My first non-family pictures!

I don’t suppose this really counts as an honest-to-goodness session, though, because I volunteered for it! This is a little guy from my church. From the very first day I saw him and his mom this summer, I thought, “Ooooh, I really want to take pictures of them!”. I just think that he is so, so cute…we call him, “Mr. Adorable” at our house.

I took a ton of pictures, of course, but I am way too impatient to load them all up here. So, these are just a few of my favorites. As usual, the quality on them looks better if you click on each picture to enlarge it(Mr. Adorable’s eyelashes are more visible that way).

So, she lacks a little finesse with the lip gloss.

She’s got a few more years to practice, though.

(not that bright purple lip gloss ever looks very elegant, even when properly applied)

Fall light

So, this is the first fall since I got my fancy-schmancy SLR camera, and I’m noticing for the first time how different fall light is from summer light. It’s hard to get nice light in the summertime, since the sun is up overhead so much of the time. In the fall, though, even in the middle of the day there is some nice indirect light to be had.

If only Zoe would quit making this face!


That’s better. But we wouldn’t want to look at the camera when we smile!

I think it’s interesting how different the light is on this one, even though I took the two within minutes of each other. They were just taken at a different spot in front of our house.

I thought the shadow was kind of neat on this one, even though her hair is a little blurry.

I just want to say a big “Thank you!”

to my dear husband, whose idea it was to get me an SLR for Christmas last year, and who used the money he was saving for a new laptop to purchase said camera.  I love you! 

And thank you to my mom and dad, my father-in-law and mother-in-law, and my brother and sister-in-law who all chipped in to make it happen.

My camera is the bestest present I have gotten for Christmas ever. Thank you!

Some things about my neighborhood rock.

Like the fact that this is just a 5-minute walk from my front door.
Oh, look!  I took a picture without a person in it.

These are my two nephews, whom I was babysitting.

I’m sure we were quite a sight walking back…me with six children ages nine and under. A man in a truck watched incredulously as we walked back and he said, “My! You certainly have your hands full!” and I said, “Oh, only four of them are mine.” And oddly enough, that didn’t seem to reduce his level of incredulity by much.

Photoshop joys and pains

Maybe some of my readers that are better with Photoshop can help me out here…the first picture here is edited with Picasa, and I’m very happy with the contrast levels in it.

In this one, I sharpened the eyes, and I’m happy with that, but I cannot get the contrast right to save my soul. The white part of the black and white is just not white enough. Something is wrong here…Picasa should not do a better job than Photoshop!

Someone help me!

A rare moment of peace

Zoe and Sonia are like oil and water lately…they each know exactly what to do to tick each other off, and they’re both pretty selfish. So they have trouble sharing, and they bother each other a lot. They’re definitely in one of those, “can’t live with you and can’t live without you” kind of relationships, though. They often give each other hugs, and every now and they do seem to like to play together, despite all their troubles with getting along. And sometimes, just sometimes, they do something together peacefully.