As many of you know, Margaret Rose is our first born.  Aaron and I adopted her early on in our relationship a little over 9 years ago.  She is spoiled rotten but is the sweetest pup you’ll ever meet.  We bring her with us everywhere…probably much to many of our friends and family members dismay.  She is gentle with the boys, and is known to go up to a baby chick and lick it in the face.  While many basset hounds can’t be left off leash because of their strong sense of smell, Margaret is happy keeping only a few steps ahead, and waiting for us at each turn.

Friday when we woke up I noticed Margaret was acting different.  She wouldn’t walk in a straight line, or lay on her side for a belly rub.  At the vet the doctor gave me the worse news: there is a mass on her spleen.  Our options were to 1) do nothing and only have a month with her.  2) remove the spleen and only have 2-3 months with her, or 3) remove the spleen and do chemo, giving us 9-12 months at best.  The news devastated us.  We brought her home knowing that the mass had a potential to burst at any time, thus causing her to bleed out.  We did some crying, and then some research.  It turns out that there is a slim chance that the mass may not cancer.  She has given us so much joy that we decided that even if the chance she’ll be ok is slim, we have to try anyway.  She had surgery that evening and came home the next day.  The doctor had found that the mass did in fact rupture at some point in time but had healed over.  We could have lost her unexpectedly so much sooner!   She is already feeling better…constantly rolling over for belly rubs and is loving all the spoiling.  I’m just trying to keep and calm, clears mind until Wednesday when the lab results are back confirming how long we’ll have left with her.

Just before we decided to do the surgery we had a little impromptu photo session.  Ignore the messy hair, clothing and tears.

A few weeks ago we went to the State Fair while it was still around.

We fed the llamas

Found my father in law Tom’s wine that won a double gold

Job became a caveman

And we found some dinosaurs

RUN!

After a foot massage…

…and cheesing for pictures…

…the boys ended the afternoon with a ride on the ferris wheel.

I’m taking a quick break from editing weddings and portrait sessions to post a few from our camping trip to Angel Island a couple of weeks ago.  We had an awesome site with great views of the city.

I’m playing around with different editing styles, so bear with me for a bit.

This one has an “I just escaped from an insane asylum” type of vibe to it, lol.

We spent last weekend in San Francisco.  We are in the middle of moving and I am massively busy, so it was nice to get away for the weekend (even though I was there on business as well).

On the way up we stopped in Berkeley to visit The Bone Room.  I worked there in college and we figured the boys would get a huge kick out of it.  They had tons of fun and picked out some special lollipops…Jerah had a cricket in his and Job a meal worm.  And yes, they did eat them.

Actually we had a lot of junk food this weekend…like ice cream at fishermans wharf…

…and cotton candy by the sea lions

We also spent some time at the aquarium after winning some free tickets.

Its been a bit rough around here lately.  Pneumonia, computer failures, busy client schedule…I hope to get posting on a more regular basis soon.  The other night I developed a couple rolls of 120 film I had laying around.  These were shot with my fun little Holga camera.  Whats a holga you ask?  Its a cheap toy camera made almost entirely out of plastic…even the lens!  You really have no control over the picture other than its composition and get all sorts of fun vignetting, light leaks, and fuzzy edges.

I also scanned in some shots from my 35mm camera.  The boys are funny.  They always want to see the picture after I take it. 

I’ve started to take a darkroom class every wednesday night.  Sending film off to be developed is just too expensive!!  The BWs are from my first attempts as developing by myself.  The scans came out under exposed and I’m not sure if thats because of how they were shot, how they were developed, or how they were scanned.  I’m usually right on when shooting though so I’m thinking it may be the other two options.  Next week we are learning how to print…so we’ll see how they really turned out then…I can’t wait!

From our trip to the snow

On our bike ride over the weekend

Hanging around the house

This I took a long time ago with my old Argus.  The disk I got from my lab never worked, so I wasn’t able to share here…but now I can.  LOVE this image!!  Again, the scan was wonky and off, but the print of gorgeous.  I guess I really just need to figure out how to use the scanner.  Oh, and apparently that camera has light leaks. 

Wha….?  Snow?  You were probably expecting spring, and flowers, and Easter.  Not today!  Today is catch up day.  The other week we met Aaron’s dad and wife up at the snow.  To be honest I wasn’t looking forward to the trip at first.  Jerah is notoriously bad with dealing with the cold.  Previously trips to the snow has involved me consoling a very unhappy boy.  This time though it was warm enough out that we weren’t too cold and everyone had a blast!

Grandpa Paul didn’t stand a chance!

Jerah had so much fun sledding this time.

Crashing into a tree was fun.

And he even went down the hill by himself!

And yes, we made a special stop at the store for a carrot nose.

On the way home from Eppies we decided to fool around at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area.  Unfortunately the way we went was still a bit wet.

Job, ever my muse posed for some pictures

Notice his fake  smile? *sigh*

Then he had a great idea: “lets find a geocache!”  There was one super close.

The find of the day?  Sunglasses!

And that ends the saga of our awesome day.

Sorry it took me a bit to start this post!  I’ve been super busy and had to put the personal stuff on the back burner.

So last weekend we had an awesome day of biking, eating, geocaching, and exploring.  I decided to document it every step of the way.  The day before my new bike trailer finally came in the mail.  The boys are getting to big to fit in one trailer so two is a necessity.  We rode to Eppies in West Sac for a yummy diner food lunch.  I LOVE diners.  They make be happy.  And they are fun to photograph.

Job is obsessed with Aaron lately.  Wants to constantly hug and kiss and hang on him.

Food is always more fun when you share.

part II is coming up in a few hours.  Stay tuned!

I told my self no working on personal pictures until I’m done with all my work…luckily these were shot with BW film so there is no extra work involved.  Let me tell you…I am not a fan of manual focus.  That is hard stuff with active 4 year olds!  Anyway, here are a few more pics from our trip to SF…and a preview of our awesome morning the following day.

Yes I know the following two are a bit out of focus.  I was too slow and they were too quick.  Just squint your eyes and look past the blur to the cute cute boys.