Jan 5

The girls were passing time while I was getting dinner ready and I thought it was interesting that this is what they came up with to do with Dominos. I must say, I don't think I would have thought of that. They said my Dad showed them. I would have naturally made snakes and then knocked them down. They were very excited that they got them stacked that high without knocking them over. Quite an accomplishment since they were crawling all around them trying to get the dominos from each other first. I didn't like the picture I had with them together because the focus was off so I'm posting one of each of them...does this make up for Jan 2 when I forgot to take a picture??? I think so.

Jan 4

OK. Today's picture is lacking somewhat. The coloring is pretty bad but it was the end of the night and I was on my way to bed when I realized that I never took a picture that day. So I tried to think of something creative to take a picture of. This was the best I could come up with...but it's some what significant. These are pictures that the girls have been painting with some watercolor paints they got for Christmas. It's very exciting for me to see them finally painting nice. Em used to always mix all the colors and everything would be a green/brown color so I put paints on the off limits list for quite some time. Now that they are in school and paint there some times, I thought I would give it a try again. I was so pleased with the outcome. So....we will definitely have more painting sessions going on. As you can see....rainbows are very popular in our house.

Jan 3

Self portrait. Not a word that really thrills me. But I thought it was time that I tried to do one. I wanted to have a picture of me to put on my Flickr page instead of using Em's picture. I follow a bunch of photography blogs and one in particular that I just love. Miz Boo (Donna Boucher) is my favorite and her pictures are just beautiful. She talked about how it is important for those of us that love to take pictures but hate to be in them really need to make a conscious effort to put ourselves in front of the camera as well. We might not be happy with how we look but our friends and family love us. They know how we look and love us anyway. Years from now they will appreciate that they have pictures with us in it and not be so focused on how we look (after all, as I said...they already know how we look, they see us all the time). So this year I am going to try to be in more pictures with my daughter and not just always be the photographer. I'll include the link for Miz Boo on the side under blogs I like.

(As for the hat...I can never find a hat that I think looks good on but I found this one at Kohl's as well as another one that doesn't completely squash my hair when it's snowing. I was pretty excited.)

January 1

So I have decided to start a 365 day challenge that I have seen on some blogs. It is to take a picture a day to try and improve my photography skills and to think more about the pictures I have taken. I don't know if I'll make it but I'm going to try. So I snapped this picture quick on Saturday night just in case I did decide to do a picture a day. This is our Christmas tree and I love the way white lights on a Christmas tree. Stay turned as I'm catching up on posting the pictures through the 5th.

Added: Ok I forgot to take one on the 2nd so this is going to have to serve both days...not off to a good start but I'll try to be better.

Our 2010 Christmas card

Polka Dot Snowflakes Christmas

Shutterfly Christmas cards

View the entire collection of cards.

Another Photo Session

I have been wanting to continue to improve my photography skills so I've decided to try and have some photo sessions with Emily & Abby...and anyone else I can convince. I figure the only way I'm going to get better is if I just keep practicing. So this past Sunday I hung a sheet up in Emily's room as she has some nice natural light coming in from her windows. I put on my 50mm lens and took the camera off automatic. They weren't very long sessions with either girl as you can only get 4 year olds to be happy to be in pictures for so long. I was happy with a couple of the pictures that I took. I just bought Photoshop and hope to get it up and running in the next couple days and then I'll play around with the pictures a little more and see if I can improve them a little but for now here are a few of my favorites. I appreciate any feedback. Already I know I need to get a better backdrop (any suggestions??) as well as a reflector to bounce some of the light back onto them. It's a learning process but it sure was fun.

Mother's Day

Emily tries her hand at baseball. Notice she's holding the bat the wrong way. Fortunately her cousin Chris was able to help her out some.

We are working on teaching the girls to ride with no training wheels. Both Emily and Abby are doing pretty well. They don't always go very far but they are working on it.

Riding to me. I was so excited to see how good she was doing. That's her cousin Chris cheering her on. He's been a big part of helping her ride a two wheeler.

My sweet Emily!!

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope all you mothers out there had a great Mother's Day. We had a great day with family. Emily & Abby just love it when they get to spend time with their cousins. They got to ride bikes, play baseball and just have fun.