2010 recap

2010 was the year little Veronica joined our family. Caring for a baby was a huge change for us and we're still defining the new "normal," but the time since her birth on October 24th has been filled with more joy than I could have possibly imagined. Our first few days with her, in particular, were the best of my life. I will always remember sitting in our sunny living room for hours and hours just watching our Vera-bean sleep. We shut out the rest of the world, listened to a lot of gentle music, and became familiar with this new person. It was absolutely love at first sight, if not earlier.

Most of the rest of the year was spent preparing mentally and physically for Veronica's arrival, but we did manage to travel a bit during the pregnancy with trips to Sonoma county, Washington state, France, and of course Minnesota. But you know what, my favorite place in the world remains here in Santa Barbara.

In addition to the birth, other notable milestones included celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary and R's 30th birthday. There has been so much reason to celebrate this year.

Hobby-wise, writing and video work have been on the decline, but my fun with photography has been on the rise. Veronica has been a huge inspiration and my new favorite subject for photos. I started a new web site in 2010 to showcase some of the pictures I've been taking of her. Free time has been short, but editing photos is so much quicker than editing video for me, so I've been fitting it in. And I just love having a record of our little girl growing up.

It has truly been an awesome year. Very few days go by when I don't think about how blessed I've been. What more could I want? Happy New Year, everybody!

Change of scenery

Here are a few non-baby related photos I've taken around town recently, just to freshen up the look around here. I'm not quite ready to begin writing much yet, but I'll probably post a brief summary of the year-in-Jeff at some point this month. Keep checking over at Three Peas for the photo story in progress.