My 2011 DPI Photo Pages

Each year the photography group I’m a part of puts together a book of the work we’ve created throughout the year.

This is my spread for this year.

2011 Photo Spread

A Loss and A Gain with the Help of Social Media

As a lot of you know, last week I stalked the SM forums to ask, plead and beg for everyone who follows me to vote for a picture I submitted to a Huron Tractor (John Deere) calendar contest.

The photo I submitted - "Heading to the Barn"

The contest opened in April but I didn’t get involved until May 11, leaving us way behind the leader in the vote department. Luckily, this contest wasn’t just about the votes, they were also using a panel of judges to determine the winners.
The contest allowed people to vote each hour and each hour found me sending out pleas to everyone who was online to take a moment to vote. “Please vote, did you vote? If you did vote don’t forget to go back in a hour and vote again!” I was driving people crazy, I’m sure.
Considering we had 6.5 days and the leader had 21 days to vote, I think Twitter and Facebook proved their power.
Our average was 166 votes a day and the top vote getter had 67 a day. We totalled 1081 and they got 1407. That’s impressive!
Now, like I said before , there were judges involved in the decision process so when the final choices were revealed, my picture was not one of the winners and, for the record, I’m ok with that. I like most of the chosen pictures (you can see the winners here) and the images that beat us in the voting process were not selected, for that I am grateful. They were bad pics. #JustSaying
Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all the people who voted, RT, passed our plea on to their friends and family.

We may not have won a lawnmower or got my photograph in a calendar but you did show me the power of Social Media, love of family and friends, and the benefit of a little OCD behaviour.
Thank you to you all.

Oh, and just for the record, I think it would have made a great cover!

What do you think?

My idea for the Calendar Cover.

Photographic Scavenger Hunt 2011

For those of you who don’t know, once a month I’m allowed to escape my kids for an evening and join some fellow photography enthusiasts at our local Digital Photography Club meeting.

It’s a chance for me to remind myself that I do have a creative element outside of play dough and colouring books.

Each month our little group (based out of Elizabeth’s Art Gallery in Goderich, ON) chooses a theme to shoot and off we go. Once a year we complete a group scavenger hunt. The challenge is to see who can get the most “things” on the list (in the month alloted), whose image is most creative, funny, etc. It’s a fun to see how everyone interprets the clues and the variety of pictures that are presented.

Anyway, this year, due to previously scheduled obligations and the fact that my youngest decided to get sick this week, I was behind the eight ball. So yesterday, the last day for this challenge, I started out. 9 am found me taking my first shot and by our 7 pm meeting I had all my pictures found, taken and edited.

Here are the results.  Let me know what you think.

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36 hours and counting…

Fever Girl

Fevers.

More specifically the “no other symptoms but my kid is burning up” fevers.

These are my kids favourite kind and the fevers that keep me up for nights on end and leave me feeling helpless, alone and most importantly that our health care professionals really don’t have a clue.

My little bear is in the middle of one of these mysterious, no specific cause, just let it run its course fevers right now.

It started yesterday morning (yes, Happy Mother’s Day to Me) and  is still continuing.

Let me fill you in on the pattern….

My fiercely independent bear becomes overly clingy and seems uncharacteristically warm. I grab a thermometer and discover yes, at 101.6 my suspicions are correct. I dose her in both Tylenol AND Advil measuring for her weight and not for her age (tired of being accused by all-knowing Docs that I must be under dosing). And wait. Now, none of my children seem to react very quickly to fever reducers. They love to keep their mother on the edge of her seat and prefer to take close to 1.5 hrs to allow that temp to come back to a level that I’m comfortable with.

So, I wait and eventually the fever reduces to a more reasonable 99.3 and I can breathe a little easier.

However, that calm is only ever shortly lived and usually, between 1/2 – 1 hr before I can safely give any more medication the fever will spike back up.

Last night my baby girl’s temperature  was 102.4 and I still had 45 min before any other medication could be given. I give her cold drinks.  I use cold compresses and strip her down. By the time it was closer to the proper time, my little bear was HOT (103.4).  I give her all I can (medication wise)  I hold her on my lap and wait very impatiently for her body to stop burning.

And this is our cycle. The same pattern every four hours (Tylenol) & six hours (Advil) for all of my kids each time.

“But why?” my husband asks. “Didn’t she just have a fever a couple of weeks ago? What was wrong then?”

Yes, it was just a couple of weeks ago (2.5 actually) but we never figured out the reason. It just “ran its course”.

“Should we take her in to see the doctor?” my husband asks. “I don’t know.” I say, knowing that there aren’t any other symptoms and most likely they’re just going to tell me it’s just a virus and again, it just needs to “run its course”.

And finally, after three days of this pattern of roller coaster temperatures and a couple of bottles of fever reducers later, I’ll take her into town to see the doctor and he/she won’t have an answer. We’ll go home and wait to see if, in the next few days we finish with our little ride or if we’ll find ourselves back in at the ER department with a very sick child on our hands.

I’m hoping this ride, like most of them, is over sooner than later because the few that we’ve experienced that are more than expected, are nothing I’d wish on any parent.

Wishing for my happy bear.