Product placement, anyone?
We don’t go to McDonald’s often. But, they currently have cute little Beanie Babies to celebrate 30 years of Happy Meals. Tom and I both agree that we were getting Happy Meals before we were 6 & 8. Or so it would seem. I guess we are both wrong. Anyway, they have these cute retro boxes, and I have a cute little girl. As it happened, while we were eating lunch. FedEx came by and dropped off a camera and lens I’m renting. Naturally, I had to try it out immediately. I read several warnings online about how very heavy this lens is. Some complained that they couldn’t get a sharp shot because it was too heavy to hold steady. Well, it certainly is heavy, especially when coupled with a camera body that is bigger and heavier than my poor sick camera that is still at camera hospital. But, I think I did an ok job. This shot was taken at a shutter speed of 1/80, which is really slow for those who don’t know camera settings.
Well, anyway…. after I took this, I realized it looked like an advertisement for McDonald’s. Now, admittedly, Olivia is certainly cute enough to model for advertisements. And that cool, red box is a nice prop. However, we don’t generally spend time promoting ol’ Micky D’s.
Filed under Olivia | Comment (1)Playing in the Rain
A couple of weeks back, when we dropped Emily off at church to leave for Costa Rica, it was raining. While they were getting loaded up, the kids decided to play in the rain. They got really wet. That happens with rain.
Note the black eye and chicken pox. He’s still pretty cute, though.
Olivia is too much of a princess to get wet in the rain, so she didn’t play. She was sitting in the entry way to the church because it was just too cold for her delicate constitution.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)Random Reflections
I love eggs. I eat them nearly every morning. The kids eat a lot of them, too. I also love my cast iron skillet. It’s the best for cooking eggs in. It’s probably a good thing that village ordinance says we can’t have chickens. I’d probably eat MORE eggs. Besides, next thing you know, I’d want a cow, and maybe a pony…. and our yard is just too small for all of that.
Speaking of a small yard and village ordinances and such, the kids wanted S’mores. We can’t have an actual bon fire on our property. Besides, just think what it would do to our lush green grass. OK. If you’ve seen our yard, you know just how tongue in cheek that was. Anyway, we had a modified bon fire. Modified to be in our charcoal grill. It actually worked perfectly. Ian like the fire. The S’mores, not so much. Just plain old marshmallows and chocolate bars, please and thank you very much.
I’ve always loved celestial bodies. Sunsets, the moon, stars, the Milky Way that I’m sure is still there, even though I can’t see it where I live…. all very fascinating to me and a much loved object of my camera. Last evening, I was out and I saw the sun go behind this cloud. It was an amazing image. Did I mention I was driving? Well, it took me 2-3 minutes to find a place to pull over where the beautiful back lit cloud was visible to me instead of hidden by houses and such. I finally found a park, but parks, naturally, contain trees. That’s ok. I think the tree silhouette adds to the view in this particular image. Unfortunately, you can see that those few precious minutes made the difference between the sun behind the cloud and is sinking below the cloud. Or maybe not so unfortunate. Seeing that bright, firey sphere is pretty amazing, too.
Yesterday, we dropped Noah off at camp. It’s his first time away, but more on that in another post. The point here is, being on these camp grounds and in his cabin took me back about 18 years or so, to when I was a counselor at Camp Mennoscah. My time spent there was amazing, and some of my most favorite times of my life. The kids, fellow counselors, the singing, card playing, meals, camp fire…. all of it was just…. well, I can’t even think of a word. I want to go back. I want to send my kids there so they can share in this experience that I had. It doesn’t really make sense to send them, of course, since we live in Illinois and camp is in Kansas, but I still day dream about it. Hopefully Noah will be able to form great memories at his camp that he can carry with him for his whole life. But I’m absolutely certain that the magic of Camp Mennoscah just can’t be recreated anywhere else on this planet. Was that magic a result of the camp itself? Was it because of who the directors were that I volunteered for? Was more a matter of who the rest of the staff was and where I was in my life? I really don’t know. I’d guess it was some combination of all three things and probably more. I miss Camp Mennoscah.
Oh. And I can see the Milky Way there.
Filed under Stacey | Comment (0)The Great Hair Cut Post
So, I’ve been meaning to post this for several weeks now. Ever since Tom tried to cut his own hair. I’ll get to that in a little bit. First, I’m going to start with cute.
It doesn’t get much cuter than this.
Here’s a side view.
And here he is in all his cuteness after his hair cut. Still loads and loads of cute.
Next is Noah. You can say it. He was looking pretty shaggy. He’s had long hair like this for a couple of years now. He likes it. I like it. But today, he surprised me by telling me he wanted it short, like Joe. His wish is my command! But first, a couple of before shots.
And now….
Quite a change, right?? Joe and Emily got their hair cut a while back, and I thought, since I’m doing a post on hair cuts, I’d show them, too.
Taken today, even though his hair cut was a few weeks ago. It’s actually grown out quite a bit. He was not happy with how short I cut it, but I was using new clippers and didn’t realize how short I was going. His hair grows really, really fast, though, so I wasn’t worried about it. Plus, we all had fun rubbing his fuzzy head.
Emily got hers cut before her trip to Costa Rica. I didn’t cut it. She doesn’t entrust me with her most prized possession – her hair.
She got a lot cut off.
And now, if you’ve stuck around this long, you are about to be rewarded. See, Tom thought he could just take care of his own hair cut. He did a fair job on the front/top. But as you can see, he had a bit of trouble with the back.
And my fix. It’s much, much shorter in the back than I usually cut it. You can kind of see his tan line to see how long it usually is. Plus, now we get a nice view of his stork bite birth mark. Fortunately, Joe got his fast growing hair from his Dad. So, this will grow back pretty quickly.
And then there were two
Jonah was able to get rid of the first of his two very loose front teeth with a little help from Ian. The second one just wouldn’t come. So, off we trekked tot he dentists office. After waiting an hour and 15 min. in the waiting room, we were called back for Joe’s 5 min. procedure. They numbed him up and then yanked it out. Jonah was not happy about it at all. The numbing was accomplished with the use of a topical spray. Apparently, it did not do as good a job as Joe thought it should. He cried out and then wimpered for the next 20 min. or so. We stopped at a filling station and procured some ice cream anesthetic. It did the trick. Now, here he is 4 days later with both his permanent teeth making a big showing. Now, these teeth are supposed to be gone by about age 6 1/2. I discussed this with the dentist and told me Joe is about 2 years behind. He says it’s actually a good thing. The less time those adult teeth are exposed to life, the less time they have to go bad. The good news on my end is, he and Noah will not have braces at the same time. Joe will not be ready yet when Noah is. Yeah me.
Filed under Jonah | Comment (0)Princess Olivia
Our church had a princess party. It was for all little girls from preschool up to, I don’t know, somewhere in elementary school? So, Olivia got all dolled up in princess gear. Really, it was just a dress. But she was sure cute! Then Tom took her to the party (because I’d been out running errands all day and just wanted to stay home. He’s such a good daddy). Here are a bunch of snaps he took at the party. There was coloring, tatooing (bet you didn’t know princesses all have tatoos), and cupcakes.
Home Coming
Since Emily is coming home from her mission trip to Costa Rica today, I thought I should probably get around to posting the pics from when she left 8 long days ago. She didn’t like the way she looked in the straight on pics I took, so I told her to hide behind her hair, which she does like. This is her new hair cut. She wanted to go short. It’s pretty short!
Olivia started giggling and couldn’t stop. Pretty soon everyone around her was laughing. Her giggle is quite contagious.
Can’t wait to see her!
Filed under Emily | Comment (0)“See my ew!”
I have no idea how this started. But, Ian will come up to me and tell me to look at his ew. I can only assume that when he does this, someone says, “Ewwww!!” Anyway, it’s cute and funny and I thought worth snapping and posting. Plus, look how good him hemoglobin must be, to have such dark colored, well, ew.
Filed under Ian | Comment (0)A new lens??
MCP Actions is having a contest. They are giving away a great lens. I really need an all around lens like this and would love to win. What I have to do is post on my blog a link to the contest. So, this is my entry! Wish me luck!
Click here to read all about it!
I’m a thief!!
As a photographer, I’m pretty touchy about people stealing other people’s images. However, this is my baby, and she’s over a thousand miles away from me in another country. Plus, I’m sure Jason wouldn’t care that I took them, so I just decided to do so. :o) Here she is, at the airport, in a bus in Costa Rica, and doing something to some floors in some building…. I have no idea what.
Miss you, Baby!!
Filed under Emily | Comment (0)