(That said, my brain has already recreated a hundred different ways he slips, catches his pants and snaps his leg on the fall down… but let’s not ruin this moment with the usual parental anxiety attacks… mmmkay?)

I was making dinner tonight when I looked out the window and saw him up there again. He was as far up as he dared to go, staring out towards the late evening sun, maybe trying to catch it set over the houses across the street. I grabbed my camera, ran out there and this is what I got.

Because seriously people. I love kids climbing trees. It’s how it should be, you know?

A few years back, I happened to put a few roots down some miles from the Gulf. I had no presumptions about what magic we would find here either. But within days, we found it. Drawn by some inner pull towards the shore and our general curiosity to see what all the fuss was about, we arrived at the Gulf’s coastline.

And we fell in love.

The Gulf stands clear and calm, mild and magnificent. Unlike the rough, tumbling waters we already knew off the shores of New England, these waters relented. They allowed us to wade in easily and settle quietly. They greeted us with fish darting around our toes and did not knock our baby on his butt. The Gulf was a warm welcome party, lulling us to stay awhile and sink our feet deep into its powder fine sand.

The Gulf is unlike any other body of water I’ve known before.

And since we have arrived, I’ve brought my family back again and again. I have walked on its shores with a new baby inside, calmed and safe. I have puttered out on boats and tossed myself blindly into it. So have my children. I have swum away from it’s shores and dived deep. I have been surrounded and filled with its aqua green, up around and over all of me.

The Gulf drops you to your knees and insists that you bathe in it, to roll around in it, to soak it up and slosh unheeded with its ebb and flow.

The Gulf surprises you with its true inhabitants. A dolphin slips by – a finger tip’s length away. A large gray shape lumbers past (not a mermaid but a manatee). Rays skate on its bottom. Fish of every size dash and jump and race through its quiet movement. Birds dive and swoop and come up with full beaks. Crabs scurry past your feet. Sand dollars are dug up with your toes. Star fish bend on your hand.

Life is everywhere.

And I am only a visitor. A guest. A passerby who barges through it’s open front door and settles her family on it’s shores. But there’s always a place for us – and a few intended hours predictably turn into an entire day. My children are endlessly entertained and utterly exhausted. I am rocked, repaired and relaxed. We stay and stay and stay.

The Gulf feeds and cleanses. The sand our bread, the water our wine.

We are renewed.

And then the Gulf bids the sun in and signals the inevitable end of our day. We pull our salted bodies up, gather our things and plod away. No matter how long we have overstayed our welcome, we are never entirely sated. We always come back. We always want more.

The Gulf feels like home.

But we are only guests here.

So what did I like about it? It was really easy to use. Click, drag and drop. But it was also easy to manipulate and personalize if you didn’t want to stay within the confines of the the templates. Whether you use the book options or just a page, there is a lot of variation. I am looking forward to tracking down more templates for other options.

What didn’t I like? While I loved that you could publish it right away onto facebook or a slide show, I wish it was easier to capture and save as a jpg or image on my hard drive. But I am still learning it all so maybe if I was a tad more tech-savvy I could figure that out too.

UPDATE:

In the comments below, I got some great tips from two Creative Memories experts so I thought I would just put them up here too.

Great news – you can pretty easily save your pages as .jpgs to your harddrive. On the “home” tab, simply click on “Save pages as” (make sure you choose the save PAGES as rather than the save as)… then you have options for your resolution, selecting certain pages, etc.

Here is another trick you might like to give your page a 3-d look. You can add a shadow (choose light or heavy) .
Format tab is where you will find the shadow option. If you hold down control and click all the elements you want to add a shadow to (for example the red mat/photo, the “beat it” tag and the star) it will add the shadow to all three with one easy click!

Sometimes on pages with many elements I will do a ctrl A and highlight every element, then just unclick the few I don’t want a shadow on (like a text box).

It rained a lot yesterday. And I was sad a lot yesterday. But as I pulled my three year old out of his bath, my husband finally arrived home and the rain let up. (No silly comments about how he is the “Sunshine of My Life”. Let’s not be so obvious… no matter how much he may be.) Still, while I quietly went about the business of turning inward that evening, my husband happened to look out. And there, across our backyard was the biggest, brightest, most complete rainbow I’ve ever seen. A double rainbow in fact. Right away he asked me where the “Morningside Mom” camera was and then went out to take the picture I would have taken. With my three year old looking up, amazed.

And do you know what else is amazing about this picture? Those there? Are *DRY* underpants. My friends, it’s finally happening.

Hope indeed.

After an evening trying to whip myself together into some sort of presentable look for fashion week, myself and the 20 other bloggers tromped out into the rain to go see the Vivienne Tam show.

What did I expect? Some very beautiful, thin, doe eyed girls trooping around in fabulous outfits and a crew of fashionistas getting it so much more than I am, and eyeing everyone up and down. I doubted I’d see VT herself, but what do I know about how these events go down…

And what happened?

Well, we arrived, were escorted right in and handed glasses of champagne. And there was Vivienne Tam standing with all the models in front of a row of Touchsmart HP screens! After many pictures, the models moved on and the crowd mingled. The wonderful DWJ from the Art of Accessories grabbed my hand (I love this woman, by the way) and managed to get us in for a picture with Vivienne Tam herself!

Um. Is this my life? Here we are. (I have no idea what happened with my hair. I am clearly channeling “A Flock of Seagulls”. Whatever. I’m standing next to her!)

And then a few minutes later, they lined up all the bloggers with Vivienne Tam and took endless pictures. This sounds silly but I totally had a red carpet moment all of the sudden. Little ol’ me. Whoda thunk. I don’t have a big group shot now but will post one when I do.

Anyway, we saw the amazing collection. Its absolutely gorgeous. I fell in love with a beautiful leather dress of hers and was amazed by the beauty of the detail in her dresses.

A Mom in Red High Heels and I checked out the Touchsmart PCs. We pulled up our sites and took pics of ourselves at the event.

We talked to interesting people, learned more about the inspiration of her collection (which I hope to post more about in the future) and just generally had an amazing time.

I think what impressed me most was Vivienne herself. She was so taken aback that we were all women bloggers there to support her show. She said it meant so much to have women supporting her this way and was extremely appreciative of us being there. I said to her that women bloggers absolutely adore this mini and all want one. Her face absolutely lit up. She spun around to some very nice man behind her. “Did you hear that?? The bloggers love the Mini!!!” She was genuine, she was warm, she was truly grateful to have us there.

Grateful. Yes. My words exactly.

What an amazing evening.

For more information about the HP products I review, please visit my HP Update page.

Here are a few pics from pumpkin carving last night in my household!

(Get your own “Yes We Carve” Stencil here.)

Last time, all we saw was the damage. This time, the boar, feral pig, whatever the heck you wanna call them, attacked our lawn in broad daylight. My mother was home babysitting my napping son while I dared go get a haircut. And as she casually walked into the living room, she looked out the window and saw this sow and her five babies rooting through my previously patched up and carefully fertilized backyard. Being a blogger’s mother, before she shooed them off, she grabbed her camera. “I knew you’d want to blog about this!” Right she was.

Of ALL things. This pig had to be a mama. With five babies.

What am I going to do????

Initially they weren’t scared of my mother’s shooing but eventually they ran off.

And left one third of my back yard in utter shambles.