By the Book

I swear that my kids take after their dad and had I not given birth to them, I wouldn't think that they were mine too.
There is one way in which Keebles is like me. She is a voracious reader. When I was her age (4th grade,) I had just discovered Nancy Drew. I tried to get her to read Nancy Drew, but after a failed AR test, she refuses to read any more of them (I will bite my tongue about that.) Now, she's working her way through the Harry Potter Series. She just finished Order of the Phoenix yesterday and was quite annoyed that I was attempting to take a picture of her as she read.
It's good to be the mom.

2011 Favorites

I had a hard time choosing my favorite photos from 2011.  I started to go through all of the photos on my hard drive, then I realized that would take a month of Sundays, so I just took my favorites from my Project 365.   
Without further ado, here are my favorite photos from 2011.

Here is JJ, just after midnight on January 1, 2011.  The lighting isn't great, the photo is a little noisy, but I just plain old like it.



I took this one of my son, just after I got my D7000.  It was dark so I cranked up the ISO and didn't care about the noise because I love action shots.  I was so glad I did because I am in love with this shot.  I entered it in one the The Pioneer Woman's contest and she chose it for one of the groups.  It wasn't a finalist, but that doesn't matter to me.  It also happens to be my son's favorite photo of the year.  By the way, the ball did not hit him.



I love my cats.  Poor Einstein was left alone after we had to put our other two cats to sleep within five months of each other.  We adopted Chester and you can see just how Einstein felt about that at first.  I like to imagine he is looking at me, saying, "Seriously?"



We took our kids to Riviera Maya this year.  It was their first time in the ocean.  We snorkeled every day.  I couldn't justify the underwater housing for my D7000, so I took a chance on a Dicapac.  It's a Ziploc Baggie on steroids, with an opening for the lens.  My little Canon Powershot did a great job.  The only issue was that I had NO idea where I was aiming.



Here is my daughter, heading to her first softball tournament.  I love her experssion and I think that she has the most beautiful eyes. 



In November, we played hooky from school and took the kids to St. Louis.  These kids grew up together in playgroup, from the time my daughter was 6 months old.  We were so excited to go to the Arch and then it was foggy.  Total bummer.  We had lots of fun anyway.

I totally fell in love with this car.  It was parked at one of my son's baseball games.  It was an exercise in composition as there was an UGLY chain link fence off to the left and lots of cars parked around it.



This was photo 365 of my Project 365 and I love love love it.  We went out to dinner for my birthday and then ate so much that we decided to walk around the outdoor mall.  All of the Christmas lights were up and they were just gorgeous.  And, of course, I go NOWHERE without my camera, so while my family shopped, I played with bokeh.