Albany NY Photographer – Thea Coughlin Photography

I am working on the design here on my blog-please forgive me for the changes. It should be done soon.

Last weekend we took a trip up to Corning NY to The Corning Museum of Glass. We left around 11:45 and got there at around 3:15. There is a main parking lot about 2 blocks from the museum. They have a glass walled welcome center, where the shuttle bus comes by every 15 minutes. The welcome center was closed and it was cold! We would have walked but we weren’t sure which of the large buildings near by was the glass museum.

The shuttle bus came just as we started to walk toward what ended up being the right place, just to do something, other than stand still freezing while my poor little guy whined. I figured moving would at least get his blood flowing!

We got to see the glass breaking demo, and the glass blowing demonstration, and the little guy enjoyed running around and then watching the cool ball sculpture down in the gift shop. I would say it isn’t really worth a 3 hour drive for an almost 5 year old, but we are glad we went. If you are planning the trip, you should buy tickets for the make your own workshops online, as they were all sold out when we arrived.

After the museum we went out to dinner and it was just so so. Then we headed back to the hotel. We chose the Comfort Inn because it had an indoor swimming pool. Our little man has been taking swim lessons this winter at the Rudy Cicotti Center and is a now a water loving little fish. This is huge I must say, since last year he would barely go in the pool. When we got back to the hotel we got in our suits and went swimming for a couple hours. Or let me correct myself and say Trey went swimming for a few hours. I was chilly after about 20 minutes and got out:) Trey made friends with the big kids who were there swimming.

In the morning we swam again and then headed home. On the way back we stopped at The Discovery Center in Binghamton. Now this was worth a drive for. It was very similar to The Saratoga Children’s museum that I wrote about a while back, only bigger.

The Children's museum of Science and Technology Troy NY

We joined the The Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) - Passport Program when we went to the Schenectady Museum a few weeks ago. The passport program allows you and your family free admission to Science museums all over the country. It pays for itself in just a few museum visits.

Last Saturday we went to The Children Museum in Troy. It is a ASTC participating museum. It was very dark inside so I didn’t get a lot of photographs. Trey LOVED the simulated tornado chamber.

On Sunday we went to check out Tree Paad in Malta as a possible place to have Trey’s birthday party. It was AMAZING. We arrived a half hour after they opened – 10:30 (going to these types of play places on the weekends can be a mad house. Going early allows you at least an hour or so of peaceful play) and had to practically drag Trey out of there at 1:30.

Most of these photos were taken right before we left, when it was getting more crowded. The Fort Ballocity was so cool. It is a multilevel play arena. The soft balls can be shot from air canons, put into large suction balls, which carry the balls up to the second floor and shoot them into the upstairs hallway. The coolest feature by far is the center feature, which when you press the green button-turns on a vacuum that pulls the balls from the tray up through the tube and sprays them all over the arena from the top. It is awesome! In addition to the Fort Ballosity they have a rock climbing wall, a cool toddler play area, games, and more. Trey didn’t want to do anything but play in the Fort Ballosity. We booked Trey’s party there before we left. So happy our friend told us about Tree Paad.

i touch moments

At the turn of the year, I turned 38. I didn’t really want to have new year resolutions, so I decided I would make 5 new year goals.

Now that we are almost 6 weeks into 2010, I am embracing that I am a consistency- phobe.  I am currently working on a combination of tough love and acceptance with this part of my personality the past 6 weeks and it is making me a bit crabby at times (said with a smirk).

I thought I would share what these “goals” are.

1. Start to use my gym membership. Some of my friends that I hardly get to see anymore joined a nearby gym and go consistently to yoga and pilates. I joined about six months ago with a plan to go twice a week. I went once in six months. Oh my that is embarrassing to write!

So on my 38th birthday, I faced the fact that this is just ridiculous. I really have to either go to the gym or pay up the $100 cancellation fee to get out of the two year contract. So with gritted teeth I have been getting to the gym 2-3 times a week for the past 6 weeks. I don’t really like going, but I am working some serious tough love here.

2. Learn to type and work on being a better blogger. No progress on typing. I signed up for a 7 week  e course on blogging and it is stressing me out! We are just starting week 4. This is how it has gone so far for me.

week 1: Got overwhelmed with all the reading and blogs and eye candy that consumed hrs of time I didn’t have to spare. Still feeling a bit hopeful. Did the assignment the day before it was due.

week 2: I thought about the assignment, by the time I was ready to post it to the message board, saw the week 3 assignment was up and about 3 posts for week two I hadn’t had a chance to read yet. The assignment was thought provoking, but got me wanting to redesign every room in the house (can’t really elaborate without spoiling it for anyone who may take the class ).

week 3: Had a tough time grasping how I could do the assignment without buying $50 in magazines. Realized I was now about 10 posts and 200+ member posts behind in reading. Starting to feel discouraged. Needless to say haven’t read any posts since and my brain starts twitching whenever I think to log into the site. So even though I am not doing anything regarding the class it is taking up energy stressing about it.

week 4: wondering what the heck I was thinking when I signed up for this 7 week course. Must find time to go online and print out posts for future reading. Pathetic. The class is fabulous and if I had the time I would be LOVING it!

3. Do more family activities and trips and less work on weekends. Happy to report I am doing great at this. We have been going out and doing family things each weekend and I feel so filled up and happy about it. I have missed my boys. It was such a busy holiday season. It is great to frolic and play on the weekends. The only challenge is I haven’t figured out when to do the work I used to do on the weekends. I am trying though. Today I chose the recumbent bike for cardio so I could write a scribbly to do list while exercising. I almost brought the note pad with me around while I weight trained, but was swayed by the notion of looking like a super dork who wrote down her weights at each machine. I decided it was better to look like a lazy multitask-er on the bike instead.

4. Enter print competitions and juried shows to improve my work. This is a bit nerve racking but I am doing it. I entered the Best of 2009 show at the Photo Center in Troy and had two prints accepted!

5. Take some classes or workshops to challenge myself technically with my photography. I  love the challenge of learning new things and improving in areas I feel passionate about. Last year I worked a lot on the business side of my photography and now I am coming full circle and back to the technical side of my work. I just signed up for a studio lighting class and am super excited about it.

It takes a lot of energy for me to work on these goals, and I am having a hard time not feeling badly about what I am not doing so great at. Somehow writing about it has helped me focus a bit more on what I have been doing and a little less bad about what I am not.

Did you set new year goals? How have you been feeling about them? Do you find them challenging or easy to work on?