Having too much fun on my computer

I have lots of pictures stored on my computer since the purchase of my digital camera last winter. I have always taken lots of pictures, but now that I don't have to pay to have them developed and printed, I have gotten even more crazy with my camera (I wonder how the film developing businesses will stay in business?). I also love to listen to Country music so I have quite a few songs stored under my music on my computer.

This past week I decided to spend some time trying to put selected pictures with music on to a CD to send to my oldest son Garrett, who is in the Navy on the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. The inspiration was a Kenny Chesney's song titled "Back where I come from." I love this song. I went through lots of pictures of our family, our yard, our pets, our garden, our beautiful Valley with the gorgeous mountains. I even took a quick drive up to Hope Valley to snap a few shots up there.

Now, to figure out how to do this. I have Windows XP and it has a program already on it called Windows Movie maker, how cool is this? I go to import pictures. Select the pictures one at a time that I would like. Then I import the music, or in this case, just the one song to begin with. Then I drag each picture down to the bottom where it says "Drag media down to the timeline to begin making movie." OK, I put 45 pictures down there and then I dragged the song to the "audio music" line. What happens next is I added a title to the front of the CD and an ending title to the end, do you see the part under edit that says make titles and credits? Wait a minute, what happened? Oh, the song is longer than the number of pictures I have. No problem, I'll add more pictures. This is looking good. OK, hit the play button and see what this is going to look and sound like. Great. Now to insert a CD-R, and push the "save to CD" button under "finish movie." Wa-la! My son will love getting this nice surprise in the mail next week. I can't wait to get a computer with a DVD burner. As much as I say I hate computers, they are too much fun.

n Did you see the orange balloons? Saturday morning we followed the balloons all the way up Stephanie Way to Esaw Street. A good time was had by all at the Kids & Horses Therapeutic Riding Center's Annual Pumpkin Patch and Mini Carnival Fundraiser. There were children trying to eat a mini donut off a string hanging in the air, bean bag and penny tosses. The children seemed to really enjoy the fishing game. There was a wonderful assortment of treats at the cake walk and I saw lots of people leaving with pumpkins. Thank you so much for the great day.

n Lisa Welch is a Johnson Lane resident and can be reached at 267-9350.