Fighting the Urge

Hello all,

I am trying to resist the tempation of laying down for a nap while the kids are. Why? Because it just never works out, that's why. I am pretty sure I can count the number of times I've successfully gotten to nap when it's just the three of us on one hand. So I'm trying to organize my desk a bit right now and thought I'd share some pictures from my morning so far. I got my new fifty in the mail last night (thanks mom!) and have been figuring out how to use it. I'm still off on my focus quite a bit so I think I need to adjust my aperture.

Anywho. In an effort to stay awake and procrastinate from cleaning, I'm going to share some photos with you. First off are a few from Thanksgiving with the Trader side last weekend. Jack and his cousin Ryder were non-stop, as usual. You could actually see Jack's hair was wet from sweat. Of course Casey's dad cannot help himself from keeping the place at a good 85 degrees so that didn't help. But he had fun! Bella had fun too, but it just doesn't come across so well in the pictures. She got really tired.



Here are a few shots I took last night when I got the lens.



Next up are some photos from an attempt at oobleck this morning. If you're familiar with Dr. Suess, he has a book called Oobleck and you can actually make the liquid/solid in the book. It is suppose to be about 2 parts corn starch to 1 part water and then a little food coloring. Jack didn't like those ratios and since he got a hold of the measuring cup with the water in and dumped it all in before I could stop him, we just have goop. I hope if we let it sit out the water will evaporate a bit and we can play with it later today or tomorrow. And then there was the food coloring...at least Jack learned about mixing colors.


It started out a nice purpleish color but then someone felt the need to add every color we had and lots of it! So now it's gray.

Bella mostly watched.


After the failed oobleck, we went upstairs to get dressed and stuff and the kids were being all cute and playing well on Jack's bed. Couldn't resist some snaps!


And we also played with building blocks.


After nap time we'll probably head to the park if it's not too windy and I'm sure I'll be bringing the camera again. I'm pretty predictable that way :)

Must share

I just finished these pages and I love them so I am sharing them with you here since I think only a few of you guys check my pages. Enjoy!




If you want to see my others, check out the link on the side or here.

A few sample pics

An update on the sample pics:




Casey took this last one :) I'm not sure why it's only showing up here as a square and cut off the rest of Bella.


My camera came via FedEx on Friday afternoon! I opened the box, gave Jack some bubble wrap so he wouldn't touch anything and was ready to test the waters. Well, actually the stinking battery wasn't charged at all so I took the kids for a walk in Schmeekle while it charged up...but then! oh then I had some fun.


The lens I got with the kit is a 55-250mm which I got to use for outdoors since the f stop only goes down to 4 (I've lost a bunch of you, but Canon users I really recommend this lens. Pretty fast, light weight and decent price). I was planning on asking my parents to get me a 50mm for Christmas to use indoors, but now they're getting us a gps so I'll see. But I'm really happy with the performance of the camera and the lens. You can tell the quality is just so much better and I'm so happy. These were all taken when the sun was starting to set so the lighting wasn't great, but I think it did great! You'll notice that the objects in the background are blurred so the kids are more in focus above which I just couldn't get with the old camera.

If I wanted to get shots like these with my old camera I had to be on macro setting right int the kids' faces and making sure they didn't move a muscle or the photos were all blurry. These were all taken from the other side of the room!
And oh my is Bella the biggest ham I've ever seen. The moment I had the camera up and pointed at her she was just smiling and laughing and loving it up. Then I'd think, "Ok, I should put the camera down now and actually play with my children" and she's start bawling. Pull the camera back out...happy. Put the camera away...sad. Ham.

And I threw in a picture of the kids at Schmeekle during the battery charging. They are so cute!
Oh and all of these pictures are completely unedited!

What a deal!

You know you've got a purse fetish and you have an extra hundred bucks lying around so why not purchase this? Or purchase it for a friend, or ask a friend to purchase it for themselves. I don't care I just want the money for my camera fund so I can get it off the credit card quickly :)

http://wausau.craigslist.org/clo/1451267308.html

And if you don't want the purse but simply want to donate a large sum of money to me, I'm open to that as well ;)

halloween 2009

Original post title, huh? Yeah. Anyway, Halloween was not the fun and merriment it usually is this year. The kids didn't quite get the amount of sleep they needed during the day so when it came time to get costumes on Jack was just crying and didn't want to wear his costume and asking to take it off. He loved loved loved it every other day since I bought it for him, but the day he is suppose to wear it, no. Eventually I bribed him with candy to wear it for a little bit and we went to two houses. Then he just cried to go back home. Gah. Oh well. He did have a really good time answering the door and handing out candy. Bella was rather impartial to the whole thing. But at least I got a photo of them in their adorable costumes for the 10 minutes that they would wear them.



And on a side note...I ordered my new camera last night!! I've been shopping around for a long time and was down to two cameras. One was significantly out of our price range and the other was manageable. Last night I checked a deal site and saw my camera listed there (the more manageable priced one) and talked to Casey and he let me order it. Now he doesn't have to hear me whine about my camera or debate which one I want. Of course now there is the I need this lens stuff ;)

Be nice

"Momma, listen. Be nice."

That's what Jack told me because I kept yelling at him to get out of the water. I'm really not sure if he was telling me I should be nice or summing up what he should do. I usually tell him listen before telling giving him a direction so I know he's paying attention. Either way it was pretty funny.

I took the kids to Schmeekle Reserve yesterday and it was so nice to have nice sunny weather again. It actually felt like fall! We hadn't been to schmeekle in a while so it was nice to see the changes. Here Jack and Bella are on a path surrounded by cattails. Jack saw one broken off and laying on the path and thought it was poop. So I showed him what it was and how soft they are and he got a kick out of em.


I'm sorry, who is this 8 year old standing in the center picture??

Bella was of course her normal happy self the whole time ;)

Poor kid, I took her out for a photo shoot and wouldn't let her eat the wet leaves. But she got pretty close.
Jack + climbing anything/nature = happy Jack.

Yep, he is splashing in the water. In the 50 degree weather. With shoes, socks, and pants on. He rode home in a diaper. But he had a blast.

Another photo shoot.

And just some random goodness from the trails.

And now that Bella is taking a little nap I'm going to go cuddle on the couch with Jack and watch Animusic. I'm not feeling 100% and I just want to lounge. Later!

Free Digi Scrap Stuff!

One of my favorite designers, Sue Cummings, is in the spotlight this week at Oscraps and she's having a great contest and giving away a free mini kit to get you started. Check it out here.

Honey giveaway

No, I'm not having another giveaway just yet, but this lovely lady is...
http://www.theprovidentwoman.com/?p=1379

Stupid weather.

Tomorrow I'm going on an overnight shopping trip with my mom and some aunts. I'm excited to get some holiday shopping started (last year I was completely done a few weeks before Christmas and it was so much more relaxed) and to eat! Two of my favorite restaurants are in Milwaukee and I am going to eat until I have to unbutton my pants! I'm such a lady :) But the forecast says it is suppose to rain just about non stop for at least a week. And I am going to have to drive down to Milwaukee (about a 2 1/2 hour drive) and back in that. Yuck.

I am also disappointed by the rain because I ordered new hats for the kids a few weeks ago. They were custom made which is why it took so long to get here. Now the weather isn't really enjoyable and I can't quite take the kids out to show off how darn cute these hats are on them. I had envisioned that we would actually have a fall. Instead there was really only about a week of what I consider fall. Boo to that. Anyway, the hats came in the mail last night so of course I made them try them on first thing this morning while they were still in their pj's and took some snap shots. I am so happy with how the hats turned out.

This is the lady I ordered them from if you are interested. The quality is really even better than I expected. http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=69490






And now I'd like to share some Jack-o-vision with you. He's really taken to photography just like his mom :) He loves to carry around one of the small digis we have and mostly take pictures of his eye because he thinks the lens should be aimed at him at all time. Maybe that's because I have a lens aimed at him so often. But it's been interesting to go through what he takes.

Most of the pictures are like this. A shot of his eye and a lot of orange from being so close to the skin. I'm just going to say he's an abstract artist :)

Then there are a few of these. Where I've told him to keep the camera back a little when doing a self portrait.

I took a family photo of us all on the steps a couple weeks back and as I was propping the camera and getting it ready for a countdown, Jack came over with his camera and started taking pictures too. It was so cute!

And here he must have thought the coffee table was pretty interesting what with the book and magnet.

And then every now and then there are these gems. I know it's out of focus and the flash is too bright and I look like a goon, but it's another photo of me with one of my kids. And that is definitely a good photo in my book.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Addictions

It's a good thing I don't do any of the addictive things that are bad for you like smoking or drugs, because when I find something I like I just can't seem to stop. I imagine if I tried meth I'd end up driving my family into living in a box. No will power over here.

My current addiction is adding texture to photos. I experimented with it on Friday night and I keep looking through photos to find ones that will work. I thought I'd share them with you.


I loved this one of Jack looking for fish a few weeks ago. So I decided to soften it up and I like the result.

This one is one of my favorites from the weekend. When I took the picture this is what I had imagined it looking like in my mind, but the photo just didn't have anything special about it. Now I think it does.

Just a little softer.

Again, softened.

Love how this one turned out. This was some lilac in our yard I shot when I was borrowing my friend's SLR for the day. I might put this up in a frame somewhere.


Ok, break is over. Time to get back to cleaning the basement and garage. Why do we have so much junk? Hope you all had a great weekend!