schrodinger's birthday.

my little schrodinger is growing up so fast! look how little he was when he first came to live with me.

and now, of course, he's huge.

we just celebrated his third birthday.

the party was complete with tuna cake, candles and his present-cat grass!

in case you don't know dinger very well, he loooves windows. sitting in them. looking out them. trying to run through them to get to the cat outside of them. all of it.

he also loves trying {and occasionally succeeding at} to escape the house.

and he's real big on just lounging around being awesome.

oh, and apparently eating flip flops is the new thing.

so, happy birthday, dinger! enjoy your cat grass!

photo project three.

our third assignment was to play with depth of field a little bit. the teacher wanted us to present six photos in which we had some psychological reason for what we are focused on and why. if that makes sense. actually, it didn't seem to make sense to most of the class, because for the most part they just took pictures of objects up close and blurred the backgrounds.

although i'm not incredibly proud of any of these photos, i think i did an ok job of getting a reason for connecting or disconnecting the foreground and the background... maybe.

first, austin reading the paper. i always think how he's so intellectual, reading the paper and all. then he reads me his horoscope. and i laugh.

second, austin overlooking the mountain over in dunlap {at least i think it's dunlap}. i was trying to focus on the land that austin was looking at and not austin. my teacher didn't like that austin is so out of focus here. oops.

third, lunch. with austin in the background praying over the meal.

fourth, austin's obsession with lottery tickets. i don't think he won though...

fifth, austin and juliet talking. her little tail is just a-going.

and sixth, study time. except even when i'm so focused on school, i wouldn't want to be away from social networking for too long...

i told you none of these were all that interesting. the class got a good laugh out of the horoscope picture and the facebook one.

photo project two.

so our second assignment in photography was to take 24 pictures in 24 hours {or close to it} simply documenting a day in our lives. even though we took 24 exposures, we were then to select our top six choices to present to the class.

here are my six.

first, a kinda crazy picture i got of a grasshopper flying in the air. it's kind of hard to see that it is a grasshopper, but it is.

second, mr. dinger giving me an evil, get-that-big-camera-out-of-my-face look.

third, juliet frolicking through the yard after getting a bath.

fourth, austin. he's wasn't feeling very good, but he let me take his picture anyway.

sixth, some fake hydrangeas i have in our spare bedroom.

and lastly, juliet asking for a belly rub and showing her teeth all at the same. typical.

not very exciting pictures, i know. but typical of a 24-hour period of my life.

photo project one.

since my PTA class schedule doesn't make me full time, i'm taking a digital photography class to reach full-time status {ok, and maybe i just reeeallly wanted to take photography}. so i think that i might share my pictures that i present in class, just for fun.

so our first assignment was to find a couple of pictures we had previously taken that we really liked, for whatever reason. so i picked these three.

first, my julie boo. i just love this picture. down on her level, focused in on her pretty little face, but you can see her little tail wagging {because she loves me, duh}.

second, sophie and juliet in my parents front yard. i love this picture, even more now than before. the two of them were best friends and this picture just shows it. two friends hanging out, enjoying the scenery and chatting about their days. juliet and i both miss sushi very, very, very much.

and lastly, this picture of the arbor vitae on the trail to the natural bridge i took when austin and i went with mom and timmy. i like the texture of the bark and how the angle of this picture shows just how huge the tree really is.

critiques on this first project were minimal, but included a liking for the angles that these pictures show and using the camera at different levels to connect with the subjects in different ways.

when we presented these photos, we were given our next assignment of 24 pictures in 24 hours, documenting our day in photographs. i'll share the pictures i chose to present from that assignment soon.

in case you missed it.

so, in case you haven't noticed, it's been quite a while since i last posted. actually it's been almost a month. but most of you probably have some clue as to why i've been absent lately...

shortly after my last post, i started PTA school and got completely overwhelmed with schoolwork, but that's to be expected. then austin and i decided to take our long labor day weekend as a mini-vacation to go visit lindsy and rj in memphis.

they took us to see the ducks at the peabody.

and gus and lucy hated that we brought juliet were so happy to see us.

and then, well, things took a drastic turn. i will spare you having to read all the details, but i will say that austin ended up in the hospital in memphis and was eventually transported to vanderbilt, where he was diagnosed with two very rare syndromes and had a defibrillator implanted into his chest. needless to say, our fun trip to memphis didn't go as planned.

but the good news is that we are back home, austin is back to work and i am back to school and things are {slowly} getting back to normal. we're still seeing doctors on a regular basis to try to get austin's medications straightened out and keep his blood levels normal. so if you've got a second throughout your day, send him some positive energy, he sure could use it.

if you'd like to, read up about brugada's syndrome and gitelman's syndrome. and then think about how rare my austin is to have both of these. i always knew he was one-in-a-million. :)

also, i want to take a minute to thank all of our loving friends and family for being there for both of us through all of this. we got so many texts, emails, facebook comments and phone calls while austin was in the hospital. even though i may not have responded to each one {things were crazy, to say the least} i appreciated each and every single one. to know that we have so many people who care about us is amazing.

i also want to thank momma and timmy for making the 12+ hour drive through hurricane weather to be there for me. it's good to know that even though i'm an adult {sort of} and off on my own that my parents will always be there when i need them.

and lindsy and rj, as well. the two of them were there when everything happened and i don't know what i would have done without them. but next time, you guys come visit us, we may not be making it to memphis anytime soon.