My Weirdo Children!

I was just trying to get some photos of them playing with Cole's Thomas trains! Really! But hey, when the camera comes out, these guys have to ham it up royally! Cole is worse than Kaleigh and this is the nicest shot out of the bunch! I kind of egged them on after the first couple, and they enjoyed pushing each other out of the shot! They have no fear or dislike of the camera that is for sure! Gee, I wonder where they get THAT from? (For Tina), "am I in the light?" Hehe.

Girl Scout Cookie Time! Second Chance Orders!!!
If you cannot read the small print (those like me 40 and above) the different cookies available are : Thin mints, shortbread, peanut butter patties, caramel delights (used to be samoas, I believe), Peanut butter sandwich cookies, Thanks-a-lots, lemonades, and a new one called Reduced Fat Daisy go rounds. They are $4.00 a box. Again, we are not trying to sell a billion cookies! If there are no takers we still have church and Carl's office so....no biggie! Again, we just want to make sure there are enough cookies for all! I will personally buy about 6 boxes! Yummy!

The Canon SX 110

This will most likely be my next camera, as soon as I can afford it. I noticed when taking the last photos, see last post, that the focus will often times be drawn to whatever is BEHIND the kids and not on them even though I keep the camera center on their face and then push down the button part way and then move it to the composition I want. It is a pain and I of course forget time to time. So the result is a somewhat fuzzy photo. Not that I can tell from the display on the camera! I try so hard to make sure the photos are good but you cannot truly tell how they look until you get home and look on the computer! So this camera, with a better zoom, a better flash and facial recognition, is what I like. The other reason I want this camera is when we went to the kids Christmas program, we were really sitting in the nose bleed seats and we didn't really even bother taking any pictures because the camera we have now would have just taken dark photos from that far back. There was a lady taking photos sitting directly in front of us and I could see the photo in the display and they looked bright and very sharp! I asked her what kind it was and she let me know. It isn't exactly the same camera, but it is in the same level. I looked at Kodak and I looked at Canon. Canon is more compact and is more popular apparently. So that is going to be my next camera. Unless someone has a better idea!

New Photos - January 2009 Well, it is another year and my kids have grown quite a bit! Cole (above) is almost as tall as Kaleigh now and is thriving in school. He will soon be starting baseball in the beginning of February. Our local Little League through the Community Center here in town starts up soon and Cole has been practicing with his Dad! Go Cole!

Kaleigh is growing into a very nice young lady, but not in the girly sense. She loves Lego's, drawing comics and writing stories! She is doing great in school and the teacher loves that she reads so much! They have a program called "Reading Around the Room" where each time the kids read a book (100 pages or more), they write 3 sentences and they get a die cut with their name up on the wall. Each die cut (Sept - Apples, Oct - pumpkins etc) gets put up next to the last so it is one big line going around the room near the ceiling. Well, Kaleigh has probably contributed about 50% of the die cuts! There are 28 kids in her class and she has half of the line! So the teacher is excited! They compete with the other 4th grade classes and her teacher has never won the contest! She thinks she may win this year! Yay, Kaleigh!

We took the day to go to and Arboretum in the area and I took the opportunity to take some photos. It is a nice place to just walk and learn about different types of trees and plants and the kids enjoyed it. There are samples of all types of areas, like desert, tropical and others. Kaleigh went there for a field trip and I was able to go along as chaperone. The kids really enjoyed it and as much as they hate getting somewhat dressed up for photos, they didn't mind today! So we had a nice walk, I took some nice photos, kind of .... but that is another thing. We had a nice Saturday all in all!

Snowball Fight!

So every year the four year olds have a snow day. Now of course we don't have snow and if we did it would melt too fast in this 70 degree weather we are having right now! So instead the kids dress in their "mountain weather" clothes and we throw marshmallows! At first I have them on either side of the table, with 5 kids on either side and the rules are: Don't eat the marshmallows, don't throw the marshmallows in someones face (if you can help it) and last but not least, if they leave me out of it I will allow them to use me as a human target at the end of the snowball fight. I do this so I can get good photos without being constantly pelted with marshmallows! So these are the kids throwing the marshmallows at me! One side of the table and then the other. It was a lot of fun and they work up an appetite for the hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls they get afterwards. This year the room mom brought Cinnabon cinnamon twists with each kids getting their individual frosting cup. Wow, it was yummy. Of course she bought 30 of the things and a little under half were left. Guess who got to take them home? MMMmmmm, yummy! Found a new thing my kids love! We also took a survey of what the kids (in my class) like best on their hot chocolate, mini marshmallows or whipped cream. I think it might have ended up half and half. So the little girl on the top photo has a cinnamon twist the little cup of frosting and the hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. It was fun and yummy! Of course this was at the end of the day and so they all went home a little wired, but hey not my prob right?