Beach Fun at I Heart Faces!!!

It's Beach Fun Week at I Heart Faces and that makes me happy because I love the beach. I love the sand. I love the heat. I love the smell. I love the water. I don't love the memory of my four jellyfish stings last year. I love the time spent with family and friends. I love the relaxation. I love the wind. I don't love the mosquitoes. I love the food. I love being lazy. I love drip castles. I love sand dollars. I love the memories.

One of my favorite memories from our beach trip this year was when we realized, while cooking dinner, that the sunset was going to be really pretty. The teenagers scattered to find the perfect outfits, we turned off the stove, grabbed our cameras and raced to the other end of the island to the perfect sunset photo capturing spot. We got there a little past the prime "setting" time but we had a great time anyway.

This is the kind of picture teenagers prefer to take. As the mother of a teenage boy, I have learned to embrace the goofy face picture. I've learned I will always remember what his real smile looks like, so I never want to miss the funny, goofy, silly faces he and his friends make. Those are the shots you can't duplicate and the ones I don't want to miss. Plus, those will be the funny one to show off twenty years from now.

Check out the other fun beach photos over at I Heart Faces.

It's Pet Week at I Heart Faces

Blogworld, meet Velcro! I love him. He is 10 years old and was once a mighty warrior. He's gotten some battle scars over the last few years as he has defended his turf from the younger neighborhood cats. Back in the glory days, he could wander the streets and love on all of the people along his route. He loved our next door neighbor's greyhound. He would reach up, put his paws on the dog's shoulders and stretch. Fester loved Velcro because he let Velcro "hug" him.
Velcro got his name because as a kitten, he would latch onto your clothing and wouldn't let go. He loves people. He likes to eat stewed tomatoes, the dog's food and cantaloupe. I really do feed him cat food. He still hasn't quite forgiven us for getting a dog...four years ago. Secretly, I know he loves the dog.
Over the years he has left me many "gifts": Birds, moles, snakes, squirrels, mice, a rat and a potato. I still don't know where he found that potato. We had a kitty door once but got rid of it after he brought in a live bird, a live mouse and the rat. Thankfully, the rat was dead.
I find myself taking more pictures of Velcro these days because he is in the golden years of his life. I just know that when his time comes, he will see his old greyhound friend again and I'm sure they will hug as old friends do.
I know you probably can't see the cute iheartfaces blog button above. Their blog is going through some updates and some images are not available right now. I guess this is one of them. I don't want to wait for it to get fixed b/c I might miss the entry deadline. Don't worry, you can click on this link and go right on over to I Heart Faces to see all of the other cute pets.

Celebrating teens, which do I choose?

I'm getting ready to enter the challenge at iheartfaces.com and I will be killing two birds with one stone with this post.

1. I will be sharing shots from a fun photo shoot with three fun girls.

2. I will get to see my photographs on the blog and will be able to choose which one I like the best.

With teenagers, there's always a creeper.

Never could get the hair twirling shot right.

Kissy face

Crazy

I hope they don't speak, hear or see evil anytime soon.

Dorks

Another creeper

Gorgeous

I Heart Faces Contest #25- Celebrating Teens

I'm SO excited about the I Heart Faces challenge this week because I have so many pictures from which to choose. I am surrounded by teenagers all the time and they are terrific people. I had such a hard time choosing a picture. I had some dorky ones, some goofy ones, some crazy ones, but I kept coming back to the gorgeous one. Just a few days shy of her sixteenth birthday, she's worth celebrating because she is kind, thoughtful, loving, full of life and just a little bit ditzy.

Check out all the other teens at iheartfaces.com

P.S. Check out the dorky teenagers here.

I Heart Faces Contest - Yellow

I haven't participated in an I Heart Faces challenge in a few months and I really had no intention to compete this week. The theme is yellow, and while a lot of my Spring shots had yellow pollen in them, they didn't have a human face so they weren't appropriate. I also haven't had a lot of time recently to prepare props or set up a fun photo op. Then I remembered one of my favorite "oops" pictures. I am sharing a shot that came SOOC. It is totally overexposed and on the wrong setting but... he's wearing a yellow sweater. I knew immediately that it would be a "throw away" shot but when I looked at it on the computer, I loved it and it's imperfections. Plus, the overexposure gives it a yellow hue. Ha! A perfectly imperfect shot for Yellow Week at I Heart Faces.

Head on over to www.iheartfaces.com and check out all of the other lovely and properly exposed yellow themed photos.

Playing Catch Up Part 2...The Photos

Here are some of my favorite shots from the last month or so.

My friend Ian in his last high school soccer game.

It was a bad year for pollen!!!

Hummingbirds have returned!!! Actually, I saw my first one back in April, but they haven't been hanging around too much.

My BFF, Rooty the squirrel. He or she is quite convinced I am a squirrel stalker.

Playing with shutter speed. The fountain at Winthrop University.

Some of the over 2,000 hot dogs we cooked and served at our Special Olympics Spring Games

The handsome young men going to prom. I guess I should have included the beautiful young ladies too. Oh well, my handsome young man is the second from the left.

Front porch visitor

Backyard visitor

Spring flowers

Playing Catch Up

I'm going to take a few minutes and play catch up with my blog. Since I'm way behind, it feels like I'll never catch up. Well, here is what's happened since April...

I finished my big, big digital scrapbook project and it turned out really well. I completed a second digital scrapbook for a teacher friend for her end of the year celebration. (I need to figure out how to post video to the blog. I just haven't tried yet.)

I worked and worked and worked at my job. The last six weeks have been super busy but really fun. We had several Special Olympics competitions and lots of fun classes.

I've had lots of fun enjoying the great weather. I've taken lots of pictures and I hope to post some of them soon. I actually have four posts that I started over the last month or so and never finished. I think I will go with the short, but sweet posts for now so I won't get b(l)ogged down.