What is it with kids waking up early on the weekends? Weekdays we practically have to drag them out of bed to get them ready to go to school. The weekend comes and when they should be able to sleep in and catch up on some much needed sleep they're up at 6 AM (well, Quinn is anyway). Seriously, is it simply the whole "I know I don't have to go to school" thing or what? Both yesterday and today Quinn is up before the crack of dawn. I really do think it's because he knows the days of the week now and knows which days he doesn't have to go to school, but I have no proof of that.
So today we got to sample the cake Ginger baked as a test to see if it was good for Quinn's Birthday party next week. Of course Quinn insisted we put candles on the cake to make it authentic. We drew the line at singing though. Both kids basically just ate the frosting and ignored the cake. I personally liked the cake better than the frosting. Still not a fan of chocolate cake, but it's not my birthday, so I don't get a lot of say in that decision (nor do I expect to have any).
With it being such a nice day, I had the kids outside for a bit playing on the moon bounce. And I don't know about anyone else, but we've got little pieces of white fluff that are blowing through the air around here and there are so many of them at times it looks like it's snowing. It's very odd. Ginger says they're pieces of dandilions, but I'm not so sure, I think they're seedlings from a tree or something, but I'm not the nature guy so I can't say for sure.
The kids didn't play normally on the moon bounce for long. It quickly devolved into a game of climbing over the edge again. Quinn was a boy on a mission trying to get up on top of the higher edge while it was inflated. He never quite made it with any control (although he did get up there once and was somewhat flung off when he was trying to move). And then later the game changed to turning the moon bounce off and either letting it collapse on them while they were in it, or crawling completely under it when it was deflated. Guess they've just gotten bored with using it as the manufacture "intended" I guess.
As you can see, the weather today was really nice. Although it was overcast for most of the day, which made getting good kid pictures challenging at best. I tried getting a couple of portrait shots of Catherine, but didn't end up with anything spectacular.
And finally, here's a couple of pics from the Japanese Maple (at least I think that's what kind of tree it is). The thing I found fascinating about these shots is how drab the tree normally looks (dark purple leaves) and how bright and colorful the leaves look in these pictures (which are untouched except for cropping). The secret (if you want to call it that) is that I took the shots from underneath the leaves with the sun above. It ended up really bringing out the colors.
3 comments:
That last picture of Catherine is really nice. There's an article in my latest issue of PopPhoto that talks about just what you're complaining about in the photo. It's a nice photo, but kind of "eh" with the lighting.
If you take the photo, working in layers, take a layer and Gaussian blur it, then multiply it by a sharpened photo with more contrast, then saturate the whole photo slightly, you get a really dreamy soft focus (yet sharpness in the face and details) photo. That photo would be PERFECT to try the technique.
If you want me to bring in the magazine, let me know.
the first photo of catherine is a cracker, great little smile.
Guess they've just gotten bored with using it as the manufacture "intended"
when we've had the bouncy castle out it usually ends up on it's side with them just running into it full pelt!it's very rarely used as it was intended.
Here's that article.
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