Thursday Thirteen #18 - Christmas photos

Thirteen Things about our holiday photos! We got our holiday photos taken at Target last week, which was definitely an interesting experience. I got the proofs online yesterday, so thought I would share 13 of them here - the good, the bad, and the well, ones we definitely didn't order any of! In general though they turned out rather well, especially considering that my expectations were pretty low - as long as the picture included the people who were supposed to be in it, and their faces were somewhat turned toward the camera, I was going to be happy with it. :) First, the good, although I'm saving my favorite for my Wordless Wednesday post next week. These are the ones that we ordered prints of (minus the 'enhancements' that they offered but we didn't purchase): The family portrait: Abby: Hannah: Becca: Three girls together: Hannah's 5-year portrait: The 'bad' - or at least the 'not quite as' good: I don't know why the photographer thought it was a good idea to try standing on a stepladder to take the family photo, but we definitely didn't like how these turned out so much. I think she wasn't quite sure what to think in the first one - and can you see Ron's shoe in the background in the second one? Ugh - we need to get Abby's glasses re-adjusted so they will stay up on her nose! This is just a very, very not good picture. That's all. We couldn't pry the Cookie Monster cup out of Becca's hands for the pictures of the 3 girls together (right after the 20 minutes we waited while the studio staff were all attempting to fix the camera). And the ones we definitely didn't order! I don't know if you can see it clearly here, but we apparently didn't get the tissue applied to her nose in time after the crying fit and before this particular photo was taken: I love this one - it's like a comedy of errors kind of, with Becca chewing on her cup and Abby looking sideways over her glasses... And by my count, that makes 13, even though I couldn't figure out how to make the list number consistently when I broke it up with text. This isn't even all of the proofs - maybe I'll share some of the others another time. :) Links to other Thursday Thirteeners:

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Here's a recipe for you...

Ingredients:

1 - vehicle in the shop, leaving one (annoying) vehicle to transport a family of 5 all day.

1 - appointment at 4:10 pm to have family/holiday/5-year-old portraits taken at a portrait studio that you've never been to before.

2 - children who are wound up, not listening to repeated requests to 'settle down!', 'stand still!' or 'stop doing *blank* to your sister!'

1 - hungry, tired toddler who wants to have nothing to do with standing/sitting still or smiling.

1 - husband with little to no patience for portrait taking to begin with and even less when added to previous ingredients.

Cooking instructions:

Mix first and second ingredients with a child needing to be picked up at school at 3:38 pm, an auto repair shop that closes at 5pm, a child needing to be picked up at daycare, and stir thoroughly.

Add in the last 3 ingredients along with a dash of runny nose, , a smidge of chapped lips, and a pinch of static-laden hair.

Optional ingredient for a special treat - mix in a 20-minute wait while 3 photographers attempt to fix the camera which broke halfway through the portrait session. And increase the amount of ingredients #3-#5 by 100%.

Another optional ingredient for a really extra special treat - attempt this recipe on one of your children's birthdays so that you feel incredibly guilty for yelling at them to be still, smile and stop fooling around. Feel even worse when they end up in tears.

Simmer all of the above for almost 2 hours.

Recipe makes a hungry, tired, frustrated family.  And somehow, by some strange miracle - this recipe also makes 13 amazingly good holiday portraits (to be posted when we get them back).  However, it is recommended to try this recipe only at your own risk as it could potentially lead to parental and marital problems of enormous magnitude.

Fall/Halloween Photo Contest Entry

Stacie over at The Twinkies is having a Fall/Halloween photo contest. It's taken me a while to figure out what picture I wanted to submit - I was hoping to have the chance to get some good new fall-ish or Halloween pictures of the girls. But unfortunately the weather has not cooperated around here and it's hardly been 'fall-ish' at all until this week. And getting home after dark every night just isn't terribly conducive for good picture-taking. So given that it's the last day to enter, I reluctantly have gone back into my photo archives and found what I think is my best photo from last year. I have a whole bunch that I would love to show, but since we were asked not to post multiple pictures at once, I'll share the others another time. So, here is my entry into the contest:

This was taken about 3 seconds after Hannah threw a huge handful of leaves up into the air. I did get a photo of her with her hands still up in the air, but in that one the leaves just happened to be covering her face... I love her expression in this photo though!

Wish me luck - and head over to The Twinkies starting tomorrow and vote for your favorite picture (hint, hint...)!

"I see!"

After my post on Saturday about how the girls' soccer games went, Eileen asked in a comment if I take my own pictures. The answer to that question is yes - well most of them. Ron takes some as well, but all of the soccer ones have been mine - mainly because he hasn't been there. And that's really the only reason I've been taking so many (and video, but I haven't subjected you all to any of that - yet. *grin*) - because he hasn't been able to make it to any of their games so far this year. Thank you for all of the compliments on the pictures!

For every photo that you see on my blog site, there are at least 2 or 3 residing on my hard drive that weren't deemed blog-worthy. Besides, I put enough pictures on here - believe me, you don't need to be seeing everything I take! Ron complains about the amount of photos that we have and how much hard drive space they take up. At which point I remind him of how many photo albums I have from pictures taken before we got our first digital camera, 6 years ago. If I still had to have prints made of every single photo that I take - we'd need a bigger house just for the photo albums.

Honest.

Part of the reason I take so many photos, I think, is that I have a horrible long-term memory. And I'm so afraid of not being able to remember all of the little things, like how the girls looked and acted at any particular age. Besides, they are just way too fun to take photos of!

Digital cameras are at fault though too - not having the cost of buying or developing film, plus knowing that I can delete any of them that I don't like (and yes, I do delete some. Well, a few anyway). It only took a short time to become used to addicted to having that screen on the back to see the photo as soon as I take it. No more waiting an hour, or overnight, or (ack!) several days to see that the picture you thought would turn out so cute instead contains a child with closed eyes or a finger up the nose...

Becca's starting to pick up a lot more words lately. And she's even beginning to string words together into phrases. One of her more recent phrases is "I see, I see, I see!". Guess when she demands says this?

After every picture that is taken of her. So we only get one shot nowadays folks, because after that she is all over us grabbing onto the camera, desperate for a glimpse at that magic screen on the back. Then when she does get to "see, see, see" - she's pointing at the picture saying, "baby!" or trying to take the camera from us and push all of the buttons. I'm worried she'll accidentally start deleting photos. Hmm, I probably shouldn't suggest to Ron that this might be a way of freeing up some extra hard drive space...

(I see! I see! I see!)

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Becca's 18-month photos!

Last weekend I took the girls and made the trek across town to JC Penney to finally get Becca’s 18-month photos taken. She only turned 18-months old oh, 4 weeks earlier but hey – at least she’s not quite 19 months old yet! Not until Tuesday anyway.

So we’ve had some pretty bad experiences with getting photos taken at JC Penny in the past. Long waits, photographers who don’t seem to know how to deal well with kids – it’s usually pretty stressful. We keep going there for a few reasons. First, they are the cheapest in town and still do a fairly good job with the actual photos. Second, we have the darn 2-year membership that isn’t up until the end of the year. And third, I wanted to try out Target’s portrait studio this time but they are apparently closed for renovations until September and the next closest one is in Indiana – at least 2 hours away. No thank you!

But I have to say, and give JC Penney full props for this, we had the most awesome experience ever at JC Penney or maybe any photo studio since we moved here! We were in and out of there in 45 minutes, which was amazing.

To start off, even though we booked the last appointment available when I called the day before, there was virtually no wait – we got in there literally 5 minutes after we arrived. That has never happened before. Usually the kids get cranky waiting around so by the time we actually get back there for the photos they’re already out of sorts. Even though Abby and Hannah weren’t listening terribly well – I wasn’t doing their pictures so it didn’t really matter, they just had to stay out of the way. That’s probably the second reason it went well – doing only one child instead of trying to do all 3 together.

I was impressed too – apparently JC Penney has converted from a film-based studio to digital since the last time we were there. This means that the photographer could actually take the camera right off the mount and get a lot more creative with her shots. There was no big, giant box to sit Becca on – instead we all sat on the floor with the backdrop behind us and the photographer just kept the camera in her lap as she played with Becca using a stuffed Big Bird. She just lifted the camera and took shots when she saw a good one – more like a ‘real’ photographer would.

This was especially helpful considering that my shy girl decided that the portrait studio was an appropriate place to freak out and she literally would not let me put her down the entire time. At the time I was sure we would have to reschedule since with their previous setup it would’ve been just about impossible to get any shots without me putting her on that big box and ‘posing’ her. But this time, I just sat on the floor with her on my lap and leaned backward out of the shots as the photographer took close-ups. Once I gave Becca her stuffed dog, she warmed up to the photographer and the games with making her stuffed doggy kiss Big Bird and vice versa – we got some great smiles out of her. We tried doing some full-body shots but Becca still wasn’t having anything to do with me letting her go. We got one where you can see my leg behind her and part of my body leaning out (she tried to fix that post-production by adding some blurring around the edges). And we got a very, very cute shot of Becca’s head on my shoulder, with a death grip on my shirt, LOL. All in all they turned out very well!

I was also so happy to see that when you’re reviewing the photos in the studio afterward and deciding what to buy, the pictures are so crisp and clear on the screen now instead of how fuzzy they used to be. I’d picked a pose that I thought would look ok in past visits only to get the actual pictures back and realize there was something wrong that I didn’t like. I actually sent back Abby’s 6-year-photos and got a different pose when I saw how they turned out. This was so much nicer! And they put together some enhancements that we could choose to purchase and when I got the SmilesByWire today, the enhancements were even included in that. I’ll share a few of them below!

And the best part? The $3.99 per sheet coupon price – they haven’t raised their prices at all (yet?) unlike Sears did when they went digital.

Here are the some of the pictures that we got:

And some of the 'enhancements' they put together - boy do I wish I could afford to get prints of some of these...

More Wednesday pics and my first video upload!

Not quite so wordless this time, LOL.

Here are Abby and Hannah with their ice cream cones from the same day that the Becca pics were taken:






Tonight the big girls were working on craft stuff - Hannah was finishing up a foam star hanging bead thing that she started at daycare a few days ago, and Abby was making (attempting) a house out of paper. Becca decided she wanted to get involved too, so I got out her chubby crayons and taped a piece of paper to the table for her. She actually 'colored' quite a bit! For the first time, really, she made an actual 'picture', even if it is just scribbles. I was very proud of her. Here's some pics of her coloring - and a video if I can get it to work right. It's cute - she's showing off her climbing and vocabulary skills as well.





Ok, trying to get the video up on YouTube - I'll put it on here later if successful...

Think I've got it now - hopefully this will work! Sorry it's turned sideways - haven't figured out how to fix that yet...

Lazy day

It's one of those Sundays where we have nothing planned and Ron's home. It's cool and rainy outside, Becca is napping, the big girls are downstairs watching a movie (Pocahontas) with Grandma and I was planning on doing some more of my photo scanning project. And yet, I find myself feeling somewhat lazy and unmotivated to do much of well, anything. So here I am, sitting on my bed with the laptop, catching up on e-mail, blog reading and (obviously) writing.

Oh, for those of you wondering - I did stay at work until 5pm on Friday and then picked Mom up. I guess it worked out anyway because the bus ended up being late and didn't even get in until 4pm. We picked the girls up and after screams of "Grandma!" and lots of hugging, we came home and I made dinner while Grandma took the big girls outside to play. It's so nice just having an extra person here to do those things. We were out of milk yesterday and I was able to just hop in the van and run to the store, leaving the kids with Grandma. No packing everyone up just to grab a gallon of milk. And the big girls love having Grandma here since she can play with them without interruption... and without having to keep a toddler occupied, like I usually do. Becca has become very attached to me and generally will not let me play with Abby and Hannah without causing a fuss or wanting to be involved too. Which doesn't make playing games and other things that Becca's too little for very easy for us. But I can play with Becca while Grandma plays with Abby and Hannah (or vice versa, but that doesn't always work very well). I am looking forward to when Becca's a bit older and can join in more easily and can also be reasoned with a bit more.

We had a fun day yesterday while Ron was at work. Mom and I took all 3 girls over to the small beach nearby. It's perfect for kids since it's on a tiny, man-made lake with no real current or waves. It's very shallow so the kids can walk out quite a ways and still touch the bottom. There's lots of sand for playing in and little minnows to chase. Abby and Hannah 'swam' in the water for almost the entire time. I did put a life jacket on Hannah, just to be on the safe side - we don't have any that fit Abby anymore, but she usually does very well in the water. Hannah threw a fit about the life jacket at first but I insisted and then she ended up liking it anyway since she could float about. Becca sat in the shallowest part (about waist deep for her while sitting) and played with her bucket and shovel and the wet sand. I took her out further for a little while and held her on my knees while I sat chest-deep. She thought that was pretty cool too. It was a perfect beach day - not too sunny and while it was warm, it wasn't too hot or humid. So we were perfectly comfortable sitting in the shallow water or on the beach.

I'm getting sleepy as I sit here... I fell asleep on the couch last night right after putting the girls to bed and didn't wake up until 10pm. And then of course I couldn't go back to sleep until after 2am. My sleep schedule is getting so very messed up nowadays! I'm halfway tempted to put this laptop down and take a nap right now...

Either that or I should get to scanning more of those photos. I'm more than halfway through the second photo album now, which is pretty exciting. Here's one of my favorite photos that I scanned last night. It's me holding my brother's puppy, Rex - I think I was about 9 when this was taken...

Happy lazy Sunday! Soon enough, Monday will be here and back to the 'grind'...

Throwback Thursday - lazy summer lake days

Since I've finally started my photo album scanning project, I can start participating in Throwback Thursday over at Pinks and Blue Girls! So, in honor of summertime, here are a few photos of me at "the lake". I think I'm maybe 3 or 4 years old in this first one and I loved this 'monster' floaty, LOL.

This was the boat that we had the entire time I was growing up. This was the most awesome boat and I really, really, really miss it. In this picture, my dad is driving and my brother and I are in the front (bow) seats.



Now this next one makes me just want to ditch work and head to the water because it looks so nice and cool and it's so darn hot out here right now, LOL. I really wish I'd labeled the photos in the albums better by date they were taken because I have no idea how old I was in any of these.



And here I am jumping off the raft. You can see my brother 'swimming' as well.

Wordless Wednesday - Say Cheese!

Abby with her camera:
And some of the pictures she's taken!






Check out more Wordless Wednesday participants here and here!

Becca's checkup and some updates

I just got back from taking Becca for her 18-month checkup. Wow, has this little girl grown! She's gone from a tall, skinny little thing with chicken legs to a robust toddler who actually has some plump to her now. Until her first birthday, she always hovered around the 10th to 25th percentile for weight. She is now in the 75th percentile at 26 pounds 4 ounces! And at 33 1/2 inches tall, she's in the 95th percentile for height. Way to grow, little Becca!

I'm feeling much better now, except for a lingering cough, but I think Becca may be catching my cold. She ran an unexplained fever last night of 101.5 before bedtime (although she's been fever-free so far today) and she just hasn't seemed herself or had an appetite. My little daredevil hardly let me put her down at the doctor's office and let's just say that's not like her. About the time she finally started calming down and playing with me, it was time for the shot - only 1 this time though, thank goodness. But in general, she's doing well and is healthy and all of that fun stuff.

Remember my cancorder tape-to-dvd project? Well, I am almost completely done! I have one tape left to copy - it's of our honeymoon in Florida. So far I have copied/watched over 30 hours of family video. After the first 7 hours of just Abby, it seemed to settle down into a nice variety of new babies, birthday parties, Christmas and preschool events/activities. Although we either did not record much in 2002 after Abby's first birthday or I'm missing a tape somewhere because between April (Abby's b'day) and November (Hannah's birth), I've got a total of about 15 minutes. But I'm excited to almost be done and already looking ahead to the next project that I've assigned myself - scanning all of the photos in my photo albums.

This is a bigger job that you might think. My mom started photo albums for my brother and I when we were born. At the time, all of their photos were developed into slides, so my mom made prints of the best photos for our albums. My brother never kept his up after he got older and I actually raided his for photos before I moved away from home (shhh, don't tell!). But I not only kept them up, they multiplied. And multiplied. I have almost 20 photo albums covering from my birth up to Abby's birth, when we got our first digital camera. I also got into scrapbooking at that point and have started 3 different scrapbooks - none of which have more than a few pages in them yet. Have I mentioned I have this habit of starting projects and not finishing them? Which is one main reason I'm so excited to almost be done with the camcorder tapes. And I WILL get all of the photo albums scanned! Eventually.

So in other news, here's some updates on past posts. First of all, Hannah is doing much, much better with the potty since we started using the timer. Even to the point where we've stopped using it most of the time. She's only had a couple of accidents and has even taken herself to the potty several times. She is back in pull-ups at night after ruining her mattress (that one was Ron's fault for not noticing he was putting her to bed on a bare mattress without sheet or mattress pad!). I haven't been giving her the MiraLax on a regular basis, but plan to start again because she's been complaining about stomach aches again. So we'll see if this streak goes more than the couple of weeks that it's ever lasted before. Having her 100% potty trained before school would be awesome.

I still haven't gotten a new wedding ring. It just hasn't seemed as high of a priority lately, what with everything else going on.

I finished Harry Potter on Monday! No spoilers here, but it was really an amazing book and a great way to end the series. I think I'm going to go back now and re-read them all from the beginning to see how everything fits together. J. K. Rowling is amazingly talented - I'll be looking forward to seeing what she does next.

I think that brings everything pretty much up to date! Just because I feel like it, here are a few photos from swimming lessons over the past couple of weeks. Sorry for the picture quality - the lighting isn't the greatest plus the motion makes things a bit blurry...

Smile - you're on candid camera!

My project for the summer is to get all of our (many) camcorder tapes copied onto DVDs. Thanks to the DVD recorder that we bought the day after Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, this is a project that I can tackle myself at home. However, there is no ‘fast forward’ way to do this – you must let each tape run since only what actually plays on the screen will be recorded onto the DVD. On the flip side of that too, anything that plays on the screen will be recorded onto the DVD, as we’ve found out when recording television shows – you can’t bring up the programming guide over the screen like you can while something’s recording on the DVR unless you want the programming guide copied for all posterity on the DVD that you’re making.

So what this means is that I’ve spent 7 hours so far sitting and watching camcorder tapes. Seven hours – of Abby. Yes, apparently it’s true what they say about first children getting all of the glory and screen time. Wow, it really didn’t seem like so much time while we were recording these tapes 6 years ago! Seven hours. And that takes us only up until her first birthday. Video of Abby sleeping, sitting in the bouncy seat, in the exersaucer, holding a toy, shaking a toy, staring at a toy… You get the idea. Almost all of this video was taken in our house (well, townhouse for the first 6 months and then our first actual ‘house’ after that). It’s not even ‘Abby goes to the park’ or ‘Abby’s first trip to the store’. With the exception of about 5 minutes taken at my in-law’s old house, pretty much every moment is either Ron or I shooting video of Abby while talking to her, convincing her to smile at the camera, etc. There is some footage of both of us with Abby. There is also footage of first visitors after we brought her home from the hospital. But the bulk of it – is Abby. And yet, I can’t help but watch. Every little facial expression, every cry, laugh, burp (or urp) – I can’t believe how much I’ve forgotten, 6 years and 2 more kids later. I hadn’t realized how much Becca sounds like Abby did as a baby even though she doesn’t really look anything like her. SEVEN hours – and yet I can’t help but wish we had this much video of the other two girls’ first years. First children do get all of the glory and screen time. And subsequent children get to share the spotlight – when there’s time to actually pull the camera out and record. As I’m finding, after the other girls were born, the camera only came out for things like Christmas, birthdays or other major events. There’s so little recorded just of – them.

Lately when we pull the camcorder out, the two older girls tend to ham it up and get silly and extra loud. Gone are the ‘candid’ recordings of their everyday life – they think it’s fun to ‘act’ for the camera. Which is fun too but I know that in another 6 years I’m going to want to look back and see how they ‘really’ were. I’m glad I decided to tackle this project now because I think it’s going to change when and how we record things. I take so many still shots but lately video just hasn’t been a priority. It’s always such a pain to keep the camcorder battery charged, make sure there’s enough tape, and try to catch the specific moments we’re after. And yet, some of the best footage that I’ve been watching this week is when we just had let the camera roll and document our lives at the time. Most of these tapes had been recorded and then put away – not even watched until now. I’m hoping that by having them on DVD, we’ll pull them out more often and enjoy these recordings of our past. I can’t wait to sit down with the girls and watch together. Ron suggested that we make copies for the grandparents. Right. Like anyone else would want to sit through SEVEN hours of Abby’s first year. Maybe a ‘highlights’ reel is the way to go on that one… :)