Poor neglected blog

I am dusting off my blog; hope I still have some readers out there to see;) Let's see, what have we been up to? Oh yes, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and most recently: MAJOR snowstorm and cold snap. Yes indeedy, winter has definitely made its appearance!! Christopher has had 2 days off from school due to 12+ inches of snow, then the bitter cold.

Some explanation regarding William's turkey costume below...Jeff started calling him our little Butterball when he first started getting chubby around 3 months of age. I got the notion to find him a turkey costume for Halloween, and found this one on Ebay. It still makes me giggle:)





Due to an illness in the family, our Thanksgiving plans abruptly changed the evening before. So we ran out to buy a turkey and invited my parents and in-laws here to our house. Between the things we were going to take and the things Mom and Dad were going to take to the extended family get-together, we had about everything we needed:) Including a good excuse for not having deep-cleaned the house before company arrived;)

Thanks to the enormous snowstorm and 2 days off from school for Christopher, we now have all of our holiday decorating done. And I put in a huge photo order online today, including enlargements of the family and each boy for us and grandparents. So I'm feeling pretty productive and think I might just kick back for the rest of the evening, heehee. Or perhaps I could kick back with a cookbook and think about cookies; Christopher keeps asking if we can make some Christmas cookies...

My New Baby Arrived!!

I'm totally in love:) And it's ABOUT TIME Pentax came up with this lens!! I've been waiting years for a prime lens, agonizing the whole time over whether to stick with Pentax or switch over to Canon or Nikon. Every once in awhile I'd search the sites, always to be disappointed that there were no new lenses. My friend Cindy was the one who tipped me off to this baby, and the dear UPS guy (whom I'm not sure I've ever even seen) brought it today.

I really put the wide-open f-stop (1.4 OMG) to the test today. It's gloomy and raining, yet the images turn out great with nothing more than natural light. I swear this thing could take pictures in the dark!


How did I get handsome Christopher to pose for me? I promised him the rest of his Culver's concrete mixer from the other night, lol! Have you tried these things? They are to DIE for! We HIGHLY recommend blueberry & banana. Hm...might have to make a field trip when Michael wakes up from his nap...

Random Things I Want

Inspired by Suzanne, I thought I'd show you a few things that have caught my fancy lately, and would love to have at my own home sometime:) These are in no particular order, btw:
We currently have a Pentax *istD, a Pentax digital SLR from I think 2004. I have been a bit unhappy with the sharpness of images and the price of new lenses. I'd really like a lens that allows shots in super low light, and those are few and far between for the Pentax. Luckily Walden Photo here in town will allow me to try-before-I-buy if I really think I want to switch. DH jokes that I'm their best customer (I don't think he knows how much some people really DO spend at a photography store!) Anyway, this is one I have my eye on, or the more expensive D300. As you can see, I borrowed the image from Ken Rockwell I hope he doesn't mind, especially since I'm linking you back to his most excellent photography site!:)

My Ames cropper friends mentioned this one...turns out DH has heard really good things about these too. Our vacuum has given warning signs of death lately, so if it kicks the bucket, we'll probably splurge. When one has two beagles, one must have a great vacuum!



I've also been thinking even more environmentally lately...I've switched to using reusable bags at the grocery store (mine are stylish freebies I received through Memory Bound, the LSS at which I work 1/2 day per week. The SB companies are always giving out cool bags at their trade shows, and they pass them along to staff:) An article about steam cleaners caught my eye in the newspaper lately, and I love how it's chemical free! Again, one with 2 beagles (not to mention 2 boys) NEEDS a nice carpet cleaner, and the steam cleaner can do that and SO much more:) (Again, we have a perfectly decent regular old soap-using carpet cleaner).
Daimer steam cleaner

So the bottom line is, I'm not likely to see any of these things at my house real soon, lol! But a girl has to have dreams, right?

Here's Michael and Christopher from the photo shoot today. To keep Michael in focus, Amy hung onto the rocking horse and distracted him from being mad by being silly. Of all our pics, this was the only one of M that turned out. I'm happy with it! Christopher wouldn't smile, but looks very handsome anyway, and after all, eyes look bigger when a person isn't smiling. A professional told me that:)

My friend Amy and I met up after preschool today for lunch (with 5 kids!) and a photo shoot at her house. Her son Gray is first, then Charley. I'll post one of Christopher and Michael later; it'll only let me upload so many to one post I think...