Christmas Pictures

I'm busy uploading Christmas Photos to my facebook account and supposedly the link below will let anyone look at the pictures. So let's see if this works.

Christmas pictures from John's family are posted at the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9727&l=45280&id=1450361928

They are yellow because they were taken by the light of the Christmas tree and I like the effect it gives. Also taken with my new camera lens. I'm really happy with how they turned out.

Enjoy.

October Happenings

I was just looking through my pictures and realized how far behind I am on postings. So for this entry, I'll cover our busy October.

In early October we took a trip to the East side of the state to use up some gift certificates that we had that were close to expiring. We had a free dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe where we had a great dinner and saw this guy:

Then we headed to our hotel, on the other side of Detroit. Have a few detours due to construction and got a little lost even with our GPS. Saw some seedier areas of Detroit but also got to see this:

It's the old Tiger's stadium. Picture is a little blurry as I wasn't expecting it so it was a really quick picture while moving.

We had a free stay at the hotel as well, from a previous bad stay a year ago for a wedding we were attending. This time was much better and we enjoyed two free drinks in the lounge while we listened to a great local band that I can't remember the name of and then had free breakfast the next morning. We went to Ikea and didn't get anything except a ticket for an illegal left turn. A major downer to our weekend. Thankfully, the officer wrote it so that while we still had to pay the penalty it won't show up on our insurance. After that we headed to Jackson to a cemetary that had some grave sites that John wanted to photograph for the Genealogy he is working on. The cemetary was HUGE which we didn't expect so we weren't as successful as we had hoped but still managed to find a couple that he was looking for. It really was a nice weekend get-away overall.

The weekend after was my birthday. I had a carseat check in the morning and then in the afternoon I was able to open the present John had been teasing me with all week. He had the wrapped box sitting on the kitchen table all week. He kept telling me I could open it if I wanted, knowing full well how tempting that was for me but that I like to open things the day of, so I waited. And the wait was worth it. John gave me a new camera!!! And not just any camera, a Canon Rebel xSI dSLR!! I've been considering one of these for a long time but was having trouble making a final decision and spending the mone. I was thrilled to see this one, plus a memory card, an extra zoom lens (which is wonderful), a carry case and probably most important for clumsy me, an extended warranty.

I've had lots of fun learning how to use it and taking pictures of everything...

The cats:




The plants outside (practicing aperture here..note the blurred background :-)):

My sweetest day flowers from John:

The cookies I made:

And even the kitchen sink! Actually I was trying an online photography challenge on the speed of the shutter. This was on a higher speed where you can see individual drops but you also need a lot more light. John, of course, thought I was more than a little crazy with this one.


Then at the end of October my mom, sister and I took our annual trip to Frankenmuth. We had a great time and found some wonderful deals at Birch Run. This picture is us at dinner at the Bavarian Inn, enjoying an AMAZING chicken dinner.

And at some point during the month, I knitted my very first pair of socks:

Phew! I think that is everything for October. November update coming soon! :-)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Ours went very well. John was very excited to break out his new hat, that he bought in Petoskey back in September. He saw this hat at a little store downtown Petoskey and immediately decided he had to have it. He wore it to work the day before Thanksgiving and the day of, and then to both of our holiday dinners.

Here he is at Lisa's house with the hat on, having dinner. He never sits down to eat...always stands in the kitchen, close to the food. As Mark said on Thursday, it's a tradition now. :-)



I was hoping to get more of an update done today but it just hasn't happen. Watch for more updates coming soon. John bought me a new camera back in October for my birthday and I've been having fun playing around with it so I have a whole bunch of fun pictures to share.