A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. ~Washington Irving

We love you both so very much.

Labels: family, holiday

Kerri and I have re-tooled our Flickr photos. Rather than having the typical "tags" on each photo, we have only tagged people (and dogs) in the photos. For example, a photo of Jeff and Kerri playing football would not contain any mention of football or playing, but would only be tagged with "jeff" and "kerri". The descriptions of the photos are where we might add those kinds of key words. Every photo on our Flickr account has been tagged in this manner.

So why is this important?

We wanted to make it easier to search for specific photos in our collection. When we want to find a photo of a specific friend for a specific reason, we generally had to browse through nearly 15,000 photographs. That's pretty tedious. Now we can get results via a specific search. For example, a search for the tags "Mateo" and "Marluce" will provide results with both kids in it (click here to see the results). On Flickr we can sort by popularity and date as well, to further narrow down results.

Furthermore, we can narrow down results by people who we DON'T want to see in the photo, either. For example: A search for tags "Mateo" and "Marluce" but excluding photos with "Jeff" and "Kerri" in them would show only photos with Mateo and Marluce, but nothing where Jeff and Kerri are present (click here to see the results).

Even cooler is that we can search by date. A search for "Jeff" and "Kerri" between 1/1/2002 and 12/31/2003 would only show results from within those two years (click here to see the results). So what are you waiting for? Get searching and find some great photos you didn't know existed... of you!

Labels: family, kids, photos, site info

Labels: family

I'm pretty sure my husband hates me this time of year. For three weeks every July I become obsessed with a little sporting event known as the Tour de France. While Jeffry likes to watch the finishes (and maybe some good crashes), I like to watch the whole stage in full. I find the team work just amazing. And the way the peloton moves together is beautiful some times; it looks as if it's been choreographed. The announcers are wonderful, and I learn something new from them every year. And the power that these cyclists have is unthinkable. Doping or not- I couldn't do it! I am enamored with the tour every summer.

Labels: family, goings-on, news

This weekend we went to Rocky Point to visit Rick (Jeff's brother). His family is living in Rocky Point while they are adopting three beautiful girls. We met them for the first time today, and we fell in love! Aracely, Itzel, and Angeles are their names, and they are simply delightful. They speak very little English, so it's hard for me to speak to them but I got by ok. I was remembering more and more high school Spanish as the day went on!

Labels: family