Crappy family pictures

Last weekend I thought it would be a great time to get a family picture so I could finally mail out my "Chrismas" letter. We finally got a hitch put on our Pilot and I got a new bike that's actually tall enought for me to ride comfortably. So we went for a ride on the river trail near our house.

 The trail passes PNC park and Heinz field. Pretty cool. Thought it would be cool to get a picture in front of one of the stadiums. Sean though Roberto would be a good place. As you can see, or maybe you can't, I was already covered in mud :) Well, not covered, but the legs were spackled.

 Anyway, so I was reading on Pioneer Woman website (they do awesome photography) (link is on the right) to let your camera pick your ISO. Which, if you were using a film camera, is "film speed." So I thought, well, crap, if she can do it, then my pics should come out great if I do that. uh, yeah, that would be negative.

 All of them came out really grainy. I am so mad, because now I can't use them for the card. not to mention that you can totally see my fat gut sticking out, but that is besides the point :) So I'm back to chosing the ISO myself. stupid camera.

 Sean was trying to get the girls to grin. Abby was all for it, as you can see, Sabrina wasn't.

As you can see, Abby is catching up to Sabrina in height. Can't really tell that there is 3 years difference, can ya?

Time for Spring!

Spring has sprung at our house and I'm really happy about it! Not that we got a lot of snow this winter, but I was sick of it already. We could have used a couple more freezing days to kill all the yucky bugs, but eh, ya win some ya lose some. Last fall I was determined to get my bulbs in the ground. This is what came up. Yaaa. so happy. Although some of them look kinda sick, not sure why.

The daffodils have just started blooming. They look kinda sick, too. hmmm, I'm noticing a theme here. Don't know if it was the kind I got or that they need to grow some more. We'll see what they look like next spring before I remove them from my flower bed. I wasn't able to put any tulips in cause some yucky bugs got into the bulbs and ate them. grrr, stupid bugs. I guess the good part is, once they ate my bulbs they died! I'll get some more this fall and plant the tulips in the spots where stuff didn't come up.  

 And here is our awesome low-tech greenhouse. We (lets be honest, I) decided that we needed to get started on the garden a little earlier this year. Last year we tried to plant some cold weather stuff and it didn't grow because we went right from winter to summer. Since I thought we'd probably be doing the same again, I thought we should get a jump on some of our faves.  

 So we got some PVC pipe, made a frame and then used clear painters plastic over top. I have a few ideas on how to improve on this next year, but for now, it works. Stuff is actually starting to sprout. yaaa. We put in beets, cauliflower, radishes, kohlrabi and carrots (I think). Hopefully we will get some good stuff in a few weeks. I'm so excited for fresh veggies.

The funny part is, you know how I mentioned winter straight to summer? We planted this, it snowed once, maybe an inch, and now it's been 80 degrees for the past week. Yep, I think we can say spring skipped us again this year. this is gonna be hell on my air conditioning bill. sigh