Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Hello Botanical!

Still not raining here in the Southeast. Yea! (I hope I don't jinx it.) :)
Today after nap the kids and I headed out to one of our "spots", the Botanical Garden. The kids were excited on the way there. But shortly after our arrival it started to thunder. Not bad and I could tell it was far away so I didn't feel it was necessary to run & get in the car. I wanted to take some pictures! Jackson decided he was scared of the thunder and he was already completely not interested in me or my camera so I didn't have much to chose from.
So most of these shots are of Isabel. I had some marshmellows in my bag and that kept her interested in me. Or at least long enough to sit still for a few. I always save the water garden for last. I use it to bribe them with while we are there. "If you don't listen to Mommy we are NOT going to get to play in the water." Hey, it works. But Jackson fell on his butt in the water garden, started to cry, and I noticed that the mosquitos were dining on my kids so it was time to go. Time.
When we were leaving we got a nice surprise. We ran into our new friends Daphne and her little boy Ben (we met them at our local adoption agency picnic a couple of months ago, and my friend from my photography class Buffy. It is such a small world that they are really good friends.)
I did get some shots that I'm happy with but I'm having a real problem with blurry images. In the past couple of weeks I seem to be taking a "crap ton" of blurry pics. I don't think I'm doing anything different. I had tons of opportunity for great pics but it just wasn't meant to be. So frustrating. Ugh.


Happy Jackson
Not so happy Jackson

My beautiful, handsome little boy. I love this pic.








Love this! You can really see her "attitude"

This is what I get if I ask her to smile. Nice, huh? Won't do that anymore. :)

I'm now stuffing her full of marshmellows


She appears to be so sweet









More editing practice

Before........
After



Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Dinner with Nicholas

Last Friday night we met Rhett, Nicole, Ella & new baby Nicholas at Mom's house for a little dinner. Charles was out of town so Mom was at home alone. And we couldn't leave GanGan with a peaceful Friday night at home could we? :)
It was baby Nicholas' first night out. He is 3 weeks old now. Growin' on up!


I took these in the driveway before heading off to Mom's:









Isabel is wearing "Princess gloves"
Here's baby Nicholas!

This is Jackson checking out Nicholas
Mommy & her baby.
I just love this picture.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Playing with PS Elements

Tonight is my last class of Intro to Photoshop. :(
Here's a little "snippet" of what we worked on last week. Isolating spots of color. The first shot is the original and the second I have isolated color in a spot on a B&W image. If only I had more time to practice.......

Original image

Now a B&W image but I left the train in color


Same story here....


Thursday, May 28, 2009

The rain has stopped!

It stopped. It has been raining for weeks. Driving me literally insane. I feel like the kids and I have been locked indoors for years! :)
On the rare occasion that the rain has taken a break it has, of course been on a day which I am at work. And what happens on my off days? RAIN!
On Wednesday the clouds parted and the sun came out and we got to get back to the zoo. Yea!!
The kids were NOT angels that day. A little whiney but I was so very happy to be outside I didn't even care when Iz had a little "fit" when I denied her a toy in the gift shop. Poor little girl. :(
















I do believe this is the best shot of the day. Thank you Isabel!






They saw this at the same time. Both ran. Fighting began. See her "monkey face"

Jackson got the first turn because Iz was behaving badly. ;)

OK. She's happy. Jackson moved out of her way.

A little "time out" with a bag of chips