Tis' the season to provide updates

With the holidays behind us, (and thanks heavens, the semester too), I finally feel like I'm ready to leave my blogless cave.  Unfortunately, that cave has also been fairly camera-free, so here's one of those full of junk, no picture posts:

• We spent the Thanksgiving holiday relaxing and refraining from cooking (because that cave of mine doesn't have a pot, spatula, and certainly not an oven).  We ate our turkey dinner at Mimi's Cafe, which wasn't bad, but certainly wasn't home cooking.
• We saw Harry Potter!  We decided to ignore the fact that we're no longer sleep deprived college students and went to the midnight showing.  We paid dearly the whole next day and didn't catch up on sleep for at least 3 days afterwards. 
• I sang in the choir as part of our church's nativity program.  It was an amazing program with a big orchestra that included percussion and a harp, our choir, a video that went with the music, as well as actors that played out the Nativity scene in front of a beautiful stable and manger.  It was pretty incredible.
• I somehow made it through the semester.  I graduate in May and I have only one semester to put together my entire culminating project.  Blech is what I say to that.
• We spent a wonderful Christmas in Denver with the Tanners!  I'm going to do a separate post about all those fun happenings.
• We're back in Texas and back to real life, at least, for Grant.  I start work again next week and then school a few weeks after that.  Yay for free time once more.  It's almost time for New Years Resolutions (as if we make those...).  The first on my list is to fatten up Grantie :)

Why yes, you can send my name to Mars

Best five bucks I ever spent...just kidding...it was free.

Family Portraits: First Run

A few weeks ago my friend Cherie asked if I would take some family pictures for her.  I said, "Um, you're aware that I have absolutely no experience & really don't know what I'm doing right?" 

She said, "No problem."

So I said, "Yes!"

We headed to Grapevine's Botanical Gardens where there were approximately 200 other families taking pictures... (Okay maybe not quite 200).

There was a beautiful little grove of trees with light streaming in through the branches so I decided to experiment with sun flares.  I've never really done that before but it turned out really well!  I had to use the manual setting instead of aperture priority (the crutch I usually rely on) to get the right exposure.  

Too much?  How do you know when it's too much?!

Amy was a little shy at first, but slowly warmed up to the camera and we got some really cute shots.  

I feel like I still struggle with proper exposure.  I need to learn how to use my light meter well because I generally guess on my settings and then check out how the picture turns out on my screen.  It works decently, but it's certainly not the most effective way to shoot.  For example, this picture is over exposed.  Whoops.

And I feel like this one is too...

Good thing the Gurneys just looked so good anyway...  

Thanks Gurneys for being my puppets while I figure things out a bit!

The Glory Days

Ahh... there it is.  Best pumpkin ever.  Lindsay is nearly suffocating me in approximately 90% of our pictures from growing up.  I think she loved me just a little too much :)

The Children of Halloween

As fun as adult tooth fairies are, we just didn't measure up to the cute children at our ward Halloween party.  

Tinkerbell & the cutest lion I've ever seen.

He wasn't too sure about Grant's extra poofiness.

This little pony is in my Sunbeam class.

And this little beauty will be in my class next year.

And the cutest little redheaded sisters.  Look at that curly hair!  (I dream of my children having curly hair... I'm afraid I dream in vain...)

Oh to be a four year old Tinkerbell... 

I need to go find some old pictures of me & Grantie from Halloween when we were but young babes :)

Halloween Delights

It was Halloween.  I love Halloween.  Not so much the scary part of it, but more the decorating, candy filled, giggles and silly costumes part of it.

I especially like the candy part... Crunch, Snickers, Skittles, Milk Duds, Reese's, Kisses, 100 Grand, Laffy Taffy, Dum dums, Milky Way, Twix, Butterfinger, Starburst, M&M's, Smarties, Blow Pops, Razzles, Caramello, Gobstoppers, Swedish Fish, Whoppers, Sugar Daddy's, and of course, Tootsie Rolls.  I can never decide which are better- the chocolate ones or the fruity ones...

With all that candy, I think some children will have teeth falling out soon...  Good thing the tooth fairy is around...

Did I mention I love candy?  Mmmm....

I noticed your machetes...

A few weeks back we headed out camping with a few of our closest friends.  We took off to Ray Roberts Lake, about an hour north of where we live.

Okay, so it ended up being more than a few friends.  In fact, the park ranger wasn't too excited about us when he made us all sit down to make sure we weren't going to attack him with our "machetes."  (They were actually hatchets from Walmart to cut firewood).  And that's when I thought, "Yeah... a group of married Mormons who don't drink or smoke and who brought small children with them on their overnight camping trip... good one..."  But anyway... 

We made some foil dinners (of course).

And toasted everything we had around including starburst.  Yum!

We stayed up until two or so talking.  The great outdoors turn good talk into great talk.  Especially when you're eating awesome camping food.

Nobody ever claimed we were normal...