Happy Memorial Day!

We had such a fun day at the lake yesterday, I wasn't even taking pictures!  Wish I had.  I did manage to get a photo of the fruit kabobs that I made.  I borrowed the idea from pinterest.com.  Love that site!

And Mom made these green beans (yum!): 

I did also manage to get one shot of Emily on the neighbor's jet ski...

So much fun!

Lake Day

It is taking me a while to get moving on this blog thing.  This week has been chaotic!  Swim team practice just started for the girls and it is every night of the week - two different times.  This is great for them, because one can swim while the other is at practice and vice versa.  We also have other activities that haven't yet ended, such as dance and softball.  I LOVE letting my kids try as many activities as they can, but it does lead to a little chaos around here.   Having a toddler adds to the complexity, but I just found out that he is going to love going to the pool this summer.  It was hard tearing him away this evening.

An other note, I received my first box of goodies (Unit 1) from the New York Institute of Photography (NYIP) and began my work immediately!  I am so excited to keep going!  So far so good.

Here are some photos from the past weekend:

The photo above was entered into the iheartfaces.com weekly photo contest.  The theme was yellow.  You'll see the same flower below .. as I kept trying different approaches to this theme.  I also had my daughter lie in a field of yellow weeds (um, I mean beautiful flowers), but I didn't like those as much!

Knock, Knock - I have a present for you!

First ski of the seaon

The yellow flower - again!

Add caption

The park with my favorite little guy

Trying to catch a bee!  Of course, I had to get the shot before I stopped him!

My Favorites

Recently, I have been attempting to improve my photography.  Since January, I have taken two online courses (one about taking photos and the other about editing photos), read a few photo books and spent a bazillion hours online reading up on things like aperture, shutter speed and depth of field.  I am constantly taking pictures (I think my neighbors think I'm a nut!) and trying to practice what I've learned.  I thought I would post some of my favorites that were taken over the past few months.

Mother's Day

Dad & Mom

What a great day it was!  It was complete with hugs and gifts from the kids, breakfast in bed and dinner with my family.  Happy Mother's day to all!

Chris & Kristy

Cookie Baking (the girls working hard to get the cookies made and Matthew working hard to eat the batter!)

Nice dunk!

Soft & Sweet - 6th Place Winner (wahoo!)

I entered this photo of my daughter into the IHeartFaces.com weekly photo contest earlier this week.  I came in sixth place out of almost 500 entries!  This made my weekend!!  

My first blog entry - EVER!

Well, I finally did it!  I have been meaning to do this for a while!  So here I am - in Blog world!  Now I just have to figure out what I am doing.  I am hoping that this blog will become a place to document stories about my three amazing kids as well as share photos as I pursue my interest in photography.  Please let me know what you think of my photos!