203/365 me and shannon

Friday, the 22nd, it was time to say goodbye to friends and family in Cadillac and head to Chicago. The week flew by and we didn't get to spend nearly enough time with everyone. We made a stop in Grand Rapids on the way to Chicago. We moved to GR 3 weeks before Emaleigh was born and lived there until we moved to SC 5 years ago. I don't remember exactly when we met Shannon and her family but I do know it was at a cookout at our friend Linda's house. It was before I had Joshua so I'm guessing 10 or 11 years ago. After that first meeting, there was a group of us that got together on a regular basis for playdates, scrapbooking, book clubs and sometimes a girl's night out. Shannon and I have been able to keep in touch since our move through emails, facebook, blogs and the occasional phone call. We also share a love for photography. It had been 2 years since we'd seen each other but when we walked in her house, it felt like it could have been just last week. Shannon is that sweet and welcoming. She's a great friend and I miss getting to spend time with her. Love you Shannon!


We handed our cameras over to Joe and her daughter Grace for this. So I didn't take this but I did set it all up for him ;-)

If you have a minute, check out Shannon's blog http://www.speakinginplainshamish.com/.

202/365

Thursday morning we headed back to the lake for some more fishing/playing in the water.


Look at that sweet face. She can get anything she wants from me ;-)

Later, we met Jen, Sean, Kyra, Teresa, Scott, Luke and Max for some bowling and dinner.

Helping her monkey with his turn to bowl.

201/365

On Wednesday, we got to hang out with my sister, BIL and sweet niece Kyra. Kyra is 2, absolutely adorable and so smart. We went to the lake so the boys could do some fishing. While they went out on the boat Kyra, Joshua, Em and I stayed on shore and played in the water. She loved it.




She would not look at me when I had the camera in my hand though. LOL

We had a good time and it was great to see my sister healthy and active again.

200/365 baby isaac

We were so excited about meeting our new nephew on our trip north {and seeing his parents too, of course}.

199/365 sleeping bear dunes

Monday, the 18th, we went to Sleeping Bear Dunes. We've been there before. Joe and I used to go fairly often before we were married. We took the kids last year. Only 3 of the 5 of us made it all the way to the lake that time. So we wanted to go back again this year, determined that all of us would make it.


Looking down at the lake from on top of one of the dunes along the scenic drive.


My 3 cute guys


The beautiful shore of Lake Michigan. It was a lot rockier than I remembered it being last year. But the water felt really good on such a hot day.

{We all made it!}

why I shoot in RAW

There has been some discussion over the past few months about the benefits and drawbacks of shooting in RAW. Most often mentioned is that the files are a lot bigger than jpegs. I've been shooting in RAW for 3-4 years now and have a hard time going back to jpeg. I'm currently working on vacation pictures {and scavenger hunt and 365 pictures}. Today I started editing the photos I took on the 18th. That's the day we went to Sleeping Bear Dunes {post coming....soon}. I edited a few shots then came to this one.


I had been taking close ups of a flower and turned around to see the three of them walking towards me. Without thinking or checking anything, I shot this. I saw that it was blown when I glanced at the screen but didn't have time to adjust and take another shot-they're just too quick. If I had shot this in jpeg, I would be out of luck. I could adjust it a little but it would take more time and wouldn't look quite right.

An exposure adjustment, WB change, sharpening, levels and contrast adjustment and crop {less than 5 minutes} and this is what I have.

Is it perfect? No. Do I love it anyway? YES! There's just something about this that I really like. I think it's that you can see their individual personalities in it. Joshua is curious and always thinking. He wants to know how things work. And he always wants to be first. Matthew is the take charge, look straight ahead and go type of kid. He'd rather lead than follow. Emaleigh is more cautious. She'd rather follow than lead. She makes sure everything is safe and clear as she goes. If I hadn't shot this in RAW, I probably wouldn't have this. I would have deleted right away and not taken the time to mess with it.

198/365 the farm

We're back! And exhausted. But we had a great time with friends and family. I have a ton of photos to go through and try to organize. Hopefully I can get caught up with posts and everyone's blogs in the next few days.

Sunday the 17th, we went to Joe's Grandpa's farm. This is where Joe's dad and his 2 brothers grew up. When we go there it is usually at Christmas time so it was nice to see it again without all the snow ;-) The kids loved seeing the sheep and wanted to bring a couple of the barn kittens home with them. They also liked picking carrots right out of the ground, washing them off real quick and eating them. Said they taste better than from the store. LOL






The sheep were quite skittish so I was surprised that they let me get a few shots of them. Almost looks like they were posing for me.

Scavenger hunt

I can't believe July is almost over already! The kids, Joe, friends and family and I have all been having a great time with the Clickin' Moms scavenger hunt. We've even gotten complete strangers involved {a few of them have given us some crazy looks....}. It was a lot of fun to do it while we were on vacation and find things we normally wouldn't have been able to at home. Like a Ferrari. Parked on the street in downtown Chicago. Definitely don't see that around here.

Check out http://www.clickinmoms.com/ Not only do they have the scavenger hunt every year, there are also pages of tutorials, lots of inspiration and helpful, friendly women {and a few men} who love photography.

197/365 reunion

Saturday was the day of Joe's high school reunion and I didn't take many pictures. We did meet my best friend, Teresa, and her family down town at the Art Festival though. This is aunt Teresa and Em.

We have known each other since we were 5 years old {as near as we can figure out. We don't remember not knowing each other}. She knows me better than anyone, including myself sometimes. I am so very thankful for her and she has made my life so much better just by being her. She lives about 14 hours away from us so we don't get to see each other nearly as often as we would like. Love you Tree!

196/365 castle

We stopped on the 2nd day of travel at a castle. The kids thought it was way cool {so did we}.



He's cool and he knows it.

195/365 through the mountains

One thing the kids really like on the drive to MI is going through the tunnels through the mountains. There are 2 the way we go.


Definitely hard to do this in a moving vehicle.

194/365 alex

Not a lot of time today so it's just a photo of the puppy.

193/365 hair cut

Matthew has had the Justin Bieber look for quite some time. It does look pretty good on him but his hair is so thick and grows so fast, it almost always looks shaggy and gets in his eyes. We were getting tired of it. So I took him to get his hair cut last night. He wasn't happy about it. I had him look in one of the books to see if he could find anything he liked. This is what he decided on.

He loves it. I think it's cute and am happy to see his adorable face again.

192/365 scavenger hunt fun

The boys enjoyed this one ;-)

Kind of a boring photo for today but I've been busy trying to get Nick@Night photos on the church's facebook page, doing laundry, trying to start thinking about what we need to do to get ready to leave for Michigan Thursday morning and getting as many scavenger hunt items as possible before we leave. It's going to be a busy week.

191/365 out of the dark ages

I was getting ready to post this last night and catch up with everyone when the power went out for the whole neighborhood. Apparently there was an accident nearby.

Anyway, this is my phone.

Kind of sad and pathetic, isn't it? I can get phone calls with it but that's about it. I can send/receive texts but it's a pain to do {it took me several minutes to type that short sentence out....}. It has a camera but the quality is not good at all. We got these phones in May of 2006, a few weeks before we moved to SC. I hear "Miss Amy, you really need a new phone" a lot. I've wanted a new one for quite some time but really didn't think we'd be getting them any time soon.

Saturday was our 17th anniversary. It was a crazy busy day with Nick@Night in the morning and lifegroup game night in the evening. So we decided to go out to lunch. And that's when it happened. Joe suggested we go see about upgrading our phones. Don't tell him this but he totally surprised me. We both picked the same phone {we seem to do that sort of thing a lot}.


Can you hear the angels singing? ;-)

Anyone want to guess who's spent the most time over the past few days playing with the new phone? If you guessed me, you'd be wrong.

190/365 pied

I love that the youth group gets involved with Nick@Night. They all do a great job too. Emaleigh was a crew co-leader and Matthew was "security" {and clean up}. He declared on the first night that he could not get a pie in the face because he was "working." Silly, silly boy. No one is safe. He complained that he got pied 8 times yesterday but I really can't take his complaints too seriously when he looks like this:



This isn't a great photo but we had a very busy day yesterday and I didn't take anything other than N@N photos. And let me just say, I am SO not used to shooting in jpeg. LOL.

I'm very behind on visiting all your blogs. I hope to catch up today. Hope y'all are having a great weekend!

189/365 nick @ night

Our church puts on Nick @ Night-VBS with a mess-every year. I'm really not sure who enjoys it more, the kids or the volunteers. There are pies in faces, water games, frosting facials, fun songs and of course the message of God's love for us all. This is my 4th year helping out with the pictures.

We have a small team going to Haiti at the end of this month to help out at an orphanage there. They are trying to raise money to buy some things the children will need.

Hopefully these jars will be full by the end of N@N.

Since I don't have permission to post pictures of the kids, I'll go with one where no one can be recognized. They were getting ready to start one of the water games and I couldn't resist the gorgeous light.

188/365

My adorable boy :-)

187/365 playing with the rain

What do you do when a thunderstorm appears and you haven't taken your picture for the day yet? Take a picture of the rain, of course!




Emaleigh declared me "crazy" for trying to get this. She's not a fan of storms and there was a lot of thunder and lightening going on at the time. I was standing in the house with the door open though, so no worries. And I enjoy a good thunderstorm :-)

186/365 house of cards

One of the items on the scavenger hunt list is a house of cards. Matthew built one for that but was determined to go bigger and better. He spent a decent part of the afternoon trying to do it.

185/365 happy 4th of july!

We had a great day. We spent the afternoon with Becky and JJ (SIL and BIL), Bobbie, Mike, Chris, Taylor and Dontavius at Becky and JJ's house, eating yummy food and playing in the pool.


Dontavius, Em, Taylor, Chris and Matthew. Josh is in the water.

Bobbie and Chris. They look dangerous, don't they? ;-)

Later we met Bobbie, Mike and the kids to watch the fireworks.

I took my tripod with me but forgot the thing that attaches the camera to it. Oops.
The "official" photo for the day.

ISO400, f16, ss 1/3 (handheld)

184/365

We had softball practice today. The spring season is over and fall hasn't started yet but we decided we wanted to practice over the summer so we might have a chance at winning a few games. I got to play 2nd base today. I kind of liked it, though I'm not sure how good I was at it. Matthew joined us and did a good job at 1st base. It was hot today-96 degrees-so we didn't practice real long, which was good because I started to not feel so well towards the end. I need to learn to like drinking water, I guess.

After practice, Joe threw some balls to Matthew so he could practice hitting.

183/365 sand dollar

So I was working on the scavenger hunt list but didn't have any ideas for a regular photo for today. Until I got the sand dollars out. I'd forgotten we had them.

Hope y'all are having a great weekend!

182/365 back to back

The parade to celebrate the back to back baseball National Champions was downtown this afternoon. Matthew was really excited to see the baseball team.

Waiting for the parade to start

The baseball team

After the parade, Emaleigh declared that she is going to USC and Matthew said that in 7 years, I'll be watching him in Omaha and then he'll be in the parade {so I guess he's going to USC too, Bobbie ;-) }

Oh, and we're all totally excited here because it's July, which means it's time for CM's annual scavenger hunt! We had a ton of fun with it last year and got friends and family involved.