After leaving Chattanooga last week, we drove to Mississippi to meet Matthew’s parents half-way and drop off the kids with them for an entire week.  Matthew’s job invited all the sales reps to Miami with only one rule- no kids.  
As we left Ross and Rayna last weekend, I wipped away my tears, pulled myself together and tried to focus on ALL the work I was going to get done while Matthew was in class all week.  
When we arrived at this super-fancy hotel, I realized they must think their high-speed internet is super-fancy too.  In order to simply use their wireless connection on my laptop, they charge $14.95 PER DAY, only until noon!  If you’re wanting to get online after noon, it’s ANOTHER $14.95 charge for that day! 
This turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  Instead of spending eight straight hours each day working, I slept-in, read some photography and parenting magazines, took a walk, had lunch by the ocean, watched way too much tv and took a few more mid-day naps.  
After doing nothing and loving it, I’m happy to report I AM online now!  (After a little assertive persuasion, the front desk was happy to offer 24-hours of free internet service in exchange for our room not having any hot water the night before.)
Meanwhile, I am caught-up on rest, but don’t have any pictures to post.  I’ll post a quick picture a stranger took of me and Matthew before dinner last night.  Hopefully, I will get out today and tomorrow with my camera.  Check back… Hopefully, I’ll have more to share!
  

Wednesday was great.  Perfect, actually.

Matthew had to spend a couple of days in Chattanooga for business.  Ross, Rayna and I had planned to go with him.  Just hours before we left, Hannah (my sister) said she’d watch Rayna where I could have some (over-due) time with Ross alone.  (YEAH!  YEAH!  YEAH!) 

I couldn’t have planned a more perfect day…

Matthew dropped us off at the hotel.  Ross and I spent the next hour swimming and playing in the heated pool… Before returning to our room, we grabbed a couple of hot chocolate chip cookies from the lobby.  I’m not sure what inspired him to strip down naked and get on our big bed to eat his cookie, but, I couldn’t resist taking a quick picture of him eating the crumbs that had fallen between his little legs. 

We got dressed and took a long walk around downtown Chattanooga.  Since Ross and I don’t have many pictures together, I asked a stranger to take one. 

Why this picture of berries?  Simply to remember this stage of Ross’ life.  If he picked up one berry off the ground, he must have picked up one hundred!  When I’m doing the clothes each week, I always find little objects in his pockets that he’s found outside or on the playground. I don’t get too many pictures of Ross because he’s not a big fan of my camera.  I happened to get this one while he was telling me what he wanted for dinner that night.  If I remember correctly, it was “Ice cream and goldfish.”  He tries to get an exaggerated ‘EWWWWW!!!’ reaction out of me.  At that moment, ‘ice cream and goldfish’ were the yuckiest thing he could come up with.This last shot probably won’t win any awards, but it’s still quite possibly one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken.  It tells a story of a little boy… barely old enough to walk without holding his mama’s hand, but sweet enough to do it because he knows how happy it makes me.

On a sidenote, when I’m teaching photography classes for moms, I always mention a few general tips.  I’ll share a few that proved true for me and my day with Ross:

1.  Take your camera with you.  Yes, it’s a pain.  My camera is pretty bulky and can get very heavy after being on my neck for a short amount of time.  Regardless, my favorite pictures (ever) are always the candid ones I don’t plan on taking.
2.  Don’t be left out of the picture.  Get your camera ready, find a nice spot and ask someone to take a quick picture with you in it. 
3.  Take several shots of the same thing.  My situation was a little different for my last (hand-holding) picture.  I was using a 50mm, f/1.4 lens.  That can be VERY tricky when WALKING, HOLDING a CAMERA and SHOOTING DOWN at the same time.  I happened to take two photos.  The first one had focused on my jacket and our hands were slightly out of focus.  The second shot was exactly what I wanted- just our hands being the focus point and everything else out of focus.
4.  Get ‘detail’ shots to document stages of your child’s life. 
5.  Smiles are over-rated.  I love natural smiles, but the C-word (‘cheese’) should be off-limits from now on.  Engage with your child and capture the real expressions.

With the exception of The Office, I don’t watch t.v.   I love watching t.v., but always feel like there’s a million other things I really need to be doing instead.   
However, once a year it happens.  I try to convince everyone I know to get involved in another season of American Idol.  The first few seasons were easy.  I mean, it was really cool then.  Now, for some reason, season EIGHT is just not as exciting.
In my quest to complete my “20.9 in 2009” goals, I am proud to commit way too may hours each week to do nothing but curl up under a blanket, veg-out and mark off my #6 goal:  “Take time to R-E-L-A-X.”

Although I don’t plan on getting these done in order, I happened to do the first item on my “20.9 in 2009” list: 
“Try new parks with Ross & Rayna.”

My dad bought this canoe at a yardsale for Ross.  We decided to take it to Tribble Mill Lake. 
Honestly, the experience was a little less-relaxing than I thought it would be. 
None of us had ever been in a canoe before, so we didn’t think about how rocky it would be. 
(ESPECIALLY with a 3-year old going side-to-side to touch the water!)
About 20 minutes into the ride, Ross spoted an amazing playground. 
My dad and I quickly made our way back to land, loaded the canoe
and enjoyed the rest of our time on land. 
There are still a lot of great parks around here I want to try with Ross and Rayna. 
Hopefully, this will be just one of many!