ModestGeniusXL

HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAY, MARIAH!

Some of you that have only known me in the past few years or so probably didn't know that Mariah was a Miracle Baby.  Not like the ones they give those names to today where they were born a few weeks early and have the little breathing machines.  She had that beat by months.  I am not exaggerating either.  I seriously mean she had it beaten by MONTHS.

Mariah was over three months premature.  She would have been even earlier than that; however, when her mom first started having contractions, they hospitalized her to prevent her from going into labor.  They were able to postpone it for a week but that's the best they could do.  When God wants you here, you show up regardless of what modern medicine says. 

Naturally, they didn't have the advances in medicine then that they do now, plus we were young, so we were very fearful of her being so early.  If she was able to be held, she could have fit in the palm of my hand.  She weighed a whopping 1 pound, 11 ounces.  She had to stay in the hospital for two months in NICU and even after she was finally able to go home, she had to go back repeatedly for lapses.

Fortunately, looking at her now, you would never know that Mariah had those issues early on.  The only remnants she has is asthma but beyond that, she's a very healthy, normal 22-year-old.  Her accident last year certainly didn't help though.  Now she has to deal with the asthma and periodic problems with her neck and back.  But besides all that, she's healthy.

She had a get-together at this trampoline place down here called Cosmic Jump.  I may have the name wrong, but essentially it's a large indoor facility that has several different activities you can do on large trampolines.  Things like dodgeball, basketball or just regular jumping.  Maybe even more than that.  I wouldn't know since I had to put in long hours as usual and missed it.  I was working like a Hebrew slave while they were getting their exercise-fun on.

I did manage to get off in time to get to the dinner she had at Pluckers.  I think I've talked about that place before.  That's a wing joint similar to Buffalo Wild Wings.  Except they don't have Caribbean Jerk wings.  They do have mild wings that are better than B2W though.  I think that's actually the reason why she prefers them to B2W.  And the good thing about it is we live just off the highway so there's really no restaurant that is too far away.  You can checks out the pics at this link:  Mariah's Birthday Party.  Everything except the moment where the staff sang Happy Birthday to her while she did some type of ritualistic chicken thing?  I guess it's a tradition there for birthdays.

That was yet another positive about being down here in North Texas as opposed to back in Iowa.  Nevermind the fact that we got away from the horrible winters.  Although that alone is a huge positive.  More importantly, I'm able to have all three of my kids in the same city so when an event like this happens we can all be together.  Moments like that are priceless. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!

I just now noticed that everytime I celebrate a family birthday out here, I make it a point to capitalize every letter in the phrase as the title of the post.  Actually, I didn't just now notice it.  I do that on purpose and have been for a while.  One of my many pet peeves on The Book is when people have a status reading "I'm screaming happy birthday to so-and-so".  Do you really have to say you're screaming it?  All caps pretty much does that sufficiently.  That effectively conveys that you're yelling to stress the importance of something.  Thus, the reason I always do all caps in these instances.

Anyway, y'all wouldn't believe how long I searched for just the right picture to use here for Mom's birthday.  I'll be honest, I would have gotten this post up a lot sooner if it wasn't for that small problem.  The thing is that I wanted to make sure to use a picture that I hadn't shown before.  That gets harder and harder to do each year because Mom isn't a fan of having her picture taken.  Therefore, some of my pics are a little older than I would like.

If I was smart, what I would have done is taken more pictures when I was in Kansas City with the family a couple of weekends ago for the mini-reunion.  I fully intended to utilize the opportunity to get more updated pics while I was there.  However, I got there and ended up enjoying my family too much to achieve that photo goal.  It was a good trade-off since I hadn't seen many of them in quite a while.  I'll have to try better next time when I go to the full year reunion in Arkansas at the end of the summer.

So I ended up using this photo from a trip that Mom and Dad made to Des Moines when I was still living there.  It happened to coincide with a same weekend that Mariah and Elijah were visiting from Texas.  As much as I hate over-utilizing the crop feature, I didn't have a choice in this instance.  Mariah's part in this photo became a casualty when I saw the perfect opportunity to use a good picture of Mom as her birthday post.

Personally, I think any photo of Mom is  a beautiful picture.  Simply because she's a beautiful person inside and out.  I don't blame her one bit for for not wanting to get her photo taken much.  I'm the same way.  Yet another trait that I inherited from her.  The difference being that I'm only beautiful on the outside.  Yes..I know...it ain't easy being this modest.

 

Happy Birthday!

Yes, I purposely left the subject generic on purpose.  Even though it is my Uncle's birthday.  I've already wished him happy birthday on The Book.  With the photo that you see here.  Which then caused me to realize the same thing I always do when it comes to my blog.  That once again, the folks that read this aren't privy to the greatness (yes, I called it greatness) that is being shared on that social networking site.

It's more than just this photo though.  It's what this photo represents.  An idea that I came up with a while back when it comes to birthdays.  It's really just a different way of wishing a person a happy birthday.  Something inexpensive that can still manage to brighten their special day.

On The Book, it's common knowledge that when it's someone's birthday, folks will flood their wall with posts wishing them happy birthday.  Some of them are sincere.  Some are just folks saying it because they feel obligated.  Or they're just trying to be friendly.  You can usually tell the difference in the punctuation that's being used.  I try to be cordial as well by doing the same, but I take it a step further in some instances.

There are a lot of folks on The Book that have done shoots with me.  So as a sign of gratitude to them on their birthday I alter one of the pics from their shoot to give them their own distinguished birthday shout out.  When I first did it, I made my XL-Images logo the prominent part of the picture.  Just switching it up how it normally looks.  Then it occurred to me that was rather selfish since it was that person's birthday.  So I changed it to that person's name being the focal point. 

I do have parameters as to what pics I can and can't use.  By rule, I will only do it if the person has done a shoot with me.  For instance, if I shot an event and that person was in one of the pics, I technically could photoshop the pic they were in and use it.  However, that cheapens the whole thing for me.  It's not like they were supporting XL-Images by just showing at up an event I was shooting.  Obviously, they were supporting us if they did a shoot.

Naturally, there are exceptions to the rule.  As you see here.  Of course this isn't from a shoot.  It's from the banquet celebrating Union Baptist's 100th anniversary.  But Uncle Johnny is family.  I make an exception for family when it comes to the birthday shout outs.  Just as long as I can find a picture that's good enough to use.  And who knows...maybe family will return the favor and get me to do one of their shoots? 

Happy (Belated) Mother's Day!

I originally posted this on The Book which means some of you may have missed out on it.  I just realized today that I hadn't shared anything out here for that auspicious occasion.  That wasn't very nice of me.  And now that I'm finally caught up on editing all my shoots from a few weeks ago, I have a little bit more spare time to get caught up here as well.

So far in 2013, I have had a chance to work with some fantastic mothers.  In all different types of families too.  There were the standard nuclear ones (which oddly enough seems to be a rarity these days), the single mother, the mother and grandmother, the mother with multiple children, the stepmother..you name it.  And every single one of them was a pleasure to work with.  What's even better is every single one of them enjoyed the photos I did for them.  Even more so when they saw that they were a part of this collage.

That took care of all the mothers that were clients, but I did something even more special for my Mom.  Something that I knew she wouldn't be expecting.  I thought about sending nice little card to her.  That just seemed a little plain though.  Then when I got one of those spam emails, I had an even better idea.  I would send her flowers.  That was something that I knew Mom wouldn't be expecting from me.  I can't remember the last time I got Mom flowers.  I want to say it was when I was 9 or so and I brought her some dandelions from the front yard.  Yeah...I know...lame.

They offered the option to have them delivered on Saturday or Sunday.  I'm not sure how Sunday was even going to work.  None of the delivery services run on Sundays.  Were they going to make a special exception because of the day?  I thought that may have been a mistake so I chose Saturday instead.  I would rather it get there early then risk the chance of getting there late.

I just wish I could have been there when those flowers showed up.  The look on Mom's face would have been priceless.   Especially after reading the card that came with it.  And if you know anything about me then you know that card was epic.  Getting that text from Mom thanking her for her flowers made my day.  I could sense the smile through the phone.  And anything that I can do to make Mom smile is the least I can do for the greatest Mom ever.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TEANDRA!!!

Yes, I know this pic is almost two years old.  It was taken during my trip to Bloomington for Thanksgiving 2011.  It's all good though.  Teandra still looks the same.  She has looked the same for the past several years.  Simply not aging.  Whenever someone tells me they can't believe how old I am (and it surprisingly happens more often than you would think) then I tell them they should see my sister who looks like she's still in her 20s.  Okay...maybe late 20s, but still.

Anyways, happy birthday to my favorie sister who lives in Illinois!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!

So I was going all through my photos trying to find a good pic of Dad to put up for this special day.  I couldn't believe that I didn't have any good enough and/or current enough.  I had a couple of nice ones with him and Mom, but I didn't want to crop Mom out.  That makes the photo look janky.  It was just a further reminder of one of the reasons I need to get there to visit again.  I should definitely have some more pics of the folks.

At any rate, I rather dig this photo for a few reasons.  First and foremost being that it's an excellent photo.  Y'all know I get rather picky about that.  Not a fan of blurry pics at all.  And with even cell phones that are capable of taking pics as high as 16 pixels there should really be more high resolution snapshots out there.  So I was glad to see that Dad was able to get this pic taken at high quality.  Especially given what it represents.

Most of the people (all 12 of you) that still read this blog may already know about Dad's daily Thoughts of the Day.  It used to be you were only aware of it if you were on The Book.  And also if you were one of his contacts.  Not anymore.  Now he's converted several of those into his very own book which you see in this photo.  "Now Think On That!: A Collection of Thoughts for Positive Daily Living! Vol 1 (Volume 1)" now makes Dad a published author! 

As if I didn't have enough things to look up to Dad for, along comes yet another.  I once had aspirations to be a published author.  I probably still could if I applied myself.  And now Dad has achieved that goal to give me yet something else to aspire to. Granted, my writing has taken a backseat to my photography in the past few years.  That doesn't mean the book publishing thing can't still happen.  It's just not in the forefront at the moment.  Given the passion that I have for my photography, I don't see it creeping back in that position either.  But I digress...

The odd thing about this week is there have been a lot of negative things happening around these parts lately.  Down right horrible.  The Boston Marathon tragedy...some moron trying to send poisoned mail to the President...this fertilizer plant explosion down here...even the background check bill thingy not passing (yep...I'm throwing that in there).  And all this before the week was even over.  But the one shining moment to look forward to was today.  Celebrating the birthday of the best role model a guy could ask for.  That's some good stuff right there.

Now think on that!

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELIJAH!!!

So it's official.  I'm down to just one 'child' now.  I already have a grown woman and now I have a grown man.  Sure...they will always be my children, but legal adults now nonetheless.

I have to admit that there are occasionally some days that I regret moving to Texas.  Maybe (Hopefully) that's normal having only been in a new place for less than a year.  However, then there will be moments like today that makes it all worth it.  If I weren't down here, I wouldn't have been able to spend my son's 18th birthday with him.  That was pretty significant.

It felt good to impart some very important fatherly wisdom with him on this special day.  Like what, you ask?  Well the importance of old school hip-hop of course!  We started off listening to some SiriusXM but I wasn't totally feeling what they had going on the Backspin station.  Thankfully, I had an old school mix-cd that I made myself.  Elijah got the honor of hearing some vintage X-Clan, Third Bass, A Tribe Called Quest, BDP and even LL Cool J.  Every one coming with a brief backstory.  Including the diss battle between LL Cool J and Kool Moe Dee.  If you have to ask who Kool Moe Dee is, you may need to brush up on some old school hip-hop yourself.

What does an 18-year-old want to do for their birthday?  I remember when I hit that number all I could think about was that I could finally vote.  Probably because it was an election year.  And that's the year that Jesse Jackson was running.  So I would FINALLY be able to make a difference by casting my vote.  Times certainly have changed since then though.  Maybe if this was an election year it would have made a bigger difference, but voting was not the first thing on Elijah's mind.  Getting a tat was.

Now I have mentioned long ago that I used to have a problem with tats.  I think I even did a post on it.  I have probably unpublished it since then because I didn't want to offend any of my tatted friends.  Also because I've come to realize that they're not all that bad.  Not if they're done right.  Don't get me wrong, I still would never get one, but that's just how I am.  They're not for everybody.  But when Elijah explained to me his rationale, what he was planning on getting and his long-term plan regarding it, I was at peace with the decision.  Not enough that I was going to venture to Dallas on a weeknight to get it for him, but I understood.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA!!!

*DISCLAIMER* For the record, Grandma's birthday was actually yesterday.  I could have easily backdated this so that the post was on her actual date.  However, for the few people that actually read my blog timely, they would know I cheated.  I would have had this done yesterday but ended up falling asleep while putting it together.  Yeah...I know...just pitiful....but anyway...

I don't believe I've ever posted this picture out here before.  It was on The Book, but not here.  Oh wait..I take that back.  It was on the countdown last year so it made it the appearance on this blog.  As a matter of fact, I purposely held out posting it out here so that it could make its debut on the countdown.  And believe me, that was difficult to do given as much as I like this pic of Grandma.

The last time I took a trip to Des Moines, I made sure to take a detour thru Kansas City.  It wasn't because the flight was cheaper.  Well let me take that back...it wasn't ONLY because the flight was cheaper.  It was mainly because I purposely wanted to stop by and see Grandma before I flew out.  Thought maybe I could get an updated pic of her while I was at it.  Then that pic could have been used for this entry.  There were a couple of problems with that plan though...

1.  I called myself wanting to surprise Grandma with a visit.  I just like the look on her face when she's surprised.  However, by doing that, I would lessen the possibility of getting a picture.  No way Grandma was going to take a pic when she wasn't ready for it.  Which meant the element of surprise would not be an option.  But that still didn't help the other issue

2.  I would have to be at the airport around 11am or so to catch my flight.  Which meant I would be getting to Grandmas early in the morning to get in some quality time.  Grandma likes to have time to get ready for a pic.  Was she going to be willing to do that so early in the morning?  Uncle Johnny warned me ahead of time it probably wouldn't happen.  I took his word for it and didn't even raise the issue. 

So what it amounted to was Grandma knew in advance that I was coming.  Wish I could have been there when she heard the news.  It's all good though because she still seemed to have a glowing smile on her face when I showed up.  Almost as if she was still surprised to see me.  That was still worth it too.

As usual, the conversation was on point.  Grandma busted out one of her old photo albums and was sharing anecdotes that I had never heard before.  All you had to do was ask about one person in one picture and Grandma had a story that would have you enthralled better than any Spielberg/Lucas/Tarrantino flick.  I never knew that her and Popoo had a run-in with some real-life Crips!  And only Grandma can tell the story in such a way that it's actually funny.  That was just one of several gems I picked up during that short visit.  So it may have been an early birthday present for Grandma but I'm the one that came away with the gift.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM AND DAD!!!

Let me get this out of the way right now while I still remember that I got it right for once.  This is their 43rd anniversary.  I think every year I mess that up somehow.  Probably because I try to equate it with my age and always want to say it's the same.  Maybe if I were smart enough to take my age plus one I would never get it wrong again.  But you all know how my memory is.

The first thing I thought about it when I first heard about this whole Mayan calender end of the year 12/21/12 was how close that date was to my parents' anniversary.  I guess it could have been worse.  It could have been on their actual anniversary.  But I was thinking if by some fluke the Mayans were right then at least they would have let Mom and Dad celebrate their 43rd anniversary before everything comes to an end.  That would be the perfect way to wrap up everything.

I have to be honest and admit that I really don't know what to say about my folks that I haven't already said time and time again out here.  Between here and The Book, I've reiterated non-stop how great both of them are.  Both individually and collectively.  I really still couldn't say it enough though.  That's why another bad thing about moving so far away to Texas is I'm even further from being able to more conveniently visit them.

Even though they are so far away, I am still thankful every day that Mom and Dad are still in my life.  I have some friends who are the same age as me who have already had one parent pass away.  In some cases, both.  I can't even imagine what that would be like to be without either one of them.  And it doesn't matter how far away they are because they're always easily accessible in some format.  I continue to be grateful for that every single day.  Just looking at their picture and keeping that in mind makes me smile.

I am constantly seeing people mention how great their mom and/or dad is.  I jokingly mentioned on The Book that if that really is the case then apparently they must have patterned themselves after Mom and Dad.  I said it to be my normal sarcastic self, but it's also true.  The two of them still look years younger than they actually are yet have more knowledge between the two of them than I can ever hope to attain.  Don't hate...my Mom and Dad simply rock.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY G!!!

I recently gave my youngest son his own photo shoot.  No, not because that was his birthday present either.  He just told me that he wanted one since I was doing Elijah's senior pictures.  G ended up having several great shots to choose from which didn't surprise me at all.  What cracked me up was when I let him pick out the ones he wanted as prints.  This one was first on his list.  Why?  Because, in his own words, it made him look buff.  So that's how this particular shot was chosen for his birthday post.

He turned 12-years-old yesterday.  I would have (or perhaps "should have" is a better way to say it) done the post on the actual day but there was just too much going on.  Even with requesting time off so I could extra time to celebrate with him.  I ended up not even getting off as early as I wanted thanks to 2-hours of my day wasted dealing with an irate customer.  But I wasn't going to let that spoil G's day.

I had been running out of things to do for G as presents for him.  Starting with his grade card.  I was going to offer him $10 for each 'A' he brought home.  Then his first progress report came in showing that he was carrying an A average.  His lowest grade was a A-.  That was $60 right there!  Good thing I hadn't yet announced the $10 per 'A' thing yet.  He was good with just getting an ice cream treat at Braum's.  The actual report cards come out Monday so I may still make good on my original idea.

What really impressed me was a conversation I had with G when I picked him up the other day.  He reminded me that grade cards were coming out soon as if he was clearly looking forward to it.  Then he told me that he's in the process of bringing his grades up.  Dude is already carrying an 'A' average.  That's the kind of ambition I'm talking about.  You can't teach that.

He also recently revealed that his other goals are to join the chess club at school and start football.  They couldn't be two more different objectives but I'm diggin' both.  Well...at least the chess club one.  I had totally forgotten that I was his same age when I joined the chess club at Norwalk.  It lasted all of about two weeks.  I got tired of beating everyone.  True story.  I even gave the teacher a run for his money although I couldn't beat him.

Now G's choice of football is something I'm not 100% gung ho about.  They take their football DEAD serious down here.  It's not s sport...it's on obsession.  I certainly don't want it interfering with his grades and/or studying.  Then there's also the fact of the whole recent head trauma phenomena going around.  The last thing we would need is for a big hit to damage that Valedictorian-bound mind.

His birthday present was easy.  I asked him what he wanted and he directed me to a site online that had Marvel Legends action figures.  It would have been nice to get the Nick Fury one so he could have some diversity in his collection.  They just wanted too much for it though.  Instead he went with Deadpool and Hawkeye.  The two of those together were still cheaper than a video game so I was good. 

Less than one year and I will have my last teenager.  Claude had mercy...