Light

Playing With Light

 














This photo was submitted to the I Heart Faces photo challenge – www.iheartfaces.com

We Have Kids!

Brownie and Smudge, our two female goats, have been keeping us entertained for the past two years.  They love to climb and walk planks and always welcome me to the backyard with a friendly bleat or two.

My hope was that with the addition of Billy last spring, we might have a few kids born this spring.  As winter became spring, it seemed to me that we had a dud.  Every time I would check on the girls, there was no sign of either goat being an expectant momma. 

Interestingly, on Friday evening my brother says to me, “Your goats expecting you know”.  I’m like, “What?!, how can you tell?”  Cody says, “Cause she’s lactating”.  I ask, “What’s lactating?”  Cody gives me a strange look.  “Um… Milk…” 

Wow! Talk about an embarrassing moment:) My brother had to remind me what lactating is.

Saturday afternoon I get an excited call from Jeremy.  We have twins!  A male and a female looking nothing alike, but so darn cute.

Cayden and a friend promptly named them Caramel and Marshmallow.  Interesting but fitting:)

Playing With Collages

So often I have a difficult time making a decision which pictures to add to a post.  I hate to leave out any because I treasure every little one.

In an attempt to add pictures in a creative way, I finally discovered ipiccy.com.  I had some fun with it but certainly look forward to using it in the future but with a whole lot more speed!

Playing With Light

A few short months ago I put aside my trusty point-and-shoot Nikon, only to take up a Nikon SLR.  Hands-down one of the best things I have ever done. 

I have been having so much fun challenging myself to take pictures all the time. No matter how bad the lighting is or how messy my children’s hair is. Trust me, Peyton has been blessed with so much hair and more often then not is quite the mess:) 

To help me on the path to taking good pictures, I joined a group of ladies called "Mom’s With A Camera”.  This certainly has been the best resource for me in learning to take decent pictures and not get too frustrated with my lack of no-how with an SLR.   I am always learning and only a couple weeks with my new camera in hand, I  left ‘auto mode’ and took the leap all the way to ‘manual mode’.

The first series that we learned was what was called, ‘Playing With Light’.  And through this I practiced taking pictures of catch-lights, back-lights, soft lights and hard lights. One of the most fun I had practicing taking pictures in these situations was with my two little angels as the slept obliviously to me snapping a multitude of pictures of them as they dreamed good things.  I even managed to get a great picture of Cayden as he drooled in his sleep:)  So much fun!

I don’t have any ambitions to become a professional photographer, but I do love taking pictures I am proud of.

Watching an episode of Franklin on my ipone.

Peyton gathered all her baby shoes to sleep with her.

Cayden caught sleeping with his new headlamp from Nana

A Spring Sunday

Today was a Peyton and mommy day.  Something uncommon but very welcome. 

It started with goodbyes to Jeremy and Cayden as we headed out to church this morning.  Jeremy and Cayden had their own day that didn’t include us either.

After church we had some lunch and enjoyed some shoe shopping.  Spring was in the air and it was finally time for me to purchase some cute and sassy shoes, rather than rely on my tried and true pair of flip flops.  Peyton enjoyed the shoe shopping far more than me.  She traded her own sandals in for a multitude of ladies heels.  I couldn’t believe how well she was able to prance around in those things!  I don’t even dare walk around in them for fear of breaking my neck.  I finally made my pick and then had to pickup and put away the many pairs of shoes Peyton had left from one end of the shoe section to the other, to the joy of the other ladies shopping for shoes who enjoyed her giggles and glee.

It was then time for a nap.  And I would be lying if I didn’t admit to taking a bit of time for one myself.  Such a nice treat.  I finally dragged myself out my sweet dreams and loaded up the trunk of the car with snacks, drinks, stroller, camera, soccer cleats and soccer ball.  It was time to get ourselves out into the glorious sun.

We had such a wonderful time walking, swinging, sliding and kicking for the next while.   Between playing some soccer on my own and running back to push Peyton on the swing ‘higher’ for quite a while I finally ran out of energy and took out the camera and played around with taking some pictures. It was the perfect lighting to capture the moment we were having together.  She even got caught up in the camera moment and grabbed my iphone to take pictures of me:)

 

Learning About Gossiping

Out of complete randomness Cayden goes into a spiel about Gossip.  I immediately thought that it was a subject learned at today’s Spring Break camp at our church today.  It totally seems like a ‘life lesson’ that would have been discussed.  Imagine my surprise when I got a playback of a My Little Pony episode on television this afternoon. Cayden was able to share  a very good definition of gossip and why gossip is not good.  All of this learned from Pinky Pie and Rainbow’s sad experience in the My Little Pony episode.

Looking back, I have learned quite a few valuable lessons from watching my favorite cartoons as a child.  I certainly am not leaving the learning all of life's lessons to watching television, but am very happy when a lesson or two is learned by the ‘wasting of time’.

 

Our Favorite Two Little People

These crazy 2 loves of our lives, seldom enjoy each others company.  Whenever they are in the vincinity of one another, a fight, scream or cry is inevitable.  I continue to hope that one day they will become friends.  Many tell me that it will happen. One day.  I sure hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

We do get glimpses once in a while.  The most recent was Peyton saying to Cayden, “Me hug, Cayden.”

Little sibling moments like this give us hope that one day Cayden will be the protector and Peyton will admire her big brother and be allowed to be the tag-a-long.