I Heart Faces Photo Challenge ~ Best Face from 2012

How do I pick one face from all of the photos I took in 2012?!

Sometimes it's made easy by having such a beautiful face to pick...

This photo was submitted to the I Heart Faces photo challenge "Best Face from 2012" – www.iheartfaces.com

Oh life! How quickly it flies!

I finished my 366 photo project! I decided not to carry it on for another year, for a few reasons.

1. I probably do take a photo every day. Some days I take hundreds! I found by half way through the year I was starting to forget to post a photo, or couldn't find the time to sit down and do it, then by the time I did sit down I had a few photos to post and it would take me so much longer to post them!

2. Because I was posting to my 366 blog so much, I neglected this one. A picture can tell a thousand words but sometimes people want to know what is really going on in my head! Well, maybe...

And 3. I've done it, so now I want to do something else.

Cousins :)

This year is going to be exciting with my photography business going from strength to strength - I hope to add birth photography and newborn studio photography to my portfolio this year; I have my CBE workshop in March with an aim to finish the course by the end of the summer; and I am bowing out of the world of forensic DNA analysis with a PhD examination at the end of this month, followed by my final ENFSI DNA working group in Bratislava in April!

I'm excited to be involved with setting up a new Birthing Circle in Frederick! This group of women hope to educate, support and empower women and their families through the journey of pregnancy, birth and the post-partum period.  We are going to hold monthly meetings and talk about all things pregnancy, birth and babies! Brilliant!

Me best friend's baby, Orson

Thomas has started a new school and is loving it now he only goes for 2.5 hours instead of all day. It's so nice to see him so excited to go! It's also nice to have him with me for longer. As he rapidly approaches school age I become more aware of how quickly time is flying. I get to keep him close for an extra year compared to my UK friends and for that I am very grateful and intend to make the most of it!

Thomas :)

Tyler is keeping me on my toes and wakes up at 5am each morning since we got back from the UK. Yawn.  He's currently refusing to walk, so my previous idea that he would walk by the age of 1 is proving wrong and he will probably follow in his brothers' footsteps and start walking perfectly at 15 months...

Tyler :)

And David is David :) He works hard and he lets me do all of these crazy things I want to do. He is marathon training again and enjoying life in the US.  He has unrelenting patience for my latest photography 'need' and he supports me in all I do. I am very lucky and very happy.  Plus he bought me an IPad for Christmas which means he can do no wrong for at least three months, maybe more...

My lovely family!

So what challenge do I set myself for this year? I'm already missing taking a photo a day! Maybe I'll set myself a photo a week? That's not really a challenge though... Maybe life is throwing me enough challenges this year and I should just decide to 'be'.  Maybe I should just update *this* blog more often... Yes, that's what I'll do, I'll give this blog more love. I can hear you all cheering already :D

Old photos...

This weekend I took down my most favourite photo of Thomas. This one:

... and replaced it with this one:

It made me start thinking about where I was then and where I am now. This photo was taken by my wonderful PhD student Ice just before I went back to work after maternity leave. He sent me a message one day asking if he could come and take some photos of Thomas as he had a new camera lens. Sure! When he sent me the photos I was so excited!

"Ice - can you take photos like this because you're a good photographer, or because you've got a good camera?"

"It's just the camera" he replied.


Now, three years later, I know he was kind of half telling the truth. Yes the lens matters but there is more to it than that!



These photos are the ones which made me go out and spend a small fortune on a dSLR. I figured in the long run, if I could take photos as good as these, then I would never have to get professional photos done!

My beautiful new (refurbished) camera arrived. And I took some photos. Fully automatic. Maybe just a bit clearer than a point and shoot.

"Oh no", I thought... "have I wasted my money?!" [don't tell my husband!]

I messed around with the camera a bit for the next year, taking 'OK' photos some of the time and pretty rubbish ones the rest of the time.  The one day I read a blog post on beginner basics [it doesn't exist any more or I would link it] and decided to try and go manual.

It didn't work so well to start with. I even wrote a blog post about it!

Then I started to get a bit better...

Practice practice practice...

And then of course, along comes the perfect subject to practice on:

And now I get it. I can know what settings I need before I take a photo. I can almost always focus on a moving object (as long as it isn't too fast). I don't over-edit and I try desperately to capture Thomas without him saying 'cheese'.

I'm moving forward and upward with my photography, both with the images I capture, and the photography business I've set up...

All because of that one set of photos taken three years ago!

Thanks Ice!

Summer fun

We played, we laughed, we loved, we had a lot of fun.

We visited the lakes and went swimming and climbed on bridges and got tanned.

We had a potluck lunch and playdates in the park.

We rode bikes and ran for miles and ate mountains of fresh fruit and vegetables.

We made lemonade and played on the slip n slide and visited the zoo and watched the baseball.

Thank you Maryland. What a great summer we had!

This photo was submitted to the I Heart Faces photo challenge – www.iheartfaces.com

20 questions for a three year old...

I saw this post over at Mummy Mishaps and it made me laugh so much so I decided I would ask Thomas the 20 questions and see how he answered.

This is long and probably not so interesting but I'm posting so I can bribe him in 13 years time... :)


 

One year on. Really?!

In five days I will have been here in the US for one whole year. I can’t really believe that so much time has passed. I vividly remember that last morning in the UK, not being able to move from the bed, not wanting to have to say goodbye to my Mum. Even now as I sit here writing this, my eyes glisten with tears as the feelings of despair and sadness wash over me.

I do miss my Mum. I really do. I miss all of my family. I can’t dwell on it because if I did, I would be unhappy and really, I don’t have a right to be unhappy when I am living such a nice life!

Life here is good. I am doing things I love, bringing up my boys, training to be a Childbirth Educator, setting up my photography business. I have met some fabulous people, and some not so fabulous people. I have been to some amazing places, visited six states, found beautiful parks, and my home feels like a home (albeit messier than I would like…). I have struggled with cultural differences, and laughed at cultural differences. I’ve experienced Fall and Thanksgiving and American Hallowe’en. I’ve discovered that there are hundreds of reasons to celebrate with candy during the school year. I’m figuring out the supermarkets and CSAs and farmers markets. I’m running - a lot! I passed my driving test. I had an American baby! I discovered groups like Frederick Mommies, Mombook, API of Frederick, La Leche League of Frederick, and I joined them all! You could never accuse me of being cliquey :)

The first three months were the loneliest I have ever had. I didn’t know how it ‘worked’ out here. I thought I would never make any friends or be able to have a normal conversation with anyone. I was sad. Then it all started coming together…

So, one year on. I feel lucky. Lucky to have a husband who supports me in all the crazy things I’ve decided to take on; who doesn’t complain when I spend all day looking after children and all night working on photos or coursework. I am lucky to have made some good friends who have seen me laugh and seen me cry. I wish I could move my home nearer to my family. Better still, I wish I could move my family nearer to me!

Spurred on by a Facebook conversation, I decided to start making a list of all the language differences I’ve come across this year. Bear with me, I’m sure I’m missing hundreds of others, but these are the ones that stick in my head!

(In no particular order)

Garden = Yard

Vegetable patch = garden

Boot = trunk

Bonnet = hood
Rubber = eraser
Condom = rubber

Pram = carriage

Buggy = stroller

Pushchair = stroller

Travel cot = pack n play

Activity centre = Excersaucer

Nappies = diapers

Aubergine = eggplant

Coriander = cilantro

Courgette = green squash / zucchini

BBQ = grill

Clothes pegs = clothes pins

Post = mail (people think I’m talking about the Washington Post newspaper if I mention post)

Football = soccer

American football = football (who’d have known!)

Cordial = doesn’t exist!

Zed = zee

Bottom = tush

Bum = butt

Biscuit = Cookie

Dumpling-type thing = biscuit, as in “chicken and biscuit”. I haven’t had it…

Pronunciation:

The completely different pronunciation of certain herbs, with herb itself being ‘erb:

oregano = o-ray-ganno

basil = bay-zle

quinoa = key-noir (had a very puzzled look from a shop assistant when I asked for ki-noah…)

Zebra = zee-bra

Nauseous = Naw-shus

Awesome ONLY sounds cool with an American accent. Fact.

Random musings:

When we first arrived I mentioned to David that there were a LOT of deaf people here. There really are! It took me ten months to realise that the Maryland School for the Deaf is in Frederick… so not just some kind of Martha’s Vineyard then…

Go to the shops / dentist / haircut etc = ‘running errands’

The addition of ‘of’ to a sentence: “take that off of there” “you get off of route 70”

The Lube Center. No matter how many times I drive past it, I still snigger to myself like an adolescent schoolboy. It just sounds so rude. It’s a car shop!

What is the thing with milk? In the UK you have whole milk, semi-skimmed milk and skimmed milk.  Here you have whole milk, 2% milk, 1% milk, some places have skimmed milk, raw milk (illegal in MD). Which one is the same as UK skimmed milk? Probably none of them, I’ve not worked it out yet…

Photography business!

Yes, I went and did it! Now I have four sessions lined up and other possibilities coming together. Exciting times!