Hanging in the tree

Kyle loves to play in this tree in our front yard. He is slowly but surely breaking the branches one by one on it. These are just some random photos I took the on Thanksgiving of him. I tried to adjust my aperture to do the whole depth of field thing. So Amy when you read this look at the last two pics -- I must have done something wrong because it didn't work. Either that or my camera just doesn't do it the way I want it to.





This picture I put my aperture on 2.7 (the lowest my camera will go). I thought that would give me the shallow depth, it didn't.



So then I decided to try the highest aperture my camera would go (which is 5.something I think). It really just made the picture darker.

The Holiday that cannot be bought

Happy Thanksgiving today! I was in the shower this morning and Kyle came and asked if we get to open presents on Thanksgiving. I said "No, today is just a day to eat lots of food and be thankful for your family." Every other holiday is so commercialized except this one. It is almost overlooked. It is not my favorite holiday by far but it is the only day of the year that I get to eat dressing. I really need to practice making that. I read about a good idea for a scrapbook page so I took pictures of our food today. Here is what our family has for Thanksgiving:

The Dressing (and there is Chicken in it)



Sweet Potato casserole (which I don't eat)
(for some reason I can't find the picture of this, maybe I didn't take one)

Mashed Potatoes



Corn Pudding



plain Green Beans (no green bean casserole in this family)



Peach Pie filling salad (aka fruit salad)



Ham



And here is the whole spread (minus the desserts):



We don't usually have Turkey at our house on Turkey day, I know weird but that is how we have always done it. And this year we didn't have any pies. That doesn't upset me at all because I don't eat any of the traditional Thanksgiving day pies, plus I would rather eat more dressing. We did have coconut cake and chocolate eclair cake.

9th birthday party

After Sweet and Sassy I took Kaitlyn to O'Charleys for dinner. We invited a few friends to go with us. Our waitress was really good and the girls enjoyed being independent and ordering for themselves. They took about 18 trips to the bathroom together.

I think this is definitely one for the Church Senior video:



We had stopped and got a Baskin Robbins cake to take with us.



Kaitlyn also received some nice gifts.

Ears Pierced

Kaitlyn has been wanting to get her ears pierced for a while now. So we decided we would go for her birthday. She wanted to have her party at Sweet and Sassy but I told her it was too expensive. So I said I would just take her there and she could get her ears pierced and her hair done.

She was a little scared to get her ears pierced but she said she would be brave. She picked out some flower earrings with a pink stone in the middle.

Before:



About to be punched:



She was really good and said it didn't hurt that much. Then she said "I didn't even have one tear in my eyes." And she didn't.

And the final result:



Then she got her hair done in the party up-do.







All done up and ready to go!

All 7 of them

Yesterday we went out to Luke's house. It has been a while since we have all been out there on a Sunday. So we had all 7 of the cousins there and we tried to take a picture. Here is the best we got:



It is not half bad and if we get copies of it made for the grandparents they will love it no matter what it looks like.

Not just a game

Luke has this Nascar DVD game but to Kyle it is just a racetrack with cars. So last night he got it out and was playing. When Kyle plays cars he makes all kinds of car rumbling noises so picture that when you see these photos.

New cousin

Here are some pics of Kaitlyn and Kyle with Ashley:

Playing with my camera

So Amy, Susan and I took a class at University of Memphis called Understanding Digital Photography. It was 2 nights and we learned a lot, even though we felt a little jipped because she ended 15 minutes early the first week and 35 minutes early the second week. The instructor seemed very knowledgable but lacked in the presentation. Nonetheless, we still feel like we learned something and are going to be able to take better photos because of it. Last Tuesday we talked about shutter speed and aperture (amongst a few other topics). These were the two things I wanted to know about the most. So while the kids were bowling yesterday I played with the shutter speed. Kaitlyn was too far away from me and when I zoomed with the shutter speed I wanted it was too dark. I have decided that I need an external flash (added to the Christmas wish list) to solve that problem. Here are a couple of Kyle:







I was thrilled to be able to "freeze" the ball in mid air so to speak in the photo. I am now looking forward to taking pictures at t-ball and soccer in the spring.

I did have a major case of camera envy last night. I think I was the only one without an SLR camera. But hey if my point and shoot can do what I want then I am okay holding off for a while buying the really expensive camera. Plus as some of you know I am really hard on cameras (I have already broken 2 in 2 years)

Wordle

Apparently on this application you can just put the address of your blog and it puts the words you use most in the wordle for you. Here is what it gave me:

title="Wordle: November"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/304019/November"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">


This is a neat application, I might do this every now and then. Interesting!

(okay so apparently something is not working right, not so interesting now, I will have to see if I can fix it)

Ladies Day

We had our Ladies Day at church this morning. On Wednesday nights we have been using a study book by Casandra Martin. We were thrilled to be able to get her to come speak for our Ladies Day. She was really good! Here is a picture of me and mom at lunch.



We sat at the Diva table, decorated by Jennifer W. and Michelle P., all done up in pink and black. All the tables at lunch were decorated in a different theme. They all looked fantastic, there was a palm tree table, lighthouse table, birthday table, snowman table, santa table, sunflower table, and many more.

Another new niece

Luke and Susan had their baby on Thursday. John and I went to see her tonight. She is so tiny, only weighed 5 pounds 10 ounces and was 18 inches long. Her name is Ashley Ruth, here is a picture:





She looks exactly like Susan, there is nothing Luke about the child (maybe her feet, hehe). Luke seems to be doing so well and is such a proud Dad! That poor little girl already has him wrapped around her finger.

Photo Shoot again

I took the kids to Buckhead Creek park to try and get some photos again. They had this fall type display set up. It did not work well being right in front of the baseball field fence but we tried. Kaitlyn and Kyle were completely uncooperative. Here is what I got: