Funny girls

The favorite place for the girls to play when we throw them out of the house is the back of my truck. I have no idea what the attraction is, but this is where they always end up. When I went out to start taking some pics, they ran. Like hide behind the bushes and don't come out forever, ran. Silly girls. Don't they know I'm smarter than they are? hehe I went in the house and there is a window on the side where the truck is parked that doesn't have a screen in it. I slowly opened the window and starting shooting :) What cracked me up while I was taking the pictures was that Sabrina went to the front of the house and Abby asked her if I was still there trying to get their picture. little did they know.

Since I'm still learning what settings are best when with the new camera I took a few while changing everything. These are some that came out pretty well. I have no idea what they were concocting in the truck, but they had a bucket, water, a stick and were tearing leaves off of trees. Who knows!

Practice? well, I guess you could call it that.

I finally got my clarinet fixed and brought it home. It was in the shop for 6 months :) Had to have all the pads replaced cause it had been in storage for 15 years, more or less. I haven't played it since I graduated high school. it's been a long time. Today I got it out to see what I could do, if I could do anything. It wasn't too bad. I used to have some great lung capacity. Don't have squat now. Horrible. And my bottom lip gave out :) If you have ever played a wind intrument, you know exactly what I mean. I'm going to have to work on this. I'd like to at least be at the level I was when I quit playing. I wasn't that bad.

This would be the wise-cracking husband that seems to think he's funny. And Abby who metions Squidward frequently. Nice people I live with, eh?

Also took the pic of the clarinet 3 times with my new camera, this was the best one. I love being able to change the settings and find the one that looks good and deleting all the rest :)

Memorial Day 2009

Someone in our ward sent out an email that there would be a gathering at Moraine State Park on Monday for Memorial Day. little did they know how big the party would get :)Abby and Sabrina headed to the water as soon as we parked the car. Sabrina thought it was too cold and was out in 10 minutes, sitting on the towel. She did get back in eventually cause it got to be a little too warm and she needed to cool off. Sean was the beach ball blower up dude :) He and our friend Franklin were talking about how it was the dad's job to blow up the toys. Uh, yeah!

These are just a few of the people that showed up. We had a blast hanging out with everyone.

I got some great pictures, even though it was really bright out. This is Matt, a friends little boy. Loving the new camera! I am totally going to have to go to a class or two to figure everything out. I had a great time taking pictures of all the kids. I took over 200 pics after I was done. Deleted a lot of them. It was too bright out to really look at the pics on the back of the camera, so I waited until I got home to delete.

This is Tim and Lizzy. Tim was swinging his son around too, got those pics too. Great thing about this camera, I actually get the pictures I want while I'm looking at the action. Woohoo. love it! Can ya tell how excited I am about the camera? Sean was paranoid the entire time cause he was afraid I was going to drop it in the lake. jeez, what does he think I am? A klutz? Oh, yeah, that's right, I am. HAHA!

My new toy!

Monday we finally bit the bullet, joined the ranks and bought a new camera. Actually Sean said he just wanted me to stop whining about it :) We got a Nikon D40, thanks for the recommendation Nicole :) So I have been playing with the thing for the last couple of days trying to figure out all the bells and whistles. The lady that helped us out at Ritz was great and didn't sell us a bunch of crap we didn't need. And she was great with the 50 million questions that I asked her. The great part about digital is that I can see how screwed up my pictures are almost immediately :) And it takes pictures when I hit the button!!! WOOHOOO!! I've never been so excited about such a dumb thing. This means I've taken over 100 pic's in the last couple of days. ha. The great thing is, I deleted most of them! I've been pushing buttons and taking pictures to see what works.

Here Abby is helping me plant the garden. She kept asking why I was taking so many pictures. The great part is, I get a picture of what I want, not her looking at me like a dork cause the camera didn't take the picture when I wanted it to!

I found this great feature on the camera where it takes several pics one right after another. A wasp landed on the gate while I was pushing buttons and reading my manual. Yes, I've been reading the manual. There is no way I'll be able to get that thing to work if I don't read! Anyway, I got several pictures of the wasp, they actually go in order as he walks around in a circle. Totally psyched about that. Wish I had had this when i was coaching, then I'd have actually gotten the kids doing their events instead of the track or the board, or whatever wasn't them!

Art Show & Mother's Day

The school district that Abby and Sabrina are in have this huge art show every year and this year we actually knew what day it was on :) So we were able to go and take pictures of the girls projects that were on display.

This us Abby's earth day flag. The yellow thing is a cheetah, they didn't have any black for her to make spots :)

This is Sabrina's mask. It's an Egyptian.. I think. It was made out of plaster of paris, and she had to use toilet paper rolls for the edging stuff. So you can imagine the nasty mess that came out of that before it dried.
And here are the beautiful flowers I got for Mother's day. Sean said to be sure and note that he remembered to get me my favorite flower after I only mentioned it to him once. And that i didn't gush over them when I came in the house. He didn't let me forget it the rest of the day. Actually he still hasn't let me forget it. jeez

May Wedding. AKA Wedding #1 of the summer

My cousin Julie was was married yesterday to Mark Hancock. The ceremony was beautiful. Long, but beautiful.
We found out that they have known each other for 7 years. 7 YEARS!! holy hannah! That's a long time :)

The ceremony was an about hour long, then we had to wait until after the wedding party took pictures before we could go into the reception. Abby brought her book with her to finish and spent the waiting time reading about "Stink."Sharing of the cake :) They did this twice, not sure why, one for the camera maybe. I think Julie escaped frosting on the face. They had cupcakes for everyone, no full cake. It was kinda nice, they had white and chocolate.
And this would be the Bobster after the crash :) He was running, runnin, runnin, didn't stop the entire time we were waiting for the reception. His running coach Ray had him doing laps. The boy never slows down...ever! He sat on his dad's lap to eat something and was down for the count!

Home-made pizza and a cutey pie :)

My friend Natalie came over the other night with her kids so we could all enjoy some homemade pizza. yum. Afterwards we were hanging out talking and Natalies little boy Josh found the box of beads. And decided he needed to put them all on :)

I tried to take a picture of him taking them all off the first time, but the camera was too slow. He is quite the camera ham, so he loaded himself back up with beads and then handed me the camera that I had set on the table. he loves getting his picture taken!While trying to remove them, he got tangled up and had to have help getting out. Isn't he the cutest!