Photography Class, FINALLY!

Yay! I finally took a photography class this weekend to learn just how to use my SLR and I am so happy I did. It was a full day and my head was spinning by the first hour but I slowly started to get it as the day progressed. I need to practice A LOT, but at least now I know what to do to take a good picture, even if it takes me 5 minutes to set it up, lol. I will never be as good as our fearless leaders Treva & Bob, but that's okay, I just want to take some awesome pictures of my kids. Here's a couple sample shots from the day. They aren't much, but we were practicing different things with our aperture, shutter and ISO. Fun times definitely!

The creative genius :-)

Working with depth of field. Love playing around with aperture. And of course I left the classes wanting a new lens that would let me open my aperture to a 1.8 (mine only goes to 3.5 at 18mm).

Taking our skills outside. Underexposed all the first shots, but I figured it out with our second "volunteer" (with the help of my meter though, would love to get good enough that I didn't have to cheat :-).

Dallas Children's Museum

During spring break my parents came up with Noah and Addy so we headed to the Dallas Children's Museum. I think Noah could have spent all day there if it weren't for the younger one's short attention span. They (including Addy :-), were done with each exhibit in 2 minutes. Whitney will have to take him by himself one of these days :-).
The dinosaur exhibit is going on, but we didn't pay extra to see that, however, they had several dinosaurs in the entrance the kids could look at. Abby's favorite by far!

The girl scount cookie displays were also out :-)

The dino dig :-)

That's one big nose! And it's purpose...to sneeze :-). The kids LOVED that.

POP!

Oh How our Gardens Grow

I really want a garden to grow our vegetables, but I'm a little nervous about taking on that project. So, I thought it would be great to start with container gardening. The kids had a blast planting their gardens and just this week we spotted a few little green strawberries and one little green bell pepper. They are SUPER excited about that and check on the strawberries and pepper at least once a day. Check out my full post at my new blog!

Party at the gym!

Earlier this month we helped celebrate our friends Caden & Dylan's 4th birthday at a local gym. The kids were so excited and of course showed no fear. We don't do our weekly gym class anymore since the kids are in school so it's a special treat when they get to play around in the gym. I really should get them in structured gymnastics classes, but I'm not sure how well they'd actually listen. I take that back, I'm not sure how well Abby would listen. Jake is doing so well in structered environments now.

Fearless!

Their favorite part of the gym. Of course this boy was the first to start this and the rest of the birthday party followed.

Lily jumped in from the side :-) She's actually mid-air if you look closely.

Later she found a ballon and that was a lot more fun than jumping into a foam pit.

Another favorite was the long trampolines the kids could run on. Lily got knocked down a few times, but it didn't stop her.

And of course I didn't get a SINGLE SHOT of the birthday boys!!

Family Day at the Ft. Worth Zoo

John had a day off in February and with as nice as the weather had been, we wanted to go to the zoo. We let the kids play hookie and headed to the Ft. Worth Zoo. It was the first time for us as we normally go the the Dallas Zoo. We had a blast and can't wait to go to the zoo again. Although Abby was a bit sad she couldn't feed the giraffees.

Abby's favorite :-)

Almost a good shot. They were leaving as soon as they got on there so I couldn't step back to get a full shot of the alligator, lol. Oh well, they are all in the shot, facing me, sort of.

Abby LOVED the hands on tanks.

Those fence rails were right at eye level for my crew so they had to climb to see.

Does it surprise anyone this is my group shot?

Still Jake's favorite :-)

Lily's favorite thing. Man I'm going to be in trouble.

Notice a theme...this was always my view :-) The kids could hardly contain themselves.

Daddy give's Lily a view.

Jake's Valentine's Party

I'm a little behind :-), but wanted to show off the fun we have at Jake's school. I try to go up there when I can and so I of course went up there for the Vday party when they had it. I love seeing his face light up when I come in and watching him learn so much at school. His teachers are amazing! They had passed out their valentine's to their friends earlier in the morning, but we had a cake walk game (where the kids won silly bands instead of cakes :-), a craft, and snacktime.

Game Time

Craft Time

Snack Time