Photo Editing

I have always been a fan of photography. I am still learning, but enjoy the experience. I especially enjoy pictures of nature, landscapes, flowers, etc.. It drives Brad crazy sometimes, because he thinks there should always be a person in the picture. I let him in sometimes and then crop him out. HA!! HA!!

One of the things I have been working on lately is to photo edit a bit more. I have been working with FotoFlexer, Picnik, and Adobe Photo Elements. Here are a few of my photo edits using Picnik. The Wild Animal Park pictures from last week were edited using Adobe Photo Elements.

I would love to hear from other bloggers and photo enthusiast on what you use.

Check them out:

Hanbury is Home

7057 Hanbury Street in Long Beach, California will forever be my family's home. My Grandpa and Grandma Holt were the original owners, and has been in our family for 57 years. It is this house where 5 Holt kids played, loved, and built endless memories. As my mother put it, it is where we were all taught to love unconditionally.

After Grandpa Holt passed away, my Uncle Monty, Aunt Joan, and Crystal moved into the house (I don't think anyone was willing to let it go just yet.) They will be moving up North soon, leaving the house to a new family. I have no doubt they will continue creating endless memories and love unconditionally as LOVE is forever embedded into the walls.

Here are a few of my own memories of 7057 Hanbury:

• Brandi and I would report to the Hanbury House afterschool for several years until Mom was off work.
• This house was our pretend address, so Brandi and I could continue attending the schools we wanted...Helen Keller Elementary and DeMille Middle School.
• This is where Tim came to announce Victoria was born with a rose for Brandi and me.
• Tim planted a itty-bitty twig in the yard, which has been become a fully grown tree (right side of yard in picture above).
• I kissed my first boy 2 houses down from this house.
• I remember all the holidays. Grandma sure loved to decorate and cook for ALL the holidays.
• I remember the smell of Grandpa's printing garage. This smell will always be present in my memories.
• Mom would tell us stories of how they had rabbits in the backyard when she was growing up. Not cute little bunnies…but rabbits to EAT!
• I would help Grandma and Grandpa with cutting the notepads after Grandpa printed and glued them.
• I remember saying goodbye to Grandpa for the last time when visiting California for Spring Break one month before he died.
• I always secretly wished the upstairs room could be mine.
• Grandpa sitting on the porch or leaning up against a car smoking and visiting with the neighbors.

I can think of so many more. I encourage those who consider Hanbury HOME to comment with your memories.

You will forever be in our hearts 7057 Hanbury Street

Love is STILL in the air!

Valentine's Day is over, however, love is still in the air. I received this e-mail a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was cute and wanted to pass it along.

What love means to a 4-8 year old. Touching words from the mouth of babes.

'When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.'
Rebecca- age 8

'When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.'
Billy - age 4

'Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.'
Karl - age 5

'Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.'
Chrissy - age 6

'Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.'
Terri - age 4

'Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.'
Danny - age 7

'Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss'

Emily - age 8

'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.'
Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)

'If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,'
Nikka - age 6 (we need a few million more Nikka's on this planet)

'Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.'
Noelle - age 7

'Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.'
Tommy - age 6

'During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore.'
Cindy - age 8

'My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.'
Clare - age 6

'Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.'
Elaine-age 5

'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.'
Chris – age 7

'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.'
Mary Ann - age 4

'I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.'
Lauren - age 4

'When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.'
Karen - age 7

'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think it's gross.'
Mark - age 6

'You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.'
Jessica - age 8

And the final one:

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, 'Nothing, I just helped him cry'

Day at the Zoo

You never get to old for a GREAT day at the zoo. For Brad's birthday (February 12th), I renewed our San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park membership. This past Saturday, we went to the Wild Animal Park along with Juan's girlfriend, Brittany. It was great weather, due to a slight rain in the morning....light sweater weather.

I love the photo opportunities the Wild Animal Park provides. No matter how many times I have been, I always find something beautiful to take a picture of. My personal favorites are the plants. The colors and uniqueness of the plants is truly inspiring.

Here are a few shots of our fun:

"Juan, don't pose...just walk casually across the bridge." Got to love Juan, he doesn't know how NOT to pose.

Feeding the ducks

Brad and Juan...watch out for the big elephant behind you.
I could watch giraffes ALL day!

Juan's favorite...the Lion!


Love how the red pops out amongst the aloe plant.

Another aloe flower!

The newest addition to the Wild Animal Park. An African Elephant born on February 14, 2010.

Then lastly, my personal favorite. As mentioned above, you are never to old for the zoo. Here is my beautiful 15 year old just having fun with a duck. No batteries, jersey, or friends required.

I treasure this smile EVERYDAY!

A VERY long SHORT week

As mentioned in my blog below, I returned to work this week after being off for 10 days. I knew I would be unable to blog as much due to my busier schedule, and I was not kidding. I didn't blog at all. I had off Monday, so it was a short week, but it was SO long. I had two days over 15 hours long EACH, not getting myself home after close to 10 p.m. each night. This is NOT the way I like to spend my week. I missed eating dinner with the family, watching the Olympics, and just hanging out. Luckily, not every week is this time intensive.

After this crazy week, however, I was imspired by a story shared by one of my teacher friends. It certainly puts in perspective why we continue to teach. I love this story and was so glad she shared it. Let's call it,



THE BIG APPLAUSE

Despite pink slips, pay cuts, furlough days, cuts in benefits, DAIT, DAW, and other not so appealing parts of being a teacher right now, one great thing about it stands out... my students! I love them!

Today I had the pleasure of watching how wonderful, smart, and awesome children can be. We are working on multiplying greater numbers, not very easy for a third grader, especially when they are first learning how. I taught them a few different ways to solve the problems this week, so today students were coming to the board to demonstrate which way they liked solving the problem.

After a few students, mostly my high achieving students who can do anything, came and showed their skills, one of my RSP (Special Education) students raised his hand and asked if he could have a turn. I said sure, and I could see that my other students looked a little worried because only the "smart" kids had volunteered to come up. Now, I knew he could do it with my help, but I was a little worried he might crack under the pressure of being up there in front of all his classmates by himself. I am very proud to say that this student came to the board, showed every step, and solved the problem perfectly.

But, the best part was watching the faces of my other students as they watched him do it, I watched as their mouths fell open and they began to whisper to each other about how "smart" this student was as he solved the problem correctly step by step. They were truly amazed. Then as he turned to walk form the board, my entire class broke out in a loud applause. They are such caring kids, proud of their classmate, and I was very proud of them all!

Now, that sounded like the end of my story, but my favorite part is yet to come, and this is better than solving a math problem correctly! After the student sat down, the next kid came up and solved his problem correctly. Then the same RSP student, who had just received applause, stood up and started clapping for his classmate and turned around and said, "Come on guys! We have to clap. He did it!" The reason this is such a big deal you may ask? Aside from academic disabilities, this student rarely recognizes, interacts with, or pays attention to any other students. So, yes, solving a math problem is great, but for him to recognize another student's accomplishments is amazing, pretty much a miracle!

I love my job!

Girl Scout Season

Girl Scout cookie season is most certainly here. I have been asked by several students, neighbors, plus girls and mommies outside of Sam's Club, Ralph's, etc. I don't mind, however, I am a HUGE fan of Thin Mints. I have to limit myself from ordering from EVERYONE, because I just love them so. Recently, I discovered a recipe for "THIN MINTS" and tried them out tonight. Ladies and Gentleman, I think I have purchased my LAST over priced box of Girl Scout cookies this year...this is the best imitation recipe I have ever made.

GIRL SCOUT "THIN MINTS"

• 1 sleeve Ritz crackers
• 2 cups chocolate chips (I didn't use dark chocolate chips, but those would be amazing for the dark chocolate lovers like me)
• 2 T shortening
• Peppermint Extract (amount based on taste preference)

Melt the chocolate chips, shortening, and peppermint extract in microwave. Be sure you don't overcook. Dip crackers into melted chocolate and transfer to cookie sheet lined with waxed paper. Allow cookies to chill in fridge. ENJOY!

I will still buy a few boxes to support those sweet Girl Scouts, but these are awesome when those boxes are gone after one hour. HA!!

PS I am going back to work tomorrow, so will be blogging less frequently. I will try to come up with some interesting topics, family updates, etc. to keep this blog blogging!

Devor Birthday Adventure

One of the many things I LOVE about my husband, is his love for nature hikes. If it wasn't for him, I would spend my time baking, hanging at home, going to mall, etc. Generally indoor type of things. However, he is always pulling me outside for a little hike, and I love it that he does.

Friday, 2/12 was Brad's 40th birthday. He didn't want a big party or surprise, he just wanted to take a hike.

Only my husband is able to find places to hike in suburbia Murrieta, California (It's not all beaches and Disneyland, people!!). So, we headed about 15 miles west to Cleveland National Forest. He was on a mission to find the Tenaja Falls he read about on-line and in the Sunset Magazine (must have mag for Westerners-hint, hint, Kami).

To get there you have to take a 7 mile un-paved road past a NO OUTLET sign. This really should have been my first sign to jump out of the car. HA!! :-) We got there and started on our way. We continued down a path to another "path" and discovered it wasn't really a path at all.

This sign should have been another clue we were not on the correct path, nay, any path at all.

After climbing up, down, and through many rock piles and mud, Brad re-discovered the real path.

(Does this look like a path to anyone, yeah, me neither?)

Remember we are on an adventure to find the Tenja Falls. We have seen many
waterfalls (Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, etc.), so we were looking and listening for a tall waterfall cascading down a tall mountain with a clean, shimmering pool at the bottom. We never quite found anything which matched this description and we kept losing sight of any form of a continuous path. We stopped, had lunch, and concluded this must be Tenaja Falls.

Isn't it lovely? If you close your eyes you can hear the roaring flow of water, if you close them a bit tighter you might even see a waterfall cascading down a tall mountain with a clean, shimmering pool at the bottom. When you re-open your eyes, yep, we see the Tenaja Falls.

Although the path was not well marked or paved out, we had an AWESOME time. Here are a few more shots of our fun.

Thank you California for helping us create another GREAT family memory.

Happy BIRTHDAY, Braddy!! I love you!!!!!!!!

Love is in the Air!

In celebration of LOVE with the upcoming Valentine's Day, please enjoy some of my favorite love scences.












And now for my all time favorite movie. I could watch Nottinghill a million times and never be tired of it!



I could include another 100 videos, but this will do for now. Much love to all the lovers out there! XOXOXOXXO Enjoy your weekend!

What is a BLOG??

I had this week off of work and have spent more time to "play" with my BLOG. I have been using Blogger for about a year. I haven't been super happy with Blogger and its ability to format the way I want things to look. For about a day, I thought about using a different theme designer (i.e. WordPress). I have a friend offering this service for free. With her advice/suggestions and the advice of other bloggers, I decided leaving Blogger was not the issue.


The issue is ME:
Here are some of my concerns with blogging in general:

• I don't seem to get the traffic to my blog I am hoping for. I thought I would have family get on my site often and check to see what the Devor's have been up to. Who wouldn't want to read about us...we are SOOO exciting (continue reading below to understand my sarcasm). So either family/friends are not visiting like I thought they would, they are not commenting, or both.
• I wasn't happy with the basic format of the site. I needed to jazz up my site and I couldn't seem to manipulate with the boring office look. However, I am currently working on this process. I am NOT creative (in forms of written or artistic expression-I approach creatively a bit more analytically) by nature, so I am excited to "borrow" the creativity of others.

• TIME: Oh TIME!! This has become a four letter word in my life. Life has really become busy lately (personal and professional) and I just don't seem to to find/give the time to blogging it deserves.
• What do I write about? I mean, really! The Devor Days are pretty basic. School, work, sleep, etc. and a family trip sprinkled in there every once in a while.
• Privacy: There are some things I don't want to share do the fact that some family things are just plain old PRIVATE! The really good stuff which happens often qualifies in this category of PRIVATE.
• Who is this blog for? Is this blog to keep my family and friends updated, a voice for me to express myself, or just something everyone else is doing, why not m
  

So, now what? Where do I go from here. I don't have an answer to this yet.

I would just thank you all for you patience and understanding as I work through my struggles and questions with blogging and expression. I am open to suggestions, comments, advice, criticism, etc.

Thanks for visiting!!

Emily VACA

This year, my school district approved a somewhat nontraditional holiday week off for President's week. Previously, we would take two 3 day weekends. This was kind of nice also. Anyway, this year students have off February 8th - 15th off. Brad still has to work, and Juan still has school. This means, I get some time alone for some R & R. Generally when I have a week off, we would plan a little trip. But due to no one being off other then me (and other financial obligations), I just get to hang at home.

So, here are my plans:

• Drop off my dry cleaning
• Complete employee evaluations which I can't seem to get done at work
• Modify lunch recess schedule
• Finalize any work e-mails
• Catch up on blog reading
• Sleep in to 8 a.m. everyday, hopefully
• Renew Juan's passport
• Take Jayme to the vet for his annual visit
• Go to Juan's final frosph-soph soccer game

Not very exciting now that I write it down...actually pretty depressing. This is why I don't find myself blogging too often. My life just isn't all that exciting. I don't post the exciting stuff (to protect privacy of family members), anyways.

Everyone have a GREAT week!

2 Truths and 1 Lie

Have you played this game before? It is simple and a GREAT way to get to know people a little bit better. You have to tell 3 things, stories, ideas, etc. about yourself. They can be simple or more complex stories. They can be about relationships, money, travel. They can be about anything you want to share.

Two of the items have to be true, and 1 has to be a lie. So, read through my 3 items and then comment about which one is the lie. Also in the comment section, you have to put 3 items (2 Truths, and 1 Lie) about yourself for others to guess. Have FUN!

Two TRUTHS...One LIE about Emily! MY MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT...

1. My most embarrassing moment included walking into a glass door (and shattering it, by the way) while visiting a friend's college dorm. A boys dorm none the less. I was so trying to be cool, and it just didn't work out right.



2. My most embarrassing moment was when my bathing suit top came down after a fabulous dive into a pool. As I jumped up from under the water, I threw my hands up to celebrate my dive. I hadn't yet realized my top was down to my waist.



3. My most embarrassing moment was when I had to present at a conference with a huge hot chocolate stain on my white pants from the crotch area to my knee. Everyone was very understanding, but there is no way they heard a word I said...too distracted.

Okay, your turn. Click on comment to guess my lie and include 2 truths, and 1 lie about yourself.