~ Photo Challenge: “Hands-On Fun” ~

I know that i heart faces is all about learning how to get better at portrait photography and capturing emotions.

But every once in a while, I love it when we take the focus off the face…and put it somewhere else.

It’s amazing how much emotion can be conveyed even without seeing the face.

As co-founder of i heart faces, I can’t win any of the challenges.  I will certainly enjoy going through all of the entries and seeing the amazing photos that all of the other participants enter this week though.  :)

Best wishes everyone!

~ The Drama of the New Camera ~

Amy and I have both been sent emails asking “When in the world is Angie ever going to add her Blissdom photos to the Flickr group?!?!?”

(Jen Johnson dancing with one of Harry Connick Jr’s band members!!  That girl is gorgeous and knows how to have fun!)

Oi vey.

(Beckie, a blogger that we met while dancing and fell in love with.  That girl knew how to get down, dance and have a good time.  She was a hoot to hang out with.)

The problem is that the day before I left for Blissdom, my “big girl camera” arrived.  Which is a good thing!  It’s a beautiful, wonderful, amazing Canon 5D Mark II and I am LOVING it.  I mean, it literally brings tears to my eyes to know that I actually own such an incredible camera now after shooting with a dinosaur of a camera for so many years.

(The amazing Laurie – a.k.a. “Tip Junkie” – and Angry Julie whom I quickly realized is not really angry at all. She's very happy, fun and sweet.  I fell in love with both of these ladies too.)

But, as soon as I uploaded the images to my computer I realized that Photoshop CS3 does not recognize any of the RAW files I shot while I was at the conference.

(Despite what it looks like, I promise that Amy is not flipping me off in this photo.  She is doing her crazy dancing fingers move.  Whatever that might be!)

After doing a bit of research on Google, I learned that in order for me to view my RAW files in Photoshop CS3, I needed to download a free DNG converter which now converts all of my thousands of RAW files to DNG files.  I still couldn’t actually view each DNG file though without opening each and every one into PS first, so I then downloaded a free DNG file viewer and I now have to go through that special program to view my DNG files and then go to a different folder to actually open the DNG file that I want to edit.

(Amy dancing with Flat Tidy Mom.  They had the best time hanging out together that night.)

Did you fall asleep while reading that last paragraph because it sounds like a bunch of gobblygook? 

I'd fall asleep too if it wasn't so darn frustrating!

(Laurie and Amy showing off their “runway moves.”)

Long story short?  As soon as I can possibly afford it I am upgrading to Photoshop CS4 because this whole process is making. me. crazy.

As in “I-want-to-pull-my-hair-out-because-this-is-making-me-so-crazy” crazy.

{sigh}


I truly do love my camera though!  Drama and all.

~I Heart Faces Photo Challenge: “I Wanna Dance!”~

While attending the Blissdom Conference in Nashville, going to see Harry Connick Jr. in concert would have to rate as one of the most awesome experiences I had there.

It wasn’t awesome just because Harry was there (although it goes without saying that he was a huge part of the awesomeness of the night)…but also because I got to hang out with my girlfriends, dance the night away and have F-U-N!!

The nightclub we were in was an absolute nightmare from a photographer’s point of view.  Very dark with crazy lights flashing everywhere and tons of movement.  It was even more nightmarish because this forgetful photographer left her huge, wonderful, amazing external flash sitting up on the bed in her hotel room instead of taking it to the concert with her. {shame on me!}  My feet were hurting so bad from wearing my cute, super-high heels and walking 10 miles through the hotel with them on that you couldn't have paid me to run back up to my room to get the flash though.  LOL!

So, I’m choosing this photo as my “I Wanna Dance!” entry…mainly because it shows off so many of my girlfriends that I enjoyed an amazing weekend with…laughing, being goofy, having fun together and dancing the night away!



You can view other dancing photos that I took that night by visiting this post.  You'll also get to read about the drama of my brand-new, flippin' incredible camera there as well!

As a co-founder of I Heart Faces, I can’t win the photo challenges but I love to enter anyway.  Join in the fun this week by adding your own “I Wanna Dance” photo entry into the mix...

~ Little Itty-Bitty Angie ~

While attending the Blissdom Conference last week, I was thrilled to meet in person many of my blogging gals that I had been friends with forever…and it was awesome to meet new blogging friends as well.

One night seven of us (that number will become significant in just a moment) headed out to dinner at the local mall.  Me, Amy from Living Locurto (what a surprise, eh?), Jen Johnson (or JJ) from Blah, Blah, Blahger, Kimm from Kimm Reinvented, Emily from Remodeling This Life, Lindsey from Living With Lindsey and Jess from Frugal With A Flourish.

I decided to be a smart girl for once in my life and wore my flat shoes to walk around in. The hotel we were staying at (the Opryland Gaylord) was ginormous and my feet had told me that they couldn’t even take one more hour of walking around in the super-cute heels I had worn all weekend.

It was while we were walking through the mall though that I realized that I was really a very little, short person walking amongst six other tall, svelte women…to the point that I really started to feel like I needed to hold one of their hands and say “mommy, where are we going next?”

Or, as one of them pointed out, they could just get a leash for me and lead me around safely that way.

So, I plodded along in my comfortable, flat shoes until we finally found a restaurant that didn’t have an hour wait. It was a restaurant called Aqaurium that was obviously geared more towards families (with huge, wall-length fish tanks everywhere) so we decided to push several tables together in the bar area where we would be able to talk and laugh without having to worry about any children being around.

We spent quite a bit of time chatting, laughing and having a great time together until two young men stopped at our table and used the cheesiest line ever to get us to talk to them. And I quote...

“Ladies, would you mind if we had our photo taken with you all? The guys back home would freak out if they saw us in a photo with such a big bunch of beautiful women.”

We all kind of looked at one another and then thought, what the heck…let’s have a photo taken.

So we pushed away from the table, got down from the bar stools we were sitting on and the first guy then began to exclaim over my camera..."Dude! Now that's a camera."

Why yes it is!

They then continued to lay it on thick...

“It’s not often that we see six, such beautiful women in a restaurant.  The guys are going to love to see this!”

At which point Jen Johnson looked at them and said, “Ummm, you do realize that there are SEVEN of us here, right?  Not six?”

Which is when the first guy (whom I like to refer to as Stupid Man #1) said “Oh, you’re right….huh, huh, huh (Stupid Man #1’s stupid laugh)…I didn’t even see her standing here…huh, huh, huh…she’s so little.”

“Her” meaning ME. "Her", the same person that he had just said had a nice camera.

Little Her was ticked.


So, we headed over to one of the fish tanks to have our photo taken with The Stupid Men while the waitress tried to take a non-blurry photo with my camera.  When I realized that all the photos were going to be bad, I quickly grabbed my camera and said that I’d take the photo instead.

I said that I'd take the photo, but I never said what I would do to that photo.

(Kimm, Lindsey, Jess, Stupid Man #1, JJ, Stupid Man #2 and Amy.  Emily somehow got out of the photo.)

I only wish that I had better Photoshoppin’ skills. I truly would have enjoyed putting them in their underwear for all the world to see.

Moral of the story?  Don’t make fun of the short woman with a blog and a big camera. She’ll get you back.

~ Photo Challenge: We Heart Kisses” ~

This photo would never win an award and is actually really, truly quite awful…but the story behind it is so much fun that I am going to use it as my i heart faces entry anyway.

My friend, Cheryl from Tidy Mom, was so disappointed when she realized that she wasn’t going to be able to attend the Blissdom Conference with a bunch of her blogging friends.  When another friend of mine (the uber-creative Cathe Holden) heard that, she decided to create a Flat Tidy Mom paper doll that everyone could take to Blissdom with them to make Cheryl feel like she was still part of the excitement.

Flat Tidy Mom was absolutely the hit of the conference.  She hid in our bags, joined me as a speaker at the photography workshop, drank a few drinks, danced, and partied the night away.

And…

She kissed Harry Connick Jr.
 
{swoon}

I have no idea what her husband thinks about the way she acted at the conference, but it became clear to me that she has a bit of “naughty girl” in her.  ;)

Amy and I got to the entertainment early on Friday night and ended up standing directly in front of where Harry was performing.  I was a busy bee photographer taking as many awesome photos as I possibly could.  In the meantime, Amy stood behind me and was making Tidy Mom dance like a crazy person screaming “Harry, look at me!!!  I want to meet you!  I loooove you Harry!!”

He glanced over at her, noticed the paper doll dancing in the air and said something like “What in the world is that?!”

Amy yelled:  “It’s my friend, Tidy Mom!  She couldn’t make it to the conference so I brought Flat Tidy Mom with me!”

Harry took the doll and said “You do realize that this is just about the weirdest thing ever?”

That’s when we both started yelling “Can you please kiss her?  She wanted to be here so bad so that she could give you a kissy. Please, please, please?!”

He looked at Flat Tidy Mom and replied “I guess so...but there’s not going to be any tongue.”

Bwahahahaha....hysterical!!!

I guarantee that the great Harry Connick Jr. is never, ever going to forget a certain Tidy Mom. 

~ Bring On The “Yoghurts”...I Can Take It. ~

(All of these photos were taken on the last Photography Drive I went on with my friends on Friday.  They are completely just here for “eye candy” and have nothing to do with this post.)

All of the young cousins on my side of the family, including (and probably especially) my children, have this strange habit of making up weird words for things.

Here are a few examples I can think of right off the top of my head.

All of my children still refer to other people as “humans” when they are talking to you.  “I was on the playground mom and there was a human who was picking his nose!  It was disgusting.”




Thanks to the oldest cousin of the family, Caryn, all of the cousins refer to their private areas (covered or uncovered) as their “privacies.”  They have done this since Caryn was able to talk and we don’t think it’s ever going to change.  “Mom!!!!  Tell him to stop looking at my privacies!!” says one of the younger boys.  Don’t mind the fact that he’s walking around the house in his underroos and you can’t help but see his “privacies.”

Or, one of my favorites…the way that Weston refers to his “you know whats” as his “turds” now.  I kid you not, that’s what the boy calls them.  “Ouch!!  The puppy just landed on my turds!  That hurted!”




One of the most annoying instances though is this new game that Caryn (what an instigator of trouble that girl is!) created called “Yoghurt.”

I had no idea that there was a game called “Yoghurt” until I began to notice that when we’d be driving along, one of my kids would do something like this while they were in the middle of a conversation with me…

“Mom, when I was riding the bus to school today, Wyatt was bugging me….Yoghurt!…and I told him to stop but he wouldn’t…Yoghurt!!…so then I got really mad and told him…YOGHURT!!!!!…to be quiet and then he told me that he wouldn’t…Hey!  I said Yoghurt first!…and then we got to school and I went to my class.”





What the?  Did I pass Crazyville somewhere and go straight into the Twilight Zone?

I did what any self-respecting parent would have done for awhile.  I decided to ignore the weird “yoghurts” that were popping up in conversation because I had absolutely no idea what that was all about and did I really want to know?  That lasted for about two days until I couldn’t stand to hear one more “yoghurt” yelled out and finally asked the kids “Someone needs to explain why you all keep screaming the word ‘yoghurt’ when we are in the car before your mom goes nuts.”


“Oh, it’s a game that Caryn made up,” they replied.

After a few minutes of excited explanations, I finally figured out that this is how you play the game:  while your parents are driving you somewhere, you watch for yellow vehicles.  If you see one, you yell out the word “yoghurt.”  Whoever yells that word first, wins.  They win absolutely nothing, but they all like the fact that they can be called the "winner.”  This all makes perfect sense in their minds because the word “yellow” and the word “yoghurt” both start with the letter “Y.”

Have you all ever noticed just exactly how many yellow vehicles are on the road?  Even excluding busses (which my kids, oh thank you Lord!, all feel are included in this game) there are a lot more yellow cars out there than I ever imagined.  And I get to hear about each and every one of them!



In my mind, that game makes absolute perfect sense if you are insane. And I wasn’t insane until I entered Week 29 of the game of “Yoghurt” that four certain children are obsessed with and haven’t shown any signs that they are going to tire of it anytime soon.

The only silver lining I have found in all of this is that Caryn was the one who created the game…and Caryn and her siblings have been driving their mama (my sister, Janine) crazy with all of their “Yoghurts” as well.



I thought that I had finally accepted the fact that I am probably going to be driving in a vehicle to shouts of “Yoghurt!!!” for the rest of my life. I had accepted it.  Come to terms with it.  Right up until I overheard this conversation the other day…

“Maybe we should make up a game for white cars!  We could say ‘Whale!’ or ‘Whipped Cream’ or ‘Whisper’ or…”


“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” the mom yelled from the front seat.  “One Yoghurt game at a time is all I can handle.  If you start Whaling on me you have to give up the Yoghurts…no ifs, ands or buts about it.”


At which point I realized that I am completely insane.  Would any normal person who was sitting in my van at that moment even have a clue as to what I was talking about?

Welcome to The Arthur Clan…also known as The Clan of Crazies.

That’s us!

~ My story In Photos: Places I Love ~

My husband and I have been on vacation to several beautiful, lovely, romantic places together, but because of our never-ending basement remodel (which is never-ending not because of the contractor, but because of the work we are trying to do on it ourselves) I cannot find any of the photos from any of those trips we went on.  They are all packed away safe and sound.

So, for “My Story In Photos” post I am going to go back to last summer when our family visited northern Michigan for the first time.  I posted about some of our adventures in July right after we returned home, but I never did share this little tidbit…mainly because Bill and I could have been nominated for the “Dumbest Parents of the Year” award if anyone had ever known about it.

One day of our vacation, we took the kids out for a day of fun at a small adventure park where we enjoyed a completely wonderful day together.  On our way back to our cottage, we passed The Dune Climb of Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and made the first of many mistakes that day: 

We thought “What the heck, let’s stop and see what this is all about.”

And right away made our next mistake:

“The hill looks steep, but at least it’s not that far.  We’ll be able to see the lake on the other side and the kids will love that.”


And on the heels of that mistake came a third one:

“Oh the sand feels nice” I said.  “I don’t think we’ll even need our shoes on for this.”


We finally got to the top of that hill and what did we see on the other side?  Another hill that was even steeper than the first hill.


By this time, Wyatt (whom we discovered was part mountain goat that day) was really far ahead of us.  I turned to Bill and told him to hurry after Wyatt and that I’d catch up with him at the top of the hill and then we could all go down to the lake together.


I was stuck behind with Mr. Weston who had decided that climbing sand dunes wasn’t quite as fun as he thought it’d be.  Especially since the higher you climb in the sand dunes, the hotter the sand gets which doesn’t feel so good on bare feet.

About ten minutes later we caught up to Bill who had decided to wait for us and I noticed two problems immediately:

1) The lake was not on the other side of that hill either.  The lake was still really, really far away.

and

2) He was minus two children that were supposed to be with him.



Where are the boys? my eyes silently screamed at him.

“Oh, I let them go ahead a little bit” he replied.

What?!  I am the mom who doesn’t even let her kids ride their bikes on our deserted country road by themselves and yet now two of my children have “gone on ahead” in this vast deserted land?

Trying to push my panic down, I pretty much say those exact words to Bill and we started trying to walk even faster to catch up to the boys.

But, no matter how far or how fast we walked…all we saw was this view:



My mommy safety genes are screeching in concern by this point.

And Bill’s somewhat-delayed daddy safety genes were in full-blown panic mode at this point as well.

Since Weston and Weslea were beyond exhausted, Bill decided to take off on his own since he could make much faster time without us and I decided to head back a little bit to where I had seen a second trail turn off in another direction because we still weren’t even sure which way the boys had gone.




Some hikers finally came along and they said that they had seen two boys on that trail (the trail that Bill was not on, of course) and then I went into a full-blown panic attack.

Do I chase down Bill to let him know that he is searching for the boys on the wrong trail?

Or do I take the exhausted Weslea and Weston down the correct trail and begin searching for the boys myself?

We ended up going down the second trail to begin searching for the boys…me an my two kiddos, all of whom had blistered, aching feet and a good mile to go until we even made it to the lake.

The kids entertained themselves for a bit, but soon it was clear that there was no way we were going to make it all the way to the lake.



It would be difficult for me to put into words what I was feeling right then.  Exhaustion, hopelessness beyond what I had ever felt before in my life, complete panic…

We were in an incredibly beautiful part of the world…and it was one of the most horrible couple of hours of my entire life.



I finally found a small spot of shade for us to rest in and decided that I had no choice but to wait there for awhile.  I continued to question every hiker that passed us (some of whom I had talked to earlier on the other trail) and they all continued to assure this teary-eyed, somewhat hysterical mama that “I just saw your two boys and they are getting ready to start down this trail soon” or “I saw two boys and it looked like there was a man with them” or “I think the dad is with them now and they are heading this way…you should just wait here, they should be here soon.”


And I just continued to pass time by wiping my tears away and praying like I had never prayed before.

After another hour or so had passed, I finally saw one of the one the most beautiful sights of my entire life…



Way far down the trail I could see three familiar heads bobbing along as they slowly made their way towards us…



When we were all finally reunited, I got to experience one of those moments as a parent when you aren’t sure whether you want to beat your children or hug the snot out of them.

I did for sure decide to hold the old guilt card over them…. “You boys worried your mommy so much that you made her cry!” I made sure to tell them before we turned around to make the long trek back to where our nightmare had all began.



They acted appropriately sorry and ashamed and exhausted for approximately thirty minutes.  Right until we began the steep downhill descent back to our vehicle.  And then the pull of running down that hill brought back their natural, childish glee…



Which brought great joy to my stressed out heart.



It was amazing to me how such a few hours of terror could change into a feeling of complete thanksgiving and joy just by seeing their little faces and knowing that all was right with my world again.

And such thankfulness that my two boys had been taken care of and were safe despite all of the terrible things that could have happened that day.

If we ever return there again sometime, I will be sure to read websites like this one first so that I hopefully won’t even come close to earning the “Dumbest Parent Of The Year” award again.

Although Bill and I both definitely earned that title on that day.

Read other stories at i heart faces: