My grandmother was in town for a day recently, and my wonderful photographer-husband took some incredible pics of all of us. But, this is one of my favorites by far.
I love the twist of Kate reading Me Too Iguana (one of my sister’s childhood faves) to everyone. Of course, some of my fondest childhood memories include listening to that beautiful gray-haired woman read me bedtime stories – specifically from a big book of Uncle Wiggily’s Tales. I still get teary-eyed when my kiddos ask to pull down that special book off the shelf to read another adventure of the long-eared gentleman.
Just wanted to share a little moment of our life with you all today, and encourage you to go read one of your favorite books with your little ones.
“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…”
For Mother’s Day we have a tradition of planting in our garden in the back yard. The kids help pick out what we want to plant while we’re at the nursery, then enjoy digging holes in the garden to plant their favorites.
Continue reading…
I wrote a post a while back about kiddos and the amazing things that they can say. In it, I listed some questions and challenged YOU to ask your kiddos the same ones, or more. I finally sat down with Kate today, one-on-one to get her responses. So here they are! Enjoy!
- Where did you come from? Texas <THAT’S my girl!!>
- Where are you going? (giggle) To my house
- What is dancing? Fun
- What’s the best place in the whole world? Home Why? Because my Mommy and my Daddy are here.
- What do you wish for?
- What is a giggle? It’s a laugh. Like what I’m doing. (giggle)
- What do you dream about? Mommy and Daddy
- What did you dream about last night? Mommy hugging me. <aw. So sweet.>
- Do you want to be beautiful or smart? Both.
- What is the sky made of? Blue and white.
- What did you do today? School.
- How fast can you run? Very fast.
- What’s the meaning of life? I don’t know. <join the club, sister!>
My husband just bought a new camera.
My husband just bought a DSLR camera.
My husband just bought a Nikon D80.
And I was afraid of it.
Seriously, I’m used to the cute little Nikon CoolPix point-and-shoot that we’ve had forever where you quite literally “point” it at your subject and then “shoot” the pic. I learned much about photography on that little camera. Things like “make sure that the heads of all the people in the picture aren’t cut off” and “the flash only lights up a few feet in front of you, not the entire concert stadium”. And once I mastered those incredibly difficult photographic techniques, I started working on framing my photos using 3rds, and not always using the flash, and looking to see what’s in the background of what I’m shooting (ie. is that pile of dirty dishes the back drop of the otherwise incredibly cute pic of the kiddos?).
I just got to a point where I felt comfortable. Like I kinda knew what I was doing. Like I could take a half-way decent picture of my own children.
And then he bought the monster camera.
And everything I was proud of myself for learning was now child’s play.
I was suddenly immersed in a world of F-stops and aperture priority and focal length and ISO. It was to be expected that I was scared. Intimidated. Overwhelmed. Sad that I wouldn’t be able to take pictures anymore because there was no way I would ever learn how to use this thing.
Somehow (I blame it on almost 14 years of marriage), my dear husband picked up on my hesitancy to even try using the camera. So, he sat down with me, showed me how to put it on “auto” everything and then MADE me shoot with it until I was more comfortable with it.
Now, I’m learning how to change the focal point. And use the “aperture priority” setting. I’m still fuzzy on F-stops and ISO and the difference between lenses, but at least it doesn’t scare me to pick up the camera anymore. So, when our friend handed me his D3, the much bigger brother to our D80 (see above picture), I actually kinda knew what I was doing. In fact, he may have created a monster by teaching me so much. Now, my friends know that if I’m showing up at an event, I’ll probably be the one toting around the camera bag and shouting at the kids to “say cheese” for the umpteenth time.
And I’m actually okay with that.
One of my favorite pictures (of the almost 500 dear hubby shot) from our recent trip to Puerto Morelos, just outside of Cancun. We stayed at the fabulous Azul Sensatori Resort thanks to some beautiful friends of ours and thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. Now we’re just trying to figure out how we can get down there again – and SOON!
By Kay on Fri, Jul 3, 2009
4 Comments