I Create Beautiful Children

I have been wanting a new camera lens for at least a year now.  A few weeks ago I decided I would have a garage sale to earn the money to buy one.   I needed a little more than $100. So I had my garage sale, made the money plus some and bought my lens from amazon. HERE  It is a Canon EF 50 mm f/1.8 II . As soon as I received it in the mail I started using it.  We had found this old chair at J's Grandparents house and it has been sitting in our utility room.

It's old, worn, the color is not too bad.  What do you think?

I kind of want to sand it down, re-paint it a brighter turquoise color then sand it down to give it the old, worn, look again.  But right now it is sufficient as is.  I might be on the look out to find more chairs of this nature. 

I set the chair up toward the back of our yard next to some purple flowers, put Z on it, who by-the-way was already in this pretty dress and shot away.  Most of the pics were taken with a f/1.8 or f/2 setting.  I forget what my ISO was, most likely 100 or 200. We were in complete shade, although I noticed on a few photos we had some sunlight come in.  The fun was to the subject's right side and it was around 5 pm.  I tried to get my auto focus to be on their eyes because I heard that this helps with getting the color of their eyes out. I don't know if that is right but I do think it helped.  

Look at those bright blue eyes!

I really love how the lens can blur out the background!  A lot better then my kit lens can. 

BTW... my son is shirtless.  It was a hot, muggy day today so he was running around in his underwear all day.

So much cuteness wrapped up in a small package!

I changed some to black and white because they were a little overexposed.  Just a little side note I do not have photoshop or any other editing program other than Picasa 3.  Although I want to take pictures in RAW I don't yet and won't until I have a decent editing program.  I did the "I feel lucky" action on a few of these.  Cropped some and then changed the overexposed ones to black and white. 

She is even cute in black and white

A few more of my favorites.

Look at her eyes!

I'm sure this is a crop. Look at that cute pout face!

Funny Moments

Baby Deer

I was driving out in the county the other day- alone and saw a baby deer crossing the road.   He/she was very focused on its destination. I was maybe 10 ft from it before it noticed me, at this point it was just a few feet away from the side of the road.  The poor baby deer saw me and jumped 5 ft in the air then jumped off the road.  I for real laughed out loud.  Then after realizing that he jumped because he had been so focused on  his destination that he didn't notice my large, loud vehicle approaching, I laughed out loud again.  

Musical Chairs

If you ever want to laugh until your side hurts, come over to my house and watch my kids play musical chairs.  Here is the run down.  First they start with three kids playing with three chairs.  They realize that that isn't very "fun" and take a chair out.  Then when the music stops the first time one cries, usually the smallest one.  I quickly start the music again and the crying stops.  I try to stop it when the youngest one is standing next to the chair so that he will get a seat.  Sometimes this works and sometimes not.  There is usually a 5 sec. reaction time to the music stopping which sometimes ends with the older kids getting the younger kids chairs even when the younger kids are right where the chair is.  Hilarious. Very Hilarious. 

Morning Madness

Last night my son peed his bed.  Which means that he spent the rest of the early morning hours in our bed. Later in the morning my youngest daughter joined us. 

There are four in the bed and the youngest one said

Yep.  Sang that to myself this morning.

My son kept on hitting me in the face with his arm.  His blanket.  His pillow. It got to be annoying.  Let's just say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  So I said rather angrily "Stop throwing stuff on my face!"

A minute later Z(youngest daughter) starts singing in her almost two year old, high sweet voice, "Not on my face, not on my face, not on my face"

Her brother laughed at her.  I laughed at her.

Z's sayings

I was showing Z a pick of our friend's newborn daughter and trying to get her to say her name, "Heidi" 

Z looked at the picture and said "Hi baby" and waved.  

I asked her "can you say Heidi?"  

Z said "No" 

I said, "Say Heidi"  

Z Said "Hi baby"  

This conversation repeated itself several times and didn't change.  I guess "Hi" is close enough to "Heidi"

Tooki the Owl

We found the Eastern Screech Owlet on Sunday, June 9th.  We were having M's 8th Birthday party and I had asked my dad to bring up his saw to cut down a couple pine trees that were planted too close together.  While he was cutting down limbs to get to the base of the tree, he found the owlet sleeping, not scared at all by the sound that the saw was making.  He yelled that he had found a baby owl and everyone came to see it and took pictures.  Ironically we had been discussing owls earlier in the day and my Grandma had said that she had not heard one in her neighborhood in awhile.  The pine tree that he was in is right next to the sidewalk.  Dad had cut down branches exposing him to the world.  We put some of the branches up to the tree to create a covering.  I was worried that he would not make it.
The following day I went to check on him in the morning and he was still in the pine tree.  He had moved over a branch or two.  I let our neighbor and mail lady know about him so he had a lot of visiting that day.  During the day he also moved to a higher branch in the tree.
On the third day of us knowing about his existence when I went to check on him in the morning he was gone.  I was a little disappointed but had known all along  that this might happen.  Around dinner time I was staring out the window and saw something in a tree and quickly went investigating to see if it was him.  I was sad when I found it was only a branch.  But when I turned I saw him in a totally different tree.  I thank God for this second opportunity of finding him.

Tooki sleeping

       I made a quiet sound and he woke up and looked at me 

This morning, the forth day, he is not in the pine tree or the second tree.  We will keep looking for him and hopefully will spot him again soon. 

M sayings

"I really want to grow my hair long like Rapunzel's... but I don't want anyone to climb on it"

I struggle to update as she plays on the floor near my feet not knowing if this post will ever be published.  Knowing for certain that any little bit of...... silence is worth gold.  This is my life.  This is what I am or what I've become.  To say it has been hard is a lie, it has been much more than that.  Yet here we are at hopefully the brink of renewal, seizing the few precious moments of sanity we have.  Savoring every bit of life.  Reaching for normalcy..  if that is the word for it.

N

Right now he is singing "building umm building, building umm building".  I asked him to find some blocks and build a tower so that I could attempt to write a post about him.  So he went and found four blocks and is currently building a tower right in front of me, leaning on me as he builds, singing right into my ear,  and I'm thinking "so much for a distraction".  But such is life with a sweet little boy like N living in your house.
We are working on learning to pee and poop in the potty.  I think it is going "ok".  He pees every time I sit him on the pot but almost never tells us that he needs to go.  This is unlike his older sisters who were... still are.. stubborn as all get out, refusing to pee even if their bladders were spilling over.  When they were ready, they were ready, and the whole "potty training" process didn't last long. N on the other hand might be content to dirty a pull-up or diaper the rest of his life.
He is all boy. Loving tractors, cars, trucks, blocks , Legos and guns. I've learned that anything can be made into a gun.  Mostly he shapes his Lego blocks into guns, then he goes and shoots things.  We are of course Brethern a peace promoting church.  So sometimes we turn his Lego block guns into Lego block crosses and teach him to say "Live! Live" instead of "Die! Die!" I really don't know where he gets it from.
He is warming up nicely to his baby sister Z.  At first he hardly noticed her. Different again from how his older sisters acted when he was born. M having a nervous breakdown when she came to visit us in the hospital and he wasn't around because he had been sent to the NICU.  L was quite aware of her little brother's presence also when he came home from the hospital.
N and Z now have a relationship which mostly consists of Z playing with N's toys, N taking the toys away from her then Z crying.  Or Z crawling after N or touching N and N backing away crying "I scared Mommy! I scared of that!" pointing to his innocent 10 month old baby sister.
N also seems to be getting along better with his older sisters.  Or maybe they have now decided that he is old enough to play with them. Or maybe because of his fun loving nature and need of attention, he doesn't mind if they dress him in dresses and paint his nails, making him into a beautiful princess, worthy to play with them.
Lately his favorite saying has been "It's my birthday!".  We are in our "birthday season"  which consists of 3 birthdays within four weeks of each other none of them being his.

Sad Girl

Sometimes when a baby is unhappy you should snap a photo.

These moments won't last forever.

I love how her eyes and nose get all red when she cries!