Tuesday, February 10, 2009

I'm still alive!

I know it's been a while since I last posted. Usually I'm right on top of this, but... I have a new obsession. Shooting in RAW. Because I don't have Adobe Lightroom, I have to edit every single picture one at a time in Photoshop and then convert them to jpg before I can upload them. It's a painfully SLOW process, but I love the results! It's soooo much better than shooting in just jpg. It's a total addiction now!
Before you start and get into this too deep, you might want to go to the bathroom, grab a drink, and get something to eat. This might take a while... (consider yourself warned!)...
This past Saturday Josh convinced me to bring the kids up to Ririe and go ICE fishing with him, and his brothers and their families and his dad. Ice fishing. That's all I have to say about that. But, the kids had fun & that's all that matters, right!? In the first picture, you can only see Kennidee and Alli because I've kindly circled them for you. Because we are all such awesome parents, we let our 3.5 and 4 yr olds play on snow and ice covered rocky slopes. Nice huh!? Oh well, the girls had a blast, didn't get hurt, and managed not to fall into any ice holes. So that's good.
If you can guess how many ice holes our group cut out and were fishing from, I'll give you a prize (not really, but you're super smart if you can guess it right).
Here are the kids enjoying the activity of the day. I'm pretty positive that this was Alli & Blake's first time Ice Fishing (Josh: correct me if I'm wrong):
For Bree, there wasn't much in the form of entertainment besides taking pictures. And because my fingers could only handle so much of the cold at a time, I was designated sled puller. I did it on foot, and then one of the men hooked a sled up to one of the two four-wheelers we had out there, and so I gave rides that way after that. It was a good thing, because I am so NOT in shape, and I got tired after only a few turns on foot. Anyways, I don't have any pictures of me pulling the kids, but here are a couple of fun "sled" pictures:


Now, to go along with sledding... here's the latest news from our household. An uncle who will remain un-named (*ahem* JAMES) was pulling Kenni and Alli around in the sled by way of the four-wheeler and he "accidently" dumped the girls over. Well, he was far accross the lake when it happened, but you can bet your bum that I could hear Alli crying. I just knew it was going to happen. Mothers have a 6th sense about these things. Needless to say, Alli didn't want to ride back on the sled, so Uncle J.T. picked her up on his way back to the "camp" from somewhere else. And when they rolled up, this is what I saw:

And here I am days later, still having to hear about how she got dumped off the sled, onto the ice & Uncle James gave her "rash" (meaning Road Rash).
Blake had lots of fun. He didn't get hurt at all! :) I'm pretty sure that Josh was in hog heaven getting to teach his boy how to ice fish. I just hope, for Josh's sake, that Blake still enjoys it when he's old enough to actually do things by himself.

Just some random pictures I took during the day:
Then I just had to take this picture. These crazies have an ice shack! They are SUPER serious about their ice fishing!

The local wildlife. Several times throughout the day we saw this Bald Eagle circling the lake. I'm sure he was looking for forgotten fish. If you get your face real close to the screen, and squint, you can kinda sorta barely maybe see him. I had to crop and zoom from the original shot so that you could even see this much of the dang bird. I'm not a miracle worker!!! ;) (sorry, I don't have a zoom lens yet).
Then as we were leaving, there were maybe 5 or 6 deer on the side of the road. Once again, I don't have a zoom lens, so you have to look closely!
Because the sun is so much fun to play with, I had to take tons of "lens flare" and sunset pictures. here are the few that I haven't shown you yet:
I was trying to get some good pictures of the kids, but totally forgot! I only remembered to take a picture if they were right in front of me. Kennidee wouldn't sit still long enough, and Brad is very elusive (almost like Big Foot or something - no not really... I'm totally teasing). I'm just stupid and forgot to take a picture of him! But here's two of the three girls:
(this one is one of my all time FAVORITES)Isn't that an AWESOME picture!? Yeah, I know. I totally know.

7 comments:

Kelsey said...

Okay missy... you need Lightroom. It will make all your worries disappear. its the most fantastic thing in the world! I just got it and am in heaven!

James & Amy Anderson Family said...

That is a way cute pic of Sydney!

grammaDawn said...

I noticed that Sydney wasn't on the sled when it crashed.....hmm:-)
Has anyone questioned him about that? (JK) Poor Alli, that looks painful.

Allisyn said...

I feel Alli pain, after getting KO'd by the sidewalk myself. At least Alli was not just walking along like I was.

Stephanie.Fitness said...

Poor little Miss Alli! That looks like it hurts! Cute pics by the way!

Michelle said...

We like shooting in RAW also. The program that Jeff uses to edit is Digital Photo Professional. I don't know where he got it, but he likes it. I still occasionally shoot in jpg, but am always disappointed when I get a really good shot that I want to tweak more and can't because it wasn't RAW.

Poor Alli. I hope that she is feeling better. You got some great pictures! Glad you had fun.

GigHarborEnrichment said...

Now that I've been ice fishing I can say that it's OK. I don't think I could get hooked on it....
oh get it...hooked? Anyway, after I saw what you pull up, that's bait for what we catch here. I thought we were going to actually catch fish. I guess it makes for an interesting hobby.