It’s almost over

The break, that is. The girls have had off school since Wednesday, and now the 5-day weekend is almost over. It’s been really nice – we haven’t done too much of anything, but we haven’t been bored either. It’s time to play catch-up with photos…

Last Monday was our Father/Daughter night at GEMS. We had an Amazing Race-type event, which included all our theme night activities revolving around prayer. It was pretty fun and I know S&B&E all had a great time together! This was the bean bag toss.

One of the days I headed out to a local park to take family pictures for some friends. On the way out, I pulled over to take some pictures of Mt. Baker – so gorgeous that morning! The pictures do not do it justice – mostly because the sun was pointing towards me, but it was a brilliant morning. Those snow geese flew away while I was taking the pictures, but one of these cold days, I am going to use my cool zoom lens to get some great pictures of those magnificent birds. I love it when they show up when the weather turns cold. The eagles, too – I’ll have to see if I can get some great eagle pictures this year with my lens.

A friend told me about a cool photography trick…using tin foil at a 45 degree angle to the pop-up flash to help diffuse the flash and bounce the light around more – less shadows, not so harsh. Here’s the results…

Picture 1: dark outside+no flash+indoors=blurry picture with bad color.

Picture 2: dark outside+flash+indoors=clear picture with weird light

Picture 3: dark outside+flash+indoors+tin foil=better picture

 

I did edit the pictures – I made them all as good as I could get them. Cool deal. Thanks, Melissa!

Have I mentioned the weather? We have had some wild weather these past few days! Cold and…crazy!

About this time the neighbor girl and my girls came in from playing outside for some yummy hot chocolate with marshmallows.And then the hail/snow/dark came:Within a matter of 10 minutes, we went from early afternoon brightness to this. It was 4:00 in the afternoon! It looked like the dead of winter and we’ve still got about 6 weeks until the shortest day of the year! After the hail stopped, we could see another storm coming. It ended up going farther north and missing us a bit, but the town northwest of us got quite a covering of the hail/snow mix again!

Busy week ahead: Dress rehearsals for Sarah’s musical and two performances…Ed leaves for New Orleans on Friday morning…plus basketball has begun so there will be a practice and a game…who knows what pictures will be up next!?!?