Sunday, September 30, 2007

Weekend in CT

Our Goddaughter Julia turns 6 this Wednesday. She had a Karate party on Saturday. The kids were very excited. We debated bringing Justin but we were told that Julia said she would be very disappointed if Justin did not come, so off we all went. Justin was the youngest in the group, but by far one of the most excited. Julia did a great job leading the group in the excercises. Justin did his best but had to add an extra jump and giggle to everything he did. Well, then came the "self control" game. The children were told to stand in place and not laugh. If you laughed you had to sit down. The teachers and parents then walked around to get the kids to laugh. Well the leader went to Justin first, an obvious choice but he did not laugh. By the end almost every child was sitting and both leaders were trying to get Justin to laugh. He had a huge smile on his face but he didn't laugh. Suddenly she looked up and said, with much surprise in her voice, "Justin wins the self control contest", he was the only one still standing. We laughed so hard. Both kids loved breaking the wood with their hands and feet. They had a great time. I don't have any pictures of the party but maybe Kelly will post some on her blog- hint hint.

We then went back and had a sleepover at their house which was very fun for all. Kelly and I proved the ING cards still have their magic- we can do no wrong. Here are a few pics of the birthday girl- yes trying to get my assignment in for this week. I am enjoying this class and the leader is tough, which is what I wanted. What do you think, are my pictures getting better?




Friday, September 28, 2007

A little fun

and this is the best pic I could get of him this week.... little stinker.


not a great pic of Jess, but this is a face she makes all the time, so I love it for that reason.

Here are two pics of the boy down the street. He and Jess are in the same class in school and this week they decided they were going to marry each other. Justin thinks he is pretty cool too. We had a playdate and I brought my camera in hopes of corraling another subject. By the end of this class there won't be a child in town that won't run from me I am afraid.



Another Blue Eyed Beauty

Ok, with another photo assignment looming I had to throw myself on the mercy of my friends with kids who aren't sick of my taking their picture. This is Amy. She has three older brothers, two of them are classmates with my kids. Her mom was kind enough to let me barge in on her this morning to take some pictures. I forgot how quick little 15 month olds can move- good practice for me and my focusing. Mom tried to put a clip in her hair, giving her much amusement and distractions. Isn't she beautiful?? I think so!






Sunday, September 23, 2007

Hmmmmm

Guess who has an opinion about all my picture taking??

but on the bright side I have finally figured out how to back button focus and can finally nail the focus on my super sharp 50mm lens (that only took a year).

Saturday, September 22, 2007

A Sneak Peek

Here is a little sneak peek for Miss A's parents. My online proofing site is down for "reconstruction", hopefully it will be back up and running in a few days. Until then this will just have to tide them over. This is my second time photographing Little A, the first time she was just 3 months old, now she is 6 months old and unstoppable. She is already sitting and crawling. Phew- not sure how we are going to get a pic of her at 9months, I think she will be running circles around all of us.






What do you think? total cutie, right??

Friday, September 21, 2007

A couple of Pics

One of the nicest things about this weekend was having a nice visit with Aunt Meg. Justin would not leave her side. He loved doing everything with Aunt Meg. Unfortunately we were all so worn out from paintball that I didn't really get any pictures. But here is one of the two of them together watching TV.

Here are a few of Miss Sophia of the blue blue eyes. I need to take a bunch of pictures for my class this week so I brought my camera with me to dance knowing that miss blue eyes would be there. Unfortunately she was a little under the weather, but here are two.

That's all for now!

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Paintball Links

Here is the link to the pictures. They are in no particular order, they are Bec's, Meg's and our pictures. Some pictures from the party have been ommitted to protect the innocent, but I can email them to you directly if you like. Here is the video of Marc's moment of glory. Funny, my big moment was not caught on film, but you all remember it right? We have found a pair of Nike Air size 11 shoes left in the breezeway- anyone claiming?

The Big Surprise 4-0!

Well we got him. When I asked him if he knew about the surprise he looked at me and said, "It's September 15th! Why would I think it would be for my birthday??" So the beauty of my, let's do the surprise a month early plan, worked! The day began with pouring down rain and we were all a little bummed. We had no idea what we were doing to begin with, and were pretty sure we weren't going to get any better with rain. But in the end the rain was a blessing in disguise. The rain kept all of the "regulars" off the field and it was just the 10 of us for the first few hours which was so much fun. I believe everyone had a much better time than they thought they would- including Marc since he thought he was going to shoot girlscouts not good friends. We even stayed after closing time so we could use up our ammo. After lunch a couple of young kids came. The amusing thing is they were as afraid of us as we were of them. They were nervous to play against us until we pointed out that we were bigger and slower than they were. We also let them choose one of our team members to be on their team and they chose Kelly because "she is Excellent". Unbeknownst to them she had only arrived 15 minutes earlier and had only played one round, but played it "excellently". We had a great day, ending in much re-hashing of the days exploits. Anyone else a little sore today?



Steve in all his glory looking fierce.
A few choice shots.

at the end of the day, a little worse for the wear.
I will upload all of the pictures and put a link here to view them so check back tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who came yesterday and giving Marc a great day.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Just some Picture Taking

So I am taking another online photography course. This time from a photographer whose work I have been admiring, it is more of a mentoring course. Justin had a playdate yesterday. Jessica takes dance with a girl who has a 2yr old brother. We, the moms, realized that is makes a heck of a lot more sense for one mom to drive the girls to dance and the other mom to watch the two boys at their house. Everyone is happier. This week was my turn to watch the boys. With a photo assignment looming I grabbed my camera and followed them around the backyard. I got a lot of bad photos- I will spare you those, but I also got some good ones. Aidan has not been traumatized by my constant photo taking, so he looked everytime I called his name- love that! Here is my favorite one of Aidan and a couple of Justin.




Monday, September 10, 2007

Justin's First Day of School

Justin's first day of school today. Boy were we all excited! Before school starts the children all received a picture to color and some clues about a story they will all read on the first day. This year they received a race car and had to decide where the race car was going and what happened to it on the way. They also had to name their car. Justin's gave his car the same name that Justin has, that was easy. He barely let a crayon touch the paper so that didn't take too long and he decided the wheel fell off and it was going to California. Well the car fell in the lake and it was on the way to the ice cream shop. I couldn't get a pic of him before school started, he was too excited to go inside, but he complied when I picked him up.

Here he is showing everyone his car and what he think happened.

Here is Sydnie, she and Justin have known each other since he was only a few weeks old. She knows how to pose for the first day of school pictures!

Saturday, September 8, 2007

First Soccer Game

Today was Jessica's first soccer game. [FYI, for those of you wondering what the rules are for such small players here are the differences: the game is only played on a half field, there are 6 players on the field, they are required to pass 3 times before they can try to score, the goals are smaller and it is only one hour.] Jessica said her stomach hurt this morning and I realized that she was really nervous about the game. She told Aunt Sheri on the phone last night that she was nervous about playing in a crowd of soccer players. We talked about it and decided that as long as she tried her best and had a good time it didn't matter how she played. She began the game on the sidelines. Once she was put in they put her into a forward position. This is not her strength, she doesn't really have the stamina at this time to run non-stop. After half time they put her back on defense. There are 2 official coaches and 2 dads they are well helper coaches. All 4 of these people are on the field with the kids in addition to the 2 high school referees. One of the helper coaches realized that Jessica needed some extra help and became her personal coach- it was just what she needed. He stayed right next to her and encouraged her and gave her advice on what to do. She did much better on defense. THEN they decided to make Jessica goalie. We were sitting next to our neighbor and her son was goalie and it was driving her nuts (especially when our team scored 3x in a row). Oh no. Every mother's worst nightmare. On the plus side our team has at least two really good players and that means that the ball stays pretty far away from our goal most of the time.

Here she is suiting up to be goalie...
waiting....
showing that she is alert and ready to stop the ball if needed (notice her personal coach hanging out at the goal with her)...
HER BIG SAVE!!!!!
She did it! She stopped a goal and almost stopped another one later. More importantly she wasn't intimidated and threw herself right in there to try to get the ball. I thought she did great. She was very happy and said she had a great time. They don't keep score (well not officially although I am sure some people were). We have at least one game every weekend sometimes one on Saturday and one on Sunday until the 3rd week in October, so you might be seeing a lot of these pictures in the future.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Water Fun!

Nothing like a hose and a sprinkler to create some fun! Kids did a great job of entertaining themselves this weekend (not such a great job of staying dry). Marc was able to work outside and they played nearby. Wait until you see all the yard word that got accomplished! Wish I could say the same about the inside of the house, but as you all know this work is very quickly undone. I was cleaning when he was outside, but if you stop by you won't notice much of a difference.








Poor Bonk

so in June we got a new driveway, and we are so happy. never thought I would rave about a driveway, but I do. one of the best things is that the kids have a great place to play now. they can draw with chalk on our driveway, something that just wasn't possible in its previous state. so this weekend the kids were drawing outlines of themselves, parking spaces for their bikes, Justin chalked up his tire and made all sorts of drawings. they entertained themselves for hours, a true blessing. alas Bonk may not feel the same way. he went and had a nice roll around on the driveway and now he is a little pink. anyone have ideas on how to get pink chalk off a cat?



Playing with Pictures

took some pics this weekend and I am playing around with them. below you will see the before and the after shots. I think I like the after on the first one but the after on the second one has a little too much vignetting, what do you think? at least I got rid of the ugly hose across the yard. took some other pics too and I will post those soon. We had a really nice weekend.