Our vacation Part #1

I know, it's been about two weeks since we got back from vacation and I still haven't uploaded photos or anything! I tend to be a slacker when it comes to that! So I'll give you an update on our exciting vacation! And photos as well, aren't I such a doll? I won't do our vacation all at once, considering we were out and about for 2 1/2 weeks so this will probably be limited to the first day... since it's a little late.



I doubt this will show up as big as this thing really is!! I made this photo 11 inches by 7 inches so it's huge! And I should be able print it off at walmart or somewhere near that size for a scrapbook, so it works out well! As always, respect my copyright please! If you see any one else using my photos somewhere please do tell me! Trust me, I'm not going to take it easily if I find them elsewhere and I would hate to have to make my blog private.

Anyway, we took our 6 hour journey from the Bremerton, WA area to Athol, Idaho's theme park Silverwood to see what it was all about. It's a fun place! Aldon and I aren't really theme park kind of people... well, except when it came to Disney World but that's a whole other story! We don't really do rides - so we do other things! We each took our turn and went on the carousel with Andrew, he absolutely loved them! I think if he had his way we'd spend all day riding those. As you can see it was fun trying to catch a picture of kiddo and us when we were going by! It looks cool in the one shot with the blur around them though.

We decided to have lunch, considering we were starved. The place is so huge and even with a map we were lost, but managed to find a place to have essentially pizza and a magic show. It was neat to watch the magic show and Andrew loved it as well. Aldon enjoyed it too, but spoiled it knowing how they pulled everything off. LOL.

Silverwood Theme Park has a huge water theme park attached to it which is where we spent most of the day! I think we spent 2 hours at that part before Andrew wanted to stop (mind you, we left at 5 am that morning and he hasn't had a nap at all). I didn't take any photos of this whole time, since I was brave and wore a swimsuit out in public and joined in the water with Andrew. After we got back in our normal clothes we enjoyed some ice cream and I had to snap a shot of Andrew with ice cream all over his face. So cute!

We wanted to make most of our time there, even though we had a 2 hour drive left to accomplish that night, and decided to do the train ride show they had there. Bandits come and "rob" the train and any money they made out with was donated to a charity. It was enjoyable and Andrew thought it was neat.. the bandit was joking when he told Andrew to come along with her, but he totally was going to listen! Imagine the amusement of everyone around us when I had to tell my son that he wasn't going with them!

Afterward we walked around some, let Andrew ride the toddler roller coaster, then let him play on the tree playground there. Around 6 we called it a day, headed out to eat some food, and then drove 2 hours more and stopped at Aldon's brother's place for the night.

Part 2 and most likely 3 to come in the future!

Sometimes I love photoshop

As you can imagine with me trying to make designs for Zazzle I have been using and abusing my photoshop program more. Today I've been trying to learn a few simple things and I got to say it's fun!! So I have got to show off what I've done.
First we'll start with the American flag. You can see it in my post before this - it's the flag I used inside the heart. Well I turned it into a pattern overlay in photoshop. Then I made the word love and used the pattern overlay in it, resulting in:

May not too look a lot but it was fun!! Then I learned a different technique on how to change the color of items - so I decided to do it on a photo of my son. I'll show the original and two fun edits:


The original photo above

And the two fun edits!

I know for some photo editors this is, well, boring to say the least. However for me it was rather fun to test his eye colors out!! I know... overkill, right? But sure was fun!!

Memories in Photos Wednesday

It's always funny looking back at photos of my son. This one was when he was 7 months old. You know how some children are very messy when they eat? My son was never really like that for the longest time, so I decided to make him messy instead. I think his expression is appropriate - he was probably questioning me and my parenting. "Why did you slime baby food on my nose, mom?" No matter what was on his face he still looked so adorable! Good times.

If you're wondering where I've been - I have one word... Zazzle. I've been trying my hand in designing photos over there to upload, which has been nice. It's a challenge in a way but has been nice. Currently working on mostly breast cancer awareness, but have branched off to male breast cancer too. I'm no where near started nor no where near done with all my ideas since I have over 200 different ideas I want to create. If you want to check it out Tshirts for a cause is where you'll find it at. Although it is more then Tshirts, kind of didn't chose my username as good as I should have. Oh well :)

I got myself a new blog name (had to spell it lifeorsumthing like it on the blog site) but when I get things transferred I'll start the process of hopefully getting all my followers over there. That's kind of up to all my followers though! We'll see how it goes. I might wait until after my vacation in July in case.

Memories in Photos Wednesday

Well, there's nothing like a story attached to this photo. Just a beautiful son that I decided to take a picture of in black & white. When he was a baby I swear it was so much easier to get photos of him! Nowadays he gives me evil faces when I try getting pictures, or I have to tell him 100 times to look at the camera and stop the cheesy grin. LOL. Got to love that little guy.

Memories in Photos Wednesday

I think every Wednesday I'll try to do "Memories in Photos" - where I might show one or two old photos and talk about them. So today is my trial day, obviously. I thought it'd be something neat to do when I don't have much to say. We'll see how long it takes until I run out of pictures to post though - although I do have a ton of them! My new camera's folder on my computer has 13,000 photos alone so you can imagine how much that is.. although there's probably over half which I don't like 100% (the anal part of me coming out). Hence why I take about 10-20 photos of the same thing sometimes. LOL. I hope some other photographers admit they do too so I don't feel bad!

Have to say this about my pictures when my son was younger - I had a cruddy camera. Just had to mention that. LOL. Anyway, here we go...

I know how much we love seeing our babies milestones come and go with flying colors. This was one of them. The milestone sheet we were given when he was a baby says by six months they should be sitting up on their own - well by the end of five months (this picture pretty much was the first time) he did it on his own! As you can see, he was so proud (and so were we)! It was so fun to see him get to this point!!


This actually happened shortly after the last photo! He was six months when he quickly went from doing push-ups to doing what can be only described as belly flop crawling. I'd have to show a video someday, in the future. He essentially would drag himself places and while I was working on my husbands quilt (which four years later hasn't been finished) he decided to come over and say hello and hang on to the quilt. It was so cute so I couldn't help taking a few photos of him. I love his baby blues.

So that wraps up Memories in Photos!

Some more adventures

February 6th we took a walk back in a hiking trail that we have in Silverdale, WA. Every so often through the trees you could see a beautiful site of the mountains, fully covered with white snow and clouds grazing them. It was a beautiful site and definitely was interesting to take a hike. Not sure how long the trail was, but it took us probably an hour, hour and a half to finish and get back to the car. Granted I was taking a lot of pictures so we did stop rather often. I was amazed at how many people were in the trails too - we ran into a lot of people considering. It's definitely a nice place to get a little work out in and see some beauty on and off.

My mother came to visit for a week for my son's birthday, which is February 14th. Yes, he's my Valentine's babe and I'm so grateful for the gift. So we wanted to celebrate and have some fun so all of us went and spent about 1 1/2 hours having fun and bowling. Obviously Andrew needed some help so my husband was there helping him. Sadly Andrew bowled as good, if not better, then I did. He had a blast!! Afterward we went to have Dairy Queen - didn't actually get a birthday cake or candle but it didn't matter, he had a good time and that was all that mattered. As for his birthday present? He got a "bunk bed", and we said goodbye to his crib that turned into a toddler bed. It's not 100% a bunk bed, it's got a three step ladder and is meant for one child but has a dresser, storage spots, and a desk that slides out! It's spiffy and will last him a long time.

February 21st was a visit to Hansville, WA at Point No Point. We looked at the lighthouse, watched boats sail, saw dogs having a blast in the water and fetching sticks and took a long walk along the beach. We saw Seattle very close in the distance, but not close enough to get a perfect picture of it. It was so neat to see it that close, though! My husband over heard a couple looking at something and they had found a star fish on the beach!! We allowed Andrew to feel it nicely and I took about 30 pictures before we set it back into the water (it's bottom side had it's little "feet" still moving). We actually found out later they can survive a little while out side of the water but we preferred to be considerate enough to make sure it survived or had a better chance of it. Someone saw me and my camera and told me there had been Eagle's in the trees and pointed to one. Unfortunately by the time I switched to my longer lens the Eagle flew away. We didn't have any success seeing any more after that, but it was a great day otherwise. Andrew has his fun playing with sticks, making "designs" in the sand and got really dirty. Even the picture shows that.

February 28th we ventured off to Poulsbo, WA. We checked out the Poulsbo Marine Center and it's very interesting! They have this place where you can feel some of the marine life (kiddo was more interesting in playing with the water, of course). They also have an octopus named Bob who usually isn't that active and hangs out in the corner most of the day. Not sure what prompted him to but he put on a good show for me for about 20 minutes. Maybe he hated my flash but I sure did get some awesome pictures of him. Afterward we went to a state park nearby and Aldon watched our son while I went and took some pictures of the water/Hood Canal area. Before we headed home we visited one of the communities and I took some pictures of the beautiful houses - they're close together but all of them are so colorful!! Beautiful houses, but personally I wouldn't want to buy one because they'd be too close to the next house! I'd like space to roam.