It's Good to be Alive

Yesterday was such a gloriously beautiful day that I felt like skipping around shouting "It's good to be alive!" I didn't do that though (have you ever seen a fat girl skip? It's not pretty), instead I finally took myself to Thanksgiving Point for the Tulip Festival. It has taken me years of good intentions to finally get myself there and it did not disappoint.

{This reminder helped me get there.}

I revel in the beauty of spring in general and take great pleasure in the meager spray of flowers growing in my own yard. I check them out each day for progress, document the stages of their development and am sincerely sad when their time of blooming is gone. So for me to be somewhere as glorious as the gardens at Thanksgiving Point was euphoric. I would like to live there or maybe have an annual pass so I could go there often.

{Tulips at our house}

My outing was almost ruined because my camera was acting up. It was giving me an error message and wouldn't let me take pictures. I've been feeling like it's in the winter of its life as it is, so I feared it was giving up the ghost on me. Thankfully I looked online (thanks to a panicked call from Michelle who encouraged me to do so) to see if I could find an answer to the error. It took me two minutes to Google the issue and resolve it...it's a good thing I hadn't been using my camera for 5 days eh? Idiot!

That meant my camera was in good form for my outing, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to enjoy it. I know that's silly, but not to me. I love nature photography and would have felt like I'd lost a limb if I'd gone there without a good camera.


It felt great to have actually followed through on one of my intentions and to be outside enjoying the gorgeous weather (76 degrees and breezy).

I'd like you all to vote for your favorite photos (I labeled them under each picture for you) and thought it would be fun to randomly select a winner or two to receive an enlargement of their favorite photo.

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After an hour and a half of wandering the grounds I found a nice bench and read for awhile. The only way it would have been better is if I'd had an ottoman and a waiter.

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I've noticed that I've become a little shy with my self-portraits lately due to the ugly period I'm going through. I think that's rather sad.


After further wandering I found myself up by the vendors and treated myself to a churro and sat down to read and write for awhile. There were kids running wild and rolling down the hill (I even saw a couple grown-ups do that) and everyone just seemed happy to be there.


I wrote in my Paris-inspired outings journal and talked myself out of buying a burger (they smelled so, so good).

{Photo 19}

It's a good thing I went yesterday because this is what it looks like today! I'm fine with rainy days if I've taken advantage of the sunny ones.

**Have you had any days like this recently?
Do you like taking pictures of flowers?
Which photos do you like?**

Comment Window Tidbit: I hope it's not presumptuous to think anyone would want an enlargement of one of my photos. I just really like doing giveaways and would be happy to receive something like this from someone else, so I'm doing it myself.