I Am A Leaf On The Wind: April 2010

Since getting back from Maine with a bunch of pictures to play with, I've been spending a lot of time working on my pictures. It's so much fun. I seriously spend pretty much all day doing this, only taking a break to eat or do something else when my eyes start to hurt from staring at the computer. I'll post some of the pictures that I've been working on, but I also wanted to mention one picture in particular that I've worked on.

A couple years ago, we got to go to Sadie's blessing and to a family gathering later on. I brought my camera and had fun taking pictures. Well, I happened to take a picture of Ashton's grandma holding Sadie. I loved the picture and wanted to make it special. I tried various techniques using Gimp (a free photoshop-type program, which I love), but couldn't figure out how to make it work to my liking and gave up. Well, the other day my screen saver was on and the picture popped up. I remembered the disappointment I had in not being able to do what I wanted with it and started thinking of how to make it work. It wasn't until yesterday, while working on some other pictures, that I had an idea to use the same techniques that I was using on other pictures (I'm not telling you what that was so I don't ruin the surprise). It took a little bit of time, but I was happy with the end result. As always, even though I thought it was good, I wanted to make sure that it really was good and showed it to Ashton when he got home from work. He loved it. So, here is that picture and some of the other ones I took and worked on from Maine.

Let me know what you think!

So, I've fallen behind on blogging. Mostly for a lack of time recently more than anything. This month has been a bit nuts for me.

A couple of weeks after moving into our new place, I left to go to Maine to help my brother Jacob and his family get settled into their new house. The trip out in and of itself was eventful since I missed my connection by a few minutes (thanks to a combination of snow in Colorado while trying to fly out and having to go from concourse C to F in 10 minutes) so I ended up having to sit in the airport for 8 hours while waiting for the next flight. No, I'm not kidding. I was there for 8 hours. Good thing I had brought some books. I was very grateful when I finally got to get on the flight and land in Maine.

There was still construction going on in Jacob and Heather's house while they were trying to get settled, so that made things interesting. Although I got a chance to paint and peel wallpaper off, the wallpaper part isn't always a whole lot of fun when it won't come off easily, those tasks were made all the more difficult while trying to keep little hands out of the paint and away from the putty knife. I didn't think that gouges in the wall would make anyone happy. It's also hard to convince a 2 year old that the new toy she discovered, namely the spray bottle filled with water and vinegar, doesn't need to be used constantly. Although the girls were dedicated to taking wallpaper off, that is until there were only little pieces to be peeled off. I had a great time though. It's always fun to play with the girls and see how big they've gotten since the last time I was out there, although, that part is a little sad too because they get so big so fast. I was definitely tired and ready to sleep for days on end when it came time for me to fly back home.

The trip back out was also stressful since my connection times were a bit short and I had two of them. I made all of my flights though, thanks to making up some lost time in the air on the first flight, and landed on time in Colorado.

That trip alone was enough traveling for me to last a little while, but the next day, Ashton and I left to drive to Utah for Lance's graduation. It was a little strange to unpack some of my clothes only to leave some of them in the suitcase, and pack a few different ones. It was nice to see everyone though even if it was only for a short while since we left Saturday to drive back home. I was happy though to get home, unpack all of my stuff, and put away the suitcase. Living out of a suitcase is fine for a little while, but it's so nice when you don't have to do that anymore. Ashton was also nice enough while I was in Maine to transport the empty boxes and the boxes that were only partially unpacked back to the storage unit. So when I got home, I was pleasantly surprised to not see boxes everywhere.

And of course, I have pictures! What kind of aunt would I be if I didn't take pictures of my nieces? Although, I missed taking pictures of some of my other nephews and nieces when they came up to visit. I missed the boat on that one. Anyways, here's a sampling of the pictures I took. As always, I took more than I can post.