the beginning of our weekend away

​... as if the Universe wanted to make sure I earned this time off, last week was particularly intense:  after returning from my most recent speaking gig in Greensboro, North Carolina, I was met by my daughter Alex enduring the worst asthma attack she's had in 18 months.  Then, my mother broke her foot:  with my father out of town, I stepped in to make sure she was taken care of.  Everything worked out beautifully, but couple these two events with a few critical deadlines that had to be met, and by the time we boarded our quick commuter flight to Dallas on Friday, I was on edge, to say the least.

(Read the rest here.) ​

We're back from our trip to Dallas, and as you can see, above, our quick little family getaway could not have come soon enough.  I'll be writing ​about our adventures and sharing pictures over the next few days over at Bliss Your Heart, so I hope you'll check in to see what we were up to.

One thing I didn't mention in this first installment, however:  soon after we checked into the hotel, I discovered that when I inadvertently dropped my camera on the plane (d'oh!) I'd completely taken out my one and only lens that I had brought with me on the trip -- so my camera was officially out of commission.  Luckily, however, I had recently bought and downloaded a new iPhone camera app called Snapseed -- and I have to say, I think I'm officially impressed with the little bugger It's the best camera app I've found that allows me to process photographs just as I would using Photoshop -- adjusting sharpness, white balance, contrast, brightness, cropping, vignetting, and so on, all right there on the fly, all right there on my phone.

All this to say that every photograph I took on this trip (including the one you see above) was taken with my iPhone 4 (not the latest version), using Snapseed.  ​I'll let you judge for yourself what you think, and decide whether price ($4.99, I think) is worth it.

Enjoy.​

​SongFly away by Lenny Kravitz