Ethan and Josh Nov 26 2011

Josh: I wonder why it's so cold at Christmastime?
Ethan: Because that's the way God wanted to do it.

Thankful

We had a great Thanksgiving. And I got in lots and lots of practice taking pictures! Here are some of my favorites from the day:

This is my mom's table before the Thanksgiving feast. She does such a great job and her table was beautiful as always.

She also had this great idea of putting a bunch of branches in a vase to look like a tree and made various "ornaments" out of scrapbooking paper, stickers and twine. On one of the ornaments she made a pocket for us to put small pieces of paper listing what we were thankful for (yes, one of the items was my camera!).

This is the bottom part of the same "Thankful Tree". So cool!

The boys also made their gingerbread houses on Thanksgiving. They had a great time, although Ethan's house was already demolished by the evening. It's just so hard to resist all of that candy! Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was wonderful!

Lazy Day!

I've been so busy being busy, that I didn't realize we had absolutely nothing to do today. No work. No school. No choir. Just hanging out in our PJ's all day. What a gift! Of course that meant time to take some pictures. Here are a few of my favorites:

He is so sweet with her. I love when he focuses on her and makes sure she's doing OK.

This is pretty typical. Josh is trying to focus and E is going crazy.

Love that sweet face. And she's wearing my fave Alice in Wonderland PJ's.
Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

The Black Dog

There's a sweet black dog that comes around our backyard every so often and appeared yesterday and ran around for a little while. Ethan saw the dog out the window and said, "I think that dog wants to OWN US!" :)

Staying Up Late

Josh went with his Sunday School class to the City Streets Shelter and to the Humane Society on Sunday (thanks Tara, Angie, Allison and Rachael for the experience!). Per Angie, Josh wanted to know when the people arrived at the shelter and what they did. He was also very curious about when they went to bed. They told him that they could go to sleep when they wanted. So, he wanted to know if he could come and stay there sometime. Imagine being able to go to bed whenever you want! :)

Lesson Learned

I am really proud of myself for taking pictures each day since the class. Even tonight when I have a million loads of laundry to fold, I made sure to take some time to work with my camera. I don't have any pictures to show you tonight because mostly what I did was take random pictures inside the house but practiced trying to memorize where the buttons/settings were without looking. Including moving the focus point around the screen without looking, which is the hardest part for me. Now I'm heading off to fold laundry and hopefully go to bed soon. Looking forward to taking pics of the kids and family this week!

White Sheet Cake

Yesterday when I was talking with Kim during my class, she was talking about the light meter on the camera and how it actually worked, as far as reading the greyscale of the focus point. Sometimes, depending on the color of what you are focusing on, the meter might read lighter/darker, even though the real amount of light in the pciture is different. Confused yet? Let me show you an example:

So, when I had my focus point on the tire (really black) the light meter kept telling me it was too dark. But guess, what? When I adjusted to allow more light, the picture looked overexposed.

Obviously focusing on something really light will give the opposite effect. So let me show you what I challenged myself with for today: a White Sheet Cake (from a Farewell Celebration for my friend Pamela, a priest who is leaving my church to be the new rector at a different church).

So the thing about the white sheet cake is when you look at the light meter, it says there's too much light because the meter is reading the level of grey (or lack thereof) at the focus point (on the white cake). So, when I adjusted my settings the pictures were still kinda dark. I finally got the hang of it and ended up with a fairly good picture (I honestly can't tell you which one I thought was the good picture b/c I took about 100 pictures of the cake). But I'm including the two pics above to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. As Kim said, you can start with the light meter, but you also have to trust your gut and go with what your eyes are telling you too.

Josh is a great kid

Got the sweetest note from a mom of a classmate/friend of Josh's yesterday. She told me how much she appreciated Josh being a good friend to her son and what a great kid he is. I agree!

More Smiles to Come

So I took a photography class today. I got a new camera for my bday a few weeks ago and I really had no idea what I was doing. Seriously I was impressed with myself for realizing that holding the button halfway down autofocuses it.

SO,  this class was great. Really great. It was taught by Jodie and Kim of Fresh Art Photography. And during the class they mentioned that one of their students blogged her whole experience of learning to take pictures and documenting her practice. And that's what I'd like to do here. I don't think anyone ever reads this thing, but at least it's a place to track my progress and keep myself honest. Hopefully I'll have some pictures up here in the next day or so, and maybe some of those will be smiles from my kids.