Saturday, June 26, 2010

Smidge mishap again

Friday when I came home from my aerobics class, I found Smidge sitting under the table on the back porch with half of his face swollen about the size of a softball. I thought he must have been stung by a bee, but then remembered he had blood in his ear earlier during the week, so I was suspicious it might be an abscess. I called the vet, who said bring him in. I was just thrilled with this bit of information, because it is a major wrestling match to get Smidge into a cat carrier. It is like world war III. My first attempt was fruitless, and did nothing but break open his abscess which made a huge mess. He was upset; I was upset, and both of us were shaking. Both of us were determined to win their part in this battle. I won by getting him in the carrier with the help of Meghann. We both put on long sleeves to prepare for the battle.

The news was not good. He had two major abcesses. One on the top of his head and the other on the side of his face. No wonder his face was so swollen. The next battle will be getting the medicine in the puncture wounds which we have to apply two times a day.

I went to pick him up today, and he is rather pitiful looking, but he has to be feeling so much better. The whole incident reminded me of the "Hank the Cowdog" episode when Hank gets bitten by the rattlesnake and his face is swollen. He is thankful for Sally Mae taking him to the vet. Usually, Smidge meows his protest all the way to and from the Vets. This time he did not protest very much. So I think maybe he knew it was for his benefit and was thankful like Hank. Well, maybe not--I did have a hard time getting him in the cat carrier.

Just for the record, on his bill, which was $215, his age was listed as 15 years and 3 months. That makes Smidge 105 years old. I was very happy to pay the bill, because I was so thankful to still have him around. And Warren didn't seem to mind either.


The first puncture hole


The Cheek puncture and worse one


Rather pitiful looking Smidge. He should know he is getting to old for fighting.

Tornado hits the Holms


On Tuesday, June 22, we had a short, freak storm. Weather can change rapidly here in New Mexico and it certainly did for us. We had a short time of thunder, lightning, and wind, but with no rain. I was going with Jerry on a photo shoot and arrived at his house to discover I had missed a "micro burst", but more like a tornado by about 10 minutes. It tore the roof off a nearby structure, and destroyed many of the Holm's trees. This one landed on their car. It was really strange and I was glad I did not get there any earlier.

June 21st, 2010


Whew, another birthday. This time it was Reid's third birthday. Laurie had a small family birthday party for him with a wonderful Winnie-the-Pooh cake which was a big hit. Everyone had a great time helping Reid celebrate. We like birthdays--well, I should qualify that--those of us who are older like birthday parties, just not the growing old part. I am sure that doesn't bother Reid right now.

The birthday boy and his Winnie-the-Pooh cake

Now Reid is 3

The Grace Fine Arts camp started today as well. Drew and Hannah were not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when we woke them at 7 a.m., but when it was time to go, they were eager to see what their classes would be like.


Drew and Hannah

Meghann, Adi, and I stayed home having our own kind of camp. Smidge was right in there with us enjoying our summer weather which is hot.


Little Miss Adi


Smidge

So begins our summer. It is off to a great start!

"Commit thy works unto the Lord and thy thoughts shall be established." Proverbs 16: 3




Sunday, June 20, 2010

My 57th Birthday


Happy Birthday sign made by Laurie

Today is my 57th birthday and it is also Father's Day. Tomorrow will be Reid's 3rd birthday and the first day of summer. (More on Reid's birthday tomorrow). Lots of things happen in the month of June. We celebrated with lunch at Ian and Laurie's and Zach and his family came from Dallas arriving at 5:30 p.m. Telephone calls have come from all the rest of the family, so it has been a great day.

One of my favorite scriptures is Psalm 16:5-6, "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; Thou dost support my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me." I think one of the reasons this particular verse means a lot to me is that the Lord has been good to me. I can remember after my mother died, everyone told me she had gone to heaven to be with God. I wanted to go there too. I recall standing in the backyard looking up to the sky saying, "I want to go to heaven." God fulfilled this scripture in me.

"I waited patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay;
And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.
And He put a new song in my mouth." Psalm 40:1-3

I praise the Lord that He hears and He works. Without Him I cannot image where I would be. My heritage is in the Lord, and in my family. And it is beautiful to me. He has done GREAT things.


Here I am as a little girl
Notice the great hairdo that seems to be popular with guys today

57 years old


Erynn and me. She is a delight to me.

Happy Father's Day to Warren


and Ian (with Erynn)

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Outtake to Treasure

My portraiture class has come to an end. All that remains it to get the comments on our lessons which will be forthcoming in the next week or so. The Jessica Sprague website (www.jessicasprague.com) is one of my favorite sites. I can spend hours reading the forums and following links to other very inspiring websites. It is one of the rare places, I find much pleasure in reading and learning. Recently, one of the topics and posts were our outtakes, our "rejects", from some of our photo shoots. I submitted one outtake that I think is a treasure. Let me explain.

I had asked a friend of mine who had 4 boys, if I could take pictures them for one of my assignments. These boys were so great, kind, courteous, and did the best they could to do the strange poses I asked of them. The youngest boy, Samuel, was not too sure of the whole situation and had an occasional meltdown. As I looked at the pictures from the shoot, one of the things that struck me was the love the oldest boy showed to his youngest brother. He is hugging, kissing, reassuring, and calming this little one. These "outtakes" are my favorite of the whole shoot. The emotion is raw and real. The ones we might consider as "no good" are really the treasures. Isn't that how God looks at us? He looks past the surface into our hearts.

"God not only hears our words, He listens to our hearts." ...unknown

"We are like angels with just one wing; we fly only by embracing each other." ...unknown



The Outtake that is my treasure

Monday, June 14, 2010

Getting Ready

Last Friday, June 11th, I went to get my hair colored. I have to say coloring my hair is something I do not particularly like doing. It costs a lot, takes a ton of time, and it only lasts a few weeks before you have to do something with the roots. Besides, I wonder if having those chemicals sitting on your head can do something to your brain. After all they sit there for an hour and I wonder if they are absorbed. That is probably why I have become so forgetful. Just the other day, Warren found a gallon of milk and spinach in the back seat of my car. I had forgotten to take it inside and with the heat, it had all spoiled. It had been there two days.
Back to my hair... I do like the outcome when I get it done and for a few days, (before the roots start showing) I feel like a new woman. I do like the warmth the color adds to my appearance. I mentioned to the hair dresser that I saw a lady walking by in the mall who had some streaks of red in her hair and I really liked them. She was not your typical teenie bopper who looked like a freak. In fact, she was very sophisticated looking. My hairdresser said we can add a few streaks of red to my hair if I wanted. Hmmm. I decided to try it when she said it would only last a couple of weeks then turn to blonde. And I like it. There is not too much of it. We (Warren and I) had a hard time getting it to show up in the pictures we took.


We, also, had Ian and his family over for dinner on Friday so I could use Ian and Laurie as subjects for a photo shoot since we were suppose to do couples for my photography class this week. I had some romantic poses in mind from things I had seen online and in magazines, but it did not quite turn out the way I planned. Ian and Laurie were great about putting up with my weird requests. We got some funny shots as well as some good ones.

Here is one of the nice ones



And now a funny one


Laurie, Ian and Reid. I like this one.


We have started getting things ready for the July 4th activities. Gradually, we are getting the yard groomed. I am still having a hard time getting my grass to grow around the back porch by the stepping stones. I think I have seeded it three times so far with not much luck. Warren got out his shade sails and put up a few around the close deck. It will be nicely shaded for outdoor eating which we will do more when Zach's crew gets here. Notice Smidge was doing his part in helping put up the sails. Warren told me he'd been thinking about when the "critters" get here--"critters" are his family. That was a new term he hadn't used before. His thinking was about how many glasses we all used, (deep thoughts for sure) and he thought plastic disposable cups would be better since we have a limited number of glasses. I had to think of Mark when he was wondering why he and Amber needed to register for 46 different sized glasses for bridal showers. The glasses are needed for all the "critters."

Warren trimmed up rose bushes, trees, and hedges. He even cut down a tree that was pretty pitiful looking. I am sure he was wishing Luke was here to carry off all the debris. One of the tree branches he cut was from our neighbor's tree that was hanging over into our yard. The good part was it was loaded with little tiny, but very tasty plums. We have enjoyed eating them.


The hanging of the sails


The plums Warren got from our neighbor's tree


Our Day lillies are just beautiful

There is nothing I enjoy more than being outdoors--except when the wind is blowing and it has done a lot of that lately. I am thankful I have a husband who loves the outside as much as I. It gives me great pleasure to be working along side him and even more pleasure to see the fruit of our labor. I am looking forward to all the family coming. Our family is the greatest fruit of our labor and it was well worth all the work and effort, indeed. I know it will be wild and crazy, but most of all it will be fun. I love having everyone home because I am wild about them. Nothing is better than family. God has given us a rich heritage in our family. I pray each member of the McKelvy clan, (I prefer clan over critter) come to know and love the Lord and realize our everything comes from Him. May all the McKelvys for all generations glorify Him.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Catching up

It has been so long since I have posted that I almost didn't get logged in because I was using the wrong sign-in information. That is pretty bad. Memorial Day has just passed. I have a nice picture that many are going to think is drawn by our grandkids...but no, it is from Ian himself. I actually like it a lot and thought it was very appropriate since we honor our Vets on Memorial Day and Warren was a Vet.





We have been working hard in our "way back" to try to add some order to it and get more perennials established to cut down on some of the work. Is there really such a thing as less yard work if you have a yard?


Warren working in the Garden

Here are some Foxgloves (used to make digitalis which we have no intention of doing). I sure hope they do well because I think they are beautiful.

The Foxgloves-I hope they have good seeds

My portraiture class is challenging and fun. We have had some interesting assignments. One was to take a picture without someone's face showing--to take one of hands, feet, the back, but no faces looking into the camera. I went to Warren's office because I thought it would be fun to take a picture of his healing hands at work.


I thing Warren has nice hands and this girl was a real trooper


Another assignment was to take a picture using window light. Here is one of Warren and then the ones I submitted of Erynn.


I have always loved Warren's eyes



We had to do window lighting with half the face lit, the other side dark (phantom of opera look)
A 3/4 head tilt
And the subject facing the window


Whew, I am almost done catching up. This picture is the picture I used for the lesson three assignment. Notice the Fruit Loop in Reid's mouth.


Little Reid


Finally, this morning I wanted to try to take some pictures in manual mode and force my flash, so it would act as a fill light against the bright morning sun. I had just gotten out of bed and debated about taking photos of me with no make-up, and not having done anything to my hair except comb it. I didn't want to be too scary looking, but I wanted to take some pictures of me,too, since I have very little photos with me in them. I wouldn't even have enough to make me a birthday DVD. It was challenging to take a self timer picture, since my camera has to have a focal spot and there was no one to focus on when I hit the timer. I was the only one home besides Smidge and he certainly wouldn't stay put long enough for me to focus on. I finally got one of our stuffed animals, it was either Chip or Dale, I cannot remember which one has the red nose. I hung it on a plant hanger, focused on it, then sat down in front of it hoping my head would cover up the stuffed animal. I did it! I just had to clone the plant hanger which seemed to be coming out of my head. Then, I decided to try to get Smidge in the picture as well. I got several pictures after about an hour of figuring this out. I am positive Warren was glad he was out of town, or he would have had to help me for sure.



Rob and Smidge--he's not very excited about it all



Rob
 
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