Happy Anniversary!

Justin & I have now been married for 8 years! EIGHT YEARS!


Our family has grown from us & a 6-yr old to us, a 14-yr old, a 4-yr old and a new addition coming soon! We're about to be out-numbered by the children!

Yes, the picture is blurry, I know. I was having focusing issues. Which just means I get to drag Justin out somewhere again to do another set of family pictures. I'm pretty sure it is his most FAVORITE activity ever! Hopefully next time it won't be so windy. He has also decided that we're not allowed to do fall pictures anymore because it gets too cold...but that's when I need a family picture for Christmas cards!

Our October Activities

I love fall and I love getting out to do some fun family activities in the fall. We've been a little less active than normal since I'm pregnant and I'm the leader of almost all of our outings, but we're still having fun. Or at least I'm having fun and Claire is having fun.

Our first October activity was a school field trip to the KC Pumpkin Patch. Claire had so much fun running around with her classmates. We didn't stay for very long because the bus had to get back to the school to drop the kids off and go pick up other kids to take home, but it was long enough to wear us out.



The following weekend, I took Claire to Deanna Rose Farmstead to their Pumpkin Hollow attraction. Claire and I got to the farm pretty soon after it opened, spent about an hour roaming around visiting the animals. Then when Pumpkin Hollow opened, we rode the hay ride out to the it. She loves hay rides. We spent over an hour at Pumpkin Hollow - there was a slide and pumpkin bowling and a barrel train and more that she really loved doing.



The next weekend, I made my entire family go to Boo at the Zoo. I don't normally drag Anaya and Justin along to things that I know they have no interest in, but we were going to visit Justin's parents and the zoo is kind of on the way from our house to their house. So it just made sense for us all to go to the zoo for about 2 hours and then head on to their house! We only saw a small portion of the zoo - the polar bear (obviously), the Asia section and some of the main area with activities for kids. Claire really wanted to ride the train, so she and I took a train ride while they waited at the station. Claire and I will end up going again next month after the Penguins are there to specifically see them and then we'll probably go see some of the animals that we missed this time around. And Claire got to wear her costume (a giraffe) which EVERYONE thought was adorable and she did a little trick-or-treating.



I really wanted to get out to an orchard and pick apples, but I think we're nearing the end of the season and still haven't gotten around to it. We also wanted to take Anaya out to the KC Fear Farm for their Zombie Paintball, but that didn't end up working out either. We may have one more activity next weekend, but it would just be Claire & me.

I love Blurb Books

I really love Blurb books. They are pretty and nice and so easy to make. I've made 4 books...I think. Well, I made 3 different versions of a 2012 book (changed out a few pictures based on who the book was for). I made my December Daily album for 2012 as a Blurb book, and I'm planning to do the same this year. I also just finished, but haven't ordered yet, a book about our Family Vacation to Colorado this summer. Here are a few of my favorite pages:



The front & back cover (well, the back & front cover). I love these two pictures. I have no clue where in Kansas we were what I got that one of the sun, but it is beautiful. The front cover was our view off one of the decks of the "cabin" we stayed at near Black Hawk, CO.



We spent the first few days in Colorado Springs. We were VERY busy for those few days - Garden of the Gods, Royal Gorge Railroad, driving up Pike's Peak, and visiting the North Pole theme park. Lots of fun.



Once we got to Black Hawk we slowed down...a lot. I realized after I did the screen shot here that I put Blackhawk instead of Black Hawk, so I'll need to fix that before I order. Claire got sick on the way to Black Hawk so I ended up spending a lot of time dealing with that, including an hour+ drive to Lakewood to the ER - you know you aren't having a good vacation until you have to go to the ER! My brother had also brought a very lovely cold with us to Colorado, which after spending 2 days with 8 people in 2 hotel rooms or cars, we had all managed to share in his misery.



Obligatory visit to Rocky Mountain National Park! We did just a little hiking, not much because of the sick preschooler and the not much better pregnant lady (I was about 2.5 months pregnant at the time). Also, pregnant + twisty curvy roads + worrying about a throwing up child = LOTS of fun! We actually did have fun, I just like to complain. And isn't that waterfall/cascade thingy pretty!



Once Claire got to feeling better, we spent a day in Denver. We went to the Denver Aquarium which was pretty nice. Then most of the family went to Chipotle for lunch while Claire, Grandma & I went to the Denver Children's Museum which Claire thought was the most amazing thing EVER and would have seriously stayed there all day long if we would've let her! Later that day, we were all sitting around the cabin bored (probably watching HGTV), the closest park with hiking trails was Golden Canyon State Park, so I convinced everyone to load into my Dad's truck and we made the short drive to the trailhead and hiked part of the way up a hill before admitting defeat (for the sickly ones) and walking back down.

I may go back and make more pages. This one is actually 20 pages long right now, I just didn't share all of the pages. But I know there are other good pictures of some of these events that I might want to include. Particularly since this is pretty much the only way any of the 508 pictures that I took are actually being printed! Well, I suppose my mom & my sister-in-law might print some of them for their own projects, but still 508 pictures taken and only 52 are actually being used. Good thing I didn't waste any film! :)

* I have no affiliation with Blurb books (although if they want to, you know, that would be cool!), I just really like their books.

Fall Family Pictures

Back on October 20th, I finally did something that I have been trying to organize my family enough to do. We took family pictures. A couple of these pictures are proof that if you hand a teenager a nice camera with a fairly good lens on it, you will actually end up with acceptable pictures. (Any that include me but not Anaya are ones that she took.) Ones that include all of us were taken using the timer or a remote depending on if the remote was working at any given time.

I ended up with a total of 91 pictures after deleting the ones that were completely blurry or otherwise unacceptable. When I use the timer, it takes 5 pictures, so some of those are duplicates. I ended up getting a pretty good picture of all the different groupings that I was hoping for.



Now, while this experience was fine. There are definitely things that I learned to make it easier the next time I decide to do this.

1. Definitely have a list of the poses/groupings that you want. I did do this and it helped so much. Particularly since my husband was NOT really into the idea of family pictures anyways.
2. Plan for longer than you think it will take. By the time we were done, we were out of sun light. I have a beautiful picture of the sunset that I took as we were driving out of the park. I would've liked to try one more pose, but it was just too dark.
3. Scope out the location before hand. This is common sense, but I didn't really do it. I knew that there were multiple shelters are this particular park, but I didn't really know which one we would use (we ended up in my first choice area). And even though I had been there multiple times with Claire & Anaya to play at the park, I hadn't ever really looked at the area with the idea of a photo shoot.
4. If you are including a toddler, possibly have another person along to help corral the toddler so that you can take pictures of just the adults. My husband didn't drive over there with us because he was still getting ready, so I had Claire & Anaya there for the first half. Which means the pictures of just Anaya involved me holding Claire with one hand and the camera with the other. The one of Justin & I is one that Anaya took while holding Claire's hand as she was trying to run away.

These pictures were taken using a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. I actually borrowed it from my co-worker but now I have my own. It is an nice portrait lens. Definitely not the BEST one, but good cost/quality ratio. Particularly since mine is purely for me & my friends & family (I'm not a professional, nor do I want to be).