Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The early morning drive to work in north central Illinois often involves lots of farmland, creeks and woods. It is a beautiful peaceful drive. Some mornings the sunrises are just awesome. While this one didn't have a lot of color, I decided to use the phone poles as the focal point for the sun (usually you try to avoid the poles when taking photos) and I was please to have the geese or ducks in the background. Overall, I liked the photo. Beauty is after all, in the eye of the beholder....and I be holdin' the camera.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Reading books & Climbing trees






On Grandparents day at school, one of the other grammas was reading a sort of scarey story about a little boy who thinks he is dying because he was falling apart....losing teeth and hair, etc.


As you can see by the expression on my granddaughters face, she was 'into' the story. Seems the little boy was experiencing the normal growth of a child and the book ends with him holding up a finger and asking if he isn't falling apart, what is this yellow stuff leaking from his ears.....to which all the kids went ewwww! It was cute.




This is my 40 yr old son....showing his son the wonders of his childhood....climbing the maple tree in the front yard. Not that any 7 yr old needs to be shown, but the 40 yr old needs to relive the glory, I guess.
The grandson thinks the tree is quite glorious and is his new clubhouse.















Isn't father/son bonding wonderful????






































Monday, September 17, 2007

Whazzzzzzup!




A couple weeks ago, I was trying to get a close up of a bumble bee. Having succeeded, I was rather pleased with the results. However when I put it up on my screen on the computer, I discovered a little green bug had popped up over a flower on the left hand side of the screen. It looks like he is saying, "Whazzzzzup!". It makes me smile everytime I see it.


Friday, September 14, 2007

OMGoodness---I got bit!!!

I got bit (Monday 8/27) while I was out taking photos and went to the emergency room at the nearest hospital.

I was walking around the flowers in a field...in the mowed portion, so I was not in tall grass or weeds, when I felt something like a stick stab my ankle. As I walked back to the car, it began to burn a little, so I looked down at it and it was bleeding quite a bit. I got in the car and wiped it with a napkin, and I could see two little puncture marks. Not a single hole in my panty hose. I began to be a little alarmed. It looked like a snake bite...two puncture holes, no damage to the nylons, bleeding profusely (for two tiny holes anyway), and the burning sensation. I called my hubby Ron and said I think I have been bitten by a snake...he said to go the hospital, I said even if it was only a garter snake? He asked if I had seen it, I said no, he says go to the hospital.
So I did. They got me in immediately. When I took off my panty hose I could see a little teensy tiny abrasion line, so I actually got stuck with a stick. I said "Well, this isn't going to be much of a story....snake bite sounds much better than stick bite!" I told my sister, "Hey!! it was a very very vicious stick, and very very noxious! It burned!!!"

So the good thing was that it wasn't a snake bite and the bad thing was that it was a horrible mean stick bite and I might be crippled for life. Ok, so they cleaned it up and they were happy for me that it wasn't serious and it will probably cost me $200+ for this darn stick bite and I hope you are laughing your hind end off!

AND I did get this great photo of a Monarch butterfly:
Then the ladies on my scrap booking group on line said I should go back and get a picture of the stick that bit me. I went back but I couldn't find it anywhere. I was telling the ladies that when I went back through my photos and found one of the stick waiting for me to come a step or two closer!!! One lady asked how I could miss seeing it because it was so huge, but I was busy looking at the butterfly and didn't see it. It is quite graphic so be prepared.

Then I was taking photos in my back yard pond of the froggies and the reflections.

THEN I discovered there were sticks in my pond!!!
OMGoodness I am plagued by sticks now!!! LOL

Hope you enjoyed my story….all of which is true, but embellished for entertainment! I did doctor the stick-bite photo with a stick and a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton head.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Where has the time gone.


I always think I am going to blog more often....and then life happens and I get side-tracked. I have taken well over 3000 photos this summer and would like to share a few in each blog. I have had so much fun with my new camera (Kodak Easy Share Z710). I took this photo of the moon....in daylight, with a flash and just the zoom on the camera.
I was just plain impressed with this darned camera!!!