Continual State of Becoming

Bedtime story. I have been struggling with my fear of failure a lot lately.  I feel like I'm not improving enough or getting to be good enough in various areas of my life.  Especially with the things that I have been putting effort into.  Photography is one of them, but not the only one... I have my 10 mile race in less than 2 weeks and while I feel pretty confident that I can run 10 miles at this point, I worry that I'm too slow.  Maybe not so slow that I won't make the 2:20:00 cut off, but slow enough that it's kind of a joke to even say I'm running.  So many people (and running articles) make it seem like I should easily be able to keep a faster pace than I do, but I struggle with even running a single 10 minute mile.  So instead of feeling proud for what I can do, I feel ashamed of what I can't.  And I feel like my pictures are stuck at mediocre... and I can't figure out what I need to do to break through this level.  I see what other people are doi

Aaron's favorite indoor activity... bath time!  We both had fun this night... he got to splash in the water for as long as he could stand it, and I put the flash on my camera and treated the bathroom like a giant soft box.  This is probably one of my best people pictures to date. ***I am wondering if I should just call it quits with this 365, I've been missing days every week lately.  I'm not quite ready to completely give in, but it may happen soon.

I thought I'd try something a little different today.  I've been playing around with some of the video functions on my camera and I really like it.  I just cant figure out how to compress the video enough to get it so I'm not trying to upload a 100MB file.  So this is a test.  Other things I haven't quite figured out:  1- which focus mode works best for video, 2- My "good" lenses don't have vibration reduction, so the footage is super shaky, and 3- lots of the camera noise is picked up by the mic, so it's probably better to watch without sound.  But...  when I do manage to get decent focus, it looks so good.  I'm probably not really going to much video, but I figure I should at least learn how to use it in case I want to from time to time.  Hopefully the video loaded correctly here, if not...  well, just more to learn.

In an effort to eat more produce (without making my grocery trips unbearably long) we've been getting weekly fruit and veggies delivered.  Most delicious mail ever!

Just a quick snapshot from today.

Happy St. Patricks Day!!! A couple days ago we spent hours at the playground with no jackets... today we woke up to 9 inches of snow.  It's been quite the winter.  I love it!!  Once last (maybe) chance to practice taking snowflake pictures.  They didn't turn out as great this time as last time, I'm not sure why exactly, but maybe next winter I'll figure it out and get some really good shots.  Since Dylan was home with a snow day (#14 for the school year) we had time to make some green cupcakes, and he even edited one of the pictures with me.

Taking a walk with the little one while his dad and big brother are at the movies.  I played around with color on this... just for fun.  The grass isn't really that green, but the dead brown color was too drab.  I think I need to start learning how to do nice clean, simple edits soon, but for now I'm still having fun experimenting.

An absolutely perfect day for the playground.  Sunny skies and just warm enough to play.  We even ran into a lemonade stand.  Too bad this weather won't last.  It was nice to get some good outside shots again though.  I'm especially happy because I was able to get one decent shot with both of the kids together (the last one).  That is much harder than I anticipated.  I don't know how professional photographers manage to get such nice shots of families all together.  I may need to learn some new tricks.

Two more from yesterday.  Aaron is becoming quite the bookworm.

One for each kid today.  It was too cold to be outside today so we spent the afternoon in Dylan's room.  A nice lazy day.

We found some green in the garden today!  Spring is coming!

Out for a walk.  Aaron wants to spend every waking moment outside these days.  He nearly walked a mile after Dylan got on the bus and I still had to drag him kicking and screaming inside for his nap.

In gratitude after yesterday's ordeal: My family at home.  Safe and sound and enjoying a beautiful day outside!  Completely perfect, even if the picture isn't.

No picture from me today.  It was a crazy day.  Crazy. The house 2 doors over caught fire early this morning and burned completely to the ground (with the exception of their garage).  We were told to evacuate our house as a precautionary because the fire was beginning to spread.  Matt and I grabbed the kids, the dog, our back up hard drive and wallets and left the house.  Our very kind neighbors took us in for a few hours while we waited to see what would happen.  Thanks to the firefighters, the fire was contained to the one house, and ours was completely fine.  It was such a weird thing to go through.  I realize that we were completely untouched by the fire, but the ordeal left me a little shaken... definitely too close to home.  Afterwards, when we were back home and safe Matt and I talked about our fire escape plan...  including: should we have grabbed anything else?  Nope, maybe some of Matt's paintings if we could have managed.  All this stuff all over our house, and we woul

I've been learning to love grapefruit lately.  I cut it up, broil it and eat it over a bowl of yogurt sweetened with honey.  Never mind the fact that the first time I tried broiling the grapefruit I set the wax paper (which was part of the recipe) on fire.  Also, that was the first time I ever used a broiler.  But I'm glad I tried it again, because it is delicious... and I don't really even like grapefruit, or yogurt for that matter.

My bouquet from the previous week is on it's last legs so I'm squeezing in a few more floral pictures while I can.  The crazy thing about these two images is that they were both taken under the same light conditions.  I just went in different directions with the editing.  I'm really excited about all the flowers I will get to take pictures of this spring :)

Yesterday's picture just didn't happen.  So I'm throwing in a few extra today to make up for it. Snow Day # 12

This has been a pretty good month for running, despite the fact that it's the middle of winter which means it's been cold and snowy.  If I knew that every Virginia winter was going to be like this, I'd happily switch over to cross country skiing during these months.  But sadly, these kinds of winters are rare.  Anyway, here are my monthly stats. Total Miles for the month: 50.5  Total Miles for 2014: 100.6 Longest run: 9 miles, which is my longest run ever!  My overall pace was 11:07, which puts me 30 seconds ahead of my super-wishful goal when I do the 10 miler (I'm hoping to do that with an 11:30-12:00 min pace).  I could hardly believe it. Fastest mile time:  I probably won't check again until it's warmer out Indoors, on the treadmill:  getting my comfortable/maintainable pace close to 6.0 (still working on this, getting better).  Recovery pace is solid at 5.0 and I've declared Wednesdays my "Run 3 miles in under 30mins" day.  The Friday ru

Dylan is at a friend's science birthday party.  He has soooo much fun.  I brought my camera convinced that I'd be brave enough to take some pictures of the science experiments, but I wasn't.  In fact I only took two quick little pictures (through a window, hence the reflection).  Oh well, more things to work on.