A SHOUT OUT TO ANSEL

IT WAS MY Grandpas 92nd birthday last weekend. He was up from Safford to celebrate at my moms. He brought me up a book that made me really excited. It is a 1948 first edition of Ansel Adams photographs titled Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada. He asked me if I knew his work and I said YES, of course, everyone does. He seemed a little unaware of his fame. Then he proceeded to tell me about shooting with him and how Ansel had an 8x10 enlarger but that he (my grandpa) only had room to house a 4x5, and other details only a personal conversation could tell. I was floored. My Grandpa doesn't lie about things, he doesn't even really ever joke. Still unsure if I should really believe it but he grew up near Yosemite, went to Berkeley and USC and probably ran into people like that from time to time.

I THOUGHT THAT for the rest of the month I would shoot in only black and white for a little bit of fun. I am a little to blue in tint right now and need to adjust my manual settings but this could be a good experiment.
Here are the happenings so far the last two weeks.

GRANDPAS BIRTHDAY AND most guests in attendance

GRANDPA


MICHAEL AND AMELIA


LILY


JOAQUIN


BALLOONS





AFRICAN VIOLET



COOKING



BATH



BRISTOL



WOODLAND WILDLIFE FESTIVAL

RUFUS PHASE RED-tailed Hawk



(100%) ARCTIC WOLF

A FEW WORDS FROM SHELBY

ON A SPIDER in the bathroom that she thought might have been dead.
The spider moves..."Oh, IT'S WORKIN!"


I HAD A sore throat last week and Shelby was trying to make me feel better. Shelby also had just gone to the bathroom...#2, and she said that it hurt her butt.
Shelby: "Can I kiss your neck ( sore throat) mamma?"
Me: "Sure honey, thank you!"
Shelby: "Can you kiss my butt?"
Me: "hahahahahahahaha!!!!"
Shelby: "Is your neck better?"
Me: "Ya, it feels better"
Shelby: "As better as my butt?!"
Me: "hahahahahaha!!! Ya darlin"

PATRICK SWAYZE

WHO DIDN'T SEE dirty dancing?! It made me sad to learn that Patrick Swayzes battle with pancreatic cancer was lost. I was soooo rooting for him. Patrick swayed in and out of my thoughts nearly my entire life. During my 10 years of ballet classes and Company, but most of all as I drove up to work at 5:30am on the Arab Horse Farm in Mesa. Patrick was one of the greatest supporters of Arabian horses in the world. I have an album with magazine rip outs of him and his Egyptian Arab Tammen (pictured above). I was particularly obsessed with him during my ownership of Spooks, a grey arab I had out in Pinedale. Before that we met at the All Arabian Horse Show in Scottsdale (you MUST forgive my outfit), one of the nicest people you would have ever met. I am sad about this loss but grateful for his influence in my life.




image credit to: http://allthecreatures.org/horse/patrick-swayze-and-his-horse-tammen.html

YOURS TRULY IS....

WALGREENS NEWEST PHARMACY tech!









image credit to: http://www4.uwm.edu/shwec/publications/newsletters/Jan-Feb_2009.cfm

RAISING A CHILD SHOULD EARN ME A SECOND COLLEGE DEGREE

A FLASH CARD from one of Shelbys National Geographics for Kids and the Blister Beetle we found in the house.
OH HOW OUR children teach us...every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

CULTURALLY SPEAKING

ON THE DRIVE up to Fort Collins with Cody as we passed through the mountains swallowing Silverton and other quaint towns Cody made a comment that Brigham Young must have passed the beauty of Colorado searching for more, got to the Salt Lake Valley and said "That's it! No more! That's as far as we're going!".
I WAS SILENTLY pleased that Brigham Young did pass it up if the humorous quip made by Cody was truth. I would hate for Colorado to be another Utah. Not that Utah is bad, it is just its own world; its own culture. I like that! I also like to observe and learn about a more liberal Colorado.
REALIZING THE POINT of mission work as being conversion...REALLY THOUGH?! How terrible would that be if the entire worlds sole religion was Mormonism? Not terrible on a moral level but a cultural level. So much of culture hinges on religious belief. To take away from the ceremony and ritual of other cultures would be educationally and culturally devastating.
THERE IS A lot I agree with concerning the LDS church, most actually, but one thing I don't or have a lack of understanding for is the seperation of souls based on conversion refusal.
SHARING THE MORMON culture is a wonderful wonderful thing that I hope is more accepted one day as that...a respectable religion and foundation of a beautiful culture. But I sure hope that one day when I travel to Ireland; land of both sets of my ancestors that I wont learn about Joseph Smith. Instead I hope to breath in the differences between the Native Irish Catholics and the British-sponsored Protestant immigrants and the blood spilt fighting for a belief they felt just as strongly to be the truth as Mormons feel Mormonism to be. Respectfully.