Just terribly busy and I’ve also been lounging around the house reading all day long :0) It was my hiatus from the online world I suppose. I haven’t visited my forums to catch up nor have I really scrapped. Eep! But I’m trying to get back on the wagon :0)

My mom’s surgery went well. She’s out and about now and seems just like her old self minus the hair. My brother, Johnson, went back to Afghanistan but still keeps in contact. Remy’s turning 5 this month :0( I still can’t believe it. Every day passes by quicker and quicker. I guess it’s because I’m getting older. Those days when I sat around bored all day no longer happens. Always a ton of things to do, places to go, brats, I mean, kids to feed and clean up after. It gets harder and harder to find time to do things for myself. But the kids are getting older and pretty soon I’ll have more free time. Just a sad trade-off, no more little ones but more quiet free time.

Raiden will be 2 this Summer and Kevin will be 25. We’re getting so old. I have no idea what to do for their birthdays. Something outdoor since it’s finally nice and Summer is here :0) I love it. This Summer should be fun. I’m planning on working PT at a restaurant with my bestie, Debbie. The hours and days aren’t 100% ideal for Summer but it’s okay. I can deal with it for extra spending money :0) I need some money to fund my hobbies lol.

I think I’m going to have a quarter-life crisis this Summer. Trying to figure out what I’ve accomplished so far in life and if I’m happy with the paths I’ve took. Also what I want and plan to do for the rest of my life. Why wait another 25 years to figure it out? Should be interesting.

So I haven’t been taking that many pictures since my mom has been in the hospital which was 1.5 months ago. Shocking, I know. But I did manage to get this one and I love it to pieces. Taken with my Canon 15mm fisheye 2.8 lens :0)

I’ve been meaning to blog but I’ve been more busy than usual. I have so many new photographs to share! I’ve been busy with digital scrapbooking and you can see most of my new layouts in my gallery linked above :0) I just finally got some printed and I’m impatiently waiting for them. It’s been over a week all because I wanted to save some money and chose standard shipping instead of priority. Bah. I hope the quality is good and worth the extra wait.

I’ve just been busy setting up speech lessons for Remy. Trying to wrangle Raiden because he’s a wild one. I have to set up appts. for his immunizations and get Remy into the dentist still and get his kindergarten stuff squared away. I’ve also been trying to take my photography skills to the next level so I’ve been preoccupied with that. Oh, and I’ve been trying to get back on my parents insurance since Kevin’s won’t accept me! Lastly, just family stuff has kept me on my toes.

My mom is going to have her surgery this Wednesday, April 14th. She has benign tumors in her brain that her doctors want removed. Family from Ohio came to visit this week so I’ve been on-call to be the family photographer. What’s also great is that my brother is here visiting! The army let him leave so I’m happy to see him. It’s just been so long that my brothers and I have gotten together under one roof. Sad. But I got photos of all of us so I’m ecstatic to scrap that one for the books!

Today, I got the sweetest photos ever. Every time I look at them, it makes my heart melt. Yes, it has to do with my boys but they are not “technically correct” or whatever. It’s just the moment I captured, the emotion conveyed. It’s like actually seeing how everyone felt at that time in that house :0)

I ordered lots of pictures from today for my mom and the rest of the family – my brother’s dad and my aunt. But I think these two, my mom will enjoy tremendously :0) I hope to have them and show her when she wakes up from the hospital. You can see my dad drinking beer in the background lol.

I don’t think I’ve gotten a family photo ever. Our family is a bit dysfunctional so there have been plenty of ups and downs like with every family but seriously, I don’t think we’ve ever had a family photo so I love, love, love these.

And I love Kevin for learning how to BBF on my camera (back button focusing) and being able to take these pictures for me. I don’t think he knows how much it means to me given that my mom is going to have serious surgery soon. I didn’t even think to bring a tripod so this was a priceless gift.

He also got me another great gift. He recently bought me the Canon 15mm fish-eye lens that should be coming later this week. Hopefully it’ll get here soon, the guy shipped it FedEx. *Sighs* Something else to impatiently wait for.

All the pictures posted today are basically unedited. Minor adjustments in LR, ran it through some noiseware in PS, cropped and then sharpened for web. That’s it. So yes, I know some things are off like skin here and there but I don’t care lol.

So…if you are still reading this far, thanks. Please keep my mom in your thoughts and prayers. Until next time :0)

It caught a virus a while back so we sent it in. Well, it came back crappier than before minus the virus. I can’t run Lightroom or Photoshop at the same time. It has dual intel core duo processors! But it craps out on me all the time. I have to shut it down and restart it the bad way. You know, just press the power button until it shuts off and then pray it’ll come back on when you reboot lol. Back to the shop it goes. Let’s all hope it gets junked out so I can splurge on a new purdy little desktop. I don’t know if I really want to jump ship and get an iMac right now. It would blow my budget and I kind of want to be not broke right now. At least I have my old iMac to hold me over so I’ll still be around. What would I do if I couldn’t scrap or edit photos? I shudder just thinking about it.

On a semi-great news, I ordered a new phone last night and it’s shipping today. I can’t wait to get it. I had a nice one but then Raiden drooled in it. Go figure. Then Kevin bought me a cheap pre-paid one that was $15 and I hate it but it works. So I got the Nokia Nuron. Hopefully I love it, it’s brand new and I’ve only seen videos of it lol. Someone please tell Raiden that this is not a toy so he’s not allowed to drool on or in it. I’ve been wanting to buy a new phone since February but had to wait until mid-March to get to the 2-year renewal time. But ugh, the “deals” weren’t such good deals. Don’t you hate that? But all in all, I got this for $30 so I’m happy. Just had to upgrade our plan but it’s not bad.

So I’ve added my gallery link at the top. It’s ONE of my galleries but that’s my main one. I’m still working on the flash banner to show more than just 4 lovely photos. I’m lazy. I’ve been spending all my free time (and cleaning, laundry and dishes time) on scrapping layouts. What can I say? Photography and digital scrapbooking go hand-in-hand and they are very addicting.

Anyways, more pictures to share :0) Remy is almost 5. I know, I do not feel like I’m old enough to have a 5 year old. Especially one who’s going to be attending kindergarten soon! He’s still behind on speech a little and we’re contemplating on whether holding him back so he can be an old 5 year old vs. a young 5 year old when starting. But he’s so full of personality and attitude. Oh, the attitude. It’s like battling myself and neither one of us wants to back down. He’s literally the clone of me. What’s sad is I looked boyish when I was little (I blame it on the infamous Asian bowl-like  hair-cut) but he looks beautiful. He has been mistaken for a girl a lot of times especially with long hair. We’ve since cut it lol, but it’s still long. He’s got the bangs I’ve always wanted haha. It looks good on him. Sighs. I can tell we’ll be batting away the girls with him. He’s the sensitive one, Raiden, however is the 100% all-boy child.

Lately, Raiden has been making funny faces at the camera. I think he’s trying to smile but be funny at the same time. Well, he accomplishes it. These photos make me laugh so much. I’m definitely going to have to scrap them.

He’s the funny one, the one who’s all-boy. He likes being thrown up in the air and likes being defiant. He’s so smart. I knew that subsequent children tend to learn faster because you learn from your mistakes the first time around LOL but they also have an older role model to learn from. Man, he’s just a non-stop learning force. He’s saying new phrases every day. He knows so many body features (mouth, nose, eyes, ears, head, belly, butt, feet and pee-pee LOL!) Oh, gosh do I have to pull him away from Remy when they argue. Yes, pull him away because Remy knows better not to hit his younger brother. But this little guy tackles like a football player and he tries to bite! Feisty little one. But he’s truly 100% a mommy’s boy :0)

And lastly, my new Kelly Moore bag. I’m beginning to love it. It wasn’t love at first sight as it was with my medium Jill-e bag but it’s growing on me a lot. A fellow CT member, Renee, made this gorgeous layout about her epiphanie bag :0) So I wanted to follow her footsteps with my new bag. But I have two bags so I just recently took a photo of all my gear (because I’m nerdy) and I will be making a layout with that too lol.

Beautiful isn’t it?! I went back and forth and back and forth on whether to get gray, black or jade croc. But I went with black because black matches everything :0)

Anyways, off to scrap since the kids are napping!