Canon EOS Rebel XTi

I’ve been holding off on purchasing a new camera for a couple years now… simply because I know before it arrives on my doorstep, there will be 6 new versions of it that are better than mine and less expensive… and after all, I have been hanging onto my Sony Mavica now for some 7 years (at 2.1 megapixels, it is WAY under-gunned) but still took a beautiful shot… it’s all in the lens, my friends!  Yes, the megapixels  DO matter, but I’ve got a pocket-sized Casio that is 7 megapixels and doesn’t hold a candle to that Sony.

plus, the Sony wrote the images to a mini disc, so they exist somewhere besides the computer you copy them to… which comes in really handy if your hard drive crashes and you don’t have a backup (that’s happened to me too!)  That led me to ‘train’ myself to burn a CD EVERY time I empty my memory card so I always have the original photo to work from.  (I recommend making 2 backups, but that’s just me)

Anyway, being a photo major in college, it was beginning to get a bit shameful that I was carrying around this less-than-spectacular camera for so long… so with all due respect, I started looking for it’s replacement.  It wasn’t long before I fell in love with the Canon EOS Rebel XTi.  I had owned a Canon Rebel film camera in college, and remember LOVING the way it felt in my hands… it’s digital cousin did not disappoint.  With all the bells and whistles of MUCH more expensive cameras, it has 10 megapixels worth of fire-power… more than enough to last me for years!

isn’t she perty?  

the best part was the price… I bought it online at www.getitdigital.com  -  a company based on the east coast.  The customer service was amazing, which is a HUGE part of the buying experience for me.  I’d pay extra for that    but in this case, I didn’t have to!

 

keeping up with Pokemon

now I know how CRAZY kids are about this Pokemon thing… I’ve seen it first hand!  My six-year old couldn’t get enough of these cards a couple months back… so as a reward for everything from good grades to good behavior, I would shell out a couple bucks so he could add to his collection.

now that Easter is coming, I always like to get the boys something that isn’t made of pure sugar (considering it is ME who will probably end up eating it), so I stocked up weeks ago on these little Pokemon ‘gems’ to put in his basket. 

you know what’s coming next… surprise!  “Pokemon isn’t cool anymore, Mom… duh!  Well, they’re not dumb enough to let my little brother within 10 feet of them, but I don’t want any more of them… now I want Bakugan.”

what the heck is a Bakugan?  I swear sometimes he’s making this stuff up

 

counting my blessings…

i realize that in my last couple posts, I have really painted a ‘not-so-pretty’ picture of my littlest blessing… I’ll call him Isaac.  fitting, since that is his name… Hebrew for laughter.  and I have to say, that name fits him like a glove. 

he makes me laugh… a LOT.  sure, the laughs are sprinkled between the panic, the wincing, the mild and not-so-mild heart palputations and all the rest, but he is mostly a joy. and sometimes I forget that…

so, my neighbor’s daughter, Elaine, who is about my age, lost her 7-year-old son in a car accident a few months back.  I had never met her before, but have been close with her mom since she moved in across the street last year…

well, yesterday Elaine knocked on my door, just as I was finishing cleaning up Isaac’s latest mess, and he was about to destroy something else… I was about to lose it.  She and I only talked for a few minutes but I was floored by her strength.  I can’t even imagine this woman’s grief, yet just a few words with her put things in perspective for me so fast…

while I can’t promise I’ll never complain about the ‘messes’ of motherhood… I will say that today I’m grateful to have them…. and Isaac is more than happy to oblige

 

beware the ‘ides of march’

if I have to tell you why… then it’s already too late 

 

daycare… it’s worth every penny!

okay, so I survived the second week of my little ‘experiment’ to keep my little guy home 2 days a week… make that, BARELY survived.  I won’t get into all of the reasons I felt compelled to try this in the first place, but most of it had to do with guilt…

GUILT that someone else was spending more waking hours with my kid on a given day…
GUILT that my husband (who I’m currently separated from, mind you) thought I should WANT to be with my child more than working
GUILT that I was spending more money than was absolutely necessary, being that I work from home, why couldn’t he just ‘hang out’ with me and I’d save a couple bucks?

well, let me tell you, I’ve come to my senses!  True, someone else does “clock” more hours with him during the week, but it’s worth every penny!  No, not because I would rather be working, dear, but because I can be more efficient when he’s not up my rear-end, thus allowing me to be more ‘present’ when he and his big bro are around. 

more on working thru guilt later…

 

I love you… now change

Look in the mirror… do you like what you see? Hopefully you answered “yes” since that is the person who will be staring back at you for the rest of your natural life.

Sure, you’ll change in both inward and outward appearance… but if you concentrate on the ‘being’ or the ‘core’ of the person staring back at you… it’s important that you like what you see… WHO you see.

Self-acceptance, in my opinion, is the single most important quality a person can have. From it branches honesty & integrity, confidence & power and the ability to love and accept others.

Think about it… if you aren’t comfortable with yourself, it’s difficult to accept others for who THEY really are… at their core. We’re constantly trying to change people into what WE think is best… not for THEM, but for US. Of course, many of us try to fool ourselves into thinking that we want what’s best for others… but HOW WOULD WE KNOW???

 

whipped…

wow, this daylight savings thing is whipping my butt!  I think my absolute inability to bounce back is confirmation that I’m getting old. 

 

Give it away…

I learned a strange, yet powerful business lesson today.  It’s important to know HOW everything in your business works, but even more important to NOT have to do any of it yourself.   Did that make sense to you?  Yeah, me neither… but read it a couple times and trust me, it will strangely begin to sound logical.

see, you NEED to know how stuff works in your business, at least for the most part… but in order to help your business reach the next level, once you gain a full understanding or master a given task… you need to give it away to someone else.  Free yourself up to innovate and take the business to places only you can.  More on this once it sinks in…

 

“koi boy”

trouble has a face… and it looks like this! 

If ever there was a child destined to be a trouble-maker… this is the one!  I may as well just face facts… this boy was put on the planet to give me gray hairs! 

he’s a handful, but I think that’s why god makes kids so darn adorable… they might not survive if they weren’t!  I snapped this photo as he was climbing out of my koi pond this morning… we buried the last fish months ago (he wanted to grow a fish tree)… I suppose it’s early demise was inevitable with this kid around.

 

Daylight savings already?

okay, I know I’m not alone… who else had NO idea it was daylight savings time already?  Sheesh!  It’s bad enough the Easter Bunny is coming on March 23rd this year, but now this?  It’s an absolute shock to the system.  The good news is all the Easter candy has been out on the shelves for a couple weeks.  I don’t know about anyone else, but Easter is my favorite “chocolate season”.