Fun to be (almost) One Photos

Last weekend we took Joel's 1 year old photos.  We went to Capital Park because we got such nice backgrounds for Rachel's 1 year photos, but with the drought the flowers were few and far between.  Plus Joel got tired and cranky.  The best pictures we got that morning were of Rachel.  We were able to get some nice ones of Joel later in our front yard.  Also note that this year no one is dressed is white or black for the photo shoot.  It only took 3 years of Brian mentioning how difficult it is to take pictures with those colors for me to get the message.

May Days

Wondering what we have been up to?  Well look no further.  Actually not much other than enjoying our kids and working on projects around the house.  Here are some pictures from the past month.

 Rachel and Joel love each other.  One of my prayers for them as siblings has been that they would not just love each other, but like each other and genuinely enjoy each other's company.  I absolutely love how Joel squeals with delight when we go wake Rachel up from her nap, and how she asks about him every morning.  As Joel has developed more personality it has been fun to watch their play evolve.  He wants to be with Rachel and do what she is doing and vice versa.  They seek each other out.  Yes, they don't always get along, but the majority of the time they do play well together.  My prayer is that their relationship continues to grow and that they are friends.  Other friends may come and go, but they will have each other for a lifetime.

 Joel discovered he could climb on the step stool the other day and reach all of Rachel's notes.  Once he ran out of notes within reach he got even braver and climbed onto the table.

We have three baby pigeons living above our bedroom window for the next month.  They are cute in a messy, noisy sort of way.  In a couple of weeks they should be flying, and then we will be taking steps to discourage them from coming back to make more baby pigeons. They fit in nicely with our lesson about how God made birds this past week.

This week Rachel decided we needed to have "fancy day," and then "fabulous day."  These pictures were taken on "fabulous day."  I think she nailed fabulous.

One of our projects was to make Rachel as area to dig in.  I had removed the rocks and fabric, but the dirt was really hard and impossible to dig in.  Brian discovered there was a thin layer of concrete under the top layer of dirt and dug it out for us.  Today the three of them enjoyed some time in the dirt.  We have some more fun plans for that play area so stay tuned in the coming months or year (you know how house projects go).

Creatively Conquering His Lion Walker

 Joel, the baby engineer, is a problem solver.  You can see the wheels turning in his little head when he encounters a puzzle, problem, or something new.

More Macro

Brian here,

With all the projects going on this weekend I still managed to pull out the camera and take some pictures.  We have a fairly large cherry tree in our new back yard and there were bees all over it this weekend because it's blooming.  I took 40 shots, and only a couple really turned out ok.  Bees when they are moving are really hard to get good shots.

It's a bee!

 This one is actually quite sharp and could probably be blown up to 8 X 10 and still look good.

Here it is again with a tighter crop.

Ok, I know you all want to see Joel. Here he is.

New Macro Lens

Brian here,

Nikon had a good rebate on a macro lens and then Google gave an extra 6% off for using Google Wallet so I decided to take the plunge and buy the Nikon 105mm macro lens that I've been wanting.  A year or two ago I bought some macro rings that turn my current lenses into macro lenses. The problem with them is that the lens will only focus on something that is 1-6 inches away. My new lens lets me achieve the really close up shots by being 8 inches away, and I can be further than that and still be able to focus. This is a big bonus because I can just step back to get more in my shots now if I want.

Enjoy the pictures:

This is Joel from 5 feet away. This lens also makes a good portrait lens.

This is Rachel's geode

This is one of my warhammer models. He stands about an inch and a half tall.

This is Rachel's lady bug larva. I set up the tripod and turned on live view. I would focus, and she would press the button to take the picture.

This is one of our roses from our front yard. It isn't the best looking rose, but it still makes a nice picture.

This is another rose from our yard. I am about 2 feet back from this bud which is something I couldn't do before.  Because it's a telephoto lens, it's really easy to get the blurred background. 

Sledding and Snowmen

Here we are in April and we made it up to Tahoe for some snow play.  We headed up early this morning for Donner Summit, our favorite sno park.  This was Rachel's third time sledding at Donner Summit and the first time she really enjoyed herself.  She was able to walk in the snow and when she fell down or rolled off the sled she would laugh instead of bursting into tears.  She absolutely loved sledding and was brave enough to go down the hill all by herself.  My independent girl even tried to walk up the hill all by herself and was so proud of herself when she made it part way up without holding our hand.  She has grown up so much since last year.  It was fun to watch her experience and enjoy snow.

She and I made a tiny snowman in the morning, but he got smooshed by a sled.  Later in the afternoon, she and Brian  made a big snowman.  The bottom was a snow covered rock which provided an excellent base.  Their snowman was so "fabulous" (Rachel's very accurate description) that Brian took a trip to the car to get the camera so we could take a picture.

 

Many Milestones

 

 Happy St Patrick's Day!

 Both kids have been learning new skills lately, so we thought it was time to share.  Rachel has been learning to roller skate.  Brian is a great teacher.  He is really good at breaking things down and explaining them.  I may be able to teach academics, but I am glad Brian is around to teach Rachel other skills like roller skating.  We make a pretty good team.
 

Joel will be 9 months tomorrow and has been working on pulling up.  A whole new world of things to get into are now within his reach.  He is also getting to be quite the speedy crawler.  Thanks to his army crawl he is currently sporting two lovely rug burned arms, but it doesn't phase him.