Announcing....

This was fun. I set my camera on Gabe's school desk, set the auto timer, focused, pushed the shutter release button and RAN to get into my place with my family. The children thought that it slightly amusing seeing mom have to run and jump in place to get in the picture. Hee-hee. Here's the best of the 4 or 5 I took of all of us. I wish Alek wasn't so slouchy and Gabe was smiling and some chins were down and I know you can hardly see Ceph, but oh well. It's going to have to do: You may be receiving this picture along with your Christmas card. Can you read it? If not, it says: Bun in the Oven (for best results) -Hand of God             -Husband and Wife Preheat oven to 98.6 degrees. Mix in lots of prayer, rest and good nutrition. Let bake for 9 months. Remove from oven around July 3rd and enjoy for a lifetime! Yield: half a dozen (yield may vary) I put "for best results" because as you know, you don't HAVE to have a husband and wife to have a child. So here are the rest: And then Josiah thought he'd entertain his siblings with his fabulous "go to sleep while taking Christmas pictures" trick: I had to perform Photoshop head swapping surgery on someone not looking at the camera in this picture. Can you tell who? The pyramid/Christmas tree picture I imagined did not turn out. It appears that Josiah is afraid of heights and Alek is not quite as strong as his younger brother, Gabe, which is why the lighter, younger sister is on his shoulders instead of Gabe's. Not at all exciting. But I LOVE HIS LIPS! (now picture Larry singing the lips song) This was Kenton's idea & I loved it! He was trying to make them into a star. I just need to be about 3 feet taller to get them all in the picture while standing on the chair (or maybe I should've just let Kenton take it....). Got milk? Cookies for Santa... but since they don't believe in Santa and they do believe mom when she says they can eat the cookies after just a few shots, they were getting a bit anxious. They've got the go ahead! And they're off! How many can I shove in my face at a time?!?!!? Sorry, Santa. The children ate your cookies. But not this one, oh no. She's *completely* innocent! She's an angel! Never does *anything* wrong! That's all there is, there isn't- anymore.

Millie, Age Five.

Miss Millie is FIVE!

My little girl turned FIVE today. Five! I can't believe it. Time flies. She had a princess party tonight so she and Gracie got all prettied up. Here are my two favorites from today: Urban Princess: AND Seeing stars: And here are the rest! Our pup's kind of nosey. She came over to see what we were doing and of course Millie had to go say hi to her. A couple of Gracie since Millie wimped out on me pretty quick. (and the other shots I got weren't terribly exciting) Fake smile, but I liked it anyway: Moody Millie: Same as the first pic, minus the "urban acid" washed look. Which do you like better?: Sisters. Not sure what's going on here. The opposite of the second picture- this time I'm focused on her eyes instead of the wand: Gracie: Millie blowing out her FIVE candles! And that's all I have for now!

Merry Christmas Bokeh

I have NO idea why this turned out like it did. I took a picture of our Christmas lights while inside, looking through the window of our front door. Our door has a fan shaped window on the upper part with sections of beveled glass. I purposely wanted the Christmas lights thrown out of focus but I can't explain why it looks like a grid or checkerboard looking pattern. Weird, huh? I put my camera on manual focus because I wanted the lights to be as out of focus as possible. I'm pretty good at manual focus when I don't really need to focus on anything- just make it out of focus. Hee-hee!  Now I put the auto focus back on and focused on the lights. Exciting. Huh. And not that this is much better, but it's the same string of lights on manual focus, out of focus. More of the same pattern: lights in focus, lights out of focus. Exciting, huh?