Month: December 2006

  • H A P P Y N E W Y E A R !

     


    The beauty of Christmas decorations…


    http://www.lydellphoto.com/slideshows/lorritable


    Our daughter Lindsay was hired by her Aunt to come over and take pictures of her decorated dining room table area before she took her Christmas decorations down. You can click on the link above to see the show.


    I’ve used a different setting for this show – it is a much bigger show, and it wont display in Xanga. After you click on the link hit your F11 key and that will maximize your screen area so you can see the whole slideshow.


    Lindsay did a great job on these pics – she really caught the essence of her dining room and how wonderful she decorated it! We are very proud of her!


    Next up i’ll be editing and loading up our Christmas Pictures from our day over at Kelly’s house. After that I’m going into hibernatuon for at least a week as I wrap up our records from 2006 and get ready for 2007.


     


     

  •  


    We spent the evening having a wonderful dinner and then a movie to celebrate a friend’s son 18th Birthday….The dinner was sooo good! The movie we saw was The Pursuit of Happyness. I just loved this movie. The absolute determination and commitment this man had really touched me. So many people find it so easy to just walk away especially when it gets tough. I found myself thinking at what point is this guy going to get a break? This was almost at the end of the movie! I also loved the movie because it was shot in SF. I once drove to SF with a friend to attend  Glide Memorial Church which is the church they have to line up at to find a place to sleep. My heart broke at some of the lengths this man had to go to keep going…I wont give any more away if you havent seen it and plan to. I just loved Will’s Smith’s son and the relationship they had in the movie. He almost stole the movie from his father!


    Well still not sure what we plan to do tonight. Probably will break out some games and make some hot cocoa ….and as usual have my husband wake me on the couch to tell me its the New Year….haha….


    Have a safe evening!!! Stay off the road if you can!


    Love Kerri  


     


     

  • Grayson Countdown-48 days!

     


    Our daughter Lindsay made photographic books for everyone this year for Christmas. This one is ours…It is one of our wedding pictures. It goes on to sow other highlights of our lives…she worked so hard on these!


    IMG_6613


    We didnt make this for her but she loved it anyway…


    IMG_6675


    Here is Brian’s book..this is a shot of his favorite pair of shoes…


    IMG_6622


    Here are his CD’s he got…


    IMG_6678


    We saw Santana Live this past summer and Lindsay really liked them so she got a DVD this year…


    IMG_6688


    Oh and Brian needed to dry his tennis shoes…when I walked by later this is what I saw… it looked so funny I had to take a shot! hahaha….


    IMG_6535

  • Ideas for New Years Eve?

    IMG_4860


    We never really do anything for New Years Eve….dont like to be out there with all the after party drivers if you know what I mean.


    What great ideas do you guys have? I want to do something really different this year.


    What are your plans this year?


     


    This photo was taken with my 5D with no flash only Christmas tree lights and an over head light in the next room shining on the wall
    behind …our son just goofing around taking shots of us. I kinda like the really low light on me! lol…
     


     

  •  


     Taking down the Christmas decorations tomorrow…
    I am goofing around with some of my pictures I took
    before I take them down.


    I am liking the blue not so sure about the grainy-film look…




    IMG_5908-1


      


    IMG_5908


    what do you think?


     



     

  • http://www.lydellphoto.com/slideshows/kellybaby


    At long last here are the pictures from Kelly’s Baby Shower. I had the privilege of being asked to take pictures that day.
    Typically only women attend a baby shower, so it felt like I was in a forbidden club…so I cant really tell you all that took place that day.
    If I told you I’d have to enter the Witness Protection Progam!

    Seriously, it was a blast! It was so much fun seeing all the family with each other and having such a great time.

    Kelly is truly blessed to be surrounded by such a group of loving and loyal friends.

    My friend Randy came along that day (yes, he passed the background check) to help out.
    He brought along his Photo Booth equipment so we could not only take pictures of Kelly with her family/friends,
    but also give them a 5×7 on the spot!
    Those are the pictures at the end of the slideshow.

    Kelly is such a beautiful lady, and it is amazing to see her growing (no pun intended) into such a wonderful Mommy.

    We can’t wait to see Grayson!! He is going to be so cute…and so spoiled…and so photographed.



  •  


    UPDATE:


    We had a most marvelous Christmas yesterday. We spent the day at Dave and  Kelly’s. Mark was doing pretty good until about the last few hours. He was on Vicodin most of the day but he was starting to really feel it just about the time we were leaving… so we drove home with him in pain. It was late and I was tired but we managed to get home safely. While we were getting ready to go to bed Mark gave a whoop and a holler which was music to our ears. It passed! This morning we went to Mark’s follow up appointment and brought “the buick” with us! Yah that is what we call it around here. They are sending it to the lab to have it analyzed to tell us which of the 4 kinds of stones it might be. That should take a week or so. Now for the one that is still bothering him. Yes, after passing it we were thrilled for a rather short time. The CAT Scan showed there was another one in the kidney….well it seems it is already working it’s way down the slide. So…


     ROUND 2! 


    We are having to cancel our shoot for tomorrow…  : (


    We do have a standing breakfast date with our very dear friends The Headlands tomorrow morning and are very excited to sit and break bread with them…we love them sooo much. We thank God for their precious friendship….hopefully …prayerfully the stone will be gone by then.  


    Well I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are relaxing in the bask of God’s goodness!


    God Bless!


    Kerri 


     


    Christmas Card2006NEW copy

  • MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

     

    Merry Christmas

     

    Christmas Card2006NEW copy

    We’re busy today getting ready! Wrapping packages and gettng set for Christmas. Are you ready?

    This year we’re having our family Christmas on Christmas Eve, since we are headed over to our daughter Kelly’s house tomorrow for Christmas Day.


    It’s her first Christmas in their new home! She is excited to have everyone over…





    Christmas Eve, or how we spent this morning…

     

    When we went to bed last night, we were looking forward to sleeping in this morning, getting ready for Christmas and then having our own family Christmas Eve together.

     

    Well, that’s not how it went. I awoke this morning at 6:30 with a sharp stabbing pain in my left side. By sharp I mean like someone put a sharp knife into my side and kept it there.  I tried to go back to sleep, but no go.  The pain just kept getting worse.

     

    One of my first thoughts was that I had a kidney stone, but since I’ve never had one before I didn’t know if this was what they felt like. Kerri got up and did some research on the internet while I tried to walk off the pain. But the pain just kept getting worse, and then I started to feel nauseous. Kerri then called the advice nurse at the local hospital. After he asked me a few questions he said Kerri should drive me to the ER since he also thought I had a kidney stone.

     

    When we got to the ER the pain had subsided a little it, enough where i could function and talk with the nurse. They ran some tests, and they then wanted to put in an IV to get me some fluids as well as have a way to get some pain meds in to me, as he said the pain would be pretty bad when it came back.  But it appears I have small narrow veins. They tried in 5 different places to get an IV in, but it kept blowing out when they tried to put fluids in, so they had to skip that. 

     

    By then the CT scan was ready for me and they wheeled me over there……but while I was waiting the next cycle of pain came along as the stone started moving again. I couldn’t believe how quick the pain started in.  They say that the actual size of a kidney stone is usually like this:

     

    Small stone

     

    But it felt like it was this:

     

    stone

     

    The comparison I heard before is true – it feels lilke you are giving birth to a Buick, and not one of those nice new smooth and sleek ones but the old ones!

     

    The pain was so bad I wasn’t able to hold still for the CT scan, so they had to give me some pain meds. After a shot for the nausea as well as a morphine shot, I felt better and they were able to get the CT scan done. The CT scan didn’t find a stone passing, but it could have been smaller than the slices the CT took. But the bad news is that I have another stone waiting in the wings…

     

    Then I had a short but powerful morphine induced nap (semi-coma?) and when I woke up I could tell I felt a lot better. When that wore off I didn’t have any pain come back, so they think that I may have passed the stone while under the morphine. That would be great, since some people have to deal with the pain on and off for a week before it passes.

     

    So that was how our day started. We met up with our friend Randy to exchange gifts, and then we get together as a family to exchange our Christmas presents with each other. Then Brian said he wanted to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” – lo and behold - when we turned on the TV to see if we could find it there it was!! So we’re watching it right now.

     

    We’ll post some pics next week of our Family Christmas!




    Christmas fun…


    This part is  a repeat from the post from yesterday, just because it was so much fun…


    Thanks to Dawn I found a link to the Elf kingdom.  We we’re were able to make Kerri an honorary Elf last night, and you can see the results here.

    http://www.elfyourself.com/?userid=545d8ec6a8e70237ea40bbeG06122222

  •  

     

    We got this idea from Dawn at Lastoria…of course when we saw Bob’s we had to do one too! Enjoy!!! 


    Kerri Elf

    Tomorrow will be Kelly’s Baby Shower then our Christmas Card so be sure to come back!

     



  • We went to San Francisco today – even though it said it would rain and it did! But we had a blast going to the Palace of Fine Arts which just reopened after the City of SF did a major renovation on the property. If it was better weather we could have walked around more to get landscape shots, but we had to protect the cameras from the rain!!


    When we started looking for a place to eat we drove past a “Pluto’s” on Chestnut street, which by the way is a very cool street. It has a Haight-Ashbury feel to it. So, back to the restaurant…since they have a Pluto’s in Roseville too, we had to try this one.

    Then we found a very cool cafe just around the corner where we got some coffee to warm up before we headed back out.

    The sun cleared up for a little bit so we went to a wharf to get out and walk around. Then we headed to a church Mark had driven past a few times and wanted to see the inside. All we can say is WOW – it was an amazing church! After getting some shots in and around Grace Cathedral it was time for the Saturday Evensong, which was very moving. The sound of voices singing in the cathedral was incredible. Our Lindsay is a choir lover and sang all through school…she was in heaven… : ) We all enjoyed it too!!!

    We ended the day with a trip to Union Square to see the big Christmas Tree there, and by then it had started to rain again pretty good so we headed home, exhausted but satisfied.

    What a great trip. We will have to get back to San Francisco soon to explore the Palace of Fine Arts more.

    This slideshow is just a quickie – I didnt do anything to the pics other than a Kubota action to make them snap a little bit.
    I would have loved to spend the time on 5-10 of these to make them snappier, but Christmas is coming and there are other projects to take care of!

    Tomorrow we’re off to breakfast with our daughter Kelly. It’s her Birthday!!