Hope springs eternal. Or, rather, Spring makes me hopeful.

I’m tired of being stuck inside. I’m tired of the snow. I’m tired, mainly. I need fresh air that doesn’t burn my lungs. I need a little more green, it being my favorite color and all. I need more color than various shades of grey. I need Spring.

I’ve been feeling kind of down in the dumps, overwhelmed with our four walls and constant company. It’s not that I’d just turn my kids loose outdoors and not watch them; it’s that we need more space for our voices, our personalities. We need to stretch and run and spend that energy. It’s been a hard winter, too, having lost two family members. I need that hopeful feeling that the new growth of Spring brings.

And it’s so close I can almost taste it.

Buds. They’re coming. I can almost imagine the blooms that they will soon bring. I can almost imagine our apple tree in full bloom, buds pushing up through the grass. I can almost imagine grass. Snow is melting, here and there, and I can see the dull, dark browns and green from a winter of halted growth. Will it green up soon? Will it soon outnumber the patches, piles and inches of endless white?

I have this lament every year, like last year when I was worried about snow falling on my day lily sprouts. They came up on March 17th. That’s only thirteen days from now. Surely that means that hope is just around the corner, just waiting to be discovered. Right? Surely that means that the sun will shine more than just today. That soon the snow will melt. That maybe, just maybe, Spring really is coming this year, not leaving us in this frozen tundra of gloom and doom forever. Right?

This has been one of the worst winters I can remember; not just snow wise but emotionally as well. Maybe not the worst but it ranks up there quite high. I’m ready to feel new again myself. To shed my winter coat and stand with my face to the sun and let the bright rays of hope remind me of who I am and what it is that I am doing here.

I’m ready. Is Spring?

_
[For more hopeful photos, visit today's You Capture Challenge at I Should Be Folding Laundry.]

We got our Girl Scout cookies just yesterday. We experienced a bit of a delay thanks to the Never Ending Winter of Doom. I had two of my favorites last night. Just two. I asked if it was possible to eat just two, considering that two Samoas pack 150 calories and I didn’t want to exceed my daily limit. While it was suggested that I just eat the entire box so that I didn’t have the same problem today, I did manage to eat just two.

Later, as I stared longingly at the box from across the room, I realized something. Samoas are a firefighter’s favorite cookie!

Firefighter helmet wearing Girl Scout! A female firefighter showing girls how to use a fire hose! Hooray for the Girl Scouts!

I then did a little Googling to see if there was any specific reason as to why the Samoas box features firefighting as a profession. During that search, I found a happy little story about a fire station serving as the delivery center for a troop’s cookie order. (And a few other stories that were similar!) I then learned of a special badge, the 2010 Gift of Caring Project, which encourages Girl Scouts to deliver boxes donated by their customers to firefighters, police officers, shelters and other non-profit organizations. I can tell you that FireDad’s station wouldn’t turn down a box of free cookies.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you why the Girl Scouts chose to use a firefighter themed picture on their Samoas box. They’re two great pictures and I send a big thumbs up to the Girl Scouts for including them because we know that women make wonderful firefighters. I would tell you that we were making the Samoa the Official Cookie of the FireFamily but, alas, FireDad doesn’t like coconut.

Guess I’ll have to eat them, two by two…

…all by myself. Done and done.

Today has been Dr. Seuss’ birthday! We’re big fans. I always have been, always will be and I hope to raise two little boys who have an appreciation for him as well. We’re on track with that as I can’t count the number of times I have read The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax (our most recent addition) or the other numerous books on our Shelf O’Seuss. I thought we’d do something a little special today since it was his birthday.

BigBrother was my inspiration for today’s plans since he brought home a very cute craft from preschool yesterday.

That’s right. I made Green Eggs and Ham. Not the kind featured in the book but scrambled eggs with bits of ham, which the Seussville website told me how to do in case I couldn’t figure out how to add green food coloring to liquid egg and cook it up. I also took it a step further and added some green food coloring when I was cooking up the ham.

When I first added the egg, it looked…. interesting.

But soon it started to scramble up and look kind of like eggs with ham. Somewhat.

When I put it on the table, the boys looked at it a bit skeptically. I mean, I can’t blame them all that much. It just looks… weird.

But LittleBrother eventually said, “I’ll pretend it’s broccoli!” He likes broccoli so that’s a good thing.

And despite his texture issues, scrambled eggs are an acceptable food with BigBrother, no matter their color, and he ate it just as slowly as he eats any meal that I make.

FireDad chose to wait until after I started the process to tell me a horror story from his youth. Apparently his sister and a friend made green pancakes one morning. FireDad ate said pancakes and, later that day due to an unrelated illness, he got sick and threw up. He forever blamed the green pancakes. I would like to report, however, that he has not yet hurled.

I take that as a sign of success.

Tasted fine to me!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Way back before I accepted my part-time photographer job, I had been researching cameras again. I had been using the Canon XT since early 2006. I was ready for something new. I had almost finished my research, deciding to go with the Fancy Pants new Canon T1i. Then the photography job came along and Nikon entered my life. I had to weigh pros and cons, redo all of my research and save up the money. Again.

I’m now officially a Nikon girl. Don’t hate me.

I went with the Nikon D90. I’m using the D200 for work. I didn’t figure buying a D300 for personal use made much sense since the differences between the two were minimal. After much research and some help from @36balloons (also known as Heather Kennedy, one of my photography inspirations), I went with the D90 for various reasons.

Reasons include preset settings that the D200 doesn’t have. I work in manual mode a lot nowadays but, man, sometimes presets are nice, aren’t they? If you have kids, you know what I mean.

Another reason? Video.

Yeah, yeah. I have a Flip. Yes, I love it. Yes, it has its place. As an example, I’m not going to lug the D90 down to the beach and risk sand in all sorts of no-good places just to take some beach video on our vacation this year. But now I don’t have to know where my Flip is at all times. I won’t use the video feature on the D90 a whole lot, I imagine. It’s just a nice feature. Plus, when I race out the door to go shoot a fire, now I can grab a bit of video footage which I normally can’t do because I never remember to grab the Flip when I’m rushing in such a way! Fire bonus!

And then, really, Heather gave me a whole bunch of differences between the D300 (which is enough like the D200 to count) and the D90 and I thought it would just be the perfect addition to my camera arsenal. The differences are visible to me already in small things. I’m sure I’ll be learning more about it over the next few weeks. I have my eyes on one lens, am considering another and will be purchasing an epiphanie bag as my personal purse/camera bag in the near future (even though they’re still on back order). It’s a good feeling to have a personal camera back in my rotation. I’m now not worried about what happens when I get Dooced.

I’m feeling pretty snap-happy. LittleBrother is barely tolerating me.

All pictures are straight out of the camera.

I’d go ahead and expect an influx of photography related posts and photos over the next few weeks as I figure out how this new camera fits into our fire and family life. I do want to get down to the fire department and take a few new photos of the trucks to give it a true fire family welcome. Until then, I’ll be messing around with settings and figuring my way around my new camera who doesn’t yet have a name. I think I also need a Fancy Pants camera strap.

In closing: I’m a happy photographer/blogger/wife/mommy/mamarazzi today. Even if we’re having a plumbing emergency that means that we have no running water and unearthed the fact that we have mold behind the walls in our bathroom. Maybe I’ll go take some photos of that… or maybe not.

_
[Disclosure: I bought the camera with my hard earned money. The links are through Amazon Associates.]