Black and White Wednesday

Today for B&W Wednesday, I present one of my absolute FAVORITE pictures.


This picture makes me smile and brings tears to my eyes as it represents such pure joy, serenity, and love. I snapped it on one of our last days in China and I seriously could stare at it all day and would wallpaper the house with it, if I could. :-)

In her referral, Lindy was described as a "moderate sleeper." Beware for those waiting for referrals--that is code for fairly light sleeper. Lindy is an active and alert child and doesn't like to miss much. This is one of the handful of times she's actually fallen asleep in our arms. Don, on the other hand, has no problem falling asleep. I've often wondered if he has narcolepsy.

To see them both asleep on a noisy city bus was pure bliss. It was one of those moments when I knew that EVERY single doubt, fear, tear, meltdown, sleepless night, nervous stomach had been worth getting to this point. At last our arms were no longer empty and our hearts were beyond full.

I am off to check out the other entries at Lisa's blog. Before you do the same, check out the post before this one and enter my Random Acts of Kindness giveaway!

Better late than never--GIVEAWAY!!!

"What is desirable in a person is kindness..."
Proverbs 19:22

I just realized yesterday--after seeing it on a school billboard--that this is Random Acts of Kindness Week. For the past two years, I have had a giveaway during the week. Obviously, I'm a bit late.

This year, I (or my lovely assistant, Lindy) will RANDOMLY choose THREE winners to receive a gift. Last year I asked people to talk about what they do to be kind and the previous year I asked people to describe acts of kindness they've received. As I recall, people were much more comfortable writing about kindness they'd received.

To mix it up this year, you can share one random fact about yourself. Yep. That's all. I'm not going to make you follow my blog or Tweet about this or blog about it or become my Facebook friend. Just leave me one teensy, eensy, random fact and you're entered.

I'll close the entries on February 28th and then draw three winners.

Have fun and be kind--all the time!

xoxo~
L

Black and White Wednesday

I can't believe it is Wednesday again and how quickly the days go by (except for the baby we look forward to bringing home).

This week I decided to give you a break and deviate from my main subject (Miss Lindy) and look for another photo to convert to black and white. During our trip to visit family in California for Christmas, we took a little jaunt to the Santa Monica pier. It was a gorgeous December day and the pier was hopping. I snapped a quick picture of the infamous ferris wheel and loved seeing the colors of the wheel against the beautiful backdrop of a crystal blue sky.

I got to thinking that there is something kind of old-fashioned about ferris wheels and decided to change this photo to black and white. If it weren't for the condos, you might even think it is a picture from long ago.


I look forward to seeing all the other entries at Lisa's this week for Black and White Wednesday!

Black and White Wednesday

I missed Black and White Wednesday at Lisa's last week but wanted to add something this week. My poor camera hasn't been seeing much action since Christmas. Unfortunately, that is pretty much the way things go EVERY year around here. Anyway, was only playing around yesterday and I snapped one or two of Lindy as she was looking kind of festive for Valentine's Day.

It sure could use A LOT more editing but I don't know how to do what I need to do and I'm pretty sure I don't have the tools to do it. I wanted to add a pop of color so I tried keeping the color in her bow using one of the editing options in Picasa (see, I told you I'm a complete novice).

Happy Black and White Wednesday and Valentine's Day~
Lisa

Just like riding a bike--yeah, right...

As we wait for mei mei, there are days I find myself COMPLETELY freaked out at the prospect of having a really little one in the house again. Overall, Lindy was (and is) so easy, so I know I probably take many things for granted with her and the whole motherhood thing.

This past Saturday we had the PRIVILEGE and HONOR to babysit our friends' baby while they went to our church's Sweetheart Dinner. We decided to sit out the annual event for more than one reason but I will admit peach cobbler being the only dessert offering (HERESY in my book) pretty much clinched the decision for us. If you know me very well, you probably know I gag a little just typing that. Neither Don and I like peaches and I'm just downright phobic and neurotic about them. Even if there had been another choice, I would have been "worrying" all evening that the cobbler spoon would touch the other dessert, thus rendering it tainted. I'm TOTALLY serious.

Anyway, I digress. We were so excited to babysit this little angel and we thought it was ironic that last week she was EXACTLY the age Lindy was when we got her (just five days shy of 11 months).


As the hours turned to minutes, I kept wondering if I would remember what to do and how to take care of a baby baby. Let me tell you, I don't remember Lindy being that small or helpless. I really don't. Our special guest was great fun and she was a total dream. She was a complete doll. However, I am here to confess that I am REALLY out of practice and it wasn't totally like riding a bike. When it came to changing a messy--and I do mean MESSY--diaper (still WAY better than peach cobbler), it took me about 10 minutes and 23 wipes. I made just about every rookie mistake. Then when it came to putting her into her pajamas, which was a one piece thing with about 1000 snaps, that took about another 10 minutes. My oh my...I am rusty and I am so glad Candid Camera wasn't there to film me.

So, if you are in the local area and you read this blog and you are about to have a baby or have one in the house, this washed up mommy is in need of some more practice!