summer nights...

I love having a backyard. I love having friends over to BBQ and relax and stay late, it's one of the best parts of summer...or spring.

Prize Winners...

Lately my girls are so in love with each other that they are really into making awards for each other. The idea was Ruby's, she went into the office and went to work. She made an award with #1 (backward one) on it. Then she made two word strips, one said, "awesome" and one said, "perfect" and she taped them all onto Alice's clothes. I didn't get pics that day, but thankfully Ruby did it again today and I got a picture of two of Alice's awards. They look like flowers, but they are meant to look like first prize ribbons, with the round, gathered tops and the card stock circle in the middle with ribbon hanging down. I have to say that lately they are just really getting along well, and I feel that heart-jumping-out-of-my-chest feeling a lot. It's nice.

Ruby's 1/2 book recital...

Ruby has worked so hard at playing the piano, and Joanie, "Mrs. Steck" is all set up to recognize that kind of hard work. Ruby had her 1/2 book recital last week, she was the only performer and had a little audience there just for her. We enjoyed two years of effort in about ten minutes, and Ruby was thrilled to recieve her coveted Clara Schumann bust for her trophy. It is so fun to see your kids just beaming, and she WAS beaming!

I put together the above invite by using Rhonna Farrer's "Magic Rainbow" kit offered for free at www.twopeasinabucket.com.

Ruby told me a little bit about each song, and I recorded her thoughts here in the program. (She wanted me to write "Grandma" instead of "Oma", so she must be aware now that we have a May birthdy!Thanks to fellow piano student Parker and his mom (my friend) Julie for coming to support Ruby! If they hadn't come, it would have been just me, my mom, Chris and Alice.

I won!!!!

I haven't entered many blog giveaways, but I did for this one, because I love this company and the beanies they sell. My friend and former roommate Jennifer Anderson features these beanies on her photography website, and I've always loved them, so I was excited about this giveaway.

My other friend Leah, was doing the giveaway (well technically Portland Beanie Company was doing the giving away) on her blog and I won!

I picked the hat in this picture. The little girl in the picture just so happens to be the little darling of Jennifer, mentioned above.

picnics...

Anytime that I make food for my kids and let them eat it outside, I get first prize in their book. We do it a lot. It's so simple, and makes them soooooo happy.

imported my old blog...

Yay! I'm so glad that I figured this out! I just imported my old blog into this blog! It was super easy. If you have the same need, just go to "settings" and first export your old blog onto your computer and then you can go to "settings" on your new blog and import the file. It puts all the posts in the right spots and everything.

To be young again...and have a calibrated monitor...

I had so much fun with this senior! We did two shoots: one urban shoot and one costume shoot in a rural setting, and had such a great time. N is going to be a MDT major and needed no prompting when it came to posing in new ways. She got some attention from some "really old" men when we were in the city shooting.

Anyway, I'm posting these knowing that they will probably look really dark. I looked at my post about the wedding photos on my other computer (this laptop is new) and they looked totally different on that screen than they do on this one...so I invested in some calibration hardware and software to try and remedy the problem. I spend a lot of time making certain that the exposure if the way I want it, and it really bummed me out to see how different my hard work looked on another screen. Anyway, so that being said, I'll probably have to redo the editing on this shoot once the calibration stuff gets here (can't be too soon).

Anyway, hope you enjoyed some shots from our shoot together. More on my photography blog coming soon...

Piano recital...

Piano is out for the year! Ruby made a lot of progress this year, and made friends with Rebecca, who happens to live really close (you could almost say same neighborhood)...we never find homeschoolers that live close! Rebecca and Ruby both earned bronze awards for their practice. I am amazed, really. Ruby practiced every day that I can think of (very few exceptions), so there must be some kids who practice more than once a day or something. Anyway, any medal thrills Ruby!

SARIAH...

Girl, I miss you! I don't have your new blog address and when you comment, I can't click on anything that will take me to your blog. I know you read Jenni's blog, so when I've been the first one to comment on a post of hers, I have left you messages in her comments begging you to send me your posts via email. PLEASE! I miss reading your blog! I think you have my email address...right?

More music...

Currently my favorite song is "I Run to You" by Lady Antebellum. If I were getting married all over again to Chris, I'd want to dance to this song at our reception. It might not be that romantic to the unwed, but I like the lyrics because they aren't all "you are rescuing me, you are perfect, I can't breathe when you aren't here..." but they do represent what love is when you are making a family together...it's a little safe place you can run to.

Ironically (see below), you'll have to turn off my play list (very bottom of my blog) in order to listen to "I Run to You" because Lady Antebellum doesn't have music available on playlist.com.



I found out that a good friend sometimes turns on my blog play list and uses it as tunes to do the dishes to. This led me to add some more music to my list, poor girl! I was thinking of deleting the list all together, but now I added to it, and I did so with her in mind, so the list isn't really a good soundtrack for my blog, but let's face it...the average person spends like one minute on my blog anyway.