Since I Been Gone

Sorry I've been away for a while - I've been REALLY sick. Hopefully the worst is behind me. But since it's been so long, I've got plenty of blogging material so, time permitting, I should have lots of new posts coming up. (Ohh, I know you all can barely contain your excitement!)

One of my mini-albums will be featured as a giveaway on the Tip Junkie website. If you haven't checked out this site yet, you're missing out. It's filled with great tips and ideas for everyday life. The details for the giveaway should be up on her site within the next day or so. Here are some pics of the book to get you all so excited. It is a "girlfriend" themed book - a fun way to display all those fun photos of you and the girls. Good luck to all who enter.

Daddy's Girl

I've always been a bit of a Daddy's Girl at heart. There is something special about the relationship a girl has with her father. I'm lucky to have a great Dad and that we have such a good relationship. We had a nice long talk tonight and he helped to lift my spirits during a really down-in-the-dumps week. (Thanks Dad)

I am also married to a great guy so I have no doubt AJ will be just as crazy about her dad when she grows up as she is now. There is a little piece of me that is jealous - moms just can't compete with the daddy-daughter thing. But most of me is just glad for them.


I saw this letter on Tangled and True and I had to share. It made me cry! It is from a Real Simple Magazine family feature called "Read this when..." : Letters written to children by their parents to be read at various milestones. (I'm sooo making Craig do this for AJ.) Grab a tissue...


To Sloane, age one, to be read on your wedding day
by Rob Corddry
{Rob Corddry is an actor is Los Angeles.}


Sloane!
Hey bug! Who's a bug? Who's a bug? Are you a little bug?
I hope that still makes you laugh. In 2007 I kill with that. Sometimes you laugh so hard, I think you're going to turn inside out. But if you are reading this letter, you haven't. You are still right side in, and you are getting married. I wonder what year it is. When do people get married in the future? Your mother and I got married late compared with our parents. I do hope you're not 75. I understand that you may want to have fun and travel, but 75 is way too old to get married for the first time.
Are you happy? Are you the person you want to be? I hope so. If not, don't worry; you still have plenty of time. I hope this person you're marrying helps you out with that.
Here's a good question: Do you still make "the goofy face"? Let me explain. The other morning, I got you out of your crib (are you sleeping past 6:30 A.M. these days?) and brought you into bed with us like I always do. I laid you next to your mother, and you turned and looked at me with the goofy face. It's a very calm yet intentionally piercing gaze, contemplative in the way you cock your head and purse your lips at me. You don't stare at your mom in this fashion. It's almost as if you know I'm going to say something stupid and you are giving me the requisite look, pre-embarrassment.
"She's making that goofy face again," I said to your mom.
"That's not a goofy face," your mom said. "That's a mature face."
And at that moment everything changed. I saw you as you may look today, reading this letter. I saw a flash of the young woman you may become. And in that flash I fell more deeply in love with you, if that's even possible. I reveled for a second in the relationship that we have barely begun to forge. I can't wait.
I hope you enjoy this day. I hope your mother and I weren't impossible and didn't invite too many of our friends or clients. Then again, I am, most likely, paying for this damn thing.
Have a wonder-filled day and a wonder-filled marriage and a wonder-filled life. I'm trying to raise you with love and just the perfect amount of detachment, for as a wise man once said, "You don't belong to me. You belong to God." Tell your partner that when he gets a little too clingy.
Bless you, Sloaney Baloney. My little girl. My little bug.

All right already!

It's only been a week since my last post, but I've been attacked by several friends for my lack of new blogging. So here's a little something short and sweet to tide you over until my super cool post is ready.

I recently read "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult. LOVED IT! It's about a 13-year old girl who was conceived strictly to be a donor for her older sister who has leukemia. By the time she's 13, there really is little chance of survival for her older sister, but her mom wants her to donate one of her kidneys to try to save her. The doctors don't think it will work and the younger sister doesn't want to undergo the surgery. She has spent her whole life feeling like she was nothing but a supplement for her sister. So she tries to get a medical emancipation from her parents. It sounds absurd, but you really feel for the girl when you hear some of the things the mom has said. But the the story changes and you hear it from the mom's point of view and you understand why. Talk about a moral dilemma. I didn't know who to side with. You really felt for both parties. This is a good cry book. I cried from the beginning to the end. I thought it was really good. (Why do we love things that make us cry?) Anyway, I recommend it and am anxiously waiting to read another of her books that I picked up at the library called "Vanishing Acts." Anyone read this? (It was the only book available by this author.)I'll let you know my review when I'm done.

Fireflies

Tonight we went to the park with AJ. It was finally not a blistering hot day today and the sun had just set. It was actually a really beautiful evening. Twilight has always been my favorite time of day. I especially loved it back home in Utah when the weather started to get cooler and you needed a sweater as soon as the sun dipped behind the mountains. I have missed that a bit, until tonight when, after living here for almost two years, I saw my first real-life fireflies.

I have never seen them in person. For me, they have always been fascinating, almost magical. At the beginning of the Disneyland ride "Pirates of the Carribean", you float through the bayous and there are little mechanical "fireflies" that fly around. That was always my favorite part of the whole ride. Everytime we rode through there I would think to myself, "Someday, I am going to go to the south and see those for real." But after living here for this long and never spotting a single one, I had kind of given up. So we were getting ready to pack it in for the night when this little blinking light caught my eye. When I realized what it was, I could hardly contain myself. I wanted to show AJ so the three of us walked across the park and down into this wooded area and they were everywhere - flying all through the trees and shrubs. It was just so beautiful! I'm sure some people may think I am crazy, but it was really a magical moment for me.

Wedding Autograph Book

My friend Candace has a great photography business back home in Utah and just got her new website up and running. (It may be a day or so before you can view it, but please check it out.) She is doing a booth at the Bridal Show this weekend at the Southtown Expo Center, as well as one in Provo in a couple weeks. She has been kind enough to feature my wedding autograph books, which I'm really excited about. Here are a few sample pictures. The idea behind these books is that rather than having a traditional guestbook for people to sign and then you it tuck away and never open it again, you have a completed mini wedding scrapbook to display your photos, and then people can sign well wishes or short heartfelt messages on the blank pages instead of just signing their names.

I am also going to make them available on my Etsy store, where you can see additional photos.

P.S. I'm counting this as my scrapbook page for the week. ;)