Sweetness

Look at that! Piper really can be a sweetie when she wants. But take note, no one is touching her and she's lying down. C took this photo of her earlier today and was impressed with himself. I thought it was pretty good too, so decided to post it here.

I also thought it was an opportunity to point out that she has two incredible sides. Mean and witchy and sweet and semi-lovable. BUT knowing our cat as well has I do I can almost read her mind in this photo: "Get that camera out of my face kid. And if that flash goes off one more time I'll not be held responsible for what happens to you."

Ah the life of a cat!

Nobody owns a cat....

So, any of you who know our cat will appreciate this picture. This is Piper, she's 7 years old and...well...to be kind in a word, cranky. Man is that putting it mildly.

She is an "on my terms only" kind of cat. Although we understand that nobody actually owns a cat (they run the house) we do say she is ours. BUT only when she wants to be.

Frequently people come to visit and if they have never met her before they think she is a beautiful specimen. We are very quick with our warnings, "Don't pet her, she bites and scratches so be careful".

She'll only allow herself to be petted when it suites her. Not when she's napping, which is most of the time. Many friends and relatives think it's okay to pick on her. She lets them know most of the time that this is not the best idea in the world. Even innocent bystanders have been put in their place.

But when she wants attention she is absolutely SHAMELESS!

C loves getting out this makeshift toy and playing with Piper. She immediately heads for the stairs. And this is what we get:

Because he can...

First I must start this by explaining that I really, really hate mopping. I'd rather scrub a toilet if that tells you anything. Which I did plenty of after the flu bug reared it's ugly head in our home.

That being said, C has recently taken to volunteering to mop for me. Don't ask me why, and before you berate me for taking advantage of him let me say that I do explain to him that he doesn't have to help me do house work. He wants to! Why? Because he can (and "Then you don't have so much work to do Mom".) Enough said.

I don't look gift horses in the mouth!! I take him up on it whenever he offers. Too soon the little man will be a towering, hormone raging teen that will hide out in his room and probably refuse to clean anything. But until then he did this for me this morning:

Aren't I the lucky mom!! (No he's not for rent.)

I apologize

Sorry for not posting more lately. Been fairly busy then came down with the flu. So please bare with me while I recover. I'll try to post something interesting real soon.

What more could happen in 20 minutes?...

First I'd like to say that our son has always been a fairly sure-footed fella. Our house in perched on a slope so our yard is pretty steep in certain areas. But that never stopped him, not since he learned to walk. When most kids would have tumbled down the yard, he ran.

Now I know his face has had a few run-ins with the ground. Yikes boy do I know (remember I'm up to a count of 4 times now!). But really he's not toooo accident prone.

That being said, he does have his moments.

Last week the weather here was beautiful! C had gone to preschool on Thursday as usual. His buddy N was coming over and they wanted my niece to come over after school. So when I went to get C and N when preschool was out we decided to stay for the half hour and wait for M.A. and just take her home with us instead of making her ride the bus to my house.
Things were going good, but shortly after taking this wonderful shot of C running I hear him start crying and he limps his way towards me. He'd twisted his ankle.

But being the tough little nut that he is it was right back to playing for him.

So he and N and another little school buddy got on the slide so I could take some action shots. They were really cheesing it up for me. Enjoying being in the spot light. Then one (I'm not sure who the guilty one was) decided it would be a great idea to go down the slide head first.

Then this happened. Apparently the plastic slide needs a good coating of wax. C's upper body stopped short of the bottom of the slide, but well, as you can see, his feet didn't. Being the human being that I am I couldn't help but find the humour in this and started laughing. Until, that was, C's body finally made it too the bottom and he started crying because his back hurt. Ah yes, two incidents within about 10 minutes of each other. Poor kid.

Oh wait, I'm not done. Like I said, he's a tough nut so he had a bout of self pity and pain for a few minutes then was right back playing with the other boys. They decided that maybe the small slide would be a good idea instead:

So I'm snapping more shots, getting a real 'feel' for the camera ya know when C emerges from the hole at the top of the slide.

And--take a close look at the photo---notice where is knee is and where his head is in proportion to where it should be to make a successful run down a slide--he takes a head dive to the ground!! I didn't get a photo of the actual fall. And after all those accidents it may be a good thing. Amazingly he popped up off the ground, laughing and telling me how 'that one didn't even hurt'. UGH. I laughed with him while shaking my head, and putting the lens cap back on the camera.

So I'm thinkin' maybe I jinxed him in some way by having the camera there. That must be it, because really, really he is usually such a sure-footed boy.

Learning

In the past few days I've learned a few things.

1. I'm pretty positive I'm addicted to flickr.com

2. We all have our clumsy moments....even it it's a truely moment by moment by moment event

3. I'm in love with my new camera--I think it's mutual

4. I love re-connecting with family members and friends

6. and I've learned that this friggin' house does not clean its self!!!!

Experimentation

I find myself really enjoying my new camera! Over the weekend I messed around with it a bit and read some of the manual that came with it. It's so great, now if I only could devote every waking minute to becoming one with the little black beauty I would be in photo heaven.

This picture I took intrigued me a bit. I was at my friend MM's house and her son had a few toys out....I had to shoot. Well, I couldn't take anymore shots of the people there---they were getting a little tired of my camera antics. So I got down on the floor and snapped this one of a Kenworth semi. Now if you just happen to glance at this photo you might think it was a real truck. I like that. I was messing around with the macro setting and I'm liking the results.

Needless to say, this is a very fun hobby. Especially when I don't have to pay to develop a whole roll of film to find only one good photo. Now, any of you want to share your shots???