My bloggy friend Melissa (aka The Blogger Formerly Known as Chickadee), is doing a series on getting the most out of one's camera. I'm not necessarily planning to participate. After all, the series is called "Using Your Camera Without Reading the Manual," and I like reading the manual. Okay, granted, in 2-1/2 years of owning my Olympus E-500 dSLR, I still haven't finished reading the manual. But it's kind of big and there's a lot there and I forget a lot of it so I have to keep backtracking and... but I do read it. Sometimes. So I don't need this series, but I find it interesting. (Actually I find nearly everything TBFKAC aka Melissa posts interesting because she is a good writer and a good photographer, but that's neither here nor there.)

TBFKAC's first installment in the series dealt with "moving out of the green zone". You know, as in putting your camera dial on something other than that green AUTO setting? (Actually, it's blue on my camera.) When I commented on something in that post, TBFKAC asked whether I was planning to participate in the meme or class or whatever you want to call it. The Using Your Camera thingy. My reply was in essence, "No, I am way beyond that." Which sounds arrogant, I suppose, but it's true. I rarely if ever use AUTO. Who buys a dSLR and then keeps it on auto?

(By the way-- chasing a little rabbit here-- everytime Hubz uses my camera, he asks, "Where's the Auto setting? Is it this A here?" No honey, the A is the Aperture-Priority setting -my favorite, by the way, and you really ought to try it. "No, I just want Auto. Where is it?" Um, doofusbrain honey, that would be this little blue word here that says "Auto". It's the same place it was the last 73 times you asked. "Oh. Well, I never see that because it's blue." This conversation never fails to amuse me.)

Anyway... out of idle curiosity, I stopped by TBFKAC (okay, that's getting annoying) Melissa's blog yesterday to see her okay-post-your-pictures-now post. In it she noted that "If you're way beyond the automatic settings, feel free to join in too." Huh. Coincidental wording, or ya think she was talking to me?

Well, I am usually too lazy to jumps through the hoops required to post pictures, and I am really bad at keeping up with memes or whatever you want to call them. So I am not promising to participate every time. But Melissa is my bloggy friend and friends humor each other, so what the heck. I'll participate this time. But I really don't have any great pics from the last few days, so I'm going to post some I took in June that go along with the theme. Also, I am going to be too lazy and/or arrogant to nab that cute little "Get the Picture" button.

Yeah, that one. I changed my mind.

(And yes, I know I'm a day late. That is to be expected. My epitaph will no doubt read, "I would have died sooner, but I didn't get around to it." Or perhaps just, "Sorry I'm late again.")

Okay then. Melissa encouraged her photo-tutees to experiment this week with some of the other auto settings this week, such as portrait, landscape, action, macro, or the "scene" modes. Now while I rarely use straight Auto, I do often use the selective auto modes. Especially portrait, because I like that wide-open aperture look. And although my personal challenge to myself the last 6 months has been to stop using them and use primarily the "creative" or manual modes, I do still use them. Just not as often. Well, unless I am being lazy or... okay, I still use them a lot. So can post a picture or two or forty-six using some of these settings.

I don't use my "Scene" modes very often, but I do like the Sunset mode. I took some sunset pictures at Lake Michigan last month and I used that setting. However, I forgot to use it for the first picture. I'm not sure what my dial was on, but it wasn't sunset. Here's what I got:

Kinda blah, right? Now here's one taken with sunset mode:

See the difference?

(Skip this paragraph if you are happy on auto or barely out of it or not really into photography. I'm adding this next part for those who, like me, are working on using the manual modes. It's possible --I'm not certain-- that the picture above was taken while not technically in sunset mode but still using the same settings. That's because I had a brilliant thought while sitting on the beach with my camera. Since I am trying to train myself to use manual modes more often, why not put the camera on sunset mode, compose the shot without actually taking it, make note of all the settings the camera decided upon --the shutter speed, the aperture, the white balance, the ISO-- then put the camera on manual and mimic the settings the camera used? That way I learn what settings work best for sunsets and I get used to making those adjustments myself. So I did that for some of my shots. Whether this was one of them, I couldn't say.)

By the way, here's the same shot, adjusted on the computer for contrast and cropped differently:

I know that has nothing to do with "using your camera", but it was kind of hard to post the other and not show you the "final version". And I have many more sunset shots, but I'm going to move along.

I have a great action shot from that same day at the beach, which I'm going to save for a "Wordless Wednesday" tomorrow. (Or Thursday or whenever I get around to it.. .) Because it's been a month already and I am old, I do not remember whether I took it using an auto mode or a manual mode because I did some of both. I can tell you this, though: when I do use an auto mode for action shots, it is often not "action" mode (the little running man on the dial) but portrait mode (the face). I find I get better focus that way, and because the portrait mode uses a wide-open aperture, the shutter speed is usually fast enough to stop the action.

Here's an action shot taken in portrait mode. (I am fairly sure about this because this pic was taken less than two weeks ago and the memory has not yet expired. Don't ask me about it a couple days from now, however; I'll look at you glassy-eyed and go, "Huh? How would I know? That was two weeks ago.")

On my camera, little-running-man mode doesn't give me any focus points, which is the main reason I don't care for it. Portrait mode does the trick nicely for a shot like this. I set my focus point on Spaz. He was a big target, so it wasn't difficult to keep him in focus even though it was an action shot. I think the camera did a pretty good job of stopping the ball in action here. The kid in the background is bothersome to me, but apart from that, I like this shot. (This photo, by the way, was framed and given to Hubz for his birthday the other day.)

Well, Melissa said to "tell us how you got your picture so we'll know how to do it too." That I have done, but now I feel like I'm the one trying to give a tutorial. Sorry about that, Melissa. I knew I wouldn't be a very good "student", but you asked.

That's more than enough from me for tonight. I'm off to get tomorrow's post ready... seeing as it's actually tomorrow already.

G is for Guess What I Did a Couple Saturdays Ago?

I was so eager to post these pictures right after the event... and then I fell asleep in my chair after uploading them, and then we had family coming over for mother's day, and then there were all sorts of things to be busy with, and that was the end of that lovely thought.

But I vowed that I would post them for you, my very bloggy friends, and so I am.

On a rainy Saturday morning, the ninth of May, my husband, younger kids, parents, and I sat in bleachers in a college gymnasium all dressed in our Sunday finery and watched eagerly for this:

Or more specifically, for this:

(Sorry the pictures aren't so great. High ISO, low shutter speed, and all that. Not sure why it didn't occur to me to bring the monopod for stability.)

And so we watched, and we sat, and we listened.

Because it all led to this:

And then they sat back down and the tassels were moved and then it was this:

And finally, this:

Are you catching the significant happening here?

He's. Wearing. A. Tie.

Before you go thinking that that isn't very significant, I should note that the last time I saw this kid --excuse me, I mean this young man-- in a tie was 2005. And I'm pretty sure the last time before that was 1998. (This is true; I am not making it up.)

So there you have it. T is for Tie.

Oh wait. The tie isn't what it was all about. Okay, I have it now:

G is for Graduate.

COLLEGE Graduate.

Yes, on May 9, I became the proud mother of a college graduate. WOW.

Oh, and the tie, we figure, was a requirement for his particular degree. Shouldn't tie ownership be a pre-requisite for everyone recieving a degree in Business Administration?

(And now you know how Biz got his blog name. It was the college major.)

I should add, however, that Biz decided at some point that he hates business administration. But rather than change his major, he went for two minors-- finance, which he likes, and English, which he loves. Like Cheez, he enjoys writing a great deal. (My kids, enjoying writing. Imagine that.) Also like Cheez, he really doesn't know what he wants to do. His required internship this past semester was actually not in the business administration field, as would normally be required, but in the publishing field. His advisor, believing in the importance of following what one really enjoys, made an exception for him. He loves it but isn't sure he wants to sit behind a desk all his life.

Tentative plans for the fall include heading to Eastern Europe to teach English through an ESL program. Paid adventure, he figures. I'm not sure he plans to pack the tie. And after that, well, who knows? He doesn't.

But whatever he ends up doing, he's given himself a good start in life. It hasn't always been a smooth road. I'm really proud of him for hanging in there and finishing out his degree.

Congratulations, Jared!!!

Cornerstone University, Class of 2009

Back to the ABC Photos, and posting "N" early in honor of World Autism Awareness Day...

N is for Napping Nephew

Of all the pictures I have taken in my life, this ranks among my very favorites.
I love the snuggly blanket, the bare toes, the peaceful countenance.
I love the way he looks just like any other kid.

This is my beautiful 10-year-old nephew DJ.
Like most kids, he's a little angel when he's asleep.
Like most kids, when he's awake, it's a different story.
Except that DJ isn't like most kids. His is a different story.

At Grandma's
he doesn't run to the playroom with his cousins.
He doesn't laugh and shout with them.
He doesn't even talk to them.
He stays with the adults
walking in circles
jumping up and down
hanging out by the food.
When I say hello to him, he doesn't answer
but he might grab the chip out of my hand
take a bite out of it, then give it back
with a mischievous grin.
I think that means hello.

So many cousins
playing, laughing, giggling
coming down the stairs all decked out
in dress-up clothes from the playroom trunk
sitting around the table on the porch
playing badminton in the yard
opening presents in the den.
DJ doesn't join them.
DJ isn't like them.

Yet he is
every bit as precious
as any of them
especially
in the sight of God
his maker.

 Pray for Autism Now

When we bought our house 3-1/2 years ago, I envisioned my two youngest children spending lazy afternoons at pond's edge hunting for all manner of creepy-crawlies and things that go "ribbit".

Didn't happen. Oh, for a week or two, maybe, and then the novelty wore off. Apparently my children suffer from a deplorable lack of curiosity when it comes to pond life.

Like any good CM-ish homeschool mom, I suggested we get out some books about ponds and frogs and insects and do some "pond science". "Yuck," they responded, which was actually a pretty accurate reflection of my own enthusiasm about the matter, so I can't say my heart was broken. Idealism about CM-type nature studies and taking advantage of one's surroundings aside, my own bent tends more towards, say, sitting inside making salt-dough maps of Narnia. And that's exactly what we did that fall when we could have been out exploring the pond.

It hasn't changed much in the intervening years. To be sure, we've spent a homeschool afternoon or two out the pond, but we were reading history and coloring maps, not looking for frogs.  Despite my good intentions, I think the closest we've gotten to studying nature outdoors was the time I checked some books about insects out of the library and convinced the kids that it would be fun to lay on the trampoline while we read them.

Pathetic. Very pathetic indeed. My children apparently take after me in that they prefer reading about imaginary and past worlds to investigating the one in which they live. While they do enjoy playing outdoors, their enjoyment does not always extend to exploring their environs-- and when it does, the neighbors' woods and the brush between our properties tends to hold much more fascination for them than the pond. So much for that whole catching frogs vision.

But then there are Other People's Children. And when Other People's Children come over and the weather is nice, quite often the first thing they do is gravitate toward the pond, pulling my own children along with them. "Let's catch frogs!" the OPCs will inevitably shout, and it suddenly dawns on my children that catching frogs might indeed be a rather enjoyable pursuit.

And so it was that I captured, on "film", my son and his favorite cousin down at the pond hunting for frogs one warm Sunday afternoon last May.

Nice pictures of kids, but this is supposed to be about frogs. Have you seen any frogs yet? They didn't see many either. That's why this post really should be called "F is For Frog-Hunting".

They did manage to get a single frog, who was promptly named Fred and given an apartment under an overturned basket. 

That's all I've got.  One measly picture, and poor Fred isn't even in focus. I think there were other attempts, but they were worthy only of the trash bin. As I recall, I had a lot of trouble getting the camera to focus between the basket slats on Fred. I don't think it occured to me to try a manual focus.

Apparently in addition to not being a very good CM-er, I'm also not a very good frogtographer.

But the frog-hunting pictures, they are fun, no? And that's what the whole frog hunt thing is about anyway. It's not about the frog, it's about the pursuit. It's about the fun.

So there we go. Never mind Fred the Frog. F is for Fun.

For more of this week's A B See posts, visit the HSBA Post.

E is for...

Edison, perhaps?

(Edison's the one in the background, by the way. In case you were wondering which was who.)

Or Earth?

(In case you hadn't figured it out, this isn't an actual cross-section of the earth; it's just a model.)

Those could be my E pictures, but they aren't. They're just teasers for upcoming posts. (Yeah, I know, I know. But I have really good intentions and the earth one is almost all written already, so chances are pretty good.)

E is actually for...

Well, wait, let me back up here.

My original intention had been to do E is for English muffin Egg sandwiches. December and the first part of January had found the kids and me in a twice-ish-weekly routine of fixing egg sandwiches together for breakfast-- Spaz cooking the eggs, Fuzz manning the toaster, and yours truly taking care of the bacon and cheese. The resulting breakfast made for a great start to our day and was especially nice on a Monday morning. Because, you know, Mondays are Mondays and we do whatever we can to help a Monday get off to a good start.

So I had a picture in my mind, though not in my camera, for E: a plate topped with a delectable freshly made Eggmuffin Sandwich, complete with lightly melted cheese and succulent, crispy bacon, on the kitchen counter with an artistically out-of-focus toaster in the background. And perhaps a few shots of the kitchen crew in action.

Alas, one morning-- a Monday morning, of course-- Spaz overcooked the eggs a bit. We had a major meltdown, and I'm not talking about the provolone. The breakfast sandwiches were RUINED!, of course, and Didn't Taste Good At All! and made him feel Sick to His Stomach! and possibly even Incapable of Doing Schoolwork! And once Spaz gets those sorts of ideas in his head, then the whole whatever-caused-it, in this case egg sandwiches, is forevermore tainted and becometh an object of scorn rather than affection.

In other words, he didn't like egg sandwiches anymore. Before long, Fuzz decided that she too was tired of them, and I never did get that picture.

So much for E is for Egg Sandwiches. So much for a Monday morning picker-upper. So much for bribing encouraging my kids out of bed at the oh-so-early hour of 8:30 am.

Not to worry about that last one, however. I already had a Bribing Motivational mechanism in place, and still do. It's called a digital timer, better known as The Crucial Item Which No ADD Parent of an ADD Child Should Be Without. But of course, a timer is not a motivator unless there is a reward or a consequence behind it. And that brings us to our E.

Or rather, our EE.

EE, you see, stands for Electronic Entertainment at our house. That is, TV, movies, computer games, and XBox.

Thus, E is for EE Chart.

Each of those little boxes you see there represents one "EE ticket", as we call them, which is good for 15 minutes of EE time. And each of those tickets has to be earned.

The first one is earned by completing BBTs (Before Breakfast Things), breakfast, and ABTs (After Breakfast Things, but you were probably astute enough to have figured that out) within a 50-minute time frame.  The goal is 9:50 am, but we are not always consistent about wake-up time, hence the legal requirement is "50 minutes after we finish devotions". That's where the timer comes in VERY handy. The second ticket is earned by completing math, writing, spelling, and piano practice by noon. (Yeah, I know, this is a late schedule, and I'd really like to accomplish more than that by noon. However, this is how it is for now.) Of course, grace is given if something is taking longer than expected and dilly-dallying has not been a factor. The third is earned by completing all chores and schoolwork by dinnertime. I recently added, on a trial basis, a fourth ticket for showing good attitude and kindness throughout the day, but I'm not sure I'm going to keep it. (Those things previously were requisites for earning ANY ticket and I'll probably go back to that.)

The system isn't perfect, but I am learning that sometimes good enough is... well, good enough. Our EE chart has worked wonders for my kids' motivation. It is the nag so that I don't have to be. And I like that.

Now. Speaking of getting things done on time, yes, I have fallen behind on my A B See posts. (On posting in general, actually.) And here I was actually going to start doing two or more letters a week so that I could finish before July. Not happening, at least at this point. I'm actually going backwards. Oh well.

E is for Exorbitant Essay. This being a Photo meme, I could try doing Photo posts instead of Photo Plus Lots of Yak posts. That might help.

Let's just hope no one in my family decides that I have to earn "EE tickets" by getting my work done on time. Because I'm pretty sure they'd consider blogging to be "EE", in which case I'm afraid you'd never hear from me again.

PS- Yes, I did write this on Sunday but dated it for Friday. Because I wanted to. Because I'm delusional enough to think that I might actually get one of my other posts-in-progress out today and I didn't want them to be dated the same day. Plus that way it doesn't look as though I went a whole week without posting. That's all.

For more of this week's A B See posts, go to the HSBA Post.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to get this next A B See installment up.  (Besides the fact that I had it very nearly finished when my computer froze up and LOST IT ALL just as I was being summoned back out of blogland to the duties of mommyhood, but we'renotgoingtotalkaboutthatrightnow.)

D was kind of a no-brainer.  Unlike C, there is not a plethora of wonderful things that begin with the letter D.  Decadently Delicious Doughnuts came to mind, of course, especially raspberry jelly-filled ones with plain or powdered sugar on top.  (Not frosting.  Glaze is OK, but frosting utterly ruins a jelly Doughnut.)  I really could not consider a photo post about Doughnuts, however, because if ever I have one, I eat it before I even think about taking a picture of it.

D could also have been for Dining room or Desk, especially since I Dramatically Defied the Demons of Depression a couple of Saturdays ago by rearranging the one and cleaning out the other.  Really, I Did-- but how exciting are pictures of my Dining room and Desk?  Not very.  (What was exciting was finding $295 when I cleaned out my Desk.  Hmmm... D is for Dollars?)

Nope, Doughnuts, Dining rooms, Desks, and even Dollars weren't going to cut it.  It really came Down to only two contenders.  The runner-up, and the picture I was really tempted to use, was "D is for David", my 10-year-old nephew who is one of God's precious and very "special" kids.  David will get a post of his own sometime, but not today.

Today the honor has to go, in all fairness, to... 

... the DOG.

Because the Cat was the star last week, and I will not, shall not be accused of favoritism among siblings.  (The dog and cat do in fact get along like a pair of siblings.  Meaning that they chase each other around and get in each others' faces and make lots of noise and annoy the heck out each other and me until I.can't.take.it.anymore and then, having successfully pushed all my buttons within a span of ten minutes or less, they either cuddle up together or happily ignore each other until one of them decides she is bored and the whole process begins again.)

Anyway...

This is Sydney, our 7-1/2-year-old Australian Shepherd.  I often refer to her as Dumb Dog, but she is actually quite smart, as are most of her breed.  Okay, so she tries to herd the van into the garage every time I come Down the Driveway.  That is Dumb.  Instinctive, but Dumb nonetheless.  You'd think she'd have figured out by now that running around and around a moving vehicle is a bit Dangerous to one's well-being, but no. And then there's that whole bit about having to bark loud and long at everything that moves.  That isn't exactly Dumb, but it is obnoxious.

Other than those things, and her bad habit of verbally assaulting everyone who walks into our house or even pulls into the Driveway, she really is a good Dog.  In fact, she's a great Dog.  Sydney has been part of our family since she was eight weeks old, and will be until the Day she Departs for that great Sheep Pasture in the Sky where she can herd to her heart's Delight.

Here she is, aDoring her favorite person, Dad (who looks as though he ought to have been brushing his own hair rather than hers).

I've already mentioned that Sydney considers it her God-given duty to bark at anything and everyone who dares to invade our territory or even pass by.  Her other job is to follow us around and remain within tripping-over proximity at all times.  It's enough to Drive one batty.  And when we settle down somewhere, well, so Does she.  Like, right at our feet.

Tripping potential aside, you can't get TOO mad about that.

I did not manage to get any A B See posts up in time for Friday's link-up, but better late than never, I suppose.

"C" is a hard one- not because there are not enough things that begin with C, but because there are too many.  After all, some of the most important things in life begin with C.  Chocolate, Coffee, Computer...

And most importantly, Christ (of Course) but I don't have any photos of Jesus on my computer, which sort of eliminates Him from the running in this case.  Oh, and Children!  How Could I forget Children?  They rank right up there as some of the most important things in my life, somewhere just barely above Chocolate and Coffee and below Computer.  Or so you'd think sometimes.

Anyway... it was hard to narrow down my Choices for C photos.  It was very tempting to use this as an excuse to show you some of the Christmas pictures I'd never gotten around to posting.  Especially for highly alliterative subjects such as Christmas Cookies, Cutting the Christmas Tree, Children in Christmas Clothing, or Cute Cousins on a Couch on Christmas Eve.  It also would have been a marvelous opportunity to show you the Calligraphy at the entrance to our Church (done five years ago by yours truly and never posted here because, you know, that was old stuff by the time I started a blog).  I even thought about trying to put some of the things I'm learning in my photography class to good use by taking some artistic-ish still-lifes of the above mentioned Chocolate and Coffee.  (And of Course there's always Cheez, but since I didn't make Biz the subject of last week's post, I Couldn't very well do that.)

So with all those tempting and very viable Choices before me, what did I finally decide to go with?

Canteloupe.  Yes, you read that right: Canteloupe.  On a Counter, no less.

Because there's a story behind that Canteloupe.  Why does it look the way it does?  Why does it look as though it has been... Chewed?

Meet the Culprit:

...who Conveniently happens to be a Cat.

This is Annabel, who joined our family at the age of 11 weeks in 2006.  We already had a dog, but the dog, for all her wonderful traits, lacked the ability to climb onto the Counters and munch on things.  To make up for that woeful deficiency, we acquired for ourselves a Cat, who serves the purpose quite well, thank you very much.  And one of her favorite delicacies, as we discovered early on, is Canteloupe.  But only the rind.

This happens every time we leave a Canteloupe on the counter or anywhere else within her range.  in fact, at the moment I have a recently-purchased Canteloupe sitting in a plastic grocery bag on a bench in the kitchen.  The bag has been Chewed through, and so has the Canteloupe rind.

I also have a Couple of Chocolate bars sitting in a bag on that same bench.  Fortunately for me, the Chocolate has been left alone.  Fortunately for the Cat as well.  She Can have the Canteloupe, as long as she doesn't mess with my Chocolate.

Bananagrams!

I spotted this game in a bookstore last November and knew I had to get it for Cheez for Christmas.  Sitting next to her on the couch, Biz recognized the game as soon as she opened it.  "Oh, I've played that!  It's fun!"  he said, and began describing the play as Hubz & I chuckled to ourselves.  We gave him the go-ahead to open up his own package and...

It's a portable, fast-paced Scrabble on Steroids.  What more could an avowed Word Nerd and an English Minor ask for?

There wasn't room in the Christmas budget this year for the usual family game.  But I knew that Cheez' Bananagrams could do double duty...

This is a fun game.  Of course, it might not be quite so fun if, say, one person tries to make a word that is entirely *ahem* unacceptable "because it's the only way I can use up my tiles", thereby causing another person, quite possibly the parental unit of the female persuasion, to be upset for approximately a day and a half.  Nor would it be quite so enjoyable if there is one participant who Will Not Shut Up throughout the entire game nor cease to touch other players' letter tiles, exasperating another player to the point that tiles are flung across the table.  NOT that those sorts of things would ever happen at my house, mind you.  I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, B is for Buttons that can be easily pushed Bananagrams.

(Oh, and in case you wondered what happened to my plan to post both alphabetically and randomly every week... welllll... On second thought, I decided to keep things simple.  The Perfectly Pleasing Pics of Pipecleaner People, Pajama Pants, and Pepperoni Pizza Pockets will just have to wait a few weeks.)

Brought to you by...
 
A B See Photo Meme
For more of this week's entries, go here.  (Hopefully Mr Linky will be up- it keeps disappearing.)

A B See Photo Meme

I know, "A is for Apple" is SO lame.  I could have done "A is for Annabel" (our cat).  Or "A is for Apples To Apples" (a favorite family game).  Or "A is for ADHD" (Spaz doing schoolwork).  Or "A is for Agitation" (me trying to get Spaz to do schoolwork).

But, darn it, I wanted to use these Apple pictures.

A is for Archives, too.  These pics are from October of 2007 when Spaz, Fuzz & I went apple picking.  They've actually been posted already, but not necessarily in exactly this form.

Howzabout Artsified Apples?

Okay, that's Part One for this week's ABSee Photo Meme.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll get my non-alphabetically-ordered Random Picture(s) from the week posted.  I'm doing "P" & "M".  (Don't hold your breath.)

Okay, I'm going to take a stab at joining the A B See Photo Meme. 

Y'all know how wonderful I am about following up with memes, tags, awards, and all that good stuff, so we'll see how it goes.  Here are the rules: 

1. Post a photo for each letter of the alphabet of anything that starts with that letter.

2. Write a few short explanatory, quirky, or witty sentences about each photo you post.

3. Only post one photo at a time (the meme can take as long as you want - a month, three months, whatever… you aren’t being graded). You can link them later in a blog post so they are listed in order if you are the list-making type.

4. If you want to join the meme, sign the Mr. Linky and use the “A B See Photo-Meme” graphic in your sidebar. Link your graphic to this post and announce that you will be joining us.

5. When you post a photo, come by and add it to the weekly A B See linky that we’ll be posting on Foto Fridays for those who have some alphabetical photo to share. You can sign it each week as many times as you have posted photos - one time for each photo linked post. Make sure you link back to the HSBA on your posts, too - so others can come and join the linky.

So... Because I think way too much about everything, I thought to myself, "Hmmm."  (I always think "Hmmm" first.)  "Hmmm.  Do I have to do them in alphabetical order?  Do I want to do them in alphabetical order or randomly?  Should I post photos from my archives?  It could be a good excuse for posting some old pics I never got around to posting before.  On the other hand, it would also be good to look for things to photograph each week instead of using photos I've already taken."  And then I thought, "This could be a fun thing for Fuzz to do.  Should I have her do it instead?  If so, shall I make it a school assignment or an option?  Should I have her do it in alphabetical order or let her decide?"

Toldja I think too much.  And the danger of thinking too much is that usually I think about something so much that I never come to a decision about it and therefore don't actually end up doing it.

Not so this time.  I have decided.  The answer is... 'yes'.  I will post photos alphabetically and randomly.  I will post photos from my archives and take new ones.  More specifically, alphabetically from my archives and in random order from each week, with the latter occasionally by Fuzz.  Two every week, or more.  That's the plan, Stan.

Oh, stop rolling your eyes at me.

Yes, I know.  I have the plan, but whether I will actually keep up on it is another matter.  I have very good intentions, but we all know which road is paved with those.  (We all know that quote, right?)  Like I keep up on this blog as it is.

Yeah, so maybe one part or the other, the archival alphabeticals or the current randoms, will end up falling by the wayside.  Okay, maybe they both will.  I can try.

Stay tuned...

Here's my little Fuzz, aka "Woolian", at the Sunday School Christmas program.

The play the kids did was called "The Unfriendly Beasts".  It was supposed to be on the 21st, but church was cancelled that morning and so they did it on the 28th.  The kids were great and the costumes were adorable.  I am hereby violating my policy of not posting pics of other peoples' kids on my blog.  After all, they're in costume...

You can see from the above picture that there were four sheep in the play.  Two of them were among the "stable" animals.  Since Fuzz' character was not a stable sheep, Spaz concluded that she must be an "unstable" sheep.

During rehearsal, every time the director said something along the lines of, "All the stable animals come down around the manger," I had to resist the temptation to call out, "Unstable animals stay put."  Because, you know, I am about three decades past junior-high age and have to show a little maturity.

Fuzz/Woolian and another sheep called Shiloh were "hillside sheep".  They had their own special little scene late in the play.    (I'd post that portion of the video if only I had the capability of getting my videos on my puter.)

The above pic was taken during the performance, but most were taken during the dress rehearsal (eight days earlier, thanks to that weather glitch!).  I was much more free to move around and get better pics that way, plus I could relax and enjoy the actual performance.

You can see my neice, "Camelot" at the end of the risers in the pic below and in some of the other pics as well.

"Shiloh, who were those shiny men?  What were they talking about?"

"Come ON, Shiloh!  Let's go see that baby!"

"Rise up Shiloh and follow..."

Fuzz had a little solo here and she did fabulously!  She sang wonderfully, her voice was loud & clear, and she was very expressive & animated.  She blew Hubz & me away-- we didn't know she had it in her!

"...the echoes of that last No-e-e-el..."

"Come on Shiloh!  I'm going to go see that baby and you're going to come with me!"

"We've come to see the baby!  Is he here?"

 Is she not an adorably cute little sheep?