Pigtails!!

Finally!  Little Miss Meredith has just enough hair that I can get it into pigtails!  Homegirl is 22 months old!  The only trimming I've done was to snip off the weird little rat-tail she had on one side in the back a couple of months ago.  The pigtails are pretty thin, but they're pigtails nonetheless!  I was just a little excited.  Texted a lot of people about it.  Ha!  So, I figured it was a fancy-camera-worthy moment.  :)

Ha!  She was running by and noticed Anna's door was open for a split second!  Anna has a pretty strict no siblings allowed rule.

This was much later in the day.  She didn't pull them out!

For New Years I bought the kids some fireworks, just sparklers and snakes and smoke bombs, but I was bummed that the sparklers I got were so crappy I didn't have time to light them, pick up my camera, and take a picture.  They were literally 8-second-sparklers.  "/  So, I'd asked Josh to pick up bigger sparklers on his way home the next day (January 1st).  Apparently they were already all sold out of the bigger sparklers, so I didn't manage to get a cute pic of any of the kids holding one.  :(  Boo!  

But while he was there, Josh picked up some fancier fireworks!  I knew these were going to scare the littles, and sure enough they did.  Wallace and Meredith darted for the house.  I coaxed them back out and got them to sit in my car so they could still watch.  I watched many fireworks displays out the back window of my Mom's car as a child.  

Anyway, I tried just getting pictures of the fireworks, but this is apparently a difficult art to master.  Still, They were pretty fun!

Ha!  I was so focused on using a long exposure and high aperture that I forgot to attempt to focus....which, how the heck are you supposed to focus on something up in the air, in the dark, before it happens???  

I ended up guessing that these were flying up about 50 feet, which is about how far away Josh's truck was from us, so I set the focus off that and of course none were centered again.  Lessons learned, use the wider lens, get away from all the trees (which you can't see in the dark!!), and haul out the tripod.  I was resting the camera on the ground and tilting it by propping it against my shoe.  :)

It only took us 17 days to getting around to lighting these fireworks.  Ha!  I'm sure our neighbors were understanding.  

Basketball!

Yay!  Finally!  A sport I truly love.  :)  Well, I can't say I love watching professional basketball, but I do love to play it.  And Anna seems to like it as well.  She can still be a little hot and cold about it, but for the most part, I think she's enjoying herself.

It is very difficult to get photos of children moving pretty fast in a dimly lit gym, but I'm trying.  I've been using the crap out of my flash.  I ran down a set of batteries in about 2 hours.  

This morning Anna had an early game (9:00am).  That may not sound early, but it means waking up at 7:00 on a Saturday for us.  :(  As I went back through the pictures I took I saw a bunch of kids yawning in the background, so it apparently wasn't just us who thought it was a little early.

I caught a few pictures of her warming up.  Anna was super excited when she realized half way through the first quarter that they were using her ball as the game ball!  She came over to me on the sidelines to tell me about it...during the game.  Ha!  

Ha.  Not really sure what was going on here, but I thought it was cute.  :)  They line up with their backs to us so the scorekeepers can write down their jersey numbers.

Tip off!  The kids are pretty cute.  About half of them have no idea what's going on with the game, Anna's in that half... 

Believe it or not the other team is actually driving toward the basket here.  In the first couple of games she was really going after the ball, but she seems to have lost that motivation over the Christmas holiday.

She brought the ball down the court a couple of times.  Oh...and also, I distinctly remember not having a uniform this cool until I played Varsity basketball!  Kids are so lucky these days!

Haha!  See what I mean...it was an early game!

Back at the house the kids proceeded to chase the ducks!

These poor ducks.  We actually bought 5 to use for Hoss's training.  These were the last two.  Josh had a few out of town trips and before we knew it they were giant!  Josh just decided to release them, and they've stuck around!  Maybe they've missed the migration or something, I don't know.  But it's nice to look out the back windows and see them waddling around  :)

Yep....that's our pool.  We're actually draining it this weekend so we can get it cleaned up and refilled, but these ducks have been in heaven with it all green.  They swim and poop in it all the time.  "/  

Christmas!!

For Christmas this year Josh and I decided to drive to east Texas to surprise his Mom, and boy was she surprised to see us!  :)  When we drove up, Josh sent Anna in the house first, and I could hear his Mom excitedly yelling "What are you doing here!!??" to Anna from outside of the house as I was walking up.  It was so cute.

I don't know what my deal is, but the past few years I just haven't managed to get many pictures of Christmas.  It's weird.  This time around I think I'm going to blame Meredith.  Homegirl wasn't feeling well, and was a bit of a handful for most of the trip.    

She was quite the snot producer this weekend...

It's difficult to take pictures, much less hold a camera, when she wants to be held the whole time she's awake.  

Oh well...at least her outfit was cute!  :)

And Wallace...I'm pretty sure he managed to survive on cookies alone the entire time we were there.  Ha!

We went over to Sarah Faye's house on Christmas day and Josh's Dad and some of that side of the family were there!  I can't remember the last time I've seen them.  We gathered everyone up for some group photos.

As usual, Wallace was uncooperative.  How dare we take him away from his precious time playing with the toy car!

This is quickly becoming his m.o. when it comes to group photos.

whew...back to play time.

I think Josh's brother was a small child the last time I saw him.  So crazy how fast everyone grows up!  Oh...and Josh managed to pull off a smile...or maybe he was just squinting. 

There were so many Nerf guns at Sarah's house!  And Frosty really got it.  He was the only target other than other children, so I think they used him for target practice before setting off to terrorize each other.  

She was so worn out she actually took a nap after we got back to Josh's Mom's house!  That never really happens these days.

Josh decided driving at night on Saturday evening would be better than fighting the traffic on Sunday, and so we left after dinner last night.  I think he was right.  We made amazing time!  Only 5.5 hours!  And no stops other than one for gas!  That might just be the way to do it.  

Anyway.  Wish I'd manged to get more pics, but take my word for it, we had a great time!   :)

The Circus!

When I got my new computer a couple of months ago, the last thing I did on my old machine was back up Lightroom.  I'm not really sure why Lightroom recommends you do backups though because NONE of my edits were transferred to my new machine.  This was just infuriating.  So, every since I've had the new machine I've been going back and re-editing all of my pictures from this year.  I figure I won't bother with anything before this year since I've already got photo albums printed for those years.

It's been eye opening to go back and re-edit.  Although Lightroom didn't hang onto my edits, I had all of my low res JPEGs I've been exporting all year to compare my re-edits to.  I've decided I can't stand my editing style from just 9 months ago!  How funny is that?  I've also decided to just export everything at 100% resolution so that I'm not stuck in the same boat ever again.  I've got like 4TBs of storage now, so it shouldn't be an issue for quite some time.

Anyway, the final batch of photos that I attempted to edit before the old machine crapped out was from the circus.  We took the kids to the circus back in September.  These photos were quite frustrating for me because I'd decided to take everyone's advice and bump up the ISO to an astronomical amount in order to even get photos in the dimly lit arena.  Everything online says that cameras now-a-days don't have issues with noise at high ISOs.  This is crap!  Don't believe what you hear.  These were the noisiest flipping photos ever!  I was not looking forward to even attempting to process them because of this, but just yesterday I was reading an article that this woman wrote on action photography in low-light areas, and she had some good advice I hadn't considered in regards to editing.  I guess I just never noticed the noise reduction section in Lightroom  before.  It's hidden under the "details" tab.  This helped quite a bit and made most of the photos down right palatable for me!  Yay for the luminance slider!  :)

We got there a little early, and so one of the clowns walked up and started talking to the kids.  You can see Wallace is a BIG fan.  Ha!  The clown was showing Anna that he's a normal person under all of that makeup and he has normal skin under his glove to prove it.  :)

I complain rather frequently about the focus issues the D7000 has, but it's was a rock star with the performers at the circus!

Even through all of the stays and fences in the way it still nailed the focus!

I thought this chick had mad skills until I pulled this pic up on the computer....you can totally see the wires holding all of the hula hoops together!  I'm sure it's rather challenging, but still.  The illusion is ruined...

I was surprised at how all of the acts were families.  And most of them sounded Russian.  These guys were pretty awesome to watch!  And what the spank D7000!!...why can't you get my kid in focus when he's 2 feet from me and standing still???  I know I know...there's not much for it to get tripped up on, but still I'm shocked it didn't choose to focus on any of those wires instead of the performers.  Seriously...it's usually that bad.  

They missed this stunt the first time they tried it in front of us!  And how is she smiling???

Holy Elsa!

I haven't been to the circus in ages, so I'm not sure if it's this way at every one of them, but an hour before it started, during the intermission, and right at the end, they set up elephant rides, camel rides, pony rides, bounce houses, face painting...  so much stuff.  Which is great because right when Anna and Wallace were starting to lose it they got to go run around!

I wasn't sure we were going to be able to get him off of this thing!

Josh bought them some tickets for the elephant ride, and neither of us were sure how Wallace might react to it.  The kids got in line and imagine my shock when they put Wallace right up at the front of the elephant!!!

I just knew he was going to start bawling any second, but he didn't!!

Seriously...it was one of my proudest moments for this kid.  :)  And of course Anna thought nothing of it.  She's such a daredevil!

So, the kids had a blast!  And if Anna has anything to say about it, this will become an annual thing.  :)  

Wallace's Christmas Program

Today was Wallace's Christmas program at school, and boy was it a show!  My Mom had warned Me about this since she went to the show yesterday (some kids only go M-W-F, some only Tu-Th, and some go all week like mine...so they do two shows).  Wallace was putting on a show all his own.  

Wallace appears to be the only one in his class who can't stay in his seat.  He went back and forth in front of his class over and over.

Maybe he does it for the snuggles he gets from Mrs. Joyce when she catches him!

When it was time for his class to go up and sing (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer), he quickly....

...ran away from the spot where he was supposed to stand!

Mrs. Joyce brought him back over, and offered him some antlers, but he refused and didn't stay there long.

He apparently thinks there should be fish in the baptismal font.  He religiously checks it every time he's in the sanctuary.

Nope...no fish buddy.

He walked back over to stand with them for about a second...

...and he was gone again!

Haha!   Good grief.

Well...as you can see his hair looks horrible.  "/  I attempted to try to give him a longer cut, it did not go so great, and that coupled with the extreme bedhead he woke up with this morning made for a really bad hair day.  I ended up taking him straight to the barber after his class party finished up.

It was Wallace and a bunch of old men.  :)

He didn't love the brush.

It turned out pretty nice!  :)  And he only cried when I first tried to set him in the chair, but he quickly calmed down for the iphone.  How did people get their kids to sit for haircuts before iphones????