Photography Friday

One of the big fears I have about my digital images is that I might loose them or accidently erase them. This fear has come to fruition a few times. One example of this happened while Des and I took a trip to Salmon Arm, BC and I accidently erased the last few days of our trip when we got home and I was cleanout the memory card. I thought I had lost the photos until I bought Des a new camera awhile back and she got a mini CD with her memory card. The CD had a recovery program on it and I thought I’d have the program scan my cards just to see what it would recover. I was amazed, it pulled up things from a year prior that I had deleted, including the lost photos from our trip. Here’s one of them.



As a side note and tip. I make it a habit to save my pictures in a few places. I used to have to manually copy and paste the files onto my hard drive and an external hard drive trying to make sure I saved them in the same folders in each place. I’ve found a faster way of doing this though. Here is what you can do:
- save your photos on your computer
- on a separate drive (you can buy cheap external drives from Costco) create a “briefcase”
- to do this just open your external hard drive and right click on a blank space in the window and select – New – Briefcase
- Then you just copy and paste your main file that has all your photos from your computer and paste it in to the briefcase on your other drive
- Now you can periodically open your briefcase and select the picture folder and click update and what ever pictures you have saved/changed on your computer will automatically be backed up/changed on your external hard drive.
- Like wise, if you save/change anything on the external hard drive it will be saved/changed on your computer

A change in plans

We've decided to change Thankful Thursday to Thrifty Thursday

So I've been looking at some funny shirts online for a while and have been wanting to buy some but have never gotten around to it. I decided the other day that instead of buying them I could make my own and personalize them and use them for my business too. Here are a few sample of some that I've done and they only cost me about $8.00/shirt total to make instead of the $30.00 to buy them.

I didn't want to say that anyone else was ugly so i used my own face. now Des really wants me to look like this... great.

Wellness Wednesday

So this is the day that I have been the most hesitant about. Like many people out there, I don’t take the best care of myself. I used to be very active and engage in lots of physical activity and self care activities but that all has gone to the wayside over the past 9 years. I recently took the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” training through work and in that training there is a habit devoted to Wellness. I am recommitted to taking better care of myself by exercising, building stronger relationships with family/friends, taking time to recharge and solidify my relationship the my Heavenly Father.

To start off, this past weekend Des and I took the “Parenting with Love and Logic” course again. It was nice to revisit some the techniques that we once used but have since replaced with some of our old habits. It’s nice to be able to focus on helping Ben and Rachel solve their own problems rather then repeatedly “rescuing” them and solving it for them. I know the school uses the Love and Logic principles and I can see that Ben is liking the consistency between home and school.

Next up, I went for a run after work yesterday. I don’t like running very much especially in the cold, but I did it again today and I’m going to try to keep doing it or some other form of exercise every day.

Testimony Tuesday

With the recent addition to our family, I have been pondering a lot about family, agency, and the love of our Heavenly Father and Savior. As I gaze at this beautiful little infant, I am amazed at the miracle of procreation and that our Heavenly Father has entrusted one of his children to me to care for and to teach. I feel so much love for her and for each of my children, that...at times, I could almost burst. I have a testimony that our Heavenly Father loves us very much. He loves us so perfectly and unconditionally that he allows us to use our agency, to make mistakes allowing us to grow and learn from them.

This isn't a picture of one of the sights but it's all

I have in the pictures I've taken

About 14 years ago my family and I had the opportunity to go on a really long trip together. This was a result of my brother getting married to a wonderful woman from Missouri and they were having a wedding reception in her hometown. So we took the chance to drive there and stop at some of the sites along the way. Most of them were historic church sites like Far West, Liberty Jail, Winter Quarters, Kirtland, Nauvoo and Carthage Jail. I was 17 or 18 at the time and I think this trip really solidified my testimony of the Pioneers, Joseph Smith and helped me make the final decision to go on a mission. As my family and I visited the sites I could feel the power and determination of the saints and their desire to follow the Saviour’s example and live his teachings. I couldn’t help but feel spirit as I sat on the bed in the upper room of Carthage Jail and listen to “A poor wayfaring man of grief” as the Senior Missionary told us of the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph. I was inspired by the bond that Hyrum and Joseph shared and knew that even in death they are brothers. As I walked the streets of Nauvoo and I visited the site of the not as yet reconstructed Temple I felt the peace that many of the saints surly felt at times while living there.

I returned from this trip with a stronger determination to follow in the foot steps of the pioneers and move forward in my progression towards eternal life and I was resolved to do my best to follow the Savior and his servants the prophets.

Memory Monday

Let's just start from the beginning shall we

Des and I met in Lethbridge at college. I noticed her from a distance while we were both at a Welcome week activity through the institute program. We were later introduced but I quickly forgot her name because i have a sieve for a brain and I also thought she had a boyfriend (my first mistake of many I assure you). To make a long story painful, we spent the next 4 months saying Hi to each other in the halls at school. She would say "Hi Rich" and I would say "Hey... how ya doin?" Each time I would tell my self "you've really got to get her name before it gets too late." well... it got too late and it would have turned out really bad for me it I fessed up and told her the truth. So I devised what I thought was a masterful plan. I asked her what her last name was and got her first name from a few reliable sources (I know it's lame But it was the best I could do at the time so cut me some slack). With her name fresh in my mind and locked in never to be forgotten I finally asked her out and we started dating. Once we became more serious she told me one day "I guess I should break up with my boyfriend." In Des' defence The guy lived in Utah and everyone knows that long distance relationships blah blah blah, Sorry buddy but she's mine now (at least that's what i wanted to say to the guy).

Fast forward a few months. Des informed me one day that she is planning on going to Utah to stay with her grandparents and to do a field placement for school during the summer. Determined not to let her go too easily I contacted some family down there and arranged to help my uncle build a cabin at Bear Lake for the summer.

By the end of the summer of 1999 Des and I had been engaged and unengaged and I found my self driving home to Canada alone

But that's another memory for another week

A New Strategy

The other day I had a flash of insight into how I wanted to proceed with our blog

I've/we've come up with a strategy for improving the frequency and quality of our blog posts. starting today we will be have topics for each day of the week to give me some thing to write about and give me some direction.

Here is the plan:

Memory Monday (how Des and I met, Births of our other children, other special memories)

Testimony Tuesday (Things that have strengthened or testimonies)

Wellness Wednesday (thought and activities about Physical/Emotional/Spiritual/Mental wellness)

Thankful Thursday (things that we're thankful for)

Photography Friday (do I have to explain)

Super Saturday (Great things that have happened during the week)

Spiritual Promptings Sunday (Promptings that we've had and how they have impacted us)

I'm hopping that once we've done this for a year we will be able to have a good collection of stories/experiences that we can grow from.

So here it goes....

Stages

I finally convinced Des to pose for the final photo in the series I've been doing of the stages of her pregnancy. The actual photo is 11.75 by 36. It is cute to see how she kind of popped out in the last few months.

I was originally planning on doing all the photos with the same lighting set up but for a few of the months we weren't at home. For example, in month 4 we were at the Grand Canyon and in month 6 we never ended up doing a photo and had to use one I shot of her during one of our family photo shoots.

I think it ended up looking alright. It's nice to have have a record of this time in our lives.

2 weeks

Sarah is 2 weeks old today so we thought we'd take a photo.

She wasn't too impressed

I think I've opened Pandora's Box

Since it appears that I will be doing most of the physical blogging and I have issues with visual stimuli/presentation and evidently some minor control issues, I made some changes to the blog (Des is asleep and she couldn't stop me and that's my defence).

Plus I'll take any opportunity I get to play around in Photoshop even if it's only to make the Banner.

It's good to be home?

When we returned home from Lethbridge with the baby we found that we had a problem.

you can't really see it too well but there is a large trail of water running down the ceiling

Apparently some water got under our lino in the bathroom and carpet in the upstairs hall way/stairs and leaked down into the basement stairwell. we don't know exactly how it got there but during the 4 days that we were away it was able to do some damage. it was pretty sad considering we just finished the basement.

we think it might have happened because we might have had some frozen water in the exhaust fan pipe going outside and it melted on a warmer day while we were gone. The reason being the water seemed to come from no where and it stopped all by its self.

I guess this is why we have home insurance.

For the past week we have had workers ripping up the carpet, putting holes in the freshly painted walls and running large fans constantly for a few days in order to dry things out.

This being said, it's still good to be home

Happy New Year

What's a better way to start the new year off then to have a new addition to the family?
Desiree was informed by her doctor in Lethbridge that she would have a planned cesarean and was given the choice of the 30th, 31st of December or the 1st or 5th of January. Since her due date was the 7th and we didn’t want to cut it too close and run the chance of going in to natural labor and rupturing her uterus we choose the 1st.

We arrived on in Lethbridge on the 31st and Des filled out the necessary paperwork and prepared to get up in the morning and meet our new addition the following day. We took the time to take one last photo of Des while she was pregnant (I have taken a photo of her once a month through out her pregnancy) We got up the next morning and drove to the hospital for our 7:30am appointment and learned that we were the 10th admission in the last 24 hours. The delivery suite was packed and needless to say we were processed and pushed out of the prep room and into the OR within an hour. At 9:02am Sarah Lee Gilmour was born and she was mad! Des was happy to see her new baby and I never let her out of my sight.

The following days were filled with visiting, sleeping, feeding, sleeping, changing diapers, sleeping, taking pictures and... sleeping.

Rachel just loves her little sister and is constantly saying:

"I want to see her"

"let me hold her"

"I want to kiss her"

"I love her"

"that's my sister"

Ben is just taking it in strides because he is an "experienced" big brother

We returned home to Brooks on the 4th and had a few days together before I went to work and left Des and the kids in the capable hands of grandma.

We would like to thank all those who have already called and come by the home to congratulate us and to see Sarah.

Happy New Year and best wishes to everyone.