Day 48 and 49

I'm posting out of order today. This week I'm taking pictures of Maya's favorites and I want to post those all together. Here are some goofy pictures to fill in the days we didn't do favorites. I took these photos today inside without my flash. My flash is upstairs in my bedroom and both times I wanted to take the picture before I lost the moment. This shows you how much I hate my built in flash. I'd rather have a grainy photo than a super bright built in flash photo. I did try to take a few of Serena with the flash but they were awful! Did you see my previous post? That one actually turned out ok!! :)

Day 49



Here's a silly photo of Alison. She was sitting at dinner all bunched up like this. It really made me laugh how rectangular she was with her head scrunched in. Then I realized with that black shirt the reason it looked so funny to me is that she looks just like the Jolly Roger!!! ha ha

Day 48



I love these pictures of Serena! She was recounting her tales of visiting the queen. She can go on and on with her stories and they vary between being quite imaginative and completely random. This story even included a missed trip to space because they didn't have a the right space clothes. I love how much she gets into it - you can see from her expressions she is in full blown drama mode.

And here is my photo tip for the day, maybe. I have a terrible time with Serena's skin tone with indoor photos when my white balance is off. With Alison and Maya's pale skin I have less trouble removing the yellowish cast but when I do the same thing for Serena her skin ends up too gray, but if I warm it back up it's too yellow again. Today I was adjusting these photos while she sat next to me. I finally added a sepia photo filter to these pictures and her skin tone looks so much better. I'm anxious to see if this works for all my photos. Really I should just learn to use a card and get my white balance right in the first place and/or shoot in RAW. Both of these photos were so yellow to start with there is only so much I know how to do to fix them.

Day 45

Love this picture of Maya - straight out of the camera. :) I have the rest of the week almost ready. I just need to process some of them. I have a feeling pretty soon here I'm going to posting my pictures once a week. I just don't have time every day to upload and process them.

Day 42-44

Day 44






Some pictures of Serena playing with her Pollys. That is all we do anymore. :)


Day 43




I am going to do something new. I am going to have the kids document with photos some of their favorite things at this age. So whenever I don't have an idea for a photo of the day I will ask them a question about their favorites. When I put my book together, I'll just pull those out into a separate page. I'm starting with Maya so here's a picture of her.


Day 42




I gave a presentation on Chinese New Year and the Lantern Festival at Serena's preschool. The kids seemed to enjoy it and they gave me this fabulous thank you card today (well Wedesday)!

Day 39-41

Sure it's just a picture of Polly Pocket shoes but to me it says so much and makes me laugh about so many things. First it exhibits how compulsively organized I can be. We have a huge bin of Polly Pockets but whenever the girls dump them out I go and collect all the little shoes and put them in a special little bag. Not sure it is compulsion or aversion to the kids whining for help finding the matching shoe. It also exhibits that I have a problem with time management that I would take the time to line up, pair up, and stand up all these little shoes. It show how ridiculously many Pollys we have. And it show how insanely sentimental I can be about objects. The single blue lace up shoe came with the first set we ever had. I bought as a first day of preschool present for Alison when she was three - it was a teacher Polly. I remember the silly shoe even thought that was 5 1/2 years ago. :) The little orange roller skate was on a Polly we took on the plane ride to Hawaii when Maya was 18 months. She was so obsessed with the Polly and the skates that she constantly had to know where it was. On the plane she fell asleep holding it tight. I couldn't sleep because I kept waking up worried that one of the skates had fallen off - ha ha ha. So not just a pile of shoes. :)



This is the view from my bed when I wake up in the morning. I really love the beautiful red glow on the trees. :)



I love these little chairs. Love love love. I bought them at TJ Maxx a few years ago. I don't splurge on much but these I couldn't pass up. The character in the middle is xi, which means happiness. Love them!

Day 38

Today I'm breaking the rules. It was just one of those days that one photo wasn't going to cut it. I didn't get any great shots so I figured I should go with the story rather than a single photo.

For months my girls' Chinese teacher has been preparing them to sing 3 songs at a local Chinese New Year celebration. Today was the big day. Even though they knew the songs well and sing them beautifully, they had major stage fright all day and didn't want to go. But when we arrived they became very brave and did a fabulous job!

Day 36-37

Day 37



Alison is finally starting to feel better. She ate a little soup today and then ate some ice cream. She's still feeling nauseous but I am happy to see a little color and the twinkle return to her eyes.

Day 36



Having Alison sick has completely thrown Maya off kilter. She has been antsy and, um, loud, for the last few days. She finally found something focused to do, make her class Valentines, and that made all the difference in her mood. She made them all by herself without any advice or assistance from me. She had the exact number of doilies as number of kids in her class and she wanted the red for the boys and the pink for the girls. So she laid them all out and counted out the hearts before she started gluing. I was impressed by her foresight and advance planning.

Day 35

Alison came down with a nasty stomach bug Tuesday night. She felt awful all day on Wednesday - the sickest she has ever been from a stomach flu. She laid on the couch the entire day watching tv and didn't want anyone near here. She only got up twice the entire day. All she had to eat or drink was one bottle of Sprite.

Since this picture was a bit boring I decided to have fun playing with it in Lightroom. I like how when the colors are distinct enough I can achieve selective coloring with the sliders rather than an extraction. The only problem is the gray line around the edge of the bottle. I could have avoided that problem if I had done an extraction. But this took 2 seconds and I really had no reason to spend time extracting a Sprite bottle!

Day 34

I got my hair cut yesterday which I don't do very often. I thought I'd try to take a picture of it but I couldn't really get a good shot. So here is a picture of me that really doesn't show my hair. I hate pictures of myself so this might be the only one of just me you see this year!!

Day 33

Meet our second vehicle! We live less than a mile from Martin's office and Serena's school, across the street from the elementary school and a half a mile from our church. So we don't need to do a ton of driving in our daily life and we just have one car. This is how Serena gets to and from school. Martin takes her everyday in the Burley (unless it rains - basically never - or there is snow on the roads) and leaves the trailer there so I can take her home. I manage to take her home in it about half the time in the winter and most of the time when the days are warmer. I love where we live and that it is so sunny here that we can rely on the bike. :)

Day 31-32

Day 32



Maya is really starting to get into reading too. I think it makes such a difference when they can read chapter books that are interesting to them. She didn't get very excited about very many of the beginning reading books. Here she is tonight reading a "Pet Fairies" book by Daisy Meadows.

I have been really impressed with Sarah C's photos. She is an amazing photographer. One thing I have learned from looking at her blog is that if I am mindful of the light, I can capture more catch lights in my kids' eyes. I sat on the floor as Maya read and the second she glanced up I got this photo with a bit of a twinkle. Thanks Sarah for the inspiration!! :)

Day 31



Here's a picture of Longs Peak on the Colorado Front Range. The thing I love about this picture is that I didn't do any post processing. :)

Day 27-30

I want to say that I really have not been into this at all this week. I'm so glad that I am doing this on a blog and that so many of you stop by to leave me love or I might have abandoned the project this week. Thank you!!!!!

So here are a bunch of pictures at once.


Day 30



The elementary school had it's annual Sock Hop Friday night. The girls were so excited to go! It is a fun event and at least half the girls wear poodle skirts!! Last year we didn't know this. But Maya and her new sewing machine came to the rescue. Maya and I made these skirts together. I prepped and with a bit of guidance she stitched them together. My battery died while I was taking their pictures. I will have to get them dressed back up to take better photo some day.


Day 29





Alison stays up way too late reading. She is on the 7th and last book of Harry Potter and I am really hoping when she finishes this series she will fall asleep earlier. right now she lives and breathes Harry Potter. Serena and Maya know all the characters just listening to all her talk. And she has gotten Martin to actually read them - he has only read two other fiction books since I met him, so a pretty big accomplishment on her part. She claims she can't fall asleep without reading - looks like it is working.


Day 28



This is a photo of relief. I didn't have my flash securely attached to my camera and it flew off, hit the ground, and went sliding across the floor. I took this photo in a state of panic, aiming at nothing in particular, to check that it still worked. It seems to be ok, but I am so mad at myself for not tightening the dial.


Day 27



My favorite breakfast in the whole world. I know it is not good for me at all, but here it is - Scallion Pancakes!! Let me explain that I don't like sweet for breakfast at all. I would take rice and beans any day over pancakes and syrup or cereal. I usually just eat leftovers. So whenever I make scallion pancakes for dinner I make more than I know we will eat. Then I refrigerate the extra dough and fry them up for breakfast. They are so light and crisp with just the right amount of salt and the lovely flavor of scallions. Oh how I love them. And they taste even lighter when the dough sits over night. Yum!