Shake it, Just Shake it, Shake it Like a Polaroid Picture

I totally forgot I have this fabulous iPhone app called ShakeItPhoto. I've been pulling it out lately and using it to catch some fun every-day pix. I like how it takes a basic iPhone photo and spruces it up a bit, giving it a fun vintage Polaroid look.

We've had a CRAZY couple of weeks lately. We bought a house, packed up our current house, switched over the lease, utilities, internet to the new tenants, put all our stuff in our garage. ALL in the space of about 3 weeks. And I was sick for about a week of that time. My wonderful husband took care of me & Sophie and packed during her nap times. And we moved out! (Oh and Sophie has been teething all this time too! :)

We are headed to Colorado tomorrow to house-sit for our friend's neighbours and visit our old stomping ground and all our buddies and we'll move in when we get back. The funnest part about Colorado will be introducing Sophie to all our friends. We figured that since John works from home, he can also work from anywhere, so have decided to have an extended visit.

In the midst of all that craziness, we've had some sweet moments together these last few weeks:

Hitting some warm spring days and putting Sophie in her cute summer clothes:

Hanging out & giggling at my dad's dog, Scooter, after one of our first meals outdoors:

Sophie hanging out with us at Yama Sushi/napping in the car after a run of errands:

Having fun in the car on the way to Sacramento today:

My Dad the Photographer

I never knew this until recently, but when my dad was finished with high school, he told his dad he wanted to be a photographer. The dream was never realised, but was reignited of late as he went to a photography workshop here in Redding. When I bought my Canon 5D, he bought my old Sony A300 DSLR with two of the lenses. It has been fun to watch him begin to grow in photography and step out in this area of creativity.

He recently went to the Philippines and took some amazing pictures of some kids whose faces they painted. I edited some for him and wanted to showcase them on my blog as an encouragement for him to continue to pursue photography.

Group Shot!

I was asked to take a photo of my dad's revival group at his school. A revival group is a smaller group of 60 or so from his School of Supernatural Ministry, here in Redding, California. It was my first time doing a big group shot like this. I had completely lost my voice that day, so my husband and awesome co-creator/photographer came with me, along with our baby girl, Sophie, to be my voice and to help direct when my voice could not.

It was a good experience to try and do a big group shot. There are so many people to direct! You really have to keep your eye on everything and everyone. You can definitely easily miss out on some details. We also had a time constraint which meant we couldn't get the best light outside so I just decided to do an inside pic. It was also easier to do it inside since everyone was already together having just had a meeting.

Anyway, here's the final result:

Weather You Will or Weather You Won't

I don't know if I've always been this way, but I know that since living in Colorado with it's average of 300 sunny days a year, I've loved weather. Storms, hail, rain, clouds, wind, sleet, snow, drizzle, clouds, you know, weather. I just find weather variety so much more interesting than "Oh, it's another sunny day again" over and over again! I know some people will hate me for writing that, but it's true! The ironic thing is that we moved from Colorado to Redding, California, which, according to one website, has 250 sunny days a year! I just can't get away from the sun, apparently.

It took me a while to figure out why I'm just not a fan of the sun (other than the fact that I hate getting sunburnt and I hate being hot). I realised that, after years of growing up in England, which gets 150-190 days of rain a year, sun makes me antsy. See, with so much rain in England, a sunny day becomes an occasion. You go for a picnic, a walk, a bike ride. You go to the market or sunbathe, or dare to take a dip in an icy outdoor pool. You drive to Brighton and walk along the sea. You drive to the cliffs and walk along the sea. You take a day-trip to London and just walk, walk, walk, soaking up the sun. You NEVER sit inside on a sunny day. That would be unthinkable. What a waste it would be! Do you get my point?

For the first few months in Colorado, I would wake up every sunny day thinking I HAD TO GO OUTSIDE to make the most of the sunny day. And since I was on my own, waiting for my work permit, and my husband was off working in Denver every day, it was hard to come up with fun things to do to spend an entire day outside by myself. So, I would stay inside. And I could never quite rest, having this ingrained thought within me that I was just wasting my day!

When I finally figured all this out, I felt so much better. And I do much better with sunny days now and don't get quite so freaked out. I do, however, still just love rainy days because I can rest inside and get all cosy and feel so peaceful and relaxed. Rainy days just don't stress me out like sunny days do!

We had a small thunderstorm last night while it was still sunny outside - hail and a double rainbow and everything. Tried to catch some pix of the torrential rain outside our house, however, it was raining so hard that I had to stay as much under our patio roof as possible to keep my camera dry, so I didn't get a lot of great shots. Also discovered it's hard to take a photo of a rainbow? If I slowed the shutter speed and upped the ISO, it was too bright to catch the rainbow against the whiteness of the sky, so I had to take the pictures kinda dark. I was able to brighten the sky in Photoshop without brightening the rainbow (LOVE editing in Photoshop), but it would have been nice to get a clear, bright rainbow (I mean, it was a double one, after all). Any thoughts on photographing rainbows???

I Heart Faces: Motherhood

Teething sucks...

We've had a poor teething baby on our hands for almost two weeks now. And surprisingly enough, STILL NO TEETH! (Apparently it can take forever.) Fortunately it's been letting up a little bit this last week and hasn't been as intense as the first week. But, yeah, teething pretty much sucks. Especially since most of the baby Tylenol and Advil are full of nasty ingredients that are just not good for babies (butyl paraben and high fructose corn syrup being two of those).

She's been such a trooper, but we're ready to have our baby Sophie back. She's just not as smiley as normal and is much more sensitive and fussy. She also got a rash on both her cheeks and a super gross runny nose. :( She's still giving us smiles and giggles, just not as many as our usually happy and easy-going Sophie normally give us. On the plus side she's even more cuddly, which is really fun.

We ran into somebody last week who told us that his kid got 12 teeth all at once, and that they actually liked it that way because it meant that the teething was all concentrated into one short space of time, instead of spread out over ages. Since then, I've had two dreams that Sophie's woken with multiple teeth showing in her mouth. Some have been all the way out, like they just grew all the way out over night, and others have been just starting to show. For some reason though, they have always been full grown adult teeth. So weird. It does look like potentially there are a few pushing through, so we'll see (definitely the bottom two as they're nice and swollen).

We've finally been able to get her back on her nights again after traveling and the intense teething last week. Last night she slept all the way through until 5:30, which she hasn't done in a while and it was nice to see that maybe the craziness has subsided somewhat (we had a night last week where she woke up every 5-15 minutes until about 4 in the morning - that was one crazy night).

Anyway, all that to say, teething is no fun, and seems to last forever (until they're two?). Still waiting to see those little white teeth peeking out through her gums.

I was able to snap some pix of her little teething expressions:

Mummy, my bottom gum feels weird:

I can feel something there with my tongue:

It hurts :(

But I'll still smile at ya: