Don't say I didn't warn you

I told you that it was the boys' turn today. It was a beautiful day and some of the shots turned out pretty good. My favorites of G are the first three of him, those are totally G. His personality just shines through.

You will notice that there are more shots of G than of J. The reason for this is because it is very difficult for me to catch J being J. This is where I wish I had the bigger camera with the telephoto lens because I have to really catch him off guard to get a candid and "true" picture of him. I know that this has much to do with his Autism.

I do love the shot of him jumping on his own. The expression on his face shows just how hard he is working at jumping. How much more difficult it is for him than most of the rest of us, because of his reduced gross motor skills. But I love the fact that he is more than willing to try and to jump (10 to 15 times!) for me in order to get a shot that I liked.

I also like the one where J is bent over and G is laughing. J is actually slapping G on the back at some joke that they were enjoying. That is typical J.

I love my boys.

The Smithy

On Saturday as G and j and I were walking home we came up on the blacksmith shop. It's over a 100 years old and we go past it every Sunday on the way to church. It's big brown wooden doors are usually closed. This is what we saw as we were walking home Saturday.
It was open for tours because it was out town's Heritage Days. Very cool. I love this old building. I'm pretty sure that the bricks that it's made from were made by my great-grandfather. I've walked past this building hundreds, possibly thousands of times in my life. When I was little it scared me, especially at night time. I would run past it as fast as I could and that was even if I was walking on the opposite side of the street. The big doors and dark windows were frightening. As time as passed I've grown to love and admire this place. They used to take school tours through but I don't know how much they do that any more. Thankfully they do open it once a year during the town festival.

This is a side door that is open. There is one just like it on the opposite side. The horses wagons would pull right up through the building. It has some neat things inside. It's not very tidy though. You can tell it's the domain of men, that and there hasn't been need for tidying up for a long, long time. I got some neat pictures of some of the things inside.

This first is a picture of an apron and a jacket and some paper that were hanging on the inside of one of the open doors.This next is a cabinet that was sitting on the work bench there. I think that it was to hold some type of thread or something because the second drawer up from the bottom says "Spool Cotton". The top drawer also says, to me, that this was in the domain of men. It's supposed to say Assorted Colors but certain letters have been rubbed off and I'm pretty sure it's not from "normal wear" because the next drawer down has every letter rubbed off but the last three and they are the same as the first three. That's not actually why I took the picture though. I just thought it was a cool cabinet. It wasn't until I got it home and opened it up on the computer that I noticed the subtleties in the spelling on the drawers.

G thought that this place was THE coolest place he'd seen in a very long time (can you imagine?) and begged and begged me to let him stay. The man that was there was very gracious and said that it would be fine for G to stay and help him out with another tour group that was coming through. He also fired up the forge and the bellows (which are all electric now) and heated up a branding iron and let G and some other kids that came in brand a piece of wood. The smell of the coal made me exceptionally sick to my stomach and light headed. I stayed around for a bit, enough to see this fine man let G help him use the mechanical hammer that they have there to hammer out really thick heavy items. G was in heaven.They also had some cool old bottles covered with dust and sitting on the shelf. The pictures I took of them did not turn out because I didn't want to use my flash. *sigh* Ah well. One of the coolest things in the place was this old scale. The full picture doesn't really give the feel of the age of this thing but the close-ups kind of do. These are my favorite shots from the smithy.

Photo Shoot

A couple of weeks ago my kids had a Monday off from school so I had them brush their hair and teeth and off we went to see if we could get some good pictures of them. I have a pretty good digital camera. I love digital. You can take TONS of shots and then you can print the best ones and you don't have to pay for the ones that are out of focus or half of someone's head cut off. Good stuff like that. I also love that you can play around with digital photos. Make them black and white. Soften them or sharpen them.

My mother gave me her love of photography. That and the fact that having some tangible piece of evidence from the past helps me with the holes that I find all to often in my memory. So I load the kids up in the truck and head out with my trusty, albeit small, digi cam. J. and M were pretty darn cooperative. G finally got into the spirit of things but j was not very into it. I tried a few different things and I thought I had some pretty good shots. Then I got home and pulled them off the camera and looked at them full size. I was highly disappointed. I don't think that there was one that was as crisp and clear as I wanted (or needed) them to be. My camera doesn't have image stabilization nor optical zoom. Two things will be on my next camera.

These are the ones that I was able to save through digital manipulation. They all look o.k. in a smaller size but I couldn't get any of them blown up to 8 x 10's because of the pixelization. I'm going to attempt this again but take each kid out separately for their own shoot and then take them all together to see what I can get for a group shot. Here are the pictures. If you want to see them a bit bigger you can click on them and it will open up to a larger shot.

These first two are G the one by the door I like but his face is kind of blown out. The second one would have been great if it wasn't so out of focus. This is SUCH a typical G shot. He does stuff like this all the time.

M wanted to do this pose with the lamp post and I thought it was a really cute idea. She is without glasses in the picture because she broke hers practicing yoga and was using her sun glasses at the time. I didn't really like that look so I had her take them off. The second picture I want to go back to that place and take some more pictures. I like the idea of this picture but her face was VERY pixelated, I did my best to fix it but it didn't work too well.

These next three I tried to get the kids jumping all at the same time. It was a riot! These are o.k. I wish they were more clear though.

I actually really like this one of J but it too is not as clear and crisp as I would like. I took this in black and white. I had a color one, like the one of G. but disappointingly it was fuzzy. I wish his hands were clearer in this picture because the way that he is holding them is something that is just SO very much J, yk?

This is one of the very few pictures that I got of j. She wanted to run and play and so I let her most of the time. There were a couple of others that I liked more but they were very out of focus. *sigh*

And we also have a new addition to our family. Welcome Zoe May (short for Mayhem) She is a cross between a blue healer and an Australian shepherd. Right now she is pure white but with time will get gray/blue spots on her. She is a very smart dog and is already whining at the door when she needs to go potty. She and Zeke, our first dog, get along famously which is wonderful. So here is her picture. I will hopefully post of this little fur ball later.

Pumpkin Pictures

We carved pumpkins the day before Halloween and I got some good shots of the pumpkins. Unfortunately I didn't get as good of shots of my kids in costume the next day. Ah well. Here are a couple of my favorites.







That last one is so huge because I for some reason blogger decided it couldn't upload any more pictures after those first three. *eyeroll*