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Over the weekend, I mentioned that The Teenager had an Annual Inspection and Parade with her NJROTC team a couple of weeks ago. My mom, Gman, Short Dude, Little Girl and I all went as did The Teenagers boyfriend. It sure brought back some memories for me!

There was lots of pomp and circumstance and the local Navy Band even played. The regional commander was present and performed the inspection and both the NJROTC armed and unarmed drill teams performed. And even though The Teenager is one of the taller people in our family, among her peers, she’s still one of the shortest. It was hard to see during parts of the ceremony.

I took quite a few pictures but didn’t really get any good shots of The Teenager because of where she was in the line but here’s a few for you . . .

And just because I can, here’s one of one my cats – Stardust – sitting on my lap.

Have a great day!

The last week has been an interesting one. Some sweet memories and some teenage rebellion I hope doesn’t go any further plus an awesome concert and lots of pictures.

One thing at a time, though. Right now, I want to share what it was like putting my baby on the bus the first week of school.

The Short Dude started pre-school last Wednesday and I was a bit emotional watching him get on the bus. Then watching the bus drive away with my little man on board – without me, without his siblings – just new faces and strangers he didn’t know. That was a difficult moment. But I knew it was for his growth (and maybe for mine, too) so I anxiously counted the minutes until his return home. I did not cry, though.

Really. I didn’t. Because isn’t he cute? Sitting there in his seat like the big boy he is, with his backpack, on his way to his FIRST DAY of school.

We took lots of pictures (you can see them all on my flickr photostream) before and after school last week. Like these flowers at grandma’s house -

And this one of the Short Dude riding Little Girl’s bike –

And these grapes the Short Dude had for snack after school on the first day that he *insisted* I take a picture of -

I love the clarity and quality of the pictures my new camera takes. It’s a Fuji FinePix S5100. Although it’s technically a point-&-shoot camera, it has all sorts of options like you’d find on a DSLR. I think I may do a review of the camera here on the blog soon. Since I got the camera last week, I’ve taken over 400 pictures! And I haven’t even touched them up in Photoshop.

Anyway, I am tired – it was a long weekend but I’m just not ready to talk about it yet. It’s time for a quick bath to relax and head to bed. I will be back this week with an around the web post (which I simply got too busy to post last week – sorry!), part 3 of Stories make us who we are, another post about connecting, a review of the George Duke & Anthony Hamilton concert I went to at McCaw Hall Friday night and anything else I happen to think of.

Oh – and probably a boat load more pictures. I hope you like them!

Until then . . .

In the arena,

Did you know I design blog headers and ebook cover graphics, too? Yes, I do. And you can get one now for the introductory price of $55 for a limited time. Just send a payment of $55 to me via PayPal along with a description of what you want. You’ll have a design within 48 hours.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.

Now that I’ve got a more powerful camera, it’s time for pictures! I’m going to be posting some pictures of lots of different things – from cats to cows to flowers to mountains to food and anything else I decide to capture.

These were taken this weekend.

Where’s my apple? These are my mom’s cows. Leone is bellering at the kids, wanting them to bring her more apples.

Waiting for apples. The kids are up the hill getting apples from one of the trees.

Grandma’s Tree – This is a tree my parents planted in the yard 20 odd years ago. They transplanted it from my Grandma’s cabin property in rural Snohomish County. It was about 3 feet tall back then. Now it’s taller than my parents house.

View from my moms farm. You can see the Olympic Mountains, Whidbey Island, Tulalip Bay and part of Camano Island here. You can also see part of Ebey Slough in the foreground.

My neighbors flag waving in the breeze.

I’ll post more later. I took over 150 pictures this weekend. It was a lot of fun as the weather was very nice so I spent a lot of time outside with the kids. We took pictures of anything that caught our attention – lawnmowers, gas cans, buckets, basketballs, animals, trees, the sky and much more. I have uploaded about half of them to flickr if you’d like to see more before I get ‘em posted here.

Also, I still have my around the web post from last week sitting here in the drafts folder. I didn’t have a lot of time to stumble around the web and therefore, don’t have too many things to share. As such, I’m kinda waiting until I have some cool things to share that I think you guys would really enjoy. So stay tuned because I do plan to post it soon.

The Short Dude starts school on Wednesday (he got in the morning class!! yay!) so perhaps I’ll be able to share it then.

In any case, I hope you all enjoyed your weekend as much as I did. Did you do anything fun? Anything new? Something different? Please share! I’d love to hear from you, as always.

In the arena (& shooting pictures),

Did you know I design blog headers and ebook cover graphics, too? Yes, I do. And you can get one now for the introductory price of $55 for a limited time. Just send a payment of $55 to me via PayPal along with a description of what you want. You’ll have a design within 48 hours.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business – just as if it were her own.

This is just a test of the gallery function. You can ignore this post.
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