November Clouds:

Almost everyday I am so thankful to live here, in La Pine on the high desert of Oregon.  Days like today especially.  The clouds are so beautiful.  They are so close to the ground, it seems.  I took these on my way to the store:

Kathy Matthews

Kathy Matthews

Paulina Peak

Kathy Matthews

Kathy Matthews

Kathy Matthews

Kathy Matthews

Kathy Matthews

Kathy Matthews

Reflecting back over the week ...

Man, what a busy week.  Okay, there is the obvious stuff ... coming home, posting all those trip photos, organizing a contest, catching up on laundry, getting the outside critters fed and watered, etc.  That stuff is to be expected, and was actually enjoyable.


But we had some very traumatic things happen too, like Cody dying.  It is so hard to see your child heartbroken.  The neighbor man who lived next door to us as I was growing up, my friend's father, died this week too.  Our long time family friend, Pauline, also passed away (she was in her late 90's, and she and her husband were best friends with my grandparents).  My step-mom's sister, Joanna, died too.  The baby deer who eats and drinks from our bird feeder showed up by herself, and I am wondering where her mom is.  Everytime I turn around, somebody is dying on me.  It sucks.

There were some other things that happened that will not be discussed on here, but were/are worrisome, and take lots of prayer and energy to deal with.  It is so hard to watch those you love have difficulties.

My sweetie has a bad case of that flu/cold that is going around, and I feel so sorry for him.  I am trying my best to not succumb to that dang bug myself.  Right now, I am as faithful about taking my little pink antihistamine pills and Muconex tablets as others are about taking their birth control pills.

Lots of good things have happened too, though.  Tyler's team won again on Friday, and they are still undefeated for the season.  Grandboys Garrett, Cameron, Casey, Johnny, and Collin, are all playing football right now too.  The Oregon Ducks won a difficult game against Stanford.  Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners won the Cy Young pitching award.  The Yankees are going into the playoffs, which is never a surprise, but I don't really mind.  At least I know who the players are.  The Red Sox are not going, and that makes me sad.  They have been there every year since I have  watching baseball, which really isn't that long.  Regular season is over, and I will miss watching baseball on t.v., which I find to be very peaceful.

More good things: I have two new followers, my friend Shelly from Creswell, and Natasha at 5 Minutes Just for Me.  Natasha lives in Australia and has an awesome blog, so make sure you take a look!  

There are even more good things:  I have a wonderful husband, wonderful parents, wonderful kids and grand kids and a wonderful huge extended family.  My dogs are healthy and fine. I am blessed with so many great friends.  I am feeling happy and content right now, for these few moments.  Thank you, Lord, for your love and for your many blessings!


Every cloud has a silver lining, you guys.  Remember that!  Hey, look, here is proof:

Please click on these to enlarge for better viewing.

Mayberry has great clouds, but I am beginning to think that you can't beat Kansas clouds, no matter how hard you try.  I took these two while I was in Kansas.  Plus, if you look closely at the bottom one, you might see something looking right back at you (after you enlarge it).
 
I hope that you guys all have a wonderful week!


~ Kathy

P.S. -  Here is another really cool thing that has happened recently.  Our great-nephews, those competitive BMX racing boys, went to the state championships the weekend before last.  Their efforts resulted in them placing for their age groups for the whole state: 

Treavor came in 3rd (age 13)

Christian came in 7th (age 12)

 Jason came in 6th (age 9)

 Isaiah came in 7th (age 6)


When the boys are not busy racing, they try 
to keep their Mom and Dad out of jail:

What did you two do this time, Brian and Shelly?

You have great boys and we are so proud of them!

Photography: Tuesday's Clouds and The Deer Family

That is birdseed, not braces, on this guy's mouth.
I'm not sure what to say about his wild eyes.

Photography: More Deer and Tweaking Your Pics

Our cheap entertainment around here is watching the wildlife stop at the two bird baths that I gave Cary for our anniversary.   One is filled with birdseed/peanuts and corn.  The other is filled with water.  We have several different squirrels, a chipmunk, blue jays, doves, and other birds who eat and drink there daily.  A nice, rather tame deer also feeds there periodically.  I have showed pictures of her before.  We just learned that she is also a mom.

Monday afternoon, Cary and I were sitting in our lawn chairs next to the front door, and here she came again; to visit and enjoy a snack.  This time, Mama Deer brought her baby with her, though she told her baby to lay down and stay in the tall grass across the street from us.   Mama Deer carefully crossed the road, but she still does not know too much about looking both ways.  Or about stop, look and listen.  It was nerve-wracking to watch her return to her kid.  She started to walk in front of a car, but stopped.  She did slowly walk in front of a motorcycle; lucky for all of us that he was paying attention and was not one of the green ninja bikes that sometimes flies by here at 100 mph.

The other day, Becky asked if I enhanced my photos.   I always go through and crop them, and many times I do enhance them.  They are part of the way I do art, and I have that philosophy of "Good, better, best, never let it rest, until the good is better and the better's best."  That means that I cannot help it ... I just cannot leave good enough alone most of the time.  I need to improve good.  And, don't laugh, but I think that I am getting so used to watching HDTV that I really expect the color in my photos to look like the high definition on television does.

I have noticed that there are a lot of purists out there who are taking issue on this sort of stuff.  One photography blog that I was recently visiting said that she NEVER enhanced her photos in any way.  I wanted to ask if that also meant cropping, but she seemed pretty fussy, and I did not want to start a fight.  Another lady labels the photos that she enhances with the program that she used.

This one was untouched and not even cropped.  Even though I left the colors alone, I could have lightened up the shadows so that we could see Mama Deer's face better.  I didn't though:

This one is "saturated", and adjusted for "warmness".  A little warning here: if you saturate your colors and print them off it uses up your ink very quickly.  I think it is pretty though:

I use Picasa 3 for digital developing.  I like all the options that it gives me.  It is a free download, and I think it comes with Blogger.com to start with.  Actually, it starts out free, but I have so many pictures now that I used up my free photo space and now pay $20.00 per year.  It saves my pictures that I have posted, even if my computer crashes.  I consider the $20.00 very inexpensive for what I get out of it.