Christmas Misc.

Cookie Baking with the kids

We all really like the cut-out cookies so we have to make more than what we get from the big cookie baking so we set aside a Friday night to bake and decorate cookies. Kathy came down to help since Paul was heading out to the snowmobile races early. Elly only slipped off her chair like 5 times from all the flour that she managed to get on her, the chair, the floor... Now she says to me..... "Grawma I can't sit on those chairs remember I fall off".

Here is Lynn rolling out the dough for Elly, Shannon and Kathy.

Now it's time to frost.... don't let Jesse fool you, he only frosted 1 cookie and then ... oops can't spoil the next picture.

Lynn why did you throw your purse at my cookie?

Hey Jesse can gingerbread men fly?

El and everyone else really like Shan's new decoraters.

School Program

Next is Elly's first school program. They were so darn cute. Lot's of boys in that class!

There's El in the middle sporting her antlers and red nose. She had a pretty polka doted dress of course in pink.

Shan was a little shocked with El's choice of shoes for the outfit, she had her real shoes in her backpack but she decided to wear her boots, good thing they are also pink. We didn't know until she walked out on stage, I think they look cute, Mom didn't!!

Brush Fire at the Doghouse

Another year with a brush fire at the hunting shack. The night was perfect for playing, snow falling down and warm. We had such a good time, El didn't ever want to come in, she was having a great time in pink from head to toe.

The kids found a sled to ride, but who's gonna pull us?

ADAM!! Maybe not!

Here's my family picture for the night. The kids didn't really think to much of it and El cried and would not even attempt to try it. So she get to be background with that pouty face.

And the pictures of the fire.

John and I took a walk to the backside of the fire for some cool shots.

And my attempt to play with a picture of El while she tried to beg Grawma not to make her lay down and kick her legs in the air. If this isn't a please face I don't know what is.

Gift Opening

Now for a few Christmas Eve photos.

Elly got a magnetic puzzle from Uncle Adam, she can dress Barbie in lots of clothes.

Adam with his new glasses, and his serious face.

Lynn this is the only picture I had of both of you....

John with his new ATV front trunk... look to the left of the picture. He got 2!!

Shan watching El open the many gifts she was spoiled with.

And Godmother Shawna got to get El her most wanted gift this year. Yep all she wanted for Christmas was a #2 pencil and she got 10 of them and they are all sharp, she was so happy. She does not color with crayons or markers. She colors with a pencil, the entire picture, with lots of shading but the pencil has to be sharp, if it's dull she be looking for someone to sharpen it for her. She has an entire color book at daycare colored with a pencil and she has another one at Grawma's. Maybe she'll be a pencil artist someday! And don't even try colored pencils... I already did and she didn't like them.

Christmas was very good to us and the family time we had was very important. I hope you all had safe and wonderful Christmas with your families as well.

Clean window and The Nutcracker

Okay tell me what you see in this picture?

If you said the imprint of a bird after hitting the window you are correct... If you didn't go back and look closer, I think you can even click on the picture to blow it up bigger.

We have no idea when this bird hit the window but he obviously hit it really, really hard. He left an imprint of his eye, beak, wings, feathers, tuff of feathers on his little head... it's kinda hard to see in this picture but in real life you can even see his little feet all tucked up under his body. Geeze that had to hurt, we all know John keeps his windows in his garage pretty clean but this is ridiculous, poor little bird. Jesse and I believe it looks like a robin, yep that's right it's so clear that we can even identify what kind of bird it was. It's actually quite freaky, kinda ghost like.

Nutcracker Ballet - I took pictures for Miss K, she was Clara this year. This is dress rehearsal, those girls spun around about a hundred miles and hour and the lighting was very poor. It was a picture taking nightmare. But the photos turned out very good.... all 249 of them.

Assignment #3 and Cookie Baking

Assignment number 3 is - Shutter speed / Aperture

This first part (shutter speed) was to photograph moving subjects, streams, vehicles or waterfalls and make them stop the motion. Well I cheated a bit on this one since I took these photo's back in April when I went to visit Lynn and Jesse in Oregon. However, it's not really cheating because I did at that time understand the method of adjusting the shutter speed to make the water stop. Here are some examples .

The stream is stopped, you can even see the water going backwards in the bottom center as it hits the rocks.

The motion of the creek is stopped as it flows through the lush green forest.

The bottom of the water fall looks like mist.

2nd half of the lesson was aperture - The size of the opening in the lens that lets light pass through into the camera. The size of the aperture effects depth of field (how much is in focus from front to back)

This first picture is an example of all the cookies being in focus, you eye goes from the front of the photo to the back and doesn't highlight or put more attention to any of the cookies.

Now this photo was taken with a small aperture causing the focus to fall on the white candies of the yellow cookie and the cookies in front are blurred and so are the ones behind. Your eye is drawn right to the most important part of the photo, and of course it helped that the candies were white which also makes them stand out.

Here are some more. This was by far my favorite assignment so far, I love putting the depth of field in the photos. Focus on the silver'ish blue ball that's slightly higher than the rest.

Focus on the pile of balls and the sea of balls behind that just blurs into a colorful background.

And of course I have a shoe addiction so I decided to line up a few sandals before I put them away for the winter. The aperture is very small in the photo, you can bearly make out the sandals in the back.

This photo I opened up the aperture so that you could see them but still have them blurred to draw the eye to the front sandal but still move to the last shoe.

Now here's some more photo's from our annual cookie baking at Starla and Brad's house. I didn't take out my camera much this year, not sure why I must have gotten to full of frosting...

Lynn, Elly and Beth (Mike's girlfriend) are starting to frost the cut outs.

Beau still likes to frost!

Starla and Gayle had new fancy froster thingys and the creativity was great.

Thanks Starla and Brad for the wonderful day, it really was fun.