Crossing My Fingers

Hopefully soon, we'll have a brand new family picture I can proudly display at the top of our blog. I mean the one with Jakey's face drawn in is nice. And it makes a statement that every parent understands completely, but he's a cute guy and deserves to really be in the picture no matter how many moms have told me the picture made them laugh out loud.

We've got family pictures scheduled for next weekend with Stephanie Pilling Photography. Check out her blog and website. She's great at what she does.

She did our pictures April last year and I have received endless compliments on the amazing work she did for us!! I love the photo and have it in our living room. It makes me happy. Cross your fingers we all have happy smiley faces. I know I am!

Family Pictures

Do you have trouble getting everyone in your family to look at the camera at the same time? Sometimes they just won't cooperate and you have to improvise. This is what happens when you have a kid that just wants a nap and won't look at the camera.

For the Sake of the Camel

Did you notice I've actually posted pictures a couple times lately? Not much, but a few here and there. I'm trying folks, but sometimes those little details are the thing that breaks the camel's back. Therefore, for the sake of the camel, I'm only doing what I can do and not feeling bad about it. For months I was terrible at posting at all because I wanted it to be perfect with picture properly placed. That proved to be an effective plan. I missed months and months of writing down the funnies and other things in our lives. Now they are gone forever. I'm still taking the pictures. And some day when I'm old and grey, I'll have all the time in the world to match them up to the stories I write. For now, I'm lookin' out for the camel as much as I can.

No One To Tell

It's 1:00 am. I have no one to tell at this hour of day, but I finally went through our pictures and cleaned them out. It feels great! I'm down to about 1.75 GB. That sounds like a lot, but I take a lot of pictures. We got a mid-range fancy pants camera when Maddie was about one year old because I had approximately zero pictures of that child with eyes opened or heck, even looking in the general direction of the camera. Never have I regretted that purchase. I love it. I do take too many pictures now though. Most of them are bad and should be thrown out. I set it to take multiple pictures per second and often do. Now we're down to 1.76 GB and we started at 5 GB. That's some major progress! If only I could get rid of 65% of the junk in the basement in three hours. Now that would be the definition of heaven, wouldn't it?

Family Pictures on a Busy Saturday

Last Saturday was jam packed with things all day long from early to late. Brian was up by 6am to get himself and Ben up and off to a stake service project. They cleaned a ton of cabins for the National Park Service and helped get the campground ready for the season. It was a great success and the park service couldn't believe anyone would volunteer to do something like that and bring 50 people or so to help. I laughed when they got home with t-shirts the park service had printed especially for them. They even had our name printed on them! Seriously, they must have be ecstatic to save weeks of grunt work.

My job while they were gone was to wear Maddie out and get her to take a super early nap so she would be happy for the family pictures late that afternoon. I was successful and when the boys got home at 1pm Maddie and Jacob were both sleeping. We cooked the rolls Brian and I had been making and then scooted out the door for a company party/picnic. Much care was taken to make sure we had party clothes and picture clothes for everyone, plus change of shoes, socks, hair fixing stuff for Maddie and extra diapers for Maddie and Ben. You know, the works.

The party was fun. Brian entertained with magic tricks and had his co-workers mesmerized. Most of them appeared not to know he was a magician. It was fun to watch the entire party stop and watch him. Jacob demanded a snack as it was time to leave, so between him and the magic, we were late to our photography appointment. Ben and I were able to change top shirts on the drive and we got Maddie as soon as our buckles were off and Jacob's shirt was in hand. Brian grabbed his shirt from on top of our bag of stuff and we rushed in with the stroller to meet Stephanie. When we found her and a great spot to start shooting (a very long walk from the car) we realized neither one of us had brought the bag with hair stuff or clean diapers or Maddie's nice shoes.

All mothers of girls know there is no point in doing a little girls hair before pictures if she is just going to mess it up while sitting in her car seat. So, we hadn't done a thing to Maddie's hair and it was pretty messy. We ended up trying to calm it a bit with our fingers and had no real choice but to call it good and leave her in the stinky diaper she had produced on the car ride. Ugh. I have been nervous all week that the pictures would turn out terrible. I was wrong. While Maddie could have looked a bit more tidy, the pictures are great. I can't wait to print the big family one and put it in the living room. The picture hanging there now was taken when Maddie was four weeks old. Way past time for an update. Thanks Stephanie for your great camera work! I know my kids weren't exactly over joyed to be having a photo session. You did great with them and keeping them moving!

Then we rushed back to Fairfax for my youth committee meetings and a rockin' dance with the kiddos while Brian got the kids dinner and to bed. I got to bed just before 2am after finishing putting final details together for a stake fireside the next night and pumping (joys of motherhood). I didn't even realize until the next day at church why I was so hungry. I had skipped dinner and breakfast because I was so busy. At least I had a lot of M&Ms at the dance! I think I had three sandwiches for lunch an apple, an orange, chips, two cookies and probably a few other things. Then I finally felt better.

Preschool - Learning About the Body & A Photo Shoot Ruined!

Today for preschool we continued our unit on the Body. I took the kids to the library and got about 15 books with stories and pictures about the body. Some were cute, some had real pictures of bones, some talked about what fun things our bodies could do, some were silly poems. They were a hit. One book in particular I had was about bones. It had realistic drawings of skeletons, an actual picture of a skull with teeth and a vertebrae, x-rays of the pelvis and ribs. The kids were totally enthralled. For a good 15 minutes I had them hooked. We felt our own bones and each others, they liked the bumps on the back of each others spine, find their own hip bones and tried to count their own ribs. Glad they were all just 4 and 5 years old, because they all just pulled up their shirts to feel their ribs, boys and girls alike. I decided it was best to let it go rather than address modesty at that moment in time. I was also glad I could claim a pregnant belly and that my baby was hiding my ribs so I didn't have to share. Cute kids. We started the day with free play time outside where they could use their bodies to run and kick balls, twirl in circles, rake leaves and jump in the pile, feel the cool breeze on their skin and a few light sprinkles of rain on their skin. The colors were gorgeous and I had a great idea at the spur of the moment. Later in the lesson I had some pictures to compare their eyes to a camera. Instead of showing boring pictures, I'd grab our camera and take great pictures in the autumn leaves of the kids playing! Then throw the memory card into the laptop and they could get a slide show of themselves as the pictures as we talked about which was better, a camera or their eyes. Brilliant!! I got the camera and went to town taking tons of fun pictures, 109 to be exact. I was so excited and so were they. When we got to the slide show part of the lesson, I popped in the memory card and well, we had a really good lesson. Most the pictures were blurry, unfocused and it was hard to make out a good image on the faces. Last night we did a family photo shoot in the overcast, just before dusk hours in the leaves and Brian had adjusted the settings on the camera. I just expected it to be in auto mode and never checked. I'm so sad. The pictures could have been amazing! I have a few, but not that many great ones. Oh well. That will teach me to point and shoot without checking how the pictures are coming out.

One other funny thing...we played the game "I spy with my little eye" and everyone got a turn to be the clue giver. The hardest one took us a while. The starting clue was that it was bright. Okay, so we guess the lamps, any and everything shiny in the living room, the brightness on the ceiling, and everything else you could come up with. Hugh finally gave in that it was the light coming out of the lamp. Can you do that? I can't actually see light, I learned this in physics class, you can only observe it's results or something like that. I do remember there is no real light, just an absence of dark. So, I guess Hugh won the game. His was definitely the hardest to guess...an untouchable phenomena

Claudia and the Night Time Photo Shoot

Claudia needed some Halloween in the dark photo shoot pictures for her class this week, so we went over and tried to help her out. Ben was MUCH more helpful that Maddie the stinker, but we got a few of both of them. With two kids, a camera and a few other lights to get the right effect, it was not a one man job by any means. It too Claudia, Aimee, me and a bag of mini candy bars but Claudia sure did a great job. Hope she gets an "A" on her assignment. Just for my notes, she used ISO 1800 and an aperture of f4 to f5. I am going to have to practice some of this in the dark photography.

My New Hobby

I've been having loads of fun experimenting with my camera this last month. I prodded long enough that one of the four photographers in our ward was finally willing to start a photography enrichment interest group. So I have homework and everything. Check out the best picture from my first assignment so far.