365 ~ 2013: Day 31

Yesterday, the fog.  Today...rain, then some sun and 100% windy.

365 ~ 2013: Day 30

Just a tad foggy today...

365 ~ 2013: Day 29

Brotherly love...Shaun snuggles up with Evan, who is still a little under the weather today.

365 ~ 2013: Day 28

Walking in a Winter wonderland...

365 ~ 2013: Day 27

One, two, three...GO!

365 ~ 2013: Day 26

Happy 2nd Birthday Nicholas!

365 ~ 2013: Day 25

This picture was taken today so that I could tell a story. This story is about a 6 year old boy who a week ago thought it would be "fun" to cut his own hair. Apparently last week he went up to his room, grabbed his scissors and cut a nice little chunk from the front. His hair long and he was able to hide it with the rest of his hair which is why we didn't notice until we took him last Saturday to get it cut. The only way to "fix" it was to cut it super short in the front. Needless to say, he's learned his lesson and will not be taking his hair-cutting needs into his own hands again.  All I could think was thank goodness he was smart enough to do this on himself and not one of his brothers or worse, a girl with a nice long pony tail!

365 ~ 2013: Day 24

A quick rendezvous at Burger King today. They were on a "real" date...well...as far as they were concerned!

365 ~ 2013: Day 23

Quiet time!

365 ~ 2013: Day 22

As I said in a previous post, I'm starting to notice distractions in my images, things that I would never give a second thought to before.  Unfortunately they can't always be avoided, so in those instances I'm thankful for Photoshop and the beauty of the clone tool, and content-aware!



Here is the before image below...much better without the distraction of a foot!

365 ~ 2013: Day 21

Forever friends!

365 ~ 2013: Day 20

AFC Championship! Go PATS!

365 ~ 2013: Day 19

Lunch date...

365 ~ 2013: Day 18

Shaun was learning about flutter kicks today, but first they had to get all the big silly kicks out of the way first.

365 ~ 2013: Day 17

Every once in a while you'll be setting up for the perfect shot and then mother nature will swoop in with a breeze and blow snow everywhere; and what you think is going to be a ruined picture, turns out to be a home run!  These are the moments you cannot script and these are the moments that are (at least in my opinion) the best ones!

 

Submitting this for the April 2013 I Heart Faces ~ Wind challenge!  Make sure to click on the link below to see other amazing interpretations of wind!

365 ~ 2013: Day 16

Snow flowers.

365 ~ 2013: Day 15

David learned a new stroke in swimming today!

365 ~ 2013: Day 14

A foggy, gloomy start to the day, but it didn't last long before the sun broke through.  It was warm and breezy all afternoon.  We even got to play outside in rain boots and no jackets...in JANUARY! Took advantage of the sun and got the last of our decorations taken down. Taking down Christmas always makes me a little sad.  I will miss the glow.

More Sledding and Cape Cod Christmas!

The last Saturday of our Christmas Vacation we got some more snow!  We were supposed to celebrate Christmas on the Cape but Mother Nature had other plans, thankfully it wasn't a big storm and we were able to meet up on Sunday!  The boys were happy to have a day to play in the snow and get in some more sledding!

Super fast!

Having an easier time getting around in the snow this year!

Sledding with Daddy!

Rolling around in the snow with Mommy!

The boys starting the path for the steep side of the hill!

On Sunday morning after the snow was cleared we packed up the car and headed south to Cape Cod to visit with the Doc's side of the family.  We had lots of munchies and it was just a lovely relaxing day!  A very big thank you to Aunt Karen for hosting us!

Evan is "dancing on the ceiling"

Our family!

The boys with Auntie Kristin

The boys with Omi

Great Aunt Karen and Great Uncle Tom with the boys!

365 ~ 2013: Day 13

On Thursday my sister turned the "dirty" 30.  Today I traveled south and made her favorite meal, my Chicken Fried Steak with homemade Mac & Cheese. I also made some collard greens (first time ever!), and mashed potatoes, but she doesn't eat that! Happy Birthday Robyn!


*Photo credit Jesse Ellis

365 ~ 2013: Day 12

Evan enjoying his California Roll, he was determined to try the chopsticks but eventually he just deconstructed it and ate it with his hands!  His favorite part is the "coocumber".

365 ~ 2013: Day 11

More underwater camera fun! This time I put on some goggles and went under with Evan! I love that he's getting so much more confident in the water!

 

365 ~ 2013: Day 10

Little boy toes!

365 ~ 2013: Day 9

Winding down after a long day...

 

365 ~ 2013: Day 8

Part of my photography journey is to learn from others.  One of the perks of being a member at The SOPHA is that I get to join in on First Friday, a peer image review night!  I have gone twice now and both times I walked away with some great feedback both positive and constructive, with tips to improve my image.  Aside for the feedback I am also learning what to "look" for that come across as "distracting" in an image, like a stray hair or crack in the wall that can easily be removed in post.  I hope that the more I attend these reviews the more I will learn and the more I will improve.

So taking the advice from my peers, I did a re-shoot of my cozy socks image.  The feedback was to make the toes be the focus (you can see from the before image that the bottom part of the socks is where the focus is), and clone in some more green in the top left corner, as well as remove the white glow from the bottom left.  Also someone made the suggestion to "color match" the green in the socks to the green in the tree.  What a perfect opportunity to learn something new in Photoshop!  

So for comparison; here is the BEFORE image.  Since the focus is not something I can fix in post I needed to actually retake the image.

BEFORE

Here is the retake.  Focus is on the toes, the green is cloned to the top and fills the space evenly, and I color matched the greens.

AFTER

So you can get a sense of what I did to change the color, there may or may not be an easier/faster way to do what I did, but I don't have a strong background in PS and used the first tutorial that I came across in google!

I love the bokeh in the after image and think the color match was great tip and I'm glad I tried it out!  However, I like the overall composition better in the original image and really wish I paid more attention to where the focus was when I originally shot it so then I could have made these changes to the original image.  Oh well, live and learn!  And that is exactly the point of this journey.

 

365 ~ 2013: Day 7

Evan just needed to rest for a minute at Target today.

365 ~ 2013: Day 6

Working on getting in front of the camera more this year!  I'm not afraid to get my picture taken, in fact I love it, but I don't always think to hand off the camera to someone else, in this case Charlie!  Today we trekked out behind our street because a few neighbors had mentioned that we check it out, since it's bigger than what we have in our backyard.  This hill was not only bigger but it was super fast.  It wasn't icy but it was just as slick!  This is Shaun and I going full speed ahead!

365 ~ 2013: Day 5

Shaun's first basketball clinic! Crazy kid told me he didn't like basketball before leaving this morning, but his ear to ear grin on his face during the entire practice and scrimmage said otherwise!

365 ~ 2013: Day 4

Since Evan is still too young for swimming lessons on his own (meaning I have to be in the pool with him) I have never been able to capture him swimming as easily as I could with the older boys.  That is...until now! Santa brought our family an underwater camera for Christmas!  It's the Panasonic Lumix TS20 and I was very excited for swimming today so that I could finally play around with it.  I didn't bother much with the manual so there may be some features I am missing but from what I can tell it allows you to adjust ISO and white balance so that is pretty cool.  For the purpose of today and trying to get some pictures of Evan and seeing what kind of shots I would get, I left it on the sport setting which is basically an auto setting that allows for high shutter speeds.  After loading them to the computer I'll be finding out if I am able to manually select my shutter speed because it still wasn't quite fast enough for my needs).

In any case, for the price tag, it's a great little point and shoot and the fact that I can take it with me in the pool is an awesome added bonus.  It also helps that Santa got a great deal from Amazon on Cyber Monday!  But deal aside, it's still one of the cheaper underwater cameras out there and while I would have liked the Canon version (because I LOVE Canon PowerShots!) I just couldn't justify the extra $150 price tag, especially for a camera that is only going to have one purpose for me; taking pictures in (and under) the water!

365 ~ 2013: Day 3

Baby it's cold outside...

365 ~ 2013: Day 2

Every so often I'll send the boys downstairs to play after school so I can prep dinner and every so often it will get quiet, like it did today.  And so I headed down to see what kind of disaster I would find except that I didn't find a disaster I found three brothers playing an elaborate scene with medieval knights, the bat cave train and a big transforming dinosaur car thingy!

These moments are what makes this project so worthwhile!  I want to remember this moment forever.

New Year-A-Palooza

Happy New Year!  Again we hosted the second annual New Year-A-Palooza and it was a blast!  It was a lot colder than it was last year and this year we had some snow.  The kids (and even the grown ups) had a great time sledding.  We had a feast of homemade Chinese food and lots of yummy desserts and munchies.  After dinner we all headed outside to light some sparklers and set off some fireworks!  It was freezing but the kids loved the fireworks!

Sledding fun!

Thomas wasn't so sure about the snow!

Cameron always smiles for me!

Evan was having fun watching the big kids play!

We got this HUGE inflatable ball from the Mailloux Family and decided to take it for a test run in the snow!  Even the grown up boys took a turn rolling down inside the ball.

Brady went first and fell out...the grown ups figured out the technique.

David taking a turn!

Brian after rolling down the hill in the ball

The kids playing a little Just Dance 4 before dinner

Nicholas with his sparkler

David showing off his sparkler

Fireworks!  Happy New Year!

This took a bribe of dessert, and noise makers but no get together is complete without the picture of the 8 (soon to be 9 once Baby Stack #4 arrives!)  boys!

After fireworks and dessert it was time to let the kids wind down with some TV and then it was off to bed.  And with the kiddos in bed it was time for the grown ups to have some fun!  Drinks, laughter and lots of fun!  We turned on the countdown at 10 minutes to midnight and toasted the new year with champagne!

I may or may not have had 3 glasses of Sangria...

We stayed up way later than I have in a LONG time but it was a lot of fun just hanging out just the grown ups!  Even though I am sure we could have chatted the night away, the fact remained that the children would be up at the crack of dawn and we were correct.  Thankfully they were able to entertain themselves quietly in their rooms until finally at 6:50 I told them they could head downstairs.  I made a HUGE breakfast and then it was time to get dressed so we could head out for some more sledding before everyone headed back home to recoup from the night before!

Scott got some nice lift on this run!

We saved the parachute fireworks for the morning so the kids could see them fly!

Brady and David had the most fun sledding!

Wishing you all a very happy and healthy 2013!