Mommy's Big Pineapple

On this exact day a year ago, I was attending my graduation and had to share my day of celebration with all the other mothers in the audience. At some point, whoever was speaking at the time, I think our President, asked ALL the mothers to stand up to celebrate our day. I looked back to the thousands of people there and there were so many moms standing up proudly, including my mommy too.

Then.....there was me. I was six months pregnant and technically a mom, I guess. But I didn't know what to do....should I stand or keep quiet. I mean not many knew I was preggers anyway and not many students were standing up. Do I become a real mom when the baby is born or am I automatically a mom by being pregnant? By the time this whole thought process was through, all the mothers were sitting down while I almost got up. Yea, I regretted it.

This weekend has been like a national holiday at our household. I slept until 11am yesterday - scandalous! Came downstairs to a beautiful breakfast and absolutely gorgeous flowers, heart-shaped balloon, my favorite - CAKE!, and pineapple....hahahaha I love pineapple. Yes, the HUB is reading beside and is urging me to mention that it was the BIGGEST pineapple of the bunch. OK!

You guys know how I feel about sushi, he took me to our favorite Japanese place, which was just FULL of prom couples, who the hell knew that it was prom weekend too. Our little baby girl was just hanging out, taking in all the excitement - but I did make sure to thank her for making me a mommy. I'm supposed to go pick out my present today and ooooh am I excited! Happy Mother's Day!

p.s. Ladies (and lads), it's still not too late to send in your letters for To My Younger Self. I'm not very anal on deadlines so it's ALL GOOD...please participate.

Most beautiful person

It has been one of those days...where you're just not in the mood you know? I usually whip out my posts earlier in the day but I didn't feel like writing today. Instead I browsed around the blogosphere reading up on other people's more interesting things. Lately, I've been visiting Jeremy's blog a lot >> Discovering Dad, he has had a series going on moms to dads topics like, Moms on marriage, physical appearance, and sex. It's VERY interesting what everyone has to say, so make sure to check it out.

This morning as I watched the Today Show, they were talking about the People's 100 Most Beautiful people with Kate Hudson as the cover model. I love KH and I'm glad they put her because she's absolutely gorgeous. In my opinion though, they left out this little person:

This is my little Elsie, aka LC as I've written before, she's my 8-month old bundle of pride and joy. This little girl has changed my life no doubt, in the most positive way possible to be the best person I can try to be. Mommy loves you baby!

Featured in RRStar

My daughter and her side-kicks, we the parents, got some press love! We attended an International Food Fair at my alma mater last Saturday, Rockford College where I got my B.S. in Biology. It's an annual event presented by students of the Multicultural Club and as alumni, I was very proud to witness that the event was a success!

A shutterbug from the Rockford Register Star was there snapping away and took a liking to my little Peanut, so he asked to take some pics. We didn't find the pictures in the actual newspaper but hello there! it was online. Getting a picture into a newspaper is nothing to be rolling eyes at - you know you'll be super excited if that happened to you, unless it's a mug shot, of course. Check out the article and us, beautiful people, here! Ha!

Can you believe my daughter learned to wave today? Just totally spontaneously! I left her for a little bit to get something from the basement, looked back at her and she was staring at me making sure I don't leave her and come back. So I just casually said Hi! and waved at her and she gave me such a wide smile with her little 8 teeth and waved back, so naturally as if she always knew how. When your little ones reach such milestones, it is that much rewarding!

Do cool things with your pics!

I found this great website, Big Huge Labs, where you can do lots of creative enhancements with your photos. Check it out, you can just apply whatever trick you want and just save it onto your desktop. This is one of my favorites: the Warholizer! Beats spending lots of time photoshop-ing, doesn't it (unless you're a pro unlike me of course)?

Playing Picasa

Inspiration is never farther than your own backyard...the above is a picture pile and a multiexposure collage of the same pictures

Anderson Japanese Gardens

These were shot with my Sony Cybershot point-and-shoot camera...so you don't necessarily need a digital SLR for great shots!

Macro pics

PhotoFiltre Studio work

Experimenting with my new Nikon