Wednesday, July 18, 2012

What Drought?

Last summer Texas was burning down around us due to the worst drought in over a hundred years.  I had all of my photos packed and sitting in the den, ready to throw them in the car in case the fields behind our house caught on fire.  It was a scary, stressful summer.  We lost so many trees and our lakes and rivers were at record lows.  We recently moved to a house on one acre and we are still cutting out trees that are dying from the stress of last summer.

We were told this summer would be equally bad, but happily they were wrong and we have had nothing  but rain for the last month.  And I thought I would never say this after last summer, but ENOUGH ALREADY!  Send some of it up north, they need it.

This morning we had a few hours of sun and no rain so I stuck the kids in the car and drove the nine minutes to my favorite park in town.  It has a huge fishing lake and miles and miles of wooded trails.  I hated moving from our rent house on acreage (insert a little sad sob here), but I have to confess getting to explore on land that we don't have to maintain is pretty darn nice.  Now I actually have the time to go to parks.


We found a little waterfall and the boys spent two hours playing in it.  Unfortunately Imp had knocked off part of his toenail two days ago and it was a bloody mess, so I made the boys keep on their shoes. I have this unreasonable fear of flesh-eating bacteria after reading that recent story about a poor girl who lost limbs from an infection she caught from zip-lining across a river.    Of course their feet were soaked by the time we left.


Both boys are passionate about penguins, so of course they had to come along and float down the creek in their "yacht" (a plastic storage container that had Mommy's craft supplies which were dumped next to her desk).

I love these photos (in all of their camera-phone imperfection) because they remind me of my childhood. I grew up in a house in the woods with a creek in the backyard and we spent so much of our time playing in it.  Throwing sticks at the water moccasins, drinking creek-water tea, making rafts and trying to float away when it flooded (I wish I could say I am joking)....  I miss those free-range days.  Where in the world were my parents?  ;-)

Of course when I was a kid I never wore shoes during the summer and had cuts all over my feet most of the time...  I think we are going to go back tomorrow and throw caution to the wind and take off our shoes.  Heal now toe!



I forgot to bring along my real camera so I used my camera phone.  I don't mind  using it in a pinch, but I hate when I capture a great moment and it is not focused...  But better a few fuzzy photos of an amazing morning than nothing, right?

The last fuzzy photo with the boys together on the trail was edited with my newest action coming out this week.  Hover over the image to see the before.  It is a fun little action I think you will enjoy playing with on your own fuzzy camera-phone images (or real camera images!).  I just ran the action and didn't make any adjustments on this image.  Go to my Facebook page if you want to help me name this action!!!

Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop Actions or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.

5 comments:

  1. Love the picture effect. I've been anxiously awaiting your creative genius in coming up with an action that has a 'Lensbaby' type of feel. Will the focus/placement or amount of blur be adjustable? Thanks so much in advance!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love the picture effect. I've been anxiously awaiting your creative genius in coming up with an action that has a 'Lensbaby' type of feel. Will the focus/placement or amount of blur be adjustable? Thanks so much in advance!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your summers as a child sound like mine. My sister and I were always off exploring somewhere (we lived on 53 acres.) One year my Maw Maw and Paw Paw's pasture flooded and we went "swimming" in it. Gross! I would never let my kids do that...what were my parents thinking?!

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  4. I know your feeling of fear on the bacteria. I watched my mom suffer from it for over 5 months....better to be safe than sorry!
    Love this new action, as I do all of them. You actions are lifesavers to a lot of my shots!!
    Summers = barefoot = simple life = LOVE!!

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  5. In Missouri we are having one of those drought summers so I haven't taken the kids out that much yet, praying we get some rain although I am not a river kind of girl so our adventure will be to the park. I'm loving the new action and can NOT wait to use it!

    ReplyDelete

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Rita