For those that are having a tough time adding my new blog to their blogger blog lists try this URL
http://www.michelleleighton.com/blog/?feed=rss2
That seems to be the one working.. Thanks to those letting me know they were not able to get theirs to work.
So I decided to combine both my blogs into 1 new one. So update your RSS feed with my new blog which can be found HERE
I know I have sadly neglected my blog lately. Part of the reason is there is not much exciting going on here and also because I am in the process of building a new blog that will encompass both my personal blog and photo blog in one. Then I will only have 1 blog to neglect instead of two.. Stay tuned for the launch of my new blog...
A couple years ago I was turned onto a photography message board. I am really fortunate to be part of this a community of photographers. I am not as active as I once was due to time restraints, the time sucker called facebook, and the whole stress of the moving thing and having ½ my life in boxes right now, but I digress. I have met several of these great people in person, but for the most part, we don't know each other in real life. However, as more and more time passes many of us have come to know and love one another.
Now the majority of this board is female and share the passion or photography on many different levels and in different manners, but a love for it just the same. It is a place we we come together to share things that are on topic, and stuff that is way off the topic of photography. We can share our latest photo sessions, get feedback on shots, and share our ever growing wish lists for gear, and often we enable one another to buy things that are photo related. In the way of off topic items there is good news shared, venting about something that has really rubbed us the wrong way, share funny stories and unfortunately we also hear about the bad news. I say unfortunately because no one wants to hear about bad things happening to our friends.
Just recently one photographer posted about how her Husband had lost his job. It was over something that was not his fault but was now unemployed as a result. With 3 kids at home and one that requires expensive medications this sweet girl who was worried about the future of her little family immediately put up some of her back up gear for sale online in order to help her family financially. It really tugged at the heartstrings of us all. Not only is she truly one of the most generous and giving people on the board, but it also meant she would no longer have back up gear and would have to turn down weddings and other photo shoots. Reducing her ability to get income in the future for her family in order to meet their immediate financial needs. It is amazing how much you can grow to care about someone that you have never met, but her kind and generous heart and the fact that she is really a talented photographer really just made the whole thing hard to swallow.
It seriously made me sick when I heard what was happening and well I sure was not the only one. Several amazing people pulled together and organized a fundraiser to “buy” this gear from her. I guess you could say we were going to buy it from her to give it back to her. So a significant sum was raised in just 4 short days (I love the power of the internet and PAYPAL) and earlier today another sweet girl from the board drove 2 hours to meet up with her and present her with the money.
So everyone that was involved is feeling a great sense of happiness today for being able to do a small part to help out such a wonderful friend. You would think we were the ones getting a gift today. It really is better to give than receive. In these tough financial times it really is hard for so many but when the masses pull together it really is amazing what you can get done. It is just another way to pay it forward for the good things that are done for us in our lives.
My Aunt and Cousin came in for a long weekend with sweet little Ellie... She had to meet her Great Grandmother on her mom's side of the family after all. Well we pulled out this picture of MomMom when she was a baby a little older than Ellie is now.
Then I took this picture of little Ellie today. She is looking a lot like her MomMom..
And since I am having so much fun taking hre picture here is a few more.. 
I even got one taken with her..
We got a 4 generation picture also. So fun..
Just a quick post to let people know I am still alive. Once I manage to get through the couple thousand pictures I took last week I will post again with some pictures. Vacation was good although the time off was too short as usual.
It was great to see the friends and family I managed to see. I am super proud of my baby sister for graduating and getting into grad school which she starts in a couple weeks. Wish I got to spend more time with her then a few days here and there once or twice a year.
I was tired when I came home but had to reassemble my closet before I could crawl into bed. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to put the attic access in the top of the closet but it meant having my closet taken apart so that the mold remediation guy could crawl up there to make sure there was no spreading mold from an old roof leak. the good news ... No spreading mold, the bad news.. I still had to take a apart my closet and put it back together and we not have a hole in the ceiling where they cut the bad drywall out. Getting that repaired is next on the to do list.
The house hunt continues.. no luck yet finding a new place to live that meets our needs. It might take a while. We might have to go with new construction so we can customize something and that means most likely moving out of the ward boundaries, and the stake for that matter. Boo Hiss.
As I sit down to write this post I can't believe how much has happened and changed in the last week. It has really moved by pretty fast.
I am going to be moving. I really didn't think I would move out of this house anytime soon. I love it here and it is a great house. So how in a week did I go from not even having moving on my radar to house hunting and having to get 2 households ready to be put on the market and moved? My grandmother is coming to live with us.....
Last weekend the discussion came up over dinner between my mother and grandmother about what my grandmother wanted to do when she felt she could no longer live alone and she replied. "I am coming to live with you." So that started the whole ball rolling. we looked into adding onto our house which was our first choice but that was quickly squashed when we found out we can only cover 20% of our lot and we are already at that percentage, so then we moved on to the next option which was selling both our houses and finding something new to move into.
So now I am interviewing Realtors, and starting to box things up in our house to declutter it so we can get it read to put on the market. The trash collectors are going to hate us on a weekly basis, but goodwill is going to love us. In other words lots of stuff that needs to go and we will donate whatever we can. I will be getting a storage unit this week to start putting stuff in as we declutter. My mom has started the painful process of going through all her books but has done a great job so far. My first big thing to tackle is my craft room and all my scrapbooking stuff. I already have a big pile of stuff to get rid of but have lots more to go through. Then I get to move onto the prep work, you know the deep cleaning, patching and painting.
So I will have plenty to keep my busy in the next few weeks/months.... Then I will be looking for a nice padded room to check myself into.
I know I have been neglecting my poor blog. Part of it is due to a busy schedule, part is cause there is not much going on, and I admit facebook has been sucking time lately.
Today was a good day. Church was good and then I joined the youth fo their Sunday Evening discussion, which was really a mid afternoon discussion. It was a special one for the graduating seniors and I made a little slide show for it so it was fun to go and be there when they watched it. It seemed to go pretty well. I love those kids, can't believe 6 of them are graduating this year. Going to miss them next year.
Yep another birthday has come and gone....
This was a pretty low key birthday, which was fitting since graduation was just a month ago and that was not low key in any way!!
On Thursday I went with Kristin Hood to see No Doubt. Kylie was supposed to go with her but she decided to be a weenie and not go, so Kristin asked me if I wanted to go. SCORE!! Here we are waiting for the show to start.
It was a little boring waiting, so I took a picture of my shoes, isn't that what you are supposed to do while waiting for a concert? We also did a lot of people watching. Concerts are the best place to people watch.
The concert was great, I want Abs like Gwen, serious envy for those abs.
The only bad part was the tree trunk of a man I got stuck standing right behind. he was a 6'6" was that just stood there recording the whole concert on his phone, it was kinda creepy, and the guy next to him just stood there, never clapping, cheering or even slightly swaying to the music. 
There was 2 opening acts, the Sounds and Paramore. Paramore was fantastic, the sounds had a couple of good songs but the lead singers profuse use of the *F* word was a turn off and her grinding up against her band mates just seemed out of place at this concert.
All in all great concert. So glad Kristin thought to ask me if I wanted to go with her.
Oh here we are in the green lights, guess a good concert changes your skin color after a while.
Friday came and I was beat but I got a little pick me up when this arrived for me at work from my friend Missy.
Saturday I didn't do much, I did go get my new driver's license picture taken, I know I live the glamorous life don't I? After that I came home amd loaded up my car with a full load for the good will, you would never know I got rid of anything looking around but it was a good start to cleaning things out. After that I let mom talk me into going to the mall, and then we went out to dinner at the Diner.
Today, my actual birthday, I went to church, came home and took a nap, I l;ove my Sunday naps, and then headed over to my grand mother's house. Then it was off to dinner with her and my mom. I have eaten too much this weekend and I am feeling it!!
As for presents I got this adorable purse from my mom and Grover and the rest was cold hard cash, since I am saving for a couple things and I got so many goodies for graduation I really didn't know what I wanted. 
So in Church this past Sunday there was a great Testimony given by my friend Elizabeth. She recently had to deal with a nasty infection in her mouth that she like many of us would do let it go for too long because it was not hurting and when she finally could not wait any longer for the surgery the lovely drugs that are used to keep you from screaming out in pain and scaring the other patients was not able to work through the infected tissue.. She did survive despite having to endure the pain she was in due to neglecting to completely take care of the infection instead of doing minor tweaks with antibiotics as soon as it was discovered.
However, she learned a big lesson from this experience and compared it to another area of her life. Now although her story of putting things off, especially when pain is involved, really rang true with me this next part did even more so. I am taking some paraphrasing liberties here and maybe not the exact point she made but it was what she shared that made me think about this. SO Elizabeth if you are reading this and I twisted your beautiful testimony forgive me please... She talked about how we let the world in or more worldy things into our lives and it slowly eats away at us, and if we do no do regular spiritual check ups and put off cleaning up areas of our life it can get to the point where it is no longer a little thing to deal with and now it is a much more complicated and sometimes painful thing to deal with. So you have to move on from spiritual antibiotics to a spiritual surgery or two...
I know this will take on a different meaning for many different people. For me this is what I personally took away from it. I have known for a little while now that life has gotten to overwhelming, and I also know it is because things of the world have become too large and imposing on certain aspects of my life. Now that I am finally done with school I am seeing it even more so. While in school I had tunnel vision to get done with classes and other things were sliding but I really didn't realize how much till I was starting to try to get some order back in my life. So I have the goal to get things back in control but I also know it is not something that can be done over night or with just one or two changes, it is going to take several areas of change.
First up for me is getting rid of some of the physical things cluttering up my life. So far I have 5 bags of clothing/shoes/purses, 4 boxes of misc knick knacks and a couple pieces of furniture for the good will, and lots more to be added to that I am sure. I have not even thought about going through everything in the basement yet, or my scrap booking supplies. While I work on that I am also going to work on getting some sort of a routine back, to help manage my time better, since i have so little free time still.
Lots more to do and lots to think about, but I am glad I am thinking about it and working on it all.
Taking pictures and LOTS of them..
First there was pictures of the Perry Family
Second a 6AM trip to Philly with the just Matt and Chelsea
Third was some quick family and kid pics for the Braodbents
Fourth I got to sneak in some pics of Zach and Kate
Fifth was the sweet Cole Arthur.
Sixth was pics of the equally sweet Hall baby.
Seventh was some quick senior pics or Breckyn (Which I will finally have blogged tomorrow)
Since then I have been trying to take some more pics of the M&M's I got for graduation for a wall picture but have given up and decided to just eat them!!
Aside from all that just lots of working, and editing all those pictures and thinking I really need to redo my blogs, but have not gotten to far on that...
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