Last week she got together with a bunch of girls from church and they all had lunch. Misty Michelle was one of them, and you might remember her from the photos she took of us and Lyla soon after she was born.

Well, being the photographer that she is, Misty couldn’t help but bring her camera to lunch knowing there would be three babies there just dying to get their pictures taken.

She posted three on her website yesterday, I wanted to show you the one of Lyla, but you should definitely go see the others…she takes some amazing photographs!

So when Misty Michelle from church asked us to help her test out a new setting for her that she wanted to do for newborn photoshoots, we of course jumped at the chance.

I had seen her blog and website already many months ago, and just recently she did some pictures for our friends Tyler and Sara.  We met her last Tuesday night as well when she took some photographs of Sara during a very special night for her.

She saw Lyla and then later in the week she emailed us to ask if we could help her out. And we did.

Below are some of my favorite shots, and you can see the rest of them by visiting the album in my Photos section of this blog.

And yes, Misty is available to take pictures of your family too. I highly recommend her and encourage you to get some of these kind of photos for your family, because they really are amazing. Visit her site and look into it!

Thank you Misty!

A massive cornfield maze is always my favorite part, but they also sell these amazing carmel apple walnut pies that are to die for.

It’s just a fun night to hang out, let the kids run around and have a good time.

Mmmm, water!

I’m telling you…Jina is so dang cute. Pregnant girl in a little cooooaaat! I love her!

All the girls…

If you don’t know what Facebook is, then you live a sheltered life. But it’s okay, I’m here to tell you about it. At least, a brief synopsis.

Facebook is a fantastic way to find friends and family, communicate with them on a daily basis, share what’s going on in your life, post photos for everyone to see and just have fun reconnecting with people.

It’s the grown-up verison of MySpace basically.

If you want to join, go to Facebook.com and then search for Mike Olbinski and I’ll be your first friend on there.

As a sample of stuff I upload to Facebook, here is a photo album of my 30th birthday bash back in 2005:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39861&l=d4e4a&id=617478229

Nothing fancy, I’m no photographer, but I liked the contrast of the sign with the dark clouds in the background.

When I first put up the new theme, it had a default “flower” kind of header up top and someone suggested I put something up there that was more “me”…so I grabbed a weather picture, because if any of you know me, a picture of a cloud is definitely ME.

The anxiousness is mostly just excitement. Now that the baby’s room is painted, we have a few things to do yet, but the big stuff is out of the way. So whenever Lyla wants to show up, that’s just fine with me.

Something pretty awesome happened late last week. Up until then, whenever I felt Lyla move, it was mostly just little “pushes” from the inside. They were light, but felt more like little taps from the inside.

Well, on Friday I had my hand on Jina’s belly and suddenly I feel her leg (or something) move across my hand. So crazy. It’s one thing to feel a little push, but to actually get a sense of something moving across the inside of her abdomen was so weird and cool.

She’s also starting to get used to my voice a lot more we think. All will be quiet, but I’ll begin talking to her with my hand poking around Jina’s belly and suddenly she’ll start moving around. I love it!

Jina is starting to feel the drag of the final trimester. She’s been really tired this weekend and is up many times during the night needing the restroom.

She also found out from a lab test that she’s a bit anemic, so hopefully this new iron supplement will give her a bit more energy.

But Jina is doing awesome otherwise. I can’t tell you how amazing she’s been the entire time she’s been pregnant. She rarely complains no matter how tough things get. I’m just so impressed with her strength and will power. She’s still working hard and not making excuses when she probably could.

If anything, I could do a better job taking care of her. I think she’s doing so well, it’s sometimes hard to even realize I could be doing more.

So this week we’re going to try and get the crib built and the shelves that go in the closet put together. At least I hope we can get that done. The weekdays tend to be busy for me lately with working all day, then getting home and writing for Pop Critics in the afternoons and late evenings.

Thanks to you all for reading our blog and keeping up with how we’re doing. It’s been a lot of fun for me.

Here are some pictures from our latest ultrasound, with a pretty decent 3D shot! The last one is pretty cool with her arm wrapped up around her head.

It’s just about enjoying it.

Today has been one of those days that is worth remembering. It was chilly this morning, overcast and drizzly. I love it when it’s like this, but yesterday had been rainy all day and I was sort of ready to see it clear up a bit. We talked about going to dinner tonight, maybe sitting outside on a patio, but with the clouds and rain, it was a bit too cold.

I had to run a package to the FexEx store this morning, and it was still cloudy, but the rain had stopped. So I took the top off the Jeep, piled the dogs inside and we went for a ride. They loved it. Stopped at a park, they went running all over the place as if they hadn’t been out of the house in months.

Which is actually true.

But just driving in the cool temperatures was relaxing and awesome.

It didn’t take long for the skies to clear and the sun to come out. And the temperature rose, not too high, but to an absolute perfect 71 degrees.

I’ve been trying to work this afternoon, but every so often I have to go and sit outside on the patio. The wind picked up, so my trees sound so soothing as they blow in the breeze. The sun keeps you just warm enough not to get cold, and the air feels heavenly. Every now and then the light dims as a lone cloud blocks the sunlight.

It even smells good out there.

These are the kinds of days that make me feel close to God. Heck, heaven could be amazing, but I almost am hoping that if I ever get there someday, I’d like to be perpetually in a place that is like today.

Relaxing, eyes closed…just feeling the rush of the wind around you, the sound of the leaves swooshing back and forth and the wind chimes on our patio playing their soft music.

It’s basically my perfect day out there. The only way it could possibly get better would be a brief thunderstorm rolled through, reminding you that while God created this peaceful day just for me, he can also turn it on its head in a moment’s notice.

Not sure what compelled me to write this…it’s just how I get when it feels like heaven sitting outside on a lawn chair.

It was a guy wearing an awesome wolf head which led the internet scavengers and X-Files nuts to cry “Spoiler! Spoiler! Cris Carter is doing a movie on werewolves!”

Yet as the Lady Galadriel said in Lord of the Rings: “But they were all of them deceived.”

Yes, it appears Cris Carter knew what he was doing and I sort of saw it coming. In that blog post with the photo of the wolf, I said this:

Is that the plot of the movie or is this a great little trick being played on all of us?

A trick Mike…a trick.

This was the photo:

I think the fact that someone is laughing in the shot should have given it away.

From The Movie Web, the writer talked to a friend a bit about the movie and asked him about the wolf.

After chuckling a bit, he said that Chris Carter knows what he’s doing, and that the werewolf did exactly what it was supposed to do- throw people off the X-Files scent.

So there you have it. I know most of you were freaking out over the wolf shots, so now you can go back to your normal lives.