Here ya go Patti!! Here are some flower pic's first of all


And now the ones from today!!

well I started the challenge with a snow and tree picture so I thought it was fitting to end it with yet another snow and tree picture!! This was taken right out of my cul de sac at the creek that runs by my house! Taken hand held from the car cause it's too cold to get out!!!

Here is a picture of a picture (ha ha!) that my boys worked on together to paint for me! Does it matter that the leaves are tree leaves on a flower? Not to me it doesnt!!! I have a hard time keeping all of their art work so I've begun to take pictures of their pictures then combine them into a monthly collage or something smaller than keeping the hundreds!! Especially the ones with noodles or something on them that bugs may enjoy!! So after I display it proudly for a little while and get a picture of it then I dont feel so guilty getting rid of the original!!

Sorry, I had absolutely NO creativity today!! I was choosing 100 proofs from the wedding (out of 500!) so I'm a little sick of looking at pictures and trying to be creative, so here is a picture of the book we read tonight!! My kids all love The Littles books, from my 4 year old to my 10 year old!! I loved them as a kid too so it's a good "quality" time thing we can do!!!

I made the boys pose for Valentines shots today, before my birthday roses died!!! Here is Zachary... he's my tough one to photograph so I'm actually kind of happy with this one! I didnt have to fix his chapped lips and he actually has somewhat of a natural smile!! The lighting looked better before uploading? I do struggle with getting his hair lit but keeping the backdrop black but in the big version you can see more of his hair? Oh well here he is!!!

Well I tried the pink paper again today and turned the lights up. I also tried it with the backdrop light but that was too much... one part of the drop was white and the rest was pink! So I shot with just 2 lights one on each side, a soft box on the 800 turned to about 1/4 and the 400 with a bounce umbrella turned up to almost 1/3? here's my results... I am happier with the pink... it looks a little peachish here but actually the real one is pretty pink? The boys are watching "Facing the giants" so I only took the time to upload one picture!! If anyone has not seen that movie I would highly highly recommend it as probably the best movie we saw in 2006!! Loved it!!!

Well I decided to wait until dark to do a picture then thought I'd try something fun and do the 'throw your camera trick!!" Only I'm a chicken and wont let go of my camera so here are three pictures combined onto one of my 'waving' my camera!!! The yellow one is the lights on my modem, the blue in the one switch on my computer, and the red is the 0 on my carbon monoxide detector!!! They do make for some cool artsy pictures!!!

Well today I played with shooting several of the roses that I got yesterday. No time to play with the shots though cause I really want to upload some things to my Zune!!! So here is one of the shots! No I dont have a macro lens so this will have to do!!

Well I decided to do another photo journalistic approach of my day!!! Here is the banana bread I made this morning for the boys to take for breakfast... nice mom, huh?? So then it's shower and get ready.. get the kids up at 6:35......

and out the door by 7:00
Drop the boys off at my friends to eat then she takes them to school on my work days!
Then it's time to drop Abby off at her in-home preschool! And off to work for me!
This morning though I had to make a stop at Price Chopper floral to pick up the 'out of date' flowers. My kids at work dry the petals then use them in our homemade paper greeting cards! Price Chopper saves them from the garbage for us and I go pick them up!! It's a great savings for us!
Then it's off to work where I was surprised with a triple chocolate cake, a dozen roses and a picture of my awesome "family"!!!

Here are my pretty roses!! I thought I'd snap another picture of my favorite barn on my way home also!!
These are out of order but this afternoon instead of being at school all day we had a meeting in the afternoon with all of the occupational therapists at district office.
Here's my kid's!!!

After work and the meeting I picked up the boys at 3:35 and it was so nice today after being freezing for so long we played outside and rode bikes for a while before heading off to work at church! here is Andrew's big jump!

and here is Zachary's!!!
At 5:00 we made it to church to do Alpha Sprouts of which I am the childrens' ministry director for....
Finally headed home for the day at 9:15 I snapped this on the highway!! I put the camera on the dash and set a slow shutter and just drove!!!
When I got home my hubby and kids shocked me with my birthday gift!!! A Zune!!! It has 30 gig's of memory, a bigger screen than an IPOD and can do slide shows and music!!! So cool!!!!! Woo hoo!!! What a day!!!

Well tomorrow is my birthday so today Abby and I went to Target at her request to she could buy me a gift (cause she didnt really want to give away all of her things... cause some of them she just got for Christmas!) !!! Isnt that sweet! So, I took her to Target and we searched through the toy dept. but I just didnt find anything perfect so she suggested that I look for a picture frame!! She found the 'perfect' one for me!! It's purple and pink "your (my) favorite colors!!!" and I could take a picture of her to put in it on one side and she could take a picture of me to put on the other side!! AND it was on clearance for $2.00!!! That's right in her price range!!! (Actually she is loaded holding a wallet with over fifty dollars but she is saving up for a bunny!) So here is the "perfect" frame and some pictures she let me take to put in it so she can wrap it tomorrow!! I bought myself the pink paper backdrop today.. I obviously still need to play with lighting it!! I think I should try doing it more high key... I like the light pink color of the backdrop better but she is too blown out and the colors are way off , the darker is better color of her but I dont like how peachish it looks? Oh well I obviously did this very very fast and did absolutely no editting cause thanks to Patti and Larry I can finish editting the wedding pictures!!! Thanks Larry!!!! He installed a recovery program on my computer and saved my disk of wedding photo's that had corrupted!!! Busy day but it was a good one!!!

I'm spending most of my day today split between trying to entertain my kids and editting wedding pictures! I ran to Walgreen's to try to get some suckers but no luck! My DD did talk me into these conversation hearts instead though so here are my quick pictures for the day! The first is just a zoomed shot (aaaaa no kidding?!!! Then the second is the reverse lens thing again. It still amazes me how close it gets!!!