La Paz...

Hello, my name is Julie and I'm 40.
That sounds a little weird but it is, in fact, my new reality. I turned 40 last week. I'm not hung up on the age thing, really. Birthdays always make me feel somewhat reflective, especially with "milestone" birthdays. In general, my 30's were better than my 20's and I'm looking forward to my 40's being even better.
One of the best parts about my birthday this year was that I got to celebrate it in La Paz, Mexico. What a beautiful, relaxing, soulful place. We spent a week lounging by the pool, swimming with sea lions, exploring the beach, eating wonderful food and drinking wonderful tequila! Not a bad way to spend any week, but in particular a birthday week.
La Paz had a lot of texture. I was struck by the feeling of so many things there and how authentic it felt. Between the four of us there, we took hundreds of photos and some of my favorite highlight the textures. Here are just a few examples...

These are really completely random... a light fixture on our patio, a grass overhang on a bar, a park bench, some wall art, a candle and a light fixture. So pretty and each of them bring me right back. I'll have more vacation photos soon, but these were the first I wanted to play with!

Disneyland...

We have just returned from a fun (surprise!) trip to Disneyland! This is the second time that we've surprised Alex with a trip and I think the surprise is just as much fun as the trip!
I captured a couple of highlights here, but there are of course many more stories to tell...

From top to bottom: Alex with the gorilla at The Rainforest Cafe, our first family character photo with Safari Mickey, the view from the gondola on the ferris wheel at California Adventure, Tigger with the boys, Alex breaking out of jail at Toon Town, Alex and the pirate, Alex and Donald, Alex chilling out on the giant Lego.
We had a really wonderful trip. Alex was brave enough to go on every ride. In fact, he became a total roller coaster fanatic! First with Space Mountain, then on California Screamin'. I believe that we went on those two rides a total of about 12 times! His reaction was so adorable. At the end of each ride, he would pump his fists and scream "Oh yeah!" "AWESOME!". Too cool.
Two years ago when we went to Disney Alex was still such a little guy. Now he seems much more like a boy. Quite bittersweet to be sure.

Me: The Abridged Version

Back in 2009, I took a class at Big Picture Classes called Me: The Abridged Version. The idea behind the class was to create an album, well, all about me. The concept is really cool, but for whatever reason, the project never really got off the ground. Until now. I decided to take advantage of my Layout-A-Day challenge to get going on it and so far, I'm really loving the process. It's pretty fun trying to come up with something that fits with each letter and I'm expecting a pretty special book when I'm done. I want to be able to share it altogether when it's done, but for now, here are my entries for A and B:

 

The toughest part is finding the right photo for the sentiment and, as you can see, sometimes creativity is the key. 

In other news, I did one of the scariest computer-related things ever the other day... I deleted my iPhoto Library from my iMac. My computer was running pretty slow for a while and my photos were taking up more than 50 GB of hard drive space (that's a little shy of 15,000 photos, in case you're wondering). I did a little research and copied the library to an external hard drive and then did nothing. It took a while, but I finally hit the delete button. 

My mom and dad had more than 100 photo albums in their home that recorded our lives. I'm sure that all my photos would take quite a few more albums than that and I'm so aware of how fragile it is, how fragile computers can be. Anyway, now they're all safe and sound on three different external hard drives, and I have a bit more room on my computer and hopefully it will more a little smoother.

Mt.Baker

Mt.Baker, originally uploaded by jashepler.

I have been keeping up daily with my LOAD challenge, but horrible at getting my layouts posted! I'll try to catch up soon, but wanted to get this layout up today. This is a few shots of Alex up at Mt. Baker where he and I are taking snowboarding lessons this year.

Let me give you a quick review of my three lessons so far. Lesson #1: I was excited to learn, sore and maybe concussed by the time we left the mountain and so sore the next morning that I though I wouldn't be able to get out of bed. Literally it was the most pain I've ever caused myself. Lesson #2: I made it through one hour of my two hour lesson. When I came in my knee was swollen and totally bruised and my tailbone (still sore from the week prior when I started) was on fire. Luckily we had a week off due to weather. Lesson #3: I loved it! It was awesome... the snow was great, there was lots of powder, I stopped falling all the time. It was really perfect. I was ready to quit if it didn't go well. Lesson #3 was make it or break it and I'm so glad that I stuck with it for one more week!

Alex's story of snowboarding is a little more straightforward. Lesson #1: He loved it. Lesson #2: He loved it even more. Lesson #3: He loved it even more again. He loves the snow. He has a great attitude and never gives up. Whenever he falls, he just pops right back up. It's awesome.

I'm really glad that we're learning this together and I hope that we can continue to enjoy the mountain for quite a while.

Wednesday

I love Ted. No, there is not a new man in my life. If you haven't discovered Ted, their mission is simple: spreading ideas. They post videos of speakers that are inspiring, thought provoking, entertaining and simply worth the time. I was browsing and came across this video of a ukulele player. Sounds crazy, but take a couple of minutes and watch this. It's rare to see someone tackle anything with as much passion as this young man does his instrument.




I'll be back with more layouts tomorrow because seriously, how can I can compete with that?

LOAD Day 5 & 6

I'm keeping up pretty well this round! One of the things I love about a challenge like Layout-A-Day is that it works to get my creative mind kick started. I start to have more ideas and often, the thing I started working on leads to lots of other ideas that I can work on.
Here is day 5:


Isn't he just the cutest? Our dear friend Matthew captured that awesome picture of Alex blowing out the candles on his cake and it was screaming to be highlighted!

Day 6:



This photo is pretty awful, but I grabbed a bunch of photos my mom took at her place and created a story. Alex is really very photogenic, so that's about all it takes to make a great page!

LOAD Day 4 ~ ChristmasCard

ChristmasCard, originally uploaded by jashepler.

Today's layout is basically the "gag reel" of my photo shoot of Alex for our Christmas card. I had the idea to wrap him up in lights like a Christmas tree. The execution didn't quite match what I had in my mind, but he had a lot of fun playing with the lights and I had a lot of fun playing with my camera. And, in the end, we ended up with a pretty cute picture for the card!