a day in my life...

I have a son.  Said son keeps me busy ALL the time.  Whether he's eating dog food, getting into the garbage, pulling his sister's hair, eating electrical cords, playing in the toilet, sucking on my cell phone, pulling all of the diapers out of the basket, or just gagging himself on anything that he can find to stick down his throat...he is a little high maintenance.  This afternoon sissy was with GiGi so we had a day together.  I tried to teach him to use the little toddler bowls with the portioned lids to keep snacks in the bowl, and reach in as you need snacks.  It didn't work out.  3 seconds later the lid was pried off with his teeth and we were in a pool of cheerios.


I love our dog's intent look into the cheerios here...

 now where did that cheerio get to....

10 months old!

my wittle bitty boy is gwowing up!  My man is 10 months old now and i'm starting to think about his 1 yr birthday!!!!  AAAHHHH!  That makes me old too! We headed outside this morning for some shots of this little big man!

Hubers Orchard

We recently had a visit from a certain poppop and 'manny' (grammy) at our house and had an outing at a local orachard/winery.  Baby girl exhausted everyone with her excitement over her visitors but we all had a great time...

waiting to ride the horsey!

we didn't catch anything with xander...i guess he didn't taste so good....

yuuummmm....

fishin with poppop

and she got her first fish!!!

leftovers...

these are some leftover side photos from various times that i've taken pics....


what i was going for before the grasshopper joined me...

this leaf got a little crowded...

my princess and her new princess dress...

aaaaand again...

and some more of my lil model's pics with her bear...

and i leave you in peace with a shot of my very active pup...

another new technique...

usually the point of good photography is to try to put things into focus....but sometimes it's fun to capture things out of focus too!  It usually drives me nuts but this time i was able to capture the photo just right...enough in focus to know what it is, but out of focus enough to make it interesting...

practice

Today i spent a little bit of time practicing my closeups and flower photos as well as my black and white editing.  I am such a fan of b/w photography but it's actually difficult to edit just right.  Some photos call for overexposure, others require filters to bring out certain colors as brighter white or darker black.  Either way this bright yellow flower created some good practice for me!

i was capturing some water beads on a piece of grass and the second i started to snap this grasshopper joined me.  He was so well behaved as i was within about 3 inches of him and there he just sat!  What fortune!!

sick babies

We are going to have a high water bill this month.  I have washed our son's sheets like 7x in the past 3 days, and have started using my daughter's pink sheets on his bed in between washings.  This poor kid can't catch a break. I guess he is like his momma in that when he gets sick...he gets sick.  I guess it's just a small stomach bug or something because there is no fever...just a lot of...mess...all over.  But his cute quotient has probably doubled since he's been sick.  His little sleepy puppy dog eyes are always begging to be cuddled, and his smiles are somehow bigger?!

edit...he has also become bipolar today...

Sunny Evening

All day today we had rain and clouds and just dreary weather.  I'm one of those people whose moods are affected by weather greatly!  So i was in an odd mood, but in the evening the sun finally made its way out and i headed out to take some pics of the flowers and bugs and stuff.  Kenzie made her way out and asked me to take her picture.  Ironically she never wants her picture taken and thus won't look at the camera...but i got a few anyways...



spiderwebs

I need a micro lens like nothing else.  I love photographing the little things that you usually wouldn't pay any attention to.  A bug on a leaf, the center of a flower, the details on an interesting piece of architecture...etc..etc...
I do what i can with what i have though so i was tempted outside this morning by the interesting sunlight cast across my yard...

 so i thought i would practice my capturing of the sunshine, as i learned how to do that the other day...

As i was doing this i noticed an awesome spiderweb strung up between the grasses...

when i walked away i found another web in the grass with a spider currently working on it.  Again...i would LOVE to have a micro lens for things like this...but this is what i could get...

after the web i went back to focusing on different techniques.  Trying to capture some bokeh with the fresh morning dew was a challenge as well.  I am however loving getting to practice with my camera and learning new things!!

Gigi (Gee-Gee)

Gigi is our kiddos' grandma, Joel's mom.  She lives not too far off so we hang out pretty frequently.  Today we were just doin our normal stuff, running errands and such and i noticed that GiGi and Xander matched quite nicely in their white shirts and thought it was a good day for some pics....so off we went to an exotic location far far away....my front yard.

my children have GOT to be the least cooperative young children for photos...