Full Moon?

So my parents come all the way from southern Illinois to visit us and spend something like 9 hours traveling. We won't get into how long they got stuck at JFK. That was a nightmare with all the delays. And what does my mom want to do?



That's right she wants to weed my front flower bed. She says she enjoys weeding. I know you're all thinking I'm horrible for posting this picture, but Mom gave me permission to post this. So if she doesn't have any problems with it why should I? And I didn't take the photo, the hubby did.

My flower bed was filled with weeds. Not anymore, thanks to Mom. And luckily we finished just before the rain hit. And what were the boys doing while we were out weeding? Why they were playing the Wii!

A Tasty Treat

What does one do after visiting a mansion? Why go have gelato of course!

We went to Cold Fusion after the tour. My parents had not had gelato and I thought on a hot day it would be a nice treat.

Mom had Raspberry and Mudslide. As you can see she enjoyed it thoroughly and was able to finish it all. It was quite good. I think I would follow her choice of flavors in the future.

Dad had Rum Raisin and Pana Cotta. I think I know where I get my attitude from. =) Each flavor is good in their own right, but Dad didn't really care for Rum Raisin once he'd gotten it. Even though he did sample it. The two flavors combined just did not do well.

I had Chocolate Amaretto. Which actually tasted like a chocolate covered cherry. Which is good, but not my cup of tea. I should stay with fruits. I liked the prickly cactus pear that I tried. Their servings are huge and I'm not a major ice cream eater.

How The Upper Crust Lived

So my parents came for a visit. Hooray! They will be here for nearly 5 days and I'm pleased as punch! I know that they don't like for us to go out of our way to find things for them to do, but we are in Newport. We should soak in some of the local stuff. Right?

So we decided to visit one of the many mansions here in Newport. This did used to be the playground for the rich in the summer. We decided to go the Beechwood Mansion. It's the Astors' mansion and was done by actor's in costume and was pretty good. I wish more of the mansions would actually do this. I would find it much more interesting and would be inclined to go to more of them.

This is a view of the mansion itself. The tour is well done. The actors make you almost believe you've been transported back in time. We were escorted by Mrs. Astors' youngest daughter for a majority of the time as guests that had arrived just before a ball. We were part of the 400 (think upper crust) and it was really neat. She was quite good.

This is in the ball room. We actually heard someone preform a small piece of music. It was very nice. The face in the artwork is Mrs. Astor herself. Not long after that a maid named, Cat, took over and finished off the tour.

This is the fountain in front of the mansion. I only wish I'd had the courage to take the young woman portray the youngest daughter and the maid's pictures. They would have been fantastic for my homework assignment. Which is portraits. We enjoyed this tour quite a lot. Something I would highly recommend if you're interested in that time period.

Damn Cute!

I've learned that I really need to watch what I say around my friend's kids. Over the 4th of July weekend we were able to visit our buddies Steve, Greta and Colten. I'm normally pretty good about watching what I say around the little ones, but this one slipped past me. Colten (The adorable monster that he is.) did something to amuse us and I turned to the hubby and said he was just so damn cute. It's not like I shouted it, but still little pitchers have big ears.

I thought nothing more about it until we went back to Norfolk for a home inspection. We were able to see Greta and Colten again. Greta then asks which one of us taught him 'damn cute'. Uh oh! I raised my hand after a moment of hesitation. I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast. Of course the hubby was laughing his butt off. Apparently while dressing said child one day Greta informed him that he looked cute. He corrected her and told her 'No Mommy I'm damn cute.' Well color me embarrassed. There's no need to worry about his hearing. That's for sure.

So of course I had to share some photos of him so everyone can understand why I would say such a thing in the presence of a child. He's just so damn cute! And by the way, he wasn't that close to me and I said it in a fairly quietly.

Assignments

I recently started attending a Digital Photography class. Actually it began at the end of June. I was a bit nervous, considering I haven't been in school for nearly 14 years. I'm taking this class purely for enjoyment. And went out and bought myself a new digital camera. So far we've played with lighting and shutter speed. We don't get a lot of direction and are just told to go out and take pictures. But we are playing in Adobe Photo Shop quite a bit.

So I thought I would bore everyone with a few of my photos. The first one is a motion shot. I find these shots to be the hardest and am still working on them. I put the shutter speed on a slower speed and followed the moving subject. It was taken over 4th of July weekend while the hubby and I were in the Virginia Beach area. This one is a still life composition taken at one of the beaches in Rhode Island. This was a fun one to do.

My teacher seems to prefer outdoor shots to the indoor, so I'm trying to stick with that. This class has helped me in looking at things with a totally different perspective. I look for little details so much more than I used to. In fact I've even gotten the hubby and friends in on this. They're always on the lookout for good photo ops. And the camera always seems to be with me. This is just a shot of a fence line, but I really liked the scroll work on it.

So not only am getting out into that fresh wonderful air and getting a tan. But I'm also getting exercise from the walks I'm taking to find these pictures. And of course I always make sure that I print off the pictures the teacher mentions that he likes. I'm no dummy. I'll be graded on 10 photos at the end of the semester and it's coming up quickly. So anything he says he likes I'm keeping just to ensure my grade isn't crap! =)

Waiting To Exhale

I've been hesitant to post this as we have yet to hear back from our Realtor. Call me superstitious if you must, but I don't care. Over the 4th of July weekend the hubby and I went house hunting.

Boy what an experience that was. We'd been working with a Realtor via the Internet. It's a person we'd worked with in the past and trust. We were checking out houses on the websites and emailing her the information on the ones we liked. We felt confident about our organization and she seemed to understand what we needed/wanted.

So we drove something like 10 hours to Virginia to start the search. Ugh! And please note that during this time we were also able to visit friends and I was able to work on my photography class assignment. I think by the time we finally left we'd looked at something like 30 houses. That may not seem like a lot to many people until you figure we did it in like 3 days. It was exhausting.

We did find something we liked and made an offer. Suddenly someone else was interested in the house we just put a bid on. Hmm. I found that a bit odd since it had been on the market since January, but hey things like this can happen. So we adjusted our offer a bit. They countered and we accommodated. They made us wait nearly an entire day before letting us know that they accepted the other bid. I was royally peeved.

We started looking again. And as luck would have it we found another house we liked. We didn't jump on it immediately though. We worried about jumping into something too soon, but after driving home and discussing it we decided we did really like it. We've got a bid on it and are waiting to hear their counter. Hence the title. There's been a delay on their response. Hopefully we'll hear soon and it will be positive.

Keep your fingers crossed.