"Turn the clock to zero, honey. We're starting up a brand new day."

Good Morning! "Turn the clock to zero, honey. We're starting up a brand new day."

I know, I know, you're probably like huh? Well as a part of this photography journey I'm on, I'm also doing a 52 week photo challenge with some of the ladies over at The Photographer Within that incorporates song lyrics in photographs. This week was Sting's Brand New Day lyric. So, this is day 3 of my 365 project and week 1 of the 52 week challenge. Whew. This year is gonna be fun!

This morning Charlie was a little fussy because she's had a cold. (She always has a cold. Daycare is building up that immune system!) So around 5am she wouldn't go back to sleep in her crib so I brought her into bed with me. Crazy husband was up at 130am to go duck hunting so he was already gone. Well anywho, I was hoping she would sleep a little longer this morning so I could get some daylight into our room because the lighting in my house SUCKS! (I can't wait to take Sarah's On Camera Flash workshop on the 20th) I managed to get this image about a minute after she woke up at 8am. FYI, she never sleeps this late on the weekends. She must get that from her momma.

Charlie wasn't really ready to start a brand new day this morning but momma has to work so we had to get rolling!

Well there you have it. Week 1 of the P52 and day 3 of the 365. Hope everyone has a great day!

Please "Like" my Facebook page and subscribe to my blog.

Facebook

xxx

Ryan

Day 2! It's a new recipe kinda day!

Hello friends!

As some of you know I LOVE to cook, bake and try new recipes and tonight I made a delicious dish and decided to blog about it and incorporate my 365 photo to it as well.

The dish is called One-Pan Venison Enchilada Pasta. Of course you don't have to use venison, but since I have a hearty supply here in my freezer thanks to the husbands hunting adventures, I rarely use any other type of meat. Plus it's so lean, I don't have to worry about all the fat and icky stuff that's in ground beef. Bleh.

Enough about that. Here is what you need:

Ingredients 

• 2 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced ( I was out so used a little garlic powder and garlic salt)
• 1 onion, diced
• 1.25 pounds of taco seasoned ground venison, turkey, or beef
• packet of low-sodium taco seasoning
• 2 cups of low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 19oz can of red enchilada sauce
• 8oz (about 2 1/2 cups) of dried rotini pasta
• 2 cups of freshly shredded Colby Jack cheese 
  
  
• green onions
• black olives (optional I didn't use olives)

Instructions

1. In a large skillet or sauté pan, sauté garlic and onions in olive oil over medium low heat until softened.
2. Add ground meat and cook, breaking meat up with a wooden spoon until browned.
3. Once turkey meat is cooked through, add pasta, chicken broth and enchilada sauce to pan.
4. Bring to a boil, then reduced heat to low and cover.
5. Cook on low, with pan covered for about 15 minutes.
6. Then remove lid and let simmer for additional 5 minutes until pasta is tender and sauce has reduced.
7. Remove from heat and stir in 1 cup of cheese.
8. Top pasta with additional cup of cheese and melt under broiler for a minute or tow, or place lid back on pan and let heat from the pasta melt the cheese.
9. Garnish with black olives and green onions.

The end result looks like this (minus the matte Lightroom filter :-)

Please don't mind my old as dirt pan. I think if I'm going to start taking pictures of my cooking I should probably get some new pots and pans. But hey, if it's not broke, don't fix it right?

Thanks for checking out the recipe and day 2 of my 365 photo project! I'm going to try and do a recipe a week. Don't forget to follow my blog and "Like" my Facebook page! Click the link below and it will take you there!

Please "Like" my Facebook page :-)

Next time I will take more photos of the cooking process as well! It's hard to do when you're trying to entertain a 9 month old in a highchair and cook dinner at the same time!

xxxx

Ryan

365......Attempt 2. Among other things......

Well here we go again. It looks like I'm going to attempt yet another 365. This time I have a lot of motivation and I'm in a wonderful Facebook group with some awesome photographers that are doing the same thing so hopefully we can all motivate each other to finish.

This was my image today.

This image means two things.

#1. This is the first image of my 365-2014 project.

#2. I'm FINALLY going to start training again. I've been running on and off over the past 8 months but it's really time to focus and get back in shape. I've joined two bets for weight loss. One with a group of friends and one on dietbet.com. The one on DietBet is HUGE. I've never seen a pot so big for a weightloss comp. This bet is over 6 months so I have to stay focused!

The triple crown of running and the mini marathon are coming up again. I haven't ran a race since the mini in 2012 so maybe if I start today I can whip my butt into shape. Plus I cannot wait to try my new outdoor running face mask my sister and brother in law got me for Christmas. That thing is SWEET!

Anywho, I'm going to be keeping up with my 365 project on here and on Facebook. This is where I'll elaborate a little on the image I've shot for the day. Obviously this is a huge time suck so I may not be able to post everyday. I hope some of you will hop over and follow my blog.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and safe New Years Eve! Welcome to 2014!

Thanks for the love and support!

xxx

Ryan

Hey-o friends!

I love saying that I'm going to keep up with my blog only to forget about it for 6 months and then realize that I should write something.

Well....duh dun duh.....I had a baby! Miss Charlotte Leigh Cecil was born on her due date, April 14, 2013 at 12:31 pm. She weighed 8lbs, 2 oz and was 19 inches long. She was totally perfect and had the most hilarious cone head for a good couple of hours after she came out.

The day prior to me going into labor was UofL's spring football game. At this point I was convinced that Charlie was never going to make her appearance and I was already planning her first birthday inside the womb so I decided to waddle my 9 month preggo butt down to Papa John's Cardinal Stadium with Tiff & Fredie and have some fun. After the basketball team was announced during "half time" we decided to split and go get some food. We went to The Cardinal Cafe to grab some grub.  My back was starting to bother me just a little when we were eating so I was ready to get home and relax.

April 13th was opening day of Turkey Season so Ryan had been hunting all morning and he managed to wrangle himself a bird. So he was dealing with that most of the day. We went to bed that night and around 1230 I woke up having contractions. I was always worried that I wasn't going to know when I was actually in labor but I knew that it was going down! I started timing my contractions at 8 minutes apart. By 2 am they were 6 minutes apart and then by 3am they were 4 minutes apart so I knew that we needed to head to the hospital. We put Rexie outside, grabbed our bag and then got on the road.

As we were driving my contractions were getting worse so Ryan started making the phone calls to let our parents know that we were heading to the hospital. When we got there, they examined me and told me that I was going to be having a baby today. That's when shit got real! Yikes!

I got my epidural around 530 am and after that the rest of the morning was a breeze. We had family in and out to visit and I was eating a ton of popsicles so all was good. Ryan took a nap and I played Candy Crush most of the morning. I was too excited to sleep.

My doctor came in around 1115 am and told me we were going to get this show on the road. I was nervous! After an hour and some change of pushing our little baby girl came out and it was the most awesome thing ever. I asked if she had all of her fingers and toes (she did) and I asked if she was cute (she is) haha. After that almost everything else is a blur. I remember hanging out, then being moved upstairs, then eating some food and we had a lot of visitors that day. We have a huge family and some awesome close friends that came to visit us that first day.

We stayed in the hospital until Tuesday and then finally got to come home. But that's worth a whole seprate post. Those first few days were rough.....more on that later. I'm blogged out for the day. I really do plan on keeping up with this....haha.

I'm a tiger. Rawr!

Until next time...........................

I Promise...

Hey-o friends! I've finally crossed over to the "I don't want to be pregnant anymore, please get this child out of me" phase of my pregnancy. Don't get me wrong, I love being pregnant, I really do, but doing the smallest things these days is SUCH a chore. Yesterday I vacuumed the rug in my living room and swept up the floors and after that I sat in the chair and actually fell asleep. Knocked right out. Granted, daylight savings time threw me off yesterday and we did get up and go to church super early but seriously....I never fall asleep sitting up in a chair. Haha.

This weekend was really nice. Not only was the weather gorgeous but Ryan was home the whole weekend! Even during the day! Haha. Saturday night we had our maternity pictures done by my sis in law's sister Candace and I cannot wait to see them, Ryan said Candace is now in charge of doing all of our pictures because she doesn't make him do weird things and pose in weird positions haha! I just love him.

But anyway basically what I wanted to write about was our experience at dinner on Saturday night. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings on Dixie and we had a good time. The food was good, service was good and it was just a good time. But while we were eating there was this guy sitting behind us with what looked like his son. They had placed their orders and they were waiting on their food I guess. The guy was probably our age, maybe a little bit older and his son was in the 7-10 age range. Old enough where you can have a conversation and talk with them and they know what's going on. Well this guy sat at this table behind us and played on his phone the entire time they were sitting down waiting. He didn't even acknowledge his son that was sitting directly across from him just staring off into space looking bored. It broke my heart. I told Ryan that I really wanted to say something to him or at least strike up a conversation with the little boy so the dad would know what a dick he was being by playing on his phone the whole time and not giving the kid the time of day. 

I know we live in an era where technology is all around us and it's part of our everyday lives, but when did we start putting technology before our children? When did people stop caring about what was going on with their kids and instead all they cared about was who was posting what on Facebook or Twitter. I sit here and think about all of these children taking guns to school and the ones that are bullied that end up committing suicide and I think to myself, what if they tried to talk to their parents about what was going on in their life but all the parents did was play on their phones, tablets and computers all the time?

At another table across from us in the restaurant there was a family of four,  a mom, dad and two little girls eating dinner as well. The little girls looked about 4 and the smallest was about 7 or 8 months or so and those parents did not have their cell phones out once. They were actively engaging their kids in conversations, playing with them and devoting all of their attention to them. I don't even know who these people are but I left there feeling grateful for them and the good job they were doing parenting those children at that time.

I'm a child of technology. I love my Kindle, my iPhone, my computers and all of that mess but I can promise you that I will never put any of these material things before my daughter or before any of my future children. I will talk to them, play with them and give them my undivided attention whenever they need it or even when I think they don't need it. So what if I miss what's going down on Facebook? Facebook and social media will never be more important than my child(ren). 

So if you see or hear a little less of me online after April, it's ok. I'm just enjoying precious moments with my family that I will never be able to go back and re-do.

Until next time........

Well would ya look at that?

So much for keeping up with my blog last year huh? Let's just say I had A LOT going on over the past 11 months and couldn't really find the time to sit down and tell my little three followers on my blog what was going on with my life. Besides, they know, we're real life friends too!

Since the last time I've posted, one of my baby sister heads got married, I stopped running, and I've gained oh about 30 pounds or so. Yeah....that happened. But at least it's for a good reason. I mean, you can't really grow another human being in your belly without gaining a little weight ya know?

Pregnancy is pretty awesome, it's about the only time in my life I've been able to eat whatever I wanted and not really felt bad about it. I always said that I would have never wanted to be pregnant in the summer but I already feel like that might have been a better plan. It's SO hard to stay active in the winter! Walking outside sucks because it's freezing, walking on the treadmill is boring, and I can't go swimming. Maybe next time we will plan this out a little better haha. And boy do I miss running. I never in a million years thought that I could miss running the way I miss it right now. When I hit the 10-14 week mark in my pregnancy that's when my shortness of breath started and I haven't ran since. The last run I went on was with Ryan and I managed to squeak out a measly 1.5 miles. Some of my friends have become such awesome runners and I'm SO jealous of them every time I see their Nike posts on FB. I'm counting down the weeks until I can run again......sigh.......

So let's talk about this magnificent little human being that is currently kicking the crap out of me right now. First of all, the little bean is a girl and her name is Charlotte Leigh. Charlie for short. I'm so obsessed with her nickname. I should have just named her Charlie but I wanted her to have the option of a girls name and a boys nickname. Kids weren't always the nicest to me since I had a boys name, although now it's more common for a girl to be named Ryan. Not the case when I was 0-15 years old. Anywho, she is due on April 14th and I hope she comes a little earlier than that. I'm so anxious to meet her and I know Ryan is too. Everyday I feel like my belly grows another inch so if she does stay in there another 7 weeks I'm not going to be able to function properly anymore. And that could be a problem considering I plan on working until the minute I go into labor! Yikes!

Miss Charlie has another baby shower this weekend. She's already had one and she is very blessed and lucky to have so many people that love her and can't wait to meet her. Ryan finished painting the nursery a couple of weeks ago and I love it. I think it's so cute and it's exactly what I pictured it looking like. The idea came from Pinterest and Ryan drew his vision for it all free hand. Here is a picture of the progress....

The longer tree branch extends over the crib. My husband is super talented. I'm thinking I should be his manager and rent his services out to others for a reasonable fee. Hah! In all seriousness.....I love this room and I can't wait for Charlie to be in it!

Well, I that's all I have time for today. I do hope to really start keeping up with this more regularly! Thanks for reading friends!

Ryan & Charlie!

Feeling Bloggy

Feeling froggy? Nope....I'm just feeling bloggy today. Meaning I'm pretty much frustrated, mainly with some of the yoyos that work for us here at the plant. I mean seriously, who puts trash in a trash can with no liner and then forgets to tell me we are out of trash bags so the trash continues to pile up. Duh. Idiots. I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

Anyway, enough about my crappy mood this morning. I already feel better now that I've vented on my bloggy blog. Not much has really been going on in my life since I last wrote. I've been lazy and swamped with school work so I haven't really had much time to write about anything interesting. Not that it really matters, I only have like 2 followers on my blog so ha! I need to find a way to make this shit go viral. Ha, only kidding. That would mean that I would have to take the time out to actually write about important things on a daily basis to keep people interested in my boring life. My only fun fact for the time being is that I finally will be graduating from college this year. I'm pretty excited about it, I feel like I've been in school forever. I will have a dual Bachelors Degree in Business Management and Logistics and Distribution. I'm taking 4 classes this summer and three in the fall and then I will be done! Of course Sullivan is kind of dumb because they won't let me walk until next Spring but oh well. At least I'll be done and then I can focus on things that I like to do like photography and FUN!

Married life is awesome. I'm trying to think about how I can elaborate on this but I can't. It's. Just. Awesome. Being with your best friend every day of your life is THE BEST THING EVER!

Aside from those things, what I really want to blog about is my friends. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I have the greatest group of friends on the planet. Two of my friends, Tiffiny and Fredie Robinson, are going through something right now that no parent should ever have to go through. Their daughter was diagnosed with MLD which stands for Metachromatic Leukodystrophy. I know, I know...most of you (whoever reads this) is like what's that? Well here is the description pulled from the MLD website:

What is Metachromatic Leukodystrophy?

Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) is one of a group of genetic disorders called the leukodystrophies. These diseases impair the growth or development of the myelin sheath, the fatty covering that acts as an insulator around nerve fibers. Myelin, which lends its color to the white matter of the brain, is a complex substance made up of at least 10 different enzymes. The leukodystrophies are caused by genetic defects in how myelin produces or metabolizes these enzymes. Each of the leukodystrophies is the result of a defect in the gene that controls one (and only one) of the enzymes. MLD is caused by a deficiency of the enzyme arylsulfatase A. MLD is one of several lipid storage diseases, which result in the toxic buildup of fatty materials (lipids) in cells in the nervous system, liver, and kidneys. There are three forms of MLD: late infantile, juvenile, and adult. Onset of the late infantile form (the most common MLD)  is typically between 12 and 20 months following birth.  Affected children have difficulty walking after the first year of life. Symptoms include muscle wasting and weakness, muscle rigidity, developmental delays, progressive loss of vision leading to blindness, convulsions, impaired swallowing, paralysis, and dementia. Children may become comatose. Most children with this form of MLD die by age 5. The juvenile form of MLD (between 3-10 years of age) usually begins with impaired school performance, mental deterioration, and dementia and then develop symptoms similar to the infantile form but with slower progression. The adult form commonly begins after age 16 as a psychiatric disorder or progressive dementia. Symptoms include impaired concentration, ataxia, seizures, dementia, and tremor..

Is there any treatment?

There is no cure for MLD.  Bone marrow transplantation may delay progression of the disease in some cases. Other treatment is symptomatic and supportive. Considerable progress has been made with regard to gene therapy in an animal model of MLD.

What is the prognosis?

The prognosis for MLD is poor. Most children within the infantile form die by age 5. Symptoms of the juvenile form progress with death occurring 10 to 20 years following onset.  Those persons affected by the adult form typically die withing 6 to 14 years following onset of symptoms. 

 

Sucks right? Your damn right it does. Makenzie is the sweetest little girl and right now she is at Duke University receiving treatment that can hopefully save her life. With all the dumb crap that I bitch about every day, seeing my friends go through something this heartbreaking really puts my problems in their place. 

 

Last Saturday I had a fundraiser photoshoot for Makenzie at McNeely Lake Park and we had a great turnout. We raised $700 for her and put the money into their COTA account. I'm hoping to do another photoshoot in the upcoming months but right now things are a little hectic on the school front. If you would like to donate the link is below. Along with Makenzie's story. Every little bit helps and spreading the word and her story helps too.

 

Makenzie's Second Chance

Make a Donation

 

 

Also, Mak loves Justin Bieber. If anyone knows a way to get him to come visit her....let's make that happen!!

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog today. I'll try to blog more often and share more fundraiser info for little Mak. Keep her in your prayers!

xoxo

Mrs. Cecil