My daughter, of course, is my favorite person in the world. My very favorite thing in the world is photographing her. My second favorite thing is admiring the photographs I've taken of her. This particular photo was taken in February of 2003, while she was just having fun, riding her trike in the front drive.
Photo one is Nikolena at Easter 2003, getting ready to hunt eggs in my parent's backyard. Two is Nikolena at age 3, one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken of her. Third is Nikolena watching fireworks, July 2003, age eight.
My next favorite thing on the list is my family. My mother, my father, and the way they completely dote on my beautiful Nikolena.
The first pic is of my parents and Nikolena at the 4th of July celebration, 2003. The next pic is of my mother and Nikolena. Nikolena has dirty hands, and she is bent on escaping with them, as my mom tries to stop her! Next is Nikolena and her Poppa, doing their usual tickling and gigglefits. That was Easter weekend, 2003. The last one is Nikolena and my dad at the 4th of July celebration.
Our next favorite activity is the beach, which we are able to enjoy for most of the year here in sunny Florida. This past April my parents gave us all a treat and rented a beach house in Mexico Beach for four days. We stayed with them for part of the time, and really enjoyed the holiday. As you can see, Nikolena loves the water.
Although it's fun to go out and do things, there IS no place like home. Here are some of the nicer things about where we live.
We are very lucky to live right on a tiny little lake. It's exactly a mile around, walking, and the neighborhood is very secluded and private. As you can see, our part of it is lovely.
Photos in order from top left: Our dock; the lake view from the dock; another lake view from the dock; view from standing on the dock facing the backyard; the backyard, facing out at the lake; my beautiful dogwood tree in the front yard; one of my few really nice roses that bloomed last year; pink azaleas from front yard; pink and white varigated camellia from backyard bush.
Another thing I love to do is photograph fireworks. I've never been able to get really _good_ photographs of them, until I got my digital camera. These are some of the nicer photos I was able to get July 4,2003.
Back to hearth and home. These are my valued little statuettes.
The quality on these photos is poor; I took them with a very cheap digital camera while my good one was in for repair. I will likely retake the photos when I get my camera back.
The first statue, the white mother and baby is a Royal Dux piece that I was very lucky to get at an auction. The second piece is a mother/daughter statue, representing Nikolena and I, that my parents gave me for my birthday. It is slightly obscured by our little snowman stocking holder (I took these at Christmas), but you can still see how lovely they are. The third is a candle holder; just a small goddess representation that I found at a curio shop one day. The picture doesn't show her true detail, but she's very pretty.
