to be captured, waiting to be seen and felt for only a moment, but this moment is the most beautiful and can bring a lifetime of comfort in it's form now.

Sometimes I think we miss God in the little things because we're so busy trying to get everything perfectly situated. He's right there for a moment in His glorious beauty, but we miss Him for whatever reason. I like to think I've captured the fingers of God here.

The Lighthouse

This is what we stopped to take pictures of, but that whale sidetracked me :).

The boys were teasing me because I got caught up in taking pictures of the whale and only got two of the Lighthouse. Every time I'd turn to take a picture of the lighthouse they'd yell from the car "Oh man, you missed the whale again mom!" or "Wow, that's the furthers it's come out of the water mom". And then I'd turn to take a picture of the whale and they'd say, "I thought you wanted lighthouse pictures!" I finally turned to them and told them to leave me alone, they just kept on harassing me.

So here are the two pictures I was able to get of the lighthouse, used my Lens baby.

A whale of a surprise!

We wanted to escape from the heat so we decided to head on out to the beach. Well, after driving in traffic for about two hours we finally got to Halfmoon Bay.

Every beach down the coast was FULL and we were turned away at every entrance.We ended up at Pescadero beach, where the boys had fun in the water, looked for crabs and found starfish. I'll post pics of those later :)


But my real treat was stopping on the way home to get some pics of a lighthouse. We decided to take the long way home and go down Hwy 1 towards Santa Cruz.



We stopped at the lighthouse and there were several cars and people standing on the cliff looking out into the ocean. They said there was a whale out there and if we looked long enough we'd see it. Well, we saw it! Thanks to a lady next to us, she offered to take my picture right at the time the whale came out of the water (I know there's a name for that but I'm really tired right now :) )


So here I am, looking ragged like I've just been at the beach all day, with a Whale jumping out of the water right behind me! Awesome I tell ya...just awesome :) When I was editing my pics I realized I also got a pic of a Dolphin or Porpus in the same frame!!!


Little Willy was the only child I could persuade out of the car to take a picture. They're all a bunch of party poopers! Plus I think they were all itchy from the sea water and had sandy cheeks - no one really wanted to move! LOL

Pre-game meditation

Another one of my "new" favorites LOL. I gotta stop shooting!

A couple of our boys were on the bench before the game sharing the IPod! earphones, I got this shot.

We're still in it

The baseball tourneyment that is! Here are a few from tonight's game. Our catcher getting bowled over, but he did hold onto the ball for the out!

Wish us luck, we play AGAIN tomorrow.

It's going, It's going, It's gone!!! Holy Toledo!!

Can I say we had an AWESOME game last night! Yes, my son, Will- Pull-ivera aka Mr. Clutch comes through in the bottom of the 7th inning. Put in as a pinch hitter to lead off the inning, we're down 4-3 he takes the count to full and crush....over the left fielder's head. Over those trees you see and I'm told (I couldn't find the ball in my view finder) over the overpass.



A towering homerun it was to tie the game and get the team into extra innnings. Too bad we couldn't produce anymore runs after this but hey, what a shot!

Here he is approaching second and third. I was also able to get some of the team waiting for him at home. He's finally greeted by his teamates, and then gets dogpiled at the plate. You'd think they had won the game at this point...gotta love these boys!

He's GO'IN!!!

We're in the third week of July and you'd think I'd be done with baseball huh? NOPE not me!

Here's a shot I got at Will's game yesterday. Notice our runner headed toward 2nd? Yep, he was safe! We won 10-0 and have another game tonight.

No drugs OR alcohol were consumed in the making of this photo montage!

Ha believe it or not, just good clean & sober fun! I won't state that we are all in our right minds BUT WE don't need no stinking drinks to look this bad!!!

Our scrappin group BNM got together last night at Lara's and just had a ball! We are actually "posing" with one of our product challenges, but thought it would be fun to take a different spin on it.

Yes, my husband and sons have seen these pictures and all they can do is shake their heads, but deep down inside I know *they* wish they had friends like mine! I told them not to hate us 'cause we're beautiful and just got the 'ole eyeroll. Guys, they just don't understand, LOL

I *HEART* My daddy!!!

This pic was taken back in April, after Andrew's Spring Concert performance. My dad joined me in attending Andrew's concert and he was just too cute to watch! I'm talking about my DAD :) You could just see the pride bursting from within to see his grandson up there onstage playing violin with the orchestra.

The performance was AMAZING! San Lorenzo USD puts on an outstanding performance, it's amazing to think these are all children playing.

We took this picture right outside the theatre, just a silly one I thought, but it turned out really cute. Me and a guy on each arm, I'm so lucky to be surrounded by so many men!

One of my favorite Baseball Pictures from this season

Love my LensBaby ! This is a shot I took of Ben during the season with my "babe". I love the artistic feel of this picture. I really need to get out more and play with this lens, now that baseball is ALMOST over I think I'll get a chance!

Andrew

Yes! We made it through this school year without being suspended!

My Andrew marches to the beat of his own drummer. I tell you this child is responsible for about half of the grey hairs on my head. He's a wonderful child, he's extremely affectionate towards me, always has been but something about this child just makes me shake my head sometimes :)

I guess being sick this year has made him realize he needs to grow up and take responsibility for himself. He's done a lot of growing up this year and I'm really proud of him. I don't know if he'll ever develop an advanced Brain-to-mouth "filter" but at least he's getting better at it :)

One of my AllStars

This child was doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing here, but it made for a great shot! :)

Friday we have FOUR baseball games!

Two Allstar games going on at the same time in different locations. AND a double header to determine whether Will's team goes to State or not.

Wish us luck! Too bad I'll only get shots at two of the four games.