Better late...

Than never. This lovely lady was pregnant with her 6th child when I took this picture, and she was gracious enough to schlep all of her other 5 kids out wither her so I could work with them during a portfolio building session. When I got home I looked at all the amazing images and was so excited to get to work on them, certain that they were going to be stunning... Later, when I sat down to edit them, I realized that I had somehow accidentally deleted 98% of the files. I was so embarrassed and sad about the situation I could hardly stand it. I learned that I must immediately buy a stand alone memory drive and set it to automatically back up all of my files nightly, which I did.

I haven't had another instance of lost files int he two years since, but did finally edit some of the 2% that were left from this session. What a lovely mama - can you believe this was baby #6??

Juicy...

I can't believe this one is five months old already!! Gorgeous little man.

Bad to the bone...

When I was nine I had a best friend named Tanya. She was a smart girl, very friendly and funny, and she had brain cancer. She underwent chemotherapy and bone marrow transfers and almost survived - but didn't. So, when my kids were born, I did my best to get their cord blood donated so the stem cells could be used to help sick kids. And then, when I was in DC for a memorial for C.O.P.S. after my brother died a few years back and there was a National Marrow Donor Program truck outside the memorial area, I made sure to give them a swipe of spit and my contact info so that in the unlikely event I was a match for some sick kid, they could find me.

That was three years ago - today I got the e-mail that I might be a match. At first, I hesitated, knowing that marrow donation is painful and that I have a needle phobia. When I was in the hospital a few months ago for a migraine and they had to do a spinal tap to rule out a brain hemorrhage, I was all but hysterical.

Then I thought about the person who might need my marrow - how they are being stuck with way worse than just one needle, and how they could die - really die- without a transplant. So I bit the bullet and called the NMDP response line... now we wait.

Be the match.