Wednesday, June 30, 2010

June 30


I love to watch Audrey eat watermelon. It makes her so happy! I ended up with so many cute pictures from this watermelon eating moment, I had a hard time picking one for today. I think I'll post the rest on the Life with the Shelton's blog...so head on over there for more watermelon fun!




Tuesday, June 29, 2010

June 29

I don't have much to say tonight. June is almost over, which means July is almost here...and I'm not ready for that yet. I have too much to do, and my brain is not able to keep up with it all right now. So we'll keep this short...here's a sweet picture of Little Miss Audrey from today. The end.




Monday, June 28, 2010

June 28

I just went upstairs, changed into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, took out my contacts, and got into bed...all without posting a picture for today! I almost forgot...gasp!!Here's a picture of Audrey eating her "bebbies" (translation: berries, meaning strawberries and blueberries). Bebbies make her very happy! She was also very happy that she got to play with Amy, Steve and Cael tonight. See Amy's post here.




Sunday, June 27, 2010

June 27

We're back home from Indy for now (though we will be going back there in just a week for another visit). I wanted to get a picture of Audrey with her cousins Mark and Mariah today. Audrey was very friendly and eager to play with them; it was cute. But I forgot to bring my camera with me. No worries though, because we will see them all again next week, and I will be sure to take plenty of pictures to make up for my forgetfulness today.

Now that we are back home, it is time to completely devote my life to VBS! I have a really big vision of what I want to create with this Egyptian Marketplace. But I'm starting to worry that I may not have enough time or volunteers to pull it off! If you go to South Side and you are reading this blog, we need your help at VBS this year!!!!!! (The multiple exclamation points are intended to emphasize how much we really, really need you!!!!!!! And there are a few more just for added emphasis.) You can find out more about VBS and keep up to date on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/vbs2010.)





Saturday, June 26, 2010

June 26

Audrey was much happier today, and I don't think she had a fever at all. So maybe she just had a 24 hour kind of thing or is getting new teeth or something. I'm just happier she was in a better mood today.

Audrey really likes Mimi and Papaw...which is a good thing because we are sending her to stay with them for a few days by herself later this summer! I think she is going to have lots of fun!




Friday, June 25, 2010

June 25

We are in Indianapolis for the weekend, which means we got to go visit our friends BJ, Kellie, Ava and their new baby Truett! Isn't he so adorable?? As I was taking and editing his pictures, I am convinced that he looks like his mommy.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to hold Truett for too long, due to one extremely grumpy little girl named Audrey. Every time I held him, Audrey would be right there saying, "Off, Off" (meaning she wanted Truett to get off me!) in a very whiny voice. She was a bit jealous, but it also turns out that she wasn't feeling too good. She'd been a grump all day, and we finally took her temp and found out she was running a fever. Ugh...why does she always get sick when we are on vacation? I'm hoping she's not really sick. She occasionally will have days where she is extremely crabby and runs a temp for about 24 hours, then she goes back to normal. So I hope this is just one of those days and tomorrow will be better!

Fortunately, we will be back in Indianapolis next week...with more time to spend with the Bungards and with a (hopefully) happier little girl!




Thursday, June 24, 2010

June 24

Tonight was the last night of Garage-a-palooza. And tonight Shannon was rewarded for all of her hard work in planning the event with a cake in the face! It was a good week. I don't feel as worn out or exhausted at the end of it as I have in past years, so that is a good thing!

To follow up with yesterday's tennis post: The Isner/Mahut match started back up again this morning. And after another hour of play (for a grand total of 11 hours and 5 minutes), Isner finally won, with a score of 70-68. Seriously, it is the craziest sporting event I have ever seen. It has never happened before, and most likely will never happen again!

Also, I just realized that I have passed the 500 day mark for this photo a day thing. 500 days of posting a picture every single day! That takes almost as much endurance as that Isner/Mahut match! =)




Wednesday, June 23, 2010

June 23

Here's Audrey saying "cheese" for the camera. I think she thinks the camera is actually called "cheese" now, because that is what she says every time she sees it. And when she says "cheese" she doesn't really smile, but kind of makes a funny face. I think we need to pick a new word for picture poses.

So, this picture was taken in the living room. Where Audrey and I pretty much spent the whole day. Normally, I would go crazy being stuck in one room all day. We tend to move around the house and around town a lot, or else I get stir crazy. But today I wanted to stay close to the TV to keep tabs on the longest, craziest tennis match that has ever been played.

It was John Isner (an American that I know a little bit about) vs. Nicholas Mahut (no clue who he is). The match started last night at 6 pm London time and was suspended around 9 pm due to darkness. At that time, they were tied with two sets a piece. (Quick tennis rules note: to win the match, you have to win three sets. To win a set, you have to win 6 games and you must win by two).

So they started with the 5th (and final) set at about 2 pm London time today. I turned it on at 10 am our time, and they had already been playing almost two hours. The score was something like 14-13. Which is a pretty unusual score. Remember they have to win by two, and by this point, there is usually a winner. But Mahut kept tying it back up. Isner would be up by 1, then Mahut would tie it. And this went on and on and on and on and on. Until finally, it was too dark for them to play and they had to suspend the match AGAIN! Total match time so far is 9 hours, 58 minutes. Score in the 5th set: 59-59. Seriously, the score for a close match is normally like 7-5 or some other really low number. A score of 59-59 for a set it is absolutely insane and has never happened before! The scoreboard eventually had to be shut off, because it wouldn't go that high.

Sorry for the long tennis tangent, though you've probably already quit reading by now. I don't know of many people who watch tennis, so I don't have anyone to share this with except for all of you out there on the internet. And I just had to talk about it, because it is such an unbelievable event. Plus it also consumed a large portion (like 5 hours!) of my day today. And yes, I will tune in tomorrow to see who wins.

Don't worry I did get a few things done and I did play with Audrey a lot today...we just multi-tasked and watched tennis at the same time. At first, Audrey was excited every time the crowd clapped. She would clap her hands and say "Yay...TV!" She was probably just excited that the TV was on, because I normally try to keep it turned off while she is awake. But she grew tired of cheering and clapping rather quickly and moved on to other ways of keeping herself entertained. Like taking all of the toys out of her toybox and piling them into the rocking chair!





Tuesday, June 22, 2010

June 22

More Garage-a-palooza fun tonight! This is Allison. She was in the Horse group and was listening intently to Becky talk about the different kinds of saddles for horses. Allison is our children's minister's daughter. I've taken pictures of her a couple of times at church events, and I think she is so photogenic. She's not even doing anything here, except for sitting and listening...but I love the sweet expression on her face.




Monday, June 21, 2010

June 21

Night 2 of Garage-a-palooza is finished! We had about 20 more kids tonight than last night, so that was good. Our numbers are still a bit down from last year, but everyone still seems to be having a good time. I'm in charge of registration, so it is always a bit crazy the first couple of nights trying to get all the kids registered and signed up for their interest groups.

I did sneak away for a few minutes tonight to take some pictures. This is one of the girls in the Hair and Makeup group. I have no idea who this girl is, and I probably shouldn't be posting her picture on my blog if I don't know her. (So if this is your child and you don't want her picture posted here, let me know!). But it was my favorite picture of the night; I just loved the expression on her face!




Sunday, June 20, 2010

June 20


Happy Father's Day! I should have taken a cute picture of Daniel and Audrey together today, but it was a very busy day, and that didn't happen. So instead here is the card I made for Daniel...it's not a very exciting card, but it's hard to make masculine cards. (If you're a Stampin Up fan, this card gives you a preview of two new colors: Marina Mist and Cajun Craze!). We got him a Starbucks gift card as well. Then Daniel got the joy of spending quality time with his daughter all afternoon and evening while I was busy getting ready for our first night of Garage-a-palooza! Night one of G-a-p went well; we didn't have as many kids as normal, but we're hoping the attendance will pick up tomorrow night. It's going to be a busy week!





Saturday, June 19, 2010

June 19

I'm sure there are better pictures from today that show Audrey did have a lot of fun at The Magic House. But this one is my favorite. The museum had a whole children's village: with a pretend kitchen, market, bank, library, theater, pizza shop...and an ice cream stand. Everything was so realistic looking! Audrey was not too pleased when she licked her ice cream cone and discovered it was fake!

I posted a few more pictures from our trip here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=13278775&l=6e458b3e4e&id=521110244. And I posted a picture on yesterday's post as well...




Friday, June 18, 2010

June 18

We decided this afternoon to take a little trip to St. Louis for the night and the day tomorrow. It's so unlike us to plan such a spur of the moment trip! But we don't have a big major vacation planned this summer, so I've been wanting to do some fun little trips. We pricelined a $40 room at the Millennium Hotel in downtown St. Louis. So we'll eat dinner, hang around downtown and go swimming at the hotel tonight. Then tomorrow we're going to take Audrey to The Magic House, which is a children's museum in St. Louis. We bought a children's museum pass last month, and we've only used it once so far. I want to get my money's worth out of it...I'm thinking we should plan our trips this summer around places that have children's museums!

Due to traffic and road construction, it took us a litte longer than expected to get to St. Louis. But we finally made it to the hotel and headed straight for the pool! The hotel had two pools, and we swam in the outdoor pool tonight. Audrey was so excited about the pool...and about the elevators and the escalators we took to get to the pool. The whole trip was worth seeing all of Audrey's excited faces tonight! I wish I had a video camera with me to better capture her joy. It was so adorable!




Thursday, June 17, 2010

June 17

This morning I babysat for little June. She's about 6 months younger than Audrey, and they seem to like each other. Audrey ran around all morning saying "Jew, Jew" (her version of June). I let both of them play the piano for a little bit, and it was so cute. I love how, in this picture, it looks like Audrey is trying to teach June how to play the piano!




Wednesday, June 16, 2010

June 16

Daniel took this picture today, but I wanted to post it to compare with last year's picture of Audrey swimming in the camp pool. I can't believe how much she has changed! And how much her hair has grown!!

We finally had a nice afternoon today, so I took Audrey swimming with all the kids at camp. She's not quite as adventurous as Cael (he is a CRAZY! man in that pool), but I do think she likes being in the water. She wasn't happy last year at the pool, probably because the water was so cold. But she was much happier in the water today and only cried when I told her it was time to get out. We definitely need to find some friends with swimming pools who are willing to let us come over and swim this summer!




Tuesday, June 15, 2010

June 15

The first words out of Audrey's mouth this morning were: "Mamy (Amy)...Cael". And then the whole time we were getting ready to leave she kept saying, "Mamy, Cael", and then she added "clap-clap" (because she really likes it when all the kids at camp clap and cheer) and "chair" (because she has been having fun sitting on chairs at camp and watching all the kids) and "go, go, go" (because that is what she says to the kids while they are playing games). It was cracking me up, like she was going through her head all of the fun things she has been doing this week...she really loves camp!! I think she will be a sad little girl on Thursday morning when camp is over, and we have to go back to being home all day!
The picture above is one that I took of Amy and Audrey during lunch today. Like I said the other day, Audrey loves Amy now!! And the picture below is one that Amy took of Audrey and Cael this morning. They have become best buddies this week! Audrey also LOVES this wagon and has spent a lot of time this week being pulled around in it.




Monday, June 14, 2010

Audrey is having a lot of fun at camp!! She wasn't quite sure what to think of all the loud, crazy kids yesterday, but today she seemed to warm up to everyone. I'm sure I have many more pictures to share and stories to tell, but those will have to wait for another day. It's 11:15 pm and we just got home for the night. The kids at camp may have endless energy, but I definitely do not!!




Sunday, June 13, 2010

June 13

This is a horrible picture, but a good story...so I'm going ahead and posting it for today (maye the theme for this week should be "bad picture week"). I have better pictures that I will put up on Facebook soon.This week is Trailblazer I at our church camp. Our friend Amy is the dean, and Daniel, Audrey and I are going to be helping out this week. We'll spend the days and evenings at camp, then come home and sleep in our own beds at night...it's a great deal! This is actually Audrey's second week of church camp (we helped last year too), and she's not even two yet!

Tonight, Amy wanted to introduce Audrey to the campers. She called Audrey's name and asked her to come up on stage. Much to our surprise, Audrey ran from us in the back and went all the way up to the front, up the stairs of the stage and right into Amy's arms. Amy asked her to say hi, and she said the cutest little "Hi", right into the microphone. It was adorable!! Audrey tends to be a little shy and clingy, especially in a new place. So it was pretty impressive to Daniel and I to see her go up on stage and talk in front of all those people! Also, it was impressive that she wanted to go to Amy. When Audrey was little, she did not like Amy. But lately, her and "Mamy" have become good buddies, and it's super cute.





Saturday, June 12, 2010

June 12


One of these days I will get back to taking good pictures. But it was another busy day and I'm tired again, so it's another bad picture tonight.

This is the money I made at our garage sale today...a grand total of $66.60. Not the best garage sale I've ever had. But it is $66.60 that I didn't have before today, so I guess that's a good thing. Our block and the block to the north of us were having sales today, and we thought that would provide us with a lot of traffic. But it was pretty slow all morning. There were a ton of garage sales and neighborhood sales in town today, so I think shoppers just didn't have enough time to get to all the sales. We didn't sell as much as we would have liked, but we did donate it all to Goodwill at the end...so at least it didn't come back into our house!!




Friday, June 11, 2010

June 11

Tonight we went to the Muni for opening night. Seussical was a fun show, and we always enjoy a night out at the Muni (especially a kid free night out!). I also spent the day getting ready for a garage sale we are having tomorrow morning. I'm thinking it was not a good idea to go to the Muni (which means a late night) right before our garage sale (which means an early morning). I am SO EXHAUSTED! I was tempted to just go straight to bed and skip my picture for the day. But I didn't because I'm afraid once I skip one picture, it will be easier to skip another and another and another, until it's been almost a month since my last post. And that would make all of my friends in Picture A Day Land very lonely. Hmm...this is starting to sound like a certain someone that I know...

Enough making fun of Amy. It's 11:59 pm and time for bed!!




Thursday, June 10, 2010

June 10

So we're back to the old 50 mm lens today. The rental lens was definitely a lot of fun. I'm thinking I need to start saving my money to buy a new and nicer lens one of these days.

This afternoon Audrey and I tried out this Splash n Play mat that Great Grandma got for her for Christmas. Audrey was willing to walk in the grass all by herself (and barefoot!) to get to it, so she must have thought it was pretty cool!





Wednesday, June 9, 2010

June 9

Today was my last day with the camera lens rental...so sad! Before I shipped it back, I took some pictures of the Deem family this morning. This is Haven. She's about 2 1/2 years old and so adorable! She wasn't much in the mood to sit still for pictures. Actually, I would love to find a 2 year old who does want to sit still for pictures, but I have a feeling they don't exist!
Anyway, I managed to catch Haven in this pose and wanted to take advantage of it, because I thought it was such an adorable shot! So I changed the coloring and cropped it differently, turning this one picture into three different pictures. It's like magic!!






Tuesday, June 8, 2010

June 8

Tonight I took pictures for the Stehling family. Sweet little June did a great job cooperating with us. We couldn't get her to crack a smile, but she also didn't ever cry or fuss. So, with a one year old, I consider that a successful photo shoot! I guess she shares Audrey's fear of grass, which is why she was willing to sit so still on this chair for me!

I haven't had a chance to go through all of the photos from tonight yet. Out of the few that I have edited, I think this one is my favorite. With her toe pointed and her arm on the back of the chair and a little contemplative look on her face...it's just so sweet!




Monday, June 7, 2010

June 7

My practice photo shoots continued today! This morning I took pictures of Cael (age 2), Dylan (age 3), Abby (5th grade), and Alyssa (6th grade). I am still working on editing them all, but so far, I am pleased with the pictures. This photography stuff is totally addicting! Today, I took 240 pictures...at the rate I am going with the editing process, I am guessing I will keep about 80-90 of them.

It was hard to pick today's picture, as I have several that I really like so far. But this one of Dylan is one of my favorites of the day. Probably because I actually got him to pose the way I wanted him to pose!

I would say posing is probably my weakness as a photographer. I'm so caught up in the camera settings and the lighting and trying to get a picture that is in focus and well-exposed, that I have a hard time trying to pose the subject as well. Something else to practice, I guess!!




June 6

Sorry this wasn't posted yesterday. Blogger was down last night and all day today...
The look on Audrey’s face here is one of pure joy! She has eaten watermelon before but never right off the rind like this. She loved it! And it was the best entertainment for her. She would slowly suck on the juice, and it took her forever to finish the piece! Plus it matched her outfit, and made for some cute picture opportunities!

My photography challenge this week is still going strong. Today I took about 150 pictures and kept about 40 of them. I'm keeping track of the number of pictures taken vs. the number of pictures kept just for fun. I want to get better at taking a good picture on the first (or maybe second or third) try. Sometimes I feel like it takes me 100 tries to just get one good picture. So that's a skill I have been trying to improve with this challenge.

I've also been trying really hard (and succeeding so far) to get all the pictures edited on the same day that I take them. 100-200 pictures a day add up to a lot of time in front of the computer! If I miss one day, then I may never make it through all of them!

Giving myself this challenge and blogging about it has been a lot of fun! A lot of work, but a lot of fun! Just three days left!




Saturday, June 5, 2010

June 5

It was hot and humid and rainy outside, and Audrey was a huge grump all day...therefore I did not take too many pictures today. I finally grabbed the camera at about 6 pm and walked around the neighborhood, looking for something to photograph. This is a flower in our neighbor's yard. I have decided that I would much rather photograph people than inanimate objects. Flowers seem to be easy enough to photograph, but they are kind of boring to me. I definitely prefer human subjects, specifically kids!

So on my little walk around the neighborhood I took about 50 pictures. I haven't made it through all of them yet, but I'm guessing I will save about 10 of them. Most of them were not so good. Tomorrow should be a better picture day: we are going to a three year old's birthday party and then we are hosting a cookout...both events should have lots of people and kids to photograph!




Friday, June 4, 2010

June 4

Today I had a big photo shoot with my friend Katie's family. Six kids under the age of 5! I was a bit nervous about it, as it was my first paid photo gig. It ended up being a bright and sunny morning. I suppose that is better than rain, but I think it is hard to get a good picture with the bright sun, at least for my inexperienced self it is hard. It was a bit stressful for me this morning, as I was trying to find photo spots with good light but not direct sunlight and no shadows. And then I was trying to remember everything I was supposed to remember about ISO and shutter speed and aperture. And all the while, trying to take pictures of six kids who only wanted to sit still for less than a second at a time! (Actually, the kids did pretty good at posing...especially the three oldest ones). Stressful, but fun too!!

All in all, I took 250 pictures and ended up with 85 keepers (an improvement on my percentage of keepers from yesterday). My favorite of the day is the one posted above. It's not a very realistic picture as her eyes are not really that green in real life (I think they looked more blue in the other pictures I took). But we took this picture underneath this tree with really low branches. It was almost like were were inside a tree tent. The light was shining through the leaves of the tree, giving everything under the tree a greenish tint. She was looking up into the light, and it just made her eyes sparkle green! I love the effect!

And I'm going to cheat, because I have several favorites from today. Here is another one I liked. These two brothers were so sweet and did a great job posing for the camera!

I have several more photo shoots lined up next week...I don't think I'm going to want to mail this lens back on Wednesday! =)




Thursday, June 3, 2010

June 3

While I have this camera lens, I gave myself a goal of taking 100 pictures every day for the next week. I didn't quite reach that goal yet today...I've only taken about 75 so far. And out of those 75 pictures, I only saved about 20. And out of those 20, I probably only really like 5 of them. But that's why I am practicing!

It's a good thing that someone invented digital photography. Imagine how much it would cost me if I was shooting with film...today it would have taken me about three rolls of film to get my five decent pictures! And even then, I wouldn't be able to edit them afterwards, so they still probably wouldn't look very good. Seriously, I have an extremely high level of respect for photographers who are able to regularly capture good images with film. I am a very big fan of the digital age!




Wednesday, June 2, 2010

June 2

Audrey seems to be better. I don't think she had a fever at all today, and she is acting and looking like normal. And that's a good thing, because I needed her to be my model tonight while I took a few pictures with my new camera lens! It's not my lens to keep; I'm just renting it for a week. I am doing a photo shoot for my friend's family, so I decided to splurge and borrow a nicer lens (in hopes of getting nicer looking pictures in return!).

So what's the difference between this $1000 lens that I am borrowing and the $100 lens that I own? I didn't have a lot of time to play around tonight, but I did take a few pictures and quickly noticed a big difference between the two lenses. First of all, this new lens can zoom in and out; my regular lens can't. Also, this lens focuses much quicker and easier than my regular lens. And finally, there is a definite difference in the image sharpness. I took two pictures to demonstrate this. The picture on the top is with the nice borrowed lens. The picture on the bottom is with my regular little lens.























I took both of these pictures with the exact same settings on my camera. And I didn't do any editing afterwards. If you don't notice the difference right away, look at the trees and houses in the background. Notice how the picture on the top has much more clarity and contrast than the picture on the bottom.

So that was my experiment for the night. I am hoping to experiment much more with this lens while I have it for the next week. If you live in the Springfield area and would like to loan me your child or family, I'd love to photograph them!!




Tuesday, June 1, 2010

June 1


Poor Audrey is still sick today. She was acting pretty normal all morning, so I thought she was feeling better. Then at one point, she brought the thermometer to me and said "beep, beep!" She felt a little warm, so I thought I would take her temp. I was shocked because she had a 102 degree temp but was running around like she felt fine.


As the day went on, I think she started to feel worse and worse. When I feel bad, I sleep a lot and lay down and rest all day. But it's hard to get a toddler to lay down and rest! Even when she wasn't feeling good, she didn't want to lay/sit down and be still. I did get her to sit for a few minutes at a time by putting on an episode of Elmo's World or Yo Gabba Gabba. But Audrey just wanted to be up playingconstantly. But then she whined the whole time she was up and wouldn't really play with any toy or focus on anything.


Tonight we needed to get out of the house, so I took her for a little walk before we went to bed. She was pretty tired when we got home. I'm hoping she will get a good night's sleep tonight and wake up doing better tomorrow.