Saturday, January 29, 2011

Update via iPhone

Lately I have felt less like a mom and more like a pack horse. For instance, when I head to Bible Study during the week I carry from the car: two diaper bags (one for each of my kids to have with them in their child-care rooms), my purse, my book and Bible, my coffee, Zetta in her two-thousand-pound car seat, and (hopefully) I have a hand available to hang on to Hale. It's a little crazy and I've lost my balance on more than one occasion.

With all of the other stuff that we pack around on a daily basis I have found that I am less likely to take my heavy camera with me. So, I rely on my OTHER camera- the one I pretty much have with me everywhere- on my iphone. Here's an update on some of our recent happenings as recorded by my iphone:

In early January, just as the weather turned bitterly cold and windy, our furnace decided to quit. Fortunately, Landon can fix absolutely anything. Unfortunately, we had to wait until Monday to buy parts. We were able to keep the upstairs pretty warm with space heaters so we spent the days up there -including all of our meals. This is Hale eating his breakfast on his toy box.



Sometimes when the weather is gray, the kids are cranky, I'm tired, and especially if it is only 40 degrees in our house, I daydream about sitting by the pool while someone brings me drinks and I read a good book. Amazingly, I had the chance to live out this dream with Landon during the second week of January. We spent a rejuvenating 5 days without either of our kids! It was a little hard for me to say goodbye to Zetta- I debated about bringing her along. But at the encouragement of my husband and mother-in-law I left her home. Except for a few moments in the very uncomfortable locations that I used my Medela pump (i.e. airport bathroom floor) I never regretted the decision.

A huge thanks to my in-laws for caring for our two kids!

Landon by our hotel


and in his spa robe by the spa pool


the lazy river


It was a little hard to come back to rainy Washington. Fortunately, Monday was a holiday and Tom, Dawn and Libby included us in a lunchtime adventure to the Everson auction barn.

Here is Hale and I and a poor Llama who couldn't get a bid to save his life (probably literally).



Hale and I shared a burger and a milkshake at the auction barn - yum! Here is a man eating at the counter across from us. Hale has a strange habit of photographing strangers. Fortunately, they are unaware.



And finally, a picture of Landon and Hale moving milk at the farm on Thursday. Just because it's cute-

Friday, January 21, 2011

Christmas 2010 - Random

I am running out of space to store all my digital pics. Landon is fixing this problem, but in the meantime I have pictures scattered everywhere - memory cards, internal harddrives, external harddrives, etc.

I found a stash of Christmas pictures today - and thought it might be appropriate to get a few up on the blog before Valentines Day. A bit random - but here they are:

Hale in his shark towel from G and G Trautman. He was freaked out by it at first, but now it's his favorite!



Christmas Eve:

Hale by G and G Van Dyk's Christmas tree.


and by the stockings


Cousins

Thursday, January 6, 2011

New Loves

I got a really special Christmas gift this year - a Canon 17-55 2.8 lens. It gives me the flexibility of a zoom lens, but is still really sharp. It is also great in low-light situations.

It came in the mail on Tuesday and Landon was a little scandalized that I still hadn't opened it up by Wednesday night. I was really excited about it, but we've been so busy and I was waiting for the perfect situation to try it out.

This afternoon Hale took an extra long time to fall asleep so I am enjoying more time than usual to myself. It is a really dark day today, but Zetta was still feeling smiley, so I finally had the perfect conditions to try out my lens.

I realized during post processing that I really didn't shoot with optimal camera settings - so these aren't perfect - but it will give you an idea of what Zetta looks like now.



Note the wider angle...







Pretty sharp considering the room was really dim. I think I'm going to enjoy this lens!

I'm still having a hard time getting Zetta to smile at me when my face is behind a camera. But she really is smiling a lot now and it is so rewarding.

Monday, January 3, 2011

A New Year!

Well, it got a little busy around here during the holidays so I had to take a break from the blog. Hopefully I will get some of our pictures from Christmas up soon. For now, I thought I would post some outtakes from the photoshoot I did for our Christmas card.

It was pretty difficult to get a two-and-a-half-year-old and an infant to cooperate, but I got lucky one morning in early December - they were both pretty mellow and I got a few good shots.

In case you didn't see our card, this is it...



Here are a few more from that morning that didn't make the card: