My Little Budding Photographer

A couple of years ago for Christmas, I gave all my kids used cameras. Brynn got Marty's old Nikon 2 megapixel point and shoot. The other day, she left it on my desk so that I could replace the batteries and I decided to upload all her photos. And I was pretty impressed by how creative and well composed a lot of her photos were. And I thought that little old camera - about an 8 or 9 year old model - did pretty well too.

About 80% of the photos were of Fred. I believe that there are several reasons for this:

1. He's readily available
2. She loves him
3. He doesn't move very fast
4. He's fabulous

 See that I mean? Pretty good photo, right? And a pretty fabulous cat, too.

There were also quite a few photos of other animals in our lives including Cookie, our neighbor dog (who does move VERY FAST and is extremely hard to photograph) and our good old dog, Maddie, who we lost at 15 last summer - we had her longer than any of the kids.

Awww, Maddie!

And the horses - this was my favorite of her horse, Bo:

Isn't that cute? I've never taken such a fun photo of a horse myself!

This is our miniature horse, Feather, he's actually cuter from further away, but it was probably fun for Feather to look down on someone for a change. (He's 31 inches tall.)

And this is our friend Molly's lovely dog, Ramona. It seems that Brynn's working on mastering the art of extreme noses, but she does take other kinds of shots too.

There were also several photos of her little brother because:

1. He's readily available
2. She loves him (although she probably won't easily admit it)
3. He doesn't move very fast (when he's eating)
4. He's fabulous

 
I was pretty impressed with some of the landscapes as well:

This is our valley's famous V rock, also know as, "The V". We like to hike up there from time to time. I love the composition on both of these!

And of course, there were no shortage of self portraits on that memory card. Behold, the photographer:



Good work, Sis. You must get it from me. :)

My Horse/Hitch Epiphany

I had an epiphany at work on Friday. Well, epiphany may be too strong a word, but as I was playing with a horse, I related what was happening at the time to a scene in one of my favorite movies. Is that an epiphany? Yeah, I guess not, but I'm going to share it with you anyway.

In the course of my job, I meet a lot of un-tame horses. Taming horses has actually gotten to be one of the best parts of what I do. It's so satisfying to help a horse who has been previously terrified of people, learn to be confident, friendly and brave. Soooo satisfying!

Anyway, in Parelli - the world's best horsemanship method of which I'm an avid student - we do something called "the horseman's handshake". It looks a little something like this:

 (Miss Montana-Banana - of the infamous "wild bunch" - and me in Montana - Feb, 2011)

The horseman's handshake is basically a polite way of approaching the horse, and allowing them the opportunity to approach us.

As I was playing with a very shy and skeptical horse at work on Friday, I wanted her to touch my hand with her muzzle - for her to come all the way to me instead of me going and touching her. This is a novel concept for most of the horse world - when it's the horse's idea to touch us, it helps them to be so much more confident. We humans tend to always do stuff TO the horse: catch them, saddle them, mount them..... but if we can get the horse to want to catch us, be with us, allow us onto their backs with their permission, the possibilities are truly amazing.

Anyway, back to my shy horse; I would hold out my hand and she would approach me, but couldn't come all the way up and touch me. It was so temping to reach out and touch her (that's the predator in me that I still have little mental arguments with everyday), but instead, every time she stopped 2 inches from my hand, I waited a few seconds for her to close the gap and when she didn't, I drew back. We repeated that about 6 times, she would approach, I would offer the handshake, she would stop 2 inches away and I would wait and then retreat. Finally, she touched me with a whisker and I immediately turned my back and walked away. (I'll let you in on a major horse whisperer secret: the best reward for a prey animal - a horse - is when the predator walks away, or takes the pressure off. Pat Parelli says, "The best treat is RETREAT.") The next time I offered my hand, she lightly touched me with the end of her nose, and of course I immediately retreated. And the time after that, she nudged me confidently with her nose. After that, I could touch her neck all over and rub her without her getting worried. Now you all might think I'm weird, but that's totally my idea of a good time!

So here's the epiphany (and now you're REALLY going to think I'm weird) the whole thing reminded me of this scene in Hitch:
(bear with this, the good part's toward the end, I couldn't find a shorter clip)


Isn't that great?! We can go 90%, but the horse should come the other 10%. Brilliant, right? Man, I love my job.

And because I love Hitch, so much, I had to include this scene too:

Cleaning Out

I still feel like I'm trying to catch up from my holidays and busy photo season in that I'm still working on things that I've neglected for ages. Today I put in my new back up battery for my computer system and it prompted me to clean off my desk and a bunch of things that I've been stuffing into the little desk organizers. I found a bunch of random things that I need to scrapbook or something like unto it. But since I haven't scapped in years, I thought at least I could preserve them on this blog.

One of the things I found was an old calendar page from July 2006 that I'd saved. One was something I'd written down on the 5th, it said: Brynn said to me (while I was making peanut butter bars) "When you get done, can I lick the stirrups?"

Pretty cute, and I guess having a horse trainer for a mom had rubbed off on her already. Also on that calendar page, was an innocuous little note saying, "Nick came". Nick was a horse, a very special horse, who came to me on the 23rd of July 2006 and left on the 24th of July 2009. He was a horse that Marty's cousin got in lieu of a bad debt and sent to me because he couldn't handle him. This horse turned out to be my perfect partner and my dream horse and I was devastated - and still am - that his owner showed up with no warning and took him away. (And then took him home and found he didn't want him and later sold him to someone else, when he knew how badly I wanted him.) My photographer friend Molly took a photo of the two of us on a trail ride at work and emailed it to me a few months ago. I used to ride Nicky all over town with no bridle on at all - a previously uncontrollable horse. In this photo, we're just riding in his halter.

Such a pretty boy. Man, I loved that horse.

I also found a poem that Jaxon wrote for me on Mother's Day last year. I scanned it to have a digital copy because it's so great:




 Here's a translation since it's a little hard to read:

A MOM Poem.... a Moem :) :) by Jaxon

roses are red
violets are blue
all moms are special
especially uou

you help a lot
you work wonders
but how many moms
are horse trainers/photographers

Mom, you are cool
Mom, you are da-bomb
I have one last thing to say
.... I love you Mom

Jaxon

P.S.  you're a great mom, you're always there for us.You're working all day (and half the night) yet you still have time to be a mom. Love you.

Isn't that nice, he's a pretty amazing kid.

I also found a quote that I had hurriedly jotted down while listening to General Conference - I think it was by Elder Holland, but I'm not positive. Still, it was worth recording.

"Apparently, the Gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

All of these things and many more have been stashed in slots on my desk for quite some time. It always feels good to muck things out.

Whew - The Holidays are OVER!

Fall - September through Christmas - is always the busiest time of year for portrait photographers and this year was my busiest year yet. After last year's craziness, I knew how it would be, so I was bound and determined to stay caught up this year. And I did pretty well at keeping up. But it was a brutal 4 months and I'm so glad to have it over with.

I made quite a few things for people this year. I made a bunch of felt and fabric flowers for friends and nieces. But the funnest thing I made was the little mini album for my neighbor Rachel. This summer, I had one day where I took a break from my photo editing craziness and went on a little macro lens - flower photographing journey. I had so much fun collecting flower photos, it's one of the best times I had with my camera all year. To see a post about it, click here. Anyway, as I was taking the photos, 6 months or so before Christmas, it occurred to me that since Mel and Rachel have put so much work into their flowers and yard, I should make them a book from the photos and give it to them for Christmas. This is what it looked like:

I made the covers out of chipboard covered in scrapbook paper and I used my newly acquired felt flower making skills to make some little mini flowers for the cover. I heart felt!

I love giving photos as gifts, they're so much more meaningful and relevant to the recipient. And this little album was really easy and enjoyable to make. I wish I had the time to do lots more projects like this. One of my new year's resolutions - if I believed in those things - would be to blog more and start making actual scrapbook pages again. Keeping 471 balls in the air at all times can be a bit tricky - I'll just have to do the best I can.

Sharon and Charlie - Hitched at Last!

This weekend, my baby sister got married. We're so, so happy with the great guy she chose, and we had a lovely couple of days with lots of great family and friends. I took a LOT of pictures and can't imagine ever having time to post them all, but I thought I'd hurry and post a few of my favs.

I really love this one of Mom and Sharon. So sweet.

Yay, the newlyweds!

Brynn and Ally are 7 weeks apart in age - they are like peas and carrots. When I told them that, Brynn said, "I want to be the peas, I only like peas". And then Ally said, "I want to be the peas, I don't like carrots either!" Oh boy.

Sharon was a beautiful bride - this was kind of an impromptu shot while they were greeting their guests, but I love it.

My brother Scott let me take a few fun shots of him.

And this is my other sister Laura with her awesome hubby, Craig - they've been married for 20 years, believe it or not. 

Their oldest daughter - beautiful Madison (she's a lot younger than she looks!).

And her big brother Justin, he's 17 - so handsome!

And my big boy, he's so handsome too.


The men.

And the little men. Double trouble: Luke and Nate. They were born 2 days apart. This was taken at the end of the day when these 2 were a little worse for wear. I asked Luke where his boutonniere was and he said he didn't know. And then he said, "But it's okay Mom, you can just copy Nate's flower in Photoshop and put one on my shirt. You'd never know he's the son of someone who spends half her life in the Photo-shop.

 

One of the best things about weddings is getting to see family and friends that we don't normally get to see. Like one of our very favorite relatives - Aunt Grace. 

  

The cake was made by Mom's good friend Margene. As long as I can remember, we've had flowers in our home that Margene made: framed and dried flower arrangements, toll painted dressers, flower paintings and crafts... it was very fitting that Margene made this cake with all it's handmade flowers on it. 

I wonder who first started the tradition of trashing the car? Anybody know? The guys took mercy on the car since it was a rental, but they still had to have their fun.

 And here's the couple heading out to catch a plane to Costa Rica - catching their first glimpse of the car.

It was fun, it was busy, it was wonderful, and now, thank goodness, it's OVER. Love you guys! We wish you every single solitary happiness.

Catchin' Up

I have been a very negligent blogger lately. I used to be a scrapbooker, then I became a digital scrapbooker and then I became a blogger and gave up scrapbooking completely. And now I've been sucked into Facebook - it's where I post daily photos and little snippets about our lives. But the problem with Facebook is that I can't print it and keep it in our home. So I need to either go back to scrapbooking or keep up better on my blog. The disadvantage of the digital age - it is sometimes intangible.

Also, Brynn really likes to read my blog and is always getting after me about my lack of recent blogging. So here's a little catch up post just for you, Sis.

I just realized that I Facebooked about Brynn's birthday, but never blogged about it. We have a tradition in our family that we celebrate birthdays with friends one year and the next year with family. This was our family year and the kids all got to pick something fun to do as a family. One of the things Brynn wanted to do was decorate her own cake.

She picked the colors and decorated it all by herself, I thought it was really pretty.

Something that Brynn's been up to lately is volleyball.  Betty has been teaching a volleyball camp to the 5th and 6th grade girls and they had their game on Friday. It was a very short game, but we were proud of her and are excited that she is liking volleyball so much.

Jenna and Dallin came to watch Brynn's game and he made her this poster:

How sweet is that?! He's a good guy, that Dallin.

Fred, the best cat in the world

For about a year, Fred has had a funny ear. Most of the time it's fine, but every so often, he holds his left ear flat and shakes it and scratches at it. He'll do that for a few hours and then he's totally fine again. I've never taken him to the vet because it never bothers him for long and it's a bit tricky to get a vet appointment, and frankly, it's not all that fun or all that easy to take a cat to the vet.  But the other day he was having trouble again and I decided it was time. Fortunately, I am very blessed to work at the nation's largest animal sanctuary and one of the best perks of working there is that we have a great clinic and 4 excellent vets who will see our personal animals. It is a little hard to get appointments though, and the only thing they had for a while was today, a Sunday. I took it rather than waiting for several weeks, I normally wouldn't do something like that on a Sunday. Also, Fred got in a fight a few days ago and has been pretty gimpy and has a puncture wound on his chest that I thought might ought to get looked at.

Well, to make a long story short, we loaded Fred up and took him - complaining a little - down to the sanctuary and saw the new vet, Dr. Brooke. When we got there, she asked his name and I said, "He usually goes by "Fred", but his whole name is "Fred-the-best-cat-in-the-world". She laughed, but after she finished examining him, I think she realized that it was true. She cleaned his ears, shaved around his wound, scoped his ears, palpated his sore leg and examined him all over and he never, ever offered to scratch or bite.  He didn't even try to get away!  What an extraordinarily good cat!

So it turns out that he does have a bacterial and yeast infection in both ears and has to have drops in them twice a day for a week.

Brynn and Luke came with, they like Fred pretty well.  (This is the reason I carry a point and shoot camera in my purse - you just never know when you might want to take a photo.)



Brynn took this photo of Fred the other day and I thought it was cute. What a good boy.



So where do you find good cats like this one? At the dump, of course.