thank you babe

To my wonderful hubby. He knew what I wanted, and delivered. Between him and Santa I can't complain. Santa brought me a new portrait lens I've been really wanting.... and I love it! f/1.8! No more lighting problems inside! It does a really great job, now it's up to me to figure out how to use it best. And then Matt got me a new camera. I don't know that I needed a new one... but it sure is a good one! Yay! Now I guess I REALLY need to figure out how to use all the programing on it. I'll be doing a lot of reading. Any suggestions on easy ways to figure (and remember) all this stuff out would be great. I just can't seem to retain some of this info! Anyway, here are a couple shots I took of Makenna with the new lens and camera. I had to do no photoshop! (well okay, I did change the black and white, but that's it!). What do you think?

Smile

Matt comes home tonight.
:)

What's that sound?

My poor baby has been stuck with this terrible cough for a week now. The kinds that keeps us all up all night. The kind that we couldn't seem to figure out what to do to make better. I finally take her to the doctor and.....
Pneumonia.
Yup. Hats off to some good parenting over here! It's amazing though. Two days on antibiotic and the cough is SO much better! I guess there was a reason she was being so bloody miserable to be around. I probably would have been too...

Shots

This poor girl of mine. We went in for her yearly, and of course had to get shots. Just two. Just two. Lets just say she doesn't handle the doctors so well. She had to have a CT scan once and they actually had to get three drugs in her, just to calm her down enough to get the IV in. Well, yesterday wasn't any better. All those spots on her face... that's not picture there, those are popped blood vessels. Nice. Very nice. You should have seen what her face looked like after the CT scan. This is nothing! Anyway, it took 3 of us to hold on to her, and we could have used more. Every time we have to do shots of any type, the nurses always impressively say she is the strongest 5 year old they've ever seen. I should be proud. Right? At least I don't have to worry about her with the boys. I KNOW she can take care of herself!

It cracked me up though. She really wanted me to take pictures of her, and she had to do her hair herself. There were green clips of any type she could find, all over in her hair. It cracked me up. And then she'd pull all these funny faces, trying her best to do her "Hannah Montana". How could I say no? So after her modeling, we went downstairs to watch her first viewing of High School Musical. I just couldn't do it before then. I'd seen it once, and couldn't stomach another. But for some reason, maybe just because I was watching it with two very intrigued girls of mine, it wasn't so bad. I think we're gonna have fun over the next few years!

My Family

So now that the Christmas cards have gone out (feel free to raz me if you don't get one in a few days!) I can safely show you some of the other pictures which didn't make the cut. Personally, it wasn't my fav that got picked for the card. Don't get me wrong.. it's not bad. Just not the one I'd pick. Probably because I'm the one who has a bit of a funny face. Really, I'm just laughing a little. Nothing TOO bad, or trust me. It wouldn't have made it on the card at all. But it was everyone else's favorite, and majority rules on this. It happened to be the best one of all the others. O-well. So back to what I was saying.. I just thought I'd show you a few of the other takes. Finally. Man I love this crew! And thank you Molly for the great picts!

~and yes, I don't know what is going on with the pixels on this blog right now... I can't seem to post clear pictures right now. :(

Every tree needs a train

Or should I say every boy needs a train. This year the kids got to open up an early Christmas present. Well, actually a few early ones (oh yes Aunt April, the kids do love the chocolate calendars as they call them...!) bug the infatuation has to be the train. Matt has always wanted to get a train to set up around the Christmas tree. And every year we wait until we can affored to get one. Well. This year we got one as a gift. I don't know who was more happy. Matt, or the kids. Especially Bug. The minute he gets home from school, this is where I find him. It's adorable really. And he'll stay occupied watching that train go around the same track until the others are begging him to come play with them. Thank you Grandpa!!!

Missing a friend and her baby

So I am just missing a friend of mine. It's been awhile since we've gotten to hang out. Too long I think! Last time I was there I took a couple of photos of her new baby, which by the way did NOT turn out! I just couldn't wake the sleeping baby to get better pictures. O-well. So me and my boredom while sick was determined to make one of them work. I actually like how it turned out. What do you think?





this one I'm not sure about... some times yes, other times no. So here it is anyway, but definitely not as good as the first.

Family photo time

I got to shoot my first family a bit ago. THANK YOU for having faith in me! They were awesome on this freezing cold morning. I do hope they are happy, because we did have some lense issues, causing things to not fully focus. Rats. If you ask me though, there were oodles of ones to choose from. Here are some I really liked...







and just one of the girls having fun!

girls being girls

It's been a good Thanksgiving. So much to be happy about. We had family here this year, which was a first (other than the year we flew my mom out because Nutmeg was born and it just so happened to be over Thanksgiving!) and hopefully not the last. Four families, including us were able to celebrate together. AND the biggest was probably that Matt was home for an entire 10 days!!

I've been sick the last couple of days, and I mean was only cohearent 3 hours on Friday and maybe 4 on Saturday type of sick, and now am awake but have no energy. So I was browsing through photos I still needed to catalog, and I remembered these. They make my heart happy. Nutmeg is putting her Hannah Montana make-up on Ase, so they can both rock out to music together. It was so sweet. This may happen with your kids often, but not mine. Ase was in absolute heaven for a bit. She was finally on the same level as her amazing big sis.

Mmmmm.
Makes me just want to hug someone (but maybe just a nap will do today)!