photography business

So, I've decided to start pursuing getting a photography business more. I figured I can get it all researched and things ready for when we move. I figure maybe in January I will be settled enough to get moving on it. I was considering starting now, but I didn't want to build a client base here then move in a few months (7 months almost). So, I need to decide on a name, I've been throwing ideas around with friends, but I just haven't said "This is it" to any one. One that I've been considering is Everyday Chaos Photography, this is the name of our family website. The other is Kelly My-Last-Name-Here Photography. It seems as though that's what everyone uses and I wanted to stand out a little, not that my last name is terribly common.

Here are some photos that I was finally able to upload. Tomorrow the boys have a dentist appointment in the morning, after we are going to get lunch I think then run to get a handful or groceries. Then it's home and time to look at the checkbooks and pay some bills. I'm still not sure whether or not Tommy will go to school or not, he didn't go today because I just couldn't get him to wake up. I really should take him, but it's been nice to have him home without anywhere we have to go.

At Port Discovery playing with the nearly life sized chess set.

Waiting outside in the courtyard for the adults to decide on where to have lunch.

The Hard Rock Cafe a few blocks away, where we finally decided to have lunch.

Anthony, Tommy, Jason, Tommy & Alex at the National Aquarium.

Jason petting a shark in Norfolk.

Alex playing with the water display in Norfolk.

A horseshoe crab that Tommy and Jason both got to touch.

Tommy finally got the courage to touch the horseshoe crab.

Anthony posing in a little boat on display.

another Sunday over

So today was supposed to be a quiet, relaxing day at home. We were going to play games, catch up on housework and just hang out together. That was until we were finally able to track down a dash kit for our new head unit. Best Buy had an appointment for installation at 11am. We went to drop off the truck, let the boys spend their birthday money on a game each and then had to run to the BB in Fredricksburg because the one here didn't have the iPod cable. Off we went to get it and then back to drop it off. Finally at 1:45 it was done.

In the meantime we dropped off the packages at Staples and sent our fax into the NC DMV. We stopped and grabbed the boys some lunch and wandered around Target for a bit. We didn't get home until after 3pm. The install took a lot longer than I had anticipated. The boys were good though which is a plus, they like to give us a hard time when we go shopping so for their good behavior they each got a new set of Pokemon cards. I bought a laptop bag, brought it home to find that my laptop is just a tiny bit too long for the inside sleeve. I'm not sure whether or not I'll keep it. Maybe I'll keep looking and see if I find anything else I like. I can put it in the middle pouch, just not in the sleeve, which is obviously made to protect the computer a bit more. We'll see, I was just disappointed because I took the time to measure my laptop before leaving, measured the inside of the bag and checked the measurements on the tag and it should fit, but it doesn't.

The start of a new week is almost upon us, Tom has a busy week at work and there is always stuff here around the house to keep me busy. The older boys have dentist appointments on Tuesday and then on Friday, sometime during the day, we are leaving for NC to go hang out with Sam & Chris for the weekend.

Alex is still awake, big surprise there, so I am going to try to make myself productive and get my stuff ready to list on Craig's List and ebay, maybe even clean the kitchen. lol

{quiet} house

Once again my house is down to the usual chaos of everyday. I love having my SiL and nephew here visiting, but the kids start to fight after awhile and it's just loud and hectic.

I have a lot of pictures to sort through and a lot I'd like to print out. So, that got me searching online for little dedicated photo printers. I read a lot of good reviews on Epsons. I found one that I wanted, but it's been discontinued. I can buy that model through a 3rd part seller through Amazon, but it's nearly $200. The newer model that replaced it is only $130 on Epson's site or $99 on Amazon. I think when I can get the money together I'm going to get the one through Amazon.

We turned in our beloved Trailblazer this afternoon. It was a sad day, while we are glad to be out of the payment we had on it, we paid for 15k miles a year and didn't use them all and we loved that truck it gave us absolutely no problems. So, we are back down to having only 2 cars in the driveway again.

I've got a long list (what's new) of things I need to do. Nothing got done while we had company so it'll all be rushed to get done soon. I have to drop off 2 packages at Staples and I also need to fax in some paperwork to the NC DMV. I have some things to list on ebay, Jackie brought me the I love Lucy Barbie that I had left in the closet at my MiL's house. I'm hoping to get all those ready to list on Tuesday or Wednesday. Then next Friday we are going to NC to see Chris off on his 3rd deployment to Iraq. Him and Tom are such good friends that when Sam told me they probably wouldn't be able to swing by during his leave I knew we had to try to see him if we could. Sam said it wasn't a problem to come next weekend, so that is our plan.

Hopefully the next time I post I'll have something off my list crossed off. ;)

busy days

It's been a lot of fun having Jackie & Jason here these past few days. But I must admit that I was really looking forward to sleeping in some. lol Though today was the only day we got up early for a reason. Tom took two days off of work so that we could all hang out and go do some things. So today we went up to Baltimore and went to Port Discovery and the National Aquarium. Port Aquarium was ok, I was under the impression that it was a science museum type center with hands on things for the kids, but it was more like a big hands on play ground. I was a bit disappointed with it, the kids had pretty good time and they do offer a military discount of $2 off per ticket. We ate lunch at the Hard Rock cafe and then decided to check out the aquarium. I was hoping they would also have a military or AAA discount, but the not-so-friendly woman at the ticket counter said they don't honor those there, how you are supposed to receive those discounts then is beyond me. Especially if you decide to go on a whim and the tickets are $22 per adult, any way we can save some money is appreciated. The kids enjoyed the aquarium though, and we spent a good amount of time there, so I guess it was money well spent.

I have a lot of pictures, but I need to re-size them so they don't take up all my storage space.

Yesterday we celebrated Tommy & Anthony's birthdays. I hope it was well worth the wait for them. They seemed to be super happy and enjoyed the attention and all the cool gifts they received. Tommy was very excited to get his beloved Pokemon Diamond game, especially since his cousin has Pearl and they can battle each other.

Well, I should remove my butt from the couch and do something productive, my laundry is piling up (and both boys complained about not having any jeans) and the house is just trashed. We aren't sure what we are doing tomorrow because right now it looks like Anthony doesn't feel so great, but we will see how he feels in the morning. I think we are looking at going to some of the caves that are somewhere kind of near here, going to DC, or a gold mine (Jason has a project to do on gold so when they were doing some research online they found there were some mines around here). If we go to DC we are going to go to the National Zoo (it's free! lol) and maybe one of the Smithsonian Museums. I am hoping to get some time on Thursday to get some organizing, house cleaning and some other things taken care of on my long list of "to get done eventually" things. lol

Here is a picture that I re-sized quick from our trip today.

new sweatshirt {love}

Anthony received a very special gift from my friend Kathy the other day. He loved it! He wore it on Friday and said to me, "Mom, how 'bout we take a picture?" So I grabbed my camera and snapped a couple shots. Unfortunately he insisted on standing in the chair with the light coming in at a bad angle, but we managed one or two acceptable pictures. Thank you Kathy!!


So tonight we had a big dinner since Tom won't be here tomorrow. It wasn't very put together or anything, no one but Tom was really hungry when everything was finished, so much for thinking that one through. lol All the food turned out good. Later we dyed 30 eggs. The color tab kit that Jackie brought didn't work so well so we had to send the boys back upstairs while we boiled some water to make it with the food coloring. In the end we have a lot of bright and funky colored eggs. I have photos but they are all orange due to the nasty lighting in my house.

Tomorrow is a lay around the house kind of day. I need to finish up with my laundry and maybe try to order some prints through Sams Club. I just showed Jackie the layouts I've done and I actually remembered to ask if Sue (my MiL) likes the scrapbook I gave her at Christmas. So, I'll be spending a small fortune to get some layouts printed out here at some point. I really want to get the ones printed that I just did. I should try to print them at home, at least some, or at least the ones for them.

It's getting a bit late, so I'm off for the night.

{cupcakes} for school

So, we made cupcakes for Tommy to take to school this morning. I just finished frosting them all, thankfully I made a couple extra because Anthony decided that he wanted to snag one. In about a an hour or so I will need to throw the other two boys into the car and take the cupcakes up to the school. I wanted Tommy to take them on the bus with him, but I don't think he'd be able to manage the container I put them in on the bus.

So today should be a busy day of cleaning and organizing. I decided to do something useful last night while Alex decided to stay up late and I backed up the entire contents of my laptop. Since I was feeling especially non-productive most of the day yesterday, I sat in my coushy computer chair and organized my scrap folders on the desktop. Then, I got it all backed up to my main EHD. Now I still need to work on getting my photos backed up, but at least we are making progress. My next plan of attack on the back-up front is to at least make 2 dvd copies of all of our photos, the 2nd copy I'm hoping either my grandparents or Tom's mom will hold onto for us. Hopefully I'll be covered. lol I know it probably sounds overly paranoid to have 4 back up copies, but I was the cause of a horrible EHD mishap about 2 years ago and it makes me sick to know that all that stuff is probably lost forever, all because of me. So, I am trying to take every precaution that I can (short of those online backup services like Mozy & Carbonite) to hopefully prevent the loss of everything should something happen to the computer. I think I need to put more dvd's on my list of things I need from the store.

Well, I should probably go make myself useful and get the kitchen cleaned up, or set my alarm and head back to bed for a bit. ;)

Look Mom, see?

So, last night I decided I'm going to try to catch up with the March challenges at TDC. When I decided this I only had one finished. There are at least 4 challenges a week, if not more. I'm a bit behind. lol But before I went to bed last night I did manage to complete one of the sketch challenges. I really do love templates/sketches, I can get pages done so much faster. So, I will share it with you now.

Thanks to Kathy for my first blog comment! lol I had to share this milestone with the few people that read this. ;) (<--still need to look for those smilies to use, why doesn't blogger implement some?)

So, I got this great idea from this item at {we are} storytellers, mommycards. I find it to be an absolute ingenious idea. I haven't bought them, yet, but am considering it, or maybe I'll make my own. I think it's a great idea not only for what the item description says, but for us with school-aged children who want to pass their phone numbers to a friend. It would be great to be able to hand Tommy a few and he can give them to his friends and their parents will have all our info at hand and not have to do the "Hi this is so-and-so's mom, I'm looking for Tommy's mom?" lol I'm really considering purchasing these or making up some boy-ish ones for Tommy, it would be nice to be able to get him to have some get togethers with his friends over the summer.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not, but I finished the last Harry Potter book. I started reading them after Christmas because I had asked for the first two in the series as gifts. I was amazed at how fast I was able to flip through them. Hmmm, other than that we are being extremely lazy tonight when we should be getting the house ready for our guests this weekend. We are all so excited for Jackie & Jason to come visit us. I'm hoping to be able to do alot of stuff with them, but not get worn out - probably won't happen though.

Until next time...

I must be {crazy}

I stayed up entirely too late last night. Mr Man just didn't want to sleep, he kept trashing around and just wouldn't close his eyes. He laid down on me for about a half hour or so and I swore he was going to sleep, but no, he was just resting. So, I finally headed up to bed around 2am. The worst part, I wasn't tired. So I turned on some hopefully boring movie and then got some completely random idea to write down a "letter" to each of the kids of their likes and personalities for the moment. I am going to use it on a scrap page, but still, at 2am? Then, after I did one for Anthony, Tommy and Alex I got to thinking about how Tom and I will be married for 8 years this coming May. So, once I thought of that I had to write down a few thoughts on that.

Tommy heads to the bus in a minute or two and I'm seriously considering heading back to bed. I'm awake now though, so I might try to dive into some cleaning or organizing while Mr Man is still sleeping. I guess at least after staying up til nearly 3am writing out those letters I won't have to flip through pictures wondering what to do for my next layout when the mood strikes me to scrap. ;) lol

{5}

The day has arrived. My middle son, Anthony, is 5 today. Where did the time go? Seems like just yesterday he was a little toddler with his eye on causing mischief wherever he could. Now he's 5 and will start kindergarten in the fall. We didn't make too much out of the day, but tried to let him know that it was his birthday. He decided, along with Tommy, to wait for Jackie and Jason to be here to celebrate their birthdays and to share the day of opening presents and a cake. Boy was I surprised to hear Tom ask him today what he wanted for his birthday dinner. That irked me a bit to say the least, but we felt horrible that he has to wait a whole week to have his presents and have his ice cream cake he's been so looking forward to. I had also asked Tom to stop by the grocery store to pick up a couple cupcakes or something (I would have made some, but I don't have any eggs lol) and he came home with a small cake! Another surprise to me, especially since we won't really eat it. We love sweets and chocolates in this house, but we just don't eat alot of cake. Some photos from our surprise cake and rendition of Happy Birthday.



Well...there were two more...but the re-sized versions have fallen into a black hole somewhere on my computer and apparently don't want to be found, so maybe tomorrow they will pop up.

Other than that we are just getting ready for our visitors. We have to do our grocery shopping for their stay and get the house straightened up. I also have about 7 or 8 boxes to unpack from the whole foreclosure fiasco. I also need to grab a few things for the Easter baskets, Jackie and my MIL have taken care of most of it, but I feel bad that we haven't gotten anything for them.

I did finish a layout after working on it on and off for nearly 3 days. It's for the Anything Goes challenge at The Digi Chick, prize this time...a guest CT spot! I think this is the 3rd time I've tried for one and I'm hoping I get a little luckier this time than I have in the past. I love participating in the challenges and pushing my "norm", but it does get discouraging when time after time you don't win anything. lol I have promised Sam a few layouts with some cute pictures she took of her kiddos. I had such a block during the whole fiasco a few weeks ago that I didn't touch anything. I think I may finally be coming out of it, so I will start looking for some girly things in my stash and look through the galleries she sent me to figure out my plan of attack. I love scrapping with pictures of her Moe, she's so cute and it's such a change to be able to use pink and purple colors!

{shopping} relieves stress

Well, that's my story anyway. ;) This week ended up a bit better than it started considering that we found out the house wasn't on the foreclosure list anymore. Now it's back to wondering/worrying about our "big" move to CA this fall. My SiL and nephew will be here in less than a week to hang out with us over Spring Break. We are hoping to get up to Baltimore and DC while they are here, but I believe I already posted about that.

Today we had some nice retail therapy as a family. Tommy, Alex and I dropped off Anthony and Tom at the exchange for haircuts. We ran to the post office in Q-Town to drop off a couple packages, and as it would figure I still forgot one! After we were all back together again we took off for Payless, I saw an ad of theirs that said had Airwalks on sale. We came out of there with 3 pairs of shoes for under $55, which might still sound a bit high, but we did save some money and hey, $55 is less that what Tom and I spend on one pair of tennis shoes for ourselves. From there we headed to Best Buy, we just had to go and check out the new store in town. It's pretty small, considering the ones in Potomac Mills and Fredricksburg.

While we were at Best Buy we decided to check out their car audio dept. We were looking to upgrade the dash unit that is in the Expedition. We ended up leaving there to head up to the store in Potomac Mills because they had the system we wanted in stock, the Stafford store had it on sale for $300 off. So, off we ran. We get ourselves into so much trouble. But, after getting the title switched we will be done with the costs of it, well with the exception of back tires before we drive to CA.

Now, I'm off to play COD4. :)

Birthday Gifts

Spring Break is coming up. We've got to figure out what we are going to do with Jackie and Jason here visiting us. I have been itching to head up to Baltimore since we've lived here. So, again I check out some "things to do" near the Baltimore Inner Harbor and a lot of things came up. There is the Aquarium (expensive though for a family of 5), the Science Museum and the Port Discovery Children's Museum. The Children's Museum looks to be the cheapest and hopefully the most entertaining after the hour or so drive with the kiddos. So now all we need is a suggestion or two for some fairly inexpensive, family friendly restaurants in the Inner Harbor.

Tom came home early-ish from work today so we took our new-ish truck out for another drive (my turn this time!) and ran to Wal-Mart. We found that the new Best Buy in town is open. We bought some more of the kiddos birthday presents, although it's amazing that we can still pull one over on Anthony anymore. Tommy is getting the Bee Movie, Now That's What I Call Music 26, a Magnetix kit and his coveted Pokemon Diamond DS game. Anthony is getting Ben 10 Season 3 (not out quite yet, but just in time for his birthday), a Ben 10 dvd Transformation game, MechAssault ds game and the soundtrack from the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie (mainly because they sing Bad Day in the beginning and that is Anthony's "song").

With all that I should log off of here and pay attention to the episode of Lost that is on before I get too confused as to what's going on.

{relieved}

On Monday afternoon Tom checked the website of the office that sent the notice about the public auction for the house, amazingly enough, the house was crossed off! Yay! It's such a relief to say the least. Mr Landlord was supposed to come by Monday night to do a walk through but never showed, he did show last night, although late, as is his MO.

So today I took a break from cleaning (although I am trying to keep up with the laundry, a seemingly never-ending and daunting task) and played online and read my book. I'm on the final book of the Harry Potter series and I find I'm flying through this last one.

This time change thing...

has really messed up my sleep schedule. I think this may be the first time that it has hit me so hard. Wow, I was fine this morning, took me 3 tries to get Tommy up and out of bed, but we really should have sent him to bed closer to 8 instead of 9. After I got Tommy on the bus I thought I would relax and read a bit of my book (Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince) and enjoy the quiet while the other two were still sleeping. I got sleepy and passed out as luck would have it. Alex finally woke up around 11:30 or so. Now I feel as though my whole day was really messed up. I had a ton of stuff I needed to get done since Mr Landlord is supposed to be coming by to get the lease and do a "walk-through". So I wanted to have everything cleaned up and what not. I still have a few things to do, but the rest of it is just going to have to be ok the way it is.

I got another layout done yesterday. I like this one alot, not sure if I'm totally in love with the title (or the way it's done) but I'm somewhat limited in my resources since I try not to spend alot of money on scrapbooking supplies. Tom suggested the title and while I like it, I don't totally love it - Tommy did though so that's what we went with. I'm trying to think of other stories and cute things about them to scrap about - I really liked doing the Missing Keys layout with all the journaling. I hooked up my EHD to the laptop so transfer some files back and forth. I need to do a backup up everything on both drives. I'm thinking that while I can I am going to make a backup folder with date on the 500gb EHD and then delete the oldest backup folder. This I think will work better for me since I'm constantly changing how I have things organized. Plus I'm starting to delete some things that I don't think I'll use so I don't want to use up space with things I've already deleted once. This system will work great for my digital scrapbooking supplies. I think I'll continue to old system for photos and other things.

Look at the time! Wow, Tommy should be off the bus here shortly so I should go and try to clean up the toys in the front room so that I can help him with his homework.

another {lazy} Saturday

So we did absolutely nothing productive today. I got up at about 10:45am, because I'm an awesome mom - all 3 of my children were downstairs watching tv already. The boys woke Tom up at 11:30 for me. We've just been sitting around today, we watched Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium and played games. I started and finished (amazingly enough) a layout today! For whatever reason it was I can't remember, but I was reminded about Tommy's losing the keys fiasco when we went to Florida in July of 2002. I really wanted to scrap about it so that I don't forget (which is happening way too frequently) and I am really happy to say that I got it done.

I'm going to try to finish at least one page of my nephew for the book I started for my SIL a long time ago. I gave her about 5 pages at Christmas and would like to have a few more to give to her when she comes down over Easter. Although she'll be here in about 2 weeks so I don't know if I'll have a chance to get them printed out before she gets here. Anyway...I'm off to do something.

{already} gone

So, my brother and his friend arrived here at the house at about 11:30 this morning. He took the truck off the trailer then actually came in for awhile. I had to convince him to stay until Tommy got home from school. Since he agreed he came in and hung out with Anthony and Alex. We showed him all the cool things about the Wii and the Wii sports. He's convinced he needs to get one for himself now! lol They ended up leaving at 5 to head back. There's supposed to be a decent line of snow coming through and they didn't want to run into too much of it, so while I am a bit disappointed I understand.

When they left we ran to Wal-Mart to pick up some pictures we had left for developing, yes that's right, developing. We had 3 disposable cameras sitting around for awhile and figured it was time to find out what was on them. Our WM is "renovating" and it's the biggest PITA to maneuver around that store. Tom sold a pair of boots that were too small for him to another guy he works with, so with his money he wanted to get a new game. He decided on Army of Two. He says it's pretty good, a lot like Gears of War, in a way.

The boys received their Webkinz in the mail today. So we spent a few minutes setting up their accounts. It is a pretty cool little world they have for those little animals, almost makes me want one of my own. lol

So, I'm going to go now and try to get motivated to scrap some. I feel like I'm horribly behind. I know some months I'll do more than others, and I'm by no means on a time frame to get anything done, I just like to see the stories unfold. I really want to scrap about the time Tommy lost the keys to the car in the toilet on our last day we were in Florida. We don't have a photo of the incident in question since we were in such a panic to find them (it was the day we were leaving) but we do have pictures of our trip so I just need to find something that works.

Before I forget, I wanted to say Hi to my good friend Sam who started a blog for her family today. I'm so excited to see more of my friends in the blogging community, I've been blogging using WordPress for our family site for at least two years, longer even.

almost {Friday}

Yay! I am so happy that it's Thursday night. That means tomorrow this week will be over and hopefully a better week is ahead of us. My brother should be leaving in about an hour or so to bring us our new (new to us) spiffy truck. I can't wait to see it in person, my brother says he's jealous and that if we ever sell it to let him know. :) I'm so appreciative that my brother has spent alot of time trying to find us something that was a good deal and taking care of the title initially to make sure that we would have no problems with it. I hope that he knows we really do appreciate everything that he's done.

Our landlord finally dropped off our "new" lease last night. Good thing that the lawyer at base legal forewarned Tom that he was probably getting it from the realtors website so when we got the exact same lease we signed with Coldwell we weren't surprised. He wants to do another walk-thru, I'm unsure exactly why - but we'll see.

I was able to get a few layouts done over the past couple of days. I haven't been in the mood much, so I used some great templates to help me with my block and I finished up one I had started a while ago.

hurry up and wait {update}

So Tom had his appointment with base legal this morning. We were hoping for good news, a twinkling of hope in this unfortunate situation we have stumbled into, but such is our luck, there wasn't any. The lawyer shed some light on things for us. He said we are in a lease, one way or another and our best bet legally and financially is to wait and see what happens on the 13th. So, Tom called Evelyn and left a message for her that the lawyer said we had to give mr lanlord 30 days notice and we can't pay for both places for the month of March. So, we wait and see.

I'm sad that I only have 13 more days left on my Lightroom trial. I really want to buy it, and if things go well with this house situation I just might. I edited some pictures I took yesterday and of the {hulk} hands incident. So, for your patience here are the photos :)

{hulk} hands

So, yeah...I was sitting on the couch on my laptop with Tommy sitting next to me looking at fairy tale stories because he had to do a small project for school due on Monday. We got everything taken care of and I was curious as to why Alex was being so quiet and hadn't bothered Tom or myself in a bit. I look up and see that he has something that looks nearly black on the kitchen chair. I get up and go in there to see what he has and start to chase him because whatever it was, was all over. Tommy says he's got paint - then I snag him up and see what he has...he found the food coloring. Yep, all 4 colors, he opened them all up and was having a grand ol' time. His hands were blackish/green and the chair was black. There is red on one wall, green & blue splashed on another, there were also drips of red making a trail from the kitchen table through the kitchen into the dining room.

So, he was rushed upstairs for a bath. Even after playing in the tub for about 20 minutes plus his hands are still tinted green. Hulk hands. I have pictures, I just need a calm moment to myself to get them loaded onto my computer. Maybe later, maybe tomorrow.

We are still dealing with the house issue. I'm at a total loss and trying to make heads or tails of the truthfulness of our landlord is just draining me completely. I really wish the solution was more cut & dry.

Off for some quality time with the hubby...a Dane Cook special from Netflix.

let's ramble just a bit today

So, there is no real purpose of this post, except to get my mind off the current state of my life and immersed in other things for the time being at least.

First off, through a post at DST I found Lisa Leonard's blog. She makes custom hand-made jewelry, it's so nice. I briefly looked through the first couple pages of her blog and saw some nice things and enjoyed reading about her kids. The one piece that I really loved and hope will be able to manage to get (going to start hinting at the hubby for it for either the anniversary or Mother's Day lol) is this Sweet and Petite necklace.

And dare I say it, I have found two more sites worth wasting time on. ;) Click here to see my mini-city - find the button on the side to create your own. I haven't looked into this one too much and don't understand exactly what is required to do. Then there is Yuwie, it's like another myspace, but apparently there is a way to possibly get paid for clicks to your page. I still need to make mine pretty, but here is my Yuwie page.

So I think this is about all I can do for now, I feel as though I can't form a complete, competent sentence at the moment.