Sunday with my boys

We took the boys to Laumier Sculpture park since it was such a beautiful day.  I got two pictures.  Two.

I reminded them in the parking lot that they owed me a few posed shots as a mother's day gift.

::sigh::  Maybe back home we'd have better luck...

Better but no one is having fun - least of all, me.

So I drop all expectations and just capture life as it happens

A lazy Saturday adventure

A quick trip for a slushie; permission to take his seatbelt off while we checked out bison and elk; a walk through the woods (possibly in a patch of poison ivy); and discovering elk scat (lots of scat).

 

 

I can't believe I haven't been to Lone Elk Park.  How did I not know they had a World Bird Sanctuary?

I had actually been on the phone with them twice this past week regarding an ailing baby robin but didn't realize until we were at the sanctuary and saw the Wildlife Hospital sign.

By the way the Wildlife Hospital has very friendly staff who does not laugh at you when you're trying to help a baby bird and who will let you in all little known facts such as sometimes baby birds have more than one father.

A very happy Fourth of July

My very awesome mother decided to treat her kids (and their spouses and kids) to an impromptu family vacation in Kansas City.  We added an extra day on to the trip and stopped about an hour outside of KC to visit our "country" sister for the fourth of July holiday and some small town fireworks (a very nice break from the overcrowded firework displays at home where the trek to and from the car takes longer than the fireworks)

 They are well supervised (I actually cloned out my husbands toes because it messed up the shot but he's right there)

We stuck to smoke bombs (and a smoke canon), black snakes, and poppers

The kids were thrilled.

At dusk we headed on to a nearby fireworks display that put on an impressive show

Last year we were mid drought for the fourth of July and almost all the fireworks displays were cancelled.  My youngest doesn't even remember seeing fireworks.  I'm very happy we were able to remind him :)

Boys and Chicks

 I love catching the boys during quiet moments...

They don't like being caught.  Retreat! Retreat!

Maybe I'll play it safe and just stick to photographing the chickens

 Yeah... that chicken isn't safe at all...

(no animals were harmed in the making of these photos)

Wild boys. Nothing new here.

Well, something sort of new.  Did I mention we have more chickens?  Those are the 4 new additions.  That's 7 total now.  Just waiting on eggs.  By the end of summer they'll be laying (or cock-a-doodle-dooing)

Capturing the night

The witching hour... well its actually more like two hours: 4PM to 6PM.  Since the day we brought our first baby home this has always been the hardest time of the day to get through.  Everyone is cranky, it coincides with trying to prepare dinner, daddy coming home so much all at once.  The nerves get frazzled.  

But then you see the light at the end of the tunnel and here comes 7 PM, the winding down hour.  Baths and milk... preparing for bedtime... and the ever present story time.  My personal favorite.  The nighttime hours are when my kids are the sweetest.  Its when I want to capture them the most.  Its when there is the least light.

Evan is reading on the Kindle these days.  Using a slow shutter speed allows me to use the ambient light from the Kindle screen to illuminate his face.  

Settings: f2.0 | ss 1/25 | ISO 800 | 50mm lens

This is the reason I shoot in RAW.  Look how much detail that was lost in the shadows can be recovered.  It can be a real life-saver when you over expose or under expose a picture.  For this type of shot I'll stick with the above photo. While the below photo is a good example of the benefit of shooting in RAW format instead of JPEG, it was not the look I was going for.

Shooting at such a low shutter speed means you risk a lot of movement blur if your subject moves (or if you move).  Here I've got the camera pressed against the wall to stabilize myself but he heard the beep and lifted his face. Movement + slow shutter speed = blur.
Settings: f2.0 | ss 1/40 | ISO 1250 | 50mm lens

Aiden, seeing an opportunity to delay sleep, made a rare request to have his picture taken.  Without the ambient light from the kindle it was a bit more challenging however there was a small amount of light coming from the window just above him.  It was dusk so it was a very soft light. but still rather dark.  I slowed my shutter even more to 1/15, a speed I don't dare do handheld on so I stacked a game and book up and used it as a tripod.  The higher iso, underexposed picture resulted in a lot of noise (or grain) so converted it to black and white.
Settings: f2.0 | ss 1/15 | ISO 1250 | 50mm lens

Before the Kindle they boys read by flashlight, usually under a blanket.  They wiggled and giggled and moved so much it was almost impossible to get a shot of this nightly concurrence that I loved so much.  So we faked it using a little Photoshop magic.
Settings: f2.2 | ss 1/125 | ISO 500 | 35mm lens.  This is what the REAL image looked like:

After Photoshop it looks like their nightly routine that I tried so hard to capture.

baby, baby, baby...

baby inside. baby outside.

center of their world baby.

oh baby sweetness.

A Snow Day Birthday {Aiden turns five}

His birthday is just before Christmas and the weather is usually horrible so we don't often do anything big to celebrate.  This year whenever we asked him what he wanted for his birthday was snow.

Just snow.

With not a snowflake in the forecast we set to work as soon as the kids went to bed.  My hands cramped up with all the cutting.  Dad tried the cut-five-snowflakes-at-a-time method.  I don't recommend it.  We carefully hung each one up, taping them to the ceiling.  Taking turns catching each other as we wobbled on chairs balanced on our tippy toes.  How the kids didn't wake up with all our snickering and crashing around I don't know.

A white blanket on the ground, hundreds of snowflakes hanging from the ceiling.  It was the closest thing to snow we could give.

After two nights the kids asked us to take them down because the snowflakes were "creeping them out at night".  But I have pictures to prove there were smiles and awe on his birthday morning surprise.

Around Autumn | Catching Up

We had a lot of illness, hospital visits, minor surgeries and such this past Fall.  It's time to catch up on the blog.  Here's what happened in November...

Another fail at family photos for Christmas Cards.  Its kind of amusing that I even attempt to get the boys to do posed pictures for the holiday cards... The holiday cards that I never get around to doing but still talk like I'm all on it each year.  Aiden has trouble looking at the camera or even having the camera pointed at him.  This past year its been pretty bad.  That's a whole 'nother blog post of its own though.  The only time he can keep it together in front of the camera is with his big brother and then I get a ton of pictures of Evan manhandling Aiden's face, with an occasional sweet picture of two seemingly loving brothers.

We also lost another chicken (we're down to three if anyone is counting).  It was Aiden's chicken but he just casually announced that he would get another one.  Evan sat in attendance at the "burial" with his favorite hen on his lap, Sweet Tweet.  He insisted on helping bury Sweet Chick.  He has a perfect balance of sadness and quiet bravery during these losses.  Makes me think this kid is gonna turn out to be a fine young man.  Then he cries for an hour over having to eat a bite of salad and shoots his little brother in the face with a nerf gun and I'm back to "his father sure has a lot of work to shape that boy into a fine young man"

I love salad and don't shoot guns so he definitely doesn't get it from me.

Outer Banks Vacation Pictures: the iPhone version (and some reviews)

The entire week my "big" camera only made it out of the safety of our room a total of four times.  The humidity, the water, the sand, were everywhere and I chose to enjoy the R&R instead of worrying about the safety of my camera.

Unfortunately, for the sake of R&R my phone was often left behind as well.  I have plenty of pictures of the view from the car (lots of mountains = lots of pretty views).  It wasn't until day 6 that I remembered I had bought this waterproof phone pouch specifically for the trip:

Waterproof Case for Phones, Digital Camera, GPS & Other Small Devices - IPX8 Certified to 100 Feet


I had high hopes of getting underwater pictures of the kids in the pool now that they'll both put their faces underwater.  It didn't happen.  First, my husband did NOT want me taking the iPhone he just got me as a mother's day gift under water despite my pre-vacation testing of the waterproof case. Second, I didn't remember I had brought it until my sister decided to take her daughter para-sailing and wanted to get a pictures while up there (doh!). My sister also inadvertently tested the cases waterproof claims when they dunked them in the ocean at the end of the trip.  Its waterproof alright.

(photo credit: Amy Bischoff)

So it wasn't until or last evening that the iPhone came to the beach sealed in its waterproof case.  Thanks to that one evening I have a bunch of video clips and beach pictures.  I was impressed with how easy it was to operate the phone through the plastic and it didn't seem to take too much away from the quality of the pics.  Here's a small portion of our vacation captured by the iPhone (photos are unedited; I have no idea why some of the pics are so blue)

I was so happy with the pictures.  They look great on my phone! Upon arriving home there was a packet of pictures that had been delivered.  I had used an app called  postalpix.com to get the pictures on my phone printed prior to leaving.  They did a good job printing them but it is now obvious that cell phone pictures just aren't that great of quality when printed (though the ones where I had the camera resting on a flat surface to steady it were much better).

PostalPix has some great products though.  They do square prints (perfect for those instagram shots) and metal prints.  I had to order one of the square metal prints and love how it came out.  It felt really good to set those phone pictures free and get them printed; I would definitely use them again.  But seeing the prints was a good reminder that my phone is great for pictures but cannot replace my real cameras.

Disclaimer:  PostalPix is not paying or requesting me to do review their services.  In fact, they have no idea I exist.  Probably.

Let's go to the Beach | Outer Banks 2012 Vacation

The beach.... one of my favorite places.  I'm especially fond of this one in the Outer Banks since Phil proposed here and we came back the following year to get married on the same beach.  If you can mentally block out the very looong drive its the perfect vacation.  27 people in one house, one 9 bedroom house, private pool and hot tub, short walk to the beach and lots of family time.

This was just after arriving... notice Aiden's (on the right) happy jig.  Happy to be out of the car; happy to be seeing the ocean:

First taste of the salt water:

 Oh yeah, that's pure joy on his face:

 And that's the taste of saltwater on his face:

 Boogie boarding

Evenings on the beach were the best

Cousins who haven't seen each other in years:

Family beach shot (thanks Amy!)

Almost all of the grandkids with my mom (who made this trip possible, thank you mom!)

And my East Coast(ish) neices who I only get to see every few years

We already have so many special memories of our times spent in the Outer Banks and now we have even more.  I love my family :)

E