Nikki's Senior Photo

Oh my gosh, what a fun day!  Nikki wanted to do her senior pics down at the beach.  It was a challenge to find a date that worked for both Michelle (our photographer) and us.  But we did it & headed down to Balboa to meet her for Nikki's photos.  She didn't disappoint!  She's been there before so she had some favorite locations she wanted to hit.  But then we just wandered around and as she'd see something interesting, we'd stop and take some shots.  I had a really hard time picking my favorite one.  There were so many that I loved!  I'll just try to narrow it down as much as I can :)

I love all of them & had a great time following along watching Michelle in action!

A Short Visit with Stephen

Nikki had a 5 day weekend this past weekend.  St. Lucy's always takes Valentine's Day off.  Sister Helen couldn't take the barrage of deliveries for the girls from both boys and parents.  So she made it a holiday.  Well then the deliveries started coming on the 13th.  So guess what?  Yep they get that day off too!  Gotta love her.  So that gave us Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Plus both girls were off on Monday for President's Day.  We decided to take advantage of it and pull Ali out of school on Friday and head up the coast.  We wanted to tour some colleges along the way and get in a visit with Stephen.

We left Friday morning and arrived at Cal State Channel Islands for our 11am tour.  The school was very nice.  Bill really liked it, and I think both girls did as well.  The one downfall is they don't have any sports programs.  They have club sports though so it's still a consideration.

From there, we headed into Santa Barbara for lunch.  We walked awhile on State Street and had a great pizza lunch.  Then it was time to jump back in the car for a long stretch.  Our next stop was Monterey.  We arrived, checked into our hotel and headed to dinner.  I'd made a reservation since it was Valentine's Day and we weren't sure what kind of crowds would be there.  I picked a place called Lalapalooza.  It had good reviews and it was in the little downtown and not near Fisherman's Wharf so I thought we'd be okay.  It was a great choice.  Not crowded, good meal and we walked from the hotel.

The next morning, we had another 11am tour.  This one at Cal State Monterey Bay.  This is the school that has been great about communicating with Nikki about soccer.  They've seen her play a few times and have told her they like what they see.  Unfortunately she's had several girls tell her not to go there.  They've said it's all concrete and super ugly since it's an old Army base (Fort Ord).  Needless to say, I'm glad I forced her to check it out.  She and Ali both loved it.  It's near the beach, has bigger dorm rooms and is really spread out over a large area.  Plus it helped that we had an awesome tour guide.  

This was the new library.  Many of the buildings had been converted from the Army base.  But the new buildings have been built using 80% recycled materials from the base.  It was really neat to hear the history of some of the buildings.

After our tour, we stopped and had lunch near the water.  There were a bunch of seals out on the dock so we watched them awhile too.  From there, we headed to UC Santa Cruz.  Nikki really wanted to check out their campus, but I wasn't able to set up a tour.  They only do weekday tours and were closed on Monday due to the holiday.  So we had planned to just do a walking tour.  But by the time we arrived and saw what hill the campus was on, we decided a driving tour would be just fine.  It's a pretty campus, but is much harder to get into.  So Nikki is going to keep it on her list of "maybes".  

From there we headed to Santa Clara.  We knew we wouldn't see Stephen until morning, so we just had a nice dinner and shopped around at Santana Row.  We stayed at the hotel right on Santana Row this time.  I'd seen it before and had thought it'd be a fun place to stay.  It was perfect.

The next morning, we picked Stephen up and headed into San Francisco.  He had kept the day open for us.  So we went into town and ate at Gotts Roadside.  Yes we'd planned our entire day around that meal.  It consisted of hamburgers, fries and shakes for $110!  Although I got the ahi burger, and it was delicious.  Then we walked down to Pier 39 and did lots of people watching.  Of course we had to stop by and see all of the seals there too.

The visit seemed way too fast, but I did get to ask him all of the questions I'd been wanting to ask.  I am just so proud of how hard he's working and the direction he wants to go.  He is loving everything they're doing in ROTC and is working really hard to earn a scholarship.  He showed me the two badges he's earned already.  One was for scoring 290 on the PT test and the other was for German Armed Forces Military Proficiency.  Now he just needs the uniform to be able to put them on!  It sounds like school is going okay and polo is too.  Although he thinks his time is limited for playing polo.  He sees  how busy school and ROTC get junior year and is concerned.  We told him to take it one year at a time and see how it goes.

Monday morning we woke up early.  Stephen forgot to give me a form he needed me to take to the bank for signatures and was leaving at 7:30 to work in a VA hospital.

Then we had breakfast at Stephen's favorite breakfast place, Bill's Cafe.  It was a yummy way to begin our long ride home.  I did enjoy the beautiful blossoms on the trees along the way, although felt really bad about all of the bees that splattered on our windshield!

Overall it was a very successful trip for both college tours and visiting Stephen.  Hopefully he'll be able to come home for spring break.  Otherwise we won't have him back here until the END of summer.  Boo!!

November happenings

Where did the month go?  It was a busy one, but great.  We knew Stephen would be coming home for a visit but didn't have exact dates.  It came down to how the water polo team performed.  With  Ali's birthday falling on Thanksgiving this year, we had to have her party the weekend before.  She wanted to go ice skating and then have everyone come back here to hang out until around 10:00.  She was planning to have the girls all sleep over that night.  I convinced her to skip the sleep over part because she was leaving the next day for camping at the beach with Paige.  We also were in high risk for rain that day which scared the heck out of me.   What was I going to do with 20 or so kids locked in my house for 8 hours?!  Thankfully the weather held out and there wasn't a drop of rain.

They were so cute.  On their own, they piled up their cell phones and left them on the table.  It was a great day!  Then they all went home, Ali slept late, then woke up and headed down to camp at Huntington Beach with her friend Paige until Wednesday.  She got home just in time to enjoy Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving day gave us another task to get done.  Stephen was leaving to go back to school in a few short days and wouldn't be home until Christmas break.  So we had to head outdoors for their annual Christmas photo.  Luckily it was a beautiful day.

We took these photos and several more in about 10 minutes.  Then I had to run inside and finish getting ready before everyone arrived for Thanksgiving dinner.  The girls asked if they could keep my camera to take a few more shots, and boy did they ever.

They had a lot of fun doing their photo shoot.  And it ended it a yummy meal shared with family.  That was just a bit of the fun from the month.

Photo Book Update

We received our 2013 photo book in the mail yesterday!  My first thought was that it was a lot smaller than I though it would be.  I had to add so many pages as I was designing it.  So I thought it was going to be this massive book.  Turns out 93 pages of a photo book is quite small.  If I opt to continue these, I know now that I can safely do 200 pages without it seeming too big.  Wish I would've known that.

As for the quality, I am very happy with it.  There were a few photos I was concerned about the quality and I was right.  They turned out not to be the best.  But the rest look amazing.  I really like being able to size photos so easily.  I can make them odd sizes and bigger or smaller.  Overall I think I do like the old fashioned scrapbook look better, but for the ease and cost I may continue with the photo books for now.  Plus they take up much less space!

Photo Books

I have finally finished my first LONGER photo book!  I decided to give it a go by doing the year 2012 all online as a printed book.  Every year since 1995 I have done one or two family albums a year through scrap booking.  I've always used Creative Memories products and have been happy with the results.  Along with the family albums, I've kept a school album for each of our kids as well as a Christmas album with highlights from each year.  My albums started out all cutesy but over the years have become more like my personality...straight and to the point.  I love taking pictures so of course I want my albums to reflect the many photos I've taken.  So rather than fill the pages with stickers or die cuts, I opt to just use photos and pens.  I like to write a bit about where we were or dates, just for reference, but I really want my pages to be about the photos.

About August of last year I realized I hadn't completed my 2011 album and was already way behind for the current year.  After pinning a few pins on Pinterest about Blurb, I decided to give it a try for a year.  I was able to get caught up and keep it up throughout the year.  My family has had mixed reviews about this idea of mine.  They all love to look through our albums and are afraid this book won't be the same.  Honestly I have that concern as well.  I've done photo books in the past from other sites and I do love them, but haven't felt that they are quite the same as a homemade album.

Have any of you switched from a scrap book type of album to a printed book and had success?  I'd love to hear some feedback.

Budding Photographer

Nikki joined the yearbook staff at school this year.  I was so excited that she was going to start taking photos and was hoping she would enjoy it as much as I do.  Turns out she's having a great time.  So the other day her friend asked her to do a "photo shoot" of her.  They walked over to the wash and had some fun all on their own.  I was so impressed with their work that I had to share a few of their shots.

This is my daughter's friend, Syd.

 This is my baby, getting in on the action.

I love that they went out there and had a good time.  As of now the photos are still on the camera card, but I know they have big plans to download them and do something special with some of their favorites.  It will be interesting to see which ones are their favorites, compared to mine.