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We observed Memorial Day by having a barbecue at our house with family and good friends. I am so thankful for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice so I can have the freedom to celebrate, enjoy my family, and worship my God.

My photo for today is my beloved mother-in-law with two of her siblings. Her older brother David has been here visiting for the last few days, and I finally got a chance to capture Barbara (my MIL) with David and their sister Judy. This kind of visit doesn’t happen often, so I was glad to capture this moment.

(This is not my favorite shot – but it’s the one I liked best in the chocolate b&w.)

This is my favorite from the few I shot – the lady in the back is David’s wife, Darlene. We really enjoyed visiting with them today!

After all of our guests left Ken had a few moments of fun with some of the kids…
 
Ken is the coolest dad ever.

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ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DAYS! Wow! I have posted daily for 150 days. That’s crazy!

We had a church picnic today to say goodbye to our interim pastor and his beautiful family. I didn’t get any really great pictures of them today – it was so windy it was hard to get great pictures of anything! But I got one of my little girl and “her Billy” that I really like.

Here’s one shot of our interim pastor and his wife. They’ve been a great blessing, and I pray that they will receive God’s greatest blessings as they move on to their next adventure.

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I saw this cool dandelion photo posted by a friend on Facebook and I wanted to try to get a shot like this. He said he held it up to the sun…I had a problem with that when I went out to shoot this morning – no sun to hold a dandelion up to. In fact, it has been raining for a couple days (until late this afternoon), so here’s what the dandies looked like this morning…

(This one has some motion blur – it was so dark and dreary outside and I had forgotten to raise my ISO. Oops.)

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The Friday Challenge for this week is “Abstract.” I decided to shoot something I’ve done before from some different angles, so here it is…

This is one of the wheels I’ve shot a couple times before.

Thanks, Sandra, for the great challenge ideas! Can’t wait to see what’s on the agenda for June!

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Here are a few shots of people I am thankful for.

1.) A nap overtook Caleb. 2.) Andrew is silly, but adorable! 3.) Nathan is a cool bean. 4.) Mr. Fixit. 5.) Nathan loves me! Or something.

It’s not that I’m not thankful for the other 4 – they’ll just have to show up in another post.

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For this Walkabout Wednesday I walked all the way out to my yard. I loved these tiny maple leaves growing out of the trunk of the maple tree – the green is so fresh and new!

While I was out in the yard I saw a Kristi-girl looking at me looking at her! The football thingy is a pair of binocular-type things.

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Texture Tuesday! I took some kids (I think it was 5) for a little photo walk today. We found some interesting textures and pretty flowers!

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It’s not monochrome, and it’s not fine artwork. But it’s a photo! It’s a camera phone photo of some of the bushes in Mom’s front yard – looking lush and springy on a rainy day.

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Snapshot Sunday! Here are a few shots from around Scrivnerburg…

We’re trying the grass thing again this year (4th year!). This time we have a hardier seed that is supposed to be able to handle less water and full shade. We’ll see.

This nice tall one looks happy! Maybe it will joyfully spread its seeds and make our yard look like there’s something like grass growing.

‘Love my Kristi-girl.

I got this dahlia plant for Mother’s Day with a few buds on it. It got left outside one cold night (I didn’t realize it was going to be in the 20’s!) and all the leaves got nipped by the cold (that’s the brownish stuff in the photo), but this blossom persevered. It doesn’t look perfect, but it’s blooming! This plant has plans!

Okay…Snapshot Sunday is done. Thanks for peeking in!

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I made it to day 142 without cheating! But I’m cheating today. This is actually a snapshot I took yesterday, but I just edited it today. Caleb asked his daddy to help him make a mask out of this head-sized box. Funny boy. He played with his “mask” ALL day! He took it to Mom’s house, he carried stuff home in it, he wore it while he played outside…

On a similar note – Ken and I have decided that for Christmas this year we are going to give our children boxes with rocks wrapped in bubble wrap. What more could they ask for? They love boxes, rocks, and bubble wrap. I think this will be a cheap Christmas. :-)

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Friday Challenge day! The challenge today was “bokeh.” For those who are not into photography, bokeh is “the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image.”

My manager increased me to 20 hours a week at this new job, so I’ve been very busy! Between kids, work, helping my friend out, photography, and church activities, my head is spinning!

Thanks for stopping by!

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Thankful Thursday…

(Long, tiring day – sorry I didn’t take the time to do the lighting properly. Can’t reshoot – something happened to the M&M’s. Oops.)

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I didn’t take too many photos today. I tweaked my ankle walking up the stairs, so I spent a good portion of the day with my ankle iced and elevated. But I did get outside with my little man and took several shots of him and Molly running up and down the sidewalk. They were funny – up and down…up and down. After he was done running he stopped, put his hand on his chest and said, “Mommy! My heart is bumping!”

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Well, it’s been a very, very busy Tuesday, and I didn’t get a dedicated “texture” photo…but here’s some nice texture! My sweet son Dale bought these roses for me last night. Not only did he see roses and decide to buy me some, but he thought it out – one rose was $3.98. A dozen was $12.98. A dozen was a better deal, so I got a dozen! Good boy!

Here’s a storyboard I just had to put together. Molly is learning to obey, and she now stays in the yard when the kids leave for school, but she doesn’t do it happily.
 
She’s really turning into a great dog. Whew!

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I went on a bit of a photo walk for my Monochrome Monday shot today. I may have shared shots of this church before, but if I have, this is a slightly different perspective, and I don’t think I’ve ever done a mocha latte version before.

This is the Methodist church – just a couple blocks from my house. I has a lovely red door that I would love to use as a background sometime, some great locations on the grounds, and a carillon that plays at noon and 6pm.

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Here are a couple Sunday Snapshots. We had a pretty low-key, lazy day. We spent some time outside with the kids – Ken played catchish with Austin, Kristi, and Nathan. There was a lot more ball chasing than ball catching, but they all had fun.

(::sigh::)

Nathan got distracted from the game – Hammy came to visit, and Nathan had to chase him.

(My kids call every squirrel Hammy after the squirrel in Over the Hedge.)

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It’s not midnight yet in my time zone, so I still haven’t missed a day! Whew – this one was really close!

Here are a few shots I took of the kids and their antics today…

Miss Virginia with her new basketball. She’s very proud of it! (For those who haven’t been following me for the last year+, this sweet little lady isn’t one of my passel of kids, but she’s here often enough to be considered part of the family.)

Andrew was having fun with shadow puppets. He’s kinda funny about having pictures taken, so I couldn’t ask him to move more into the light, or even let him know I was shooting. This was taken through the dirty dining room window. Gotta catch the moment, right?

Dale was inventing things again. He says the only drawback is that this design hurts his nose. I’m sure he’ll work on that.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Friday Food! It’s also the Friday Challenge theme this week, so I got to do two in one! Here is Caleb enjoying his watermelon. I didn’t realize until I uploaded the photo that I had captured the piece of watermelon that went flying. That’s why there’s a piece over the back of his left hand. He didn’t want to get watermelon all over his face, but he soon discovered that the way he was doing it was not working out well. He ended up with watermelon all over his face anyway.

This was shot in full sun with no light modifiers – that’s why it’s so bright with hard shadows.

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It’s Thankful Thursday! I’m thankful that I can get out and do silly, fun, pointless things with my kids. I found a monstro poofyhead today when I went to check the mail, so I took a bunch of my kids back there to see it. We had fun blowing poofyheads and admiring the monster dandy. (It looked like 3 or 4 dandelions had grown together.)

(These photos were taken with my Palm Pre Plus and edited with Adobe Camera Raw.)

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Caleb and I walked to the little park today. It was beautiful outside, so we really had a Walkabout Wednesday! Here are a couple shots I took during our ramble…

I loved how this chokecherry looked against the blue sky. It looks almost lacy with all those blossoms about to pop. I didn’t see the mayfly coming in until I got the photo on the computer.

Caleb had so much fun with the sunshine flowers! He loves blowing the poofyheads and watching them dance on their way.

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I’ve had a fairly busy day getting oriented with my new job, but I did take some time to do a little blog reading. I ran across this one and decided to try some of the ideas. This is the only one that was really worth sharing, but I plan to try again sometime soon. I’ll see what else I can do with this concept.

This one was shot through plastic packaging. I moved the plastic around to get some glare-flare in it that didn’t totally obscure my subject.

Photogs, make sure to stop by Sandra’s blog – she has some challenging questions on her blog today!

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Quick Monochrome Monday today – it’s been a busy day! I’m starting a new adventure (a new part-time job) and it called for a new laptop. Well, it wasn’t a requirement, but it will certainly make my job easier. So I went to Missoula today to find the very thing. Here is my new Toshiba laptop…

Now I’m off to finish that employee handbook and figure out what I’m doing! Thanks for stopping by!

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Since it’s Mother’s Day I will post photos of my wonderful mother. This woman has the best sense of humor, she has a great attitude about life, and she didn’t kill me when I was a teenager. She deserves a medal! We were blessed to have her sisters here to visit for a few days, and I loved every minute I spent with all of them! (My mom is the one sitting on the stool.)

I told my mom that I wanted to see her “semi pleasant” face.

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Exhausted. Family reunion. Snapshots tomorrow. G’night.

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It’s a late post from me tonight! I was going to share my Friday Food photo, but I’m not going to take the time to edit it this late. Here’s a shot of the lovely Mother’s Day flowers my daughter and son-in-law sent to me…

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Thankful Thursday! I’m thankful that it really is spring even if it doesn’t feel like it. I hear that spring will return to us tomorrow. I’m ready – I’m freezing! I’ve been using my heated mattress pad every night – in MAY! Craziness!

Oh, and just in case you didn’t see it on Facebook…here’s a terrible shot I took of my youngest son after he found out that I forgot to bring his leftover curly fries from the restaurant…

His heart was shattered into a million tiny pieces.

Fortunately, he got over it fairly quickly. Whew. I almost had to go buy him new curly fries!

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Okay…this isn’t a lovely, well-thought-out photo…it’s just a snapshot of my view a few minutes ago.

Don’t adjust your set – that is not static. That is snow. Blech.

So I went over to my neighbor’s yard and took this just to prove to myself that it truly is spring.

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It’s Texture Tuesday! How ‘bout a new pattern instead of a texture? I found these Corelle plates at my favorite thrift store today. It was a set of 12 plates for $8! I was so excited! We’ve wanted Corelle for a long time because we break so many plates around here (that’s what you get for starting kids on chores when they’re 2!). This isn’t the pattern I would choose if I picked my own, but for $8, I love it!

This shot was taken with my Palm Pre Plus and edited in CS3. (I left my camera bag in the Suburban when I sent Fancy and boys off to baseball. Oops.)

The only photo related reading I did today was this interesting post at The Maternal Lens.

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For this Monochrome Monday shot I stayed indoors and took pictures of my african violet. Not only have I not killed this plant in the 2 years I’ve had it (amazing – trust me!), I have been able to take proper care of it so that it bloomed again and looks beautiful and healthy! It’s blossoms are white, so it’s a good candidate for black and white, I think.

Here’s a color version of the same shot.

I would never have thought of adding a warming filter to a black and white image, but one of my blog followers suggested it (thanks sasi! http://my3rdi.org/) and I really like what it did. This is a very light version, but it really added richness to the photo!

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I took a little photo ramble today! Yay for getting outside! I saw some wonderful trees…here are just a few: