Family communication at it's best

Maybe they are emailing each other?

Andrew practicing piano

I think this is actually animating backwards but does it matter really?

Photoshopped Elijah

Above is the original shot I took of Elijah today. I'm trying to get away from using any flash but to do so I'm taking shots that are a bit more underexposed to keep them better in focus. With Photoshop I'm able to bring up the exposure and to highlight the center of the picture using the spotlight function to bring out Elijah's face over the rest of the picture. The altered version is below. Also note that Dawn's nose is now missing from the picture.

Pork, It's What's for Dinner

Ah, what a wonderful looking meal Dawn has prepared for us this evening. Angel hair pasta, covered with a creamy garlic sauce, peas, and pork tenderloin.
Uh, What's this, I thought it looked great!! Well, it did taste good and the kids actually ended up liking it (somewhat).

Andrew Sledding

My first attempt to make an animated gif with the software package Photoshop Elements.
We went sledding Saturday and the conditions were perfect with the foot of snow, temps in the 20s and snow falling. The city has several sledding sites they maintain in the parks. This one had probably a 200-300 length sliding area and maintained fire pit for keeping warm in between sliding. This animation was made by taking a series of pictures taken in sequence with the rapid shoot feature on my camera and putting them in separate layers of the same image.

Another attempt to make Elijah perfect

Elijah just wasn't good enough. I had to lighten his skin make his eyes a bit bluer, remove a little spot below his nose (only visible if you view the large version) and remove the hairs in his eye. The original pictures is below.

Valentines Day Activities

A picture tells the story.

Out and about taking pictures

Andrew and I got together all of our camera equipment and went out in the afternoon to take pictures of the snow. We saw a lot of great snow drifts but the snow along the roads was so high we couldn't pull off anywhere to get good picture. I took over 200 pictures but wasn't happy with very many. I'm still working to figure out my camera and so I mostly played with the manual settings which resulted in some perfectly dreadful shots. However with the rapid shot ability combined with bracketing even someone like me can manage to get something worth keeping once and a while. On this trip there really wasn't much worth keeping but here are a few shots. (click on pictures for larger versions) We stopped at McDonalds so Andrew could spend the last bit on a gift certificate. Naturally he bought ice cream. I took the picture below through the window at the bushes around the store. I used the Nikon software to convert to B&W and I did enhance the contrast. The sun was partially out but I was using several filters so the shadows aren't as apparent.
The obligatory snow mound pictures taken at a local store parking lot.

What the morning brought us

We are right around a foot of snow and it is still coming down though we don't expect much more than another inch. This is a picture taken from the warmth of the living room.The kids enjoyed sliding down the driveway from the mounds that I created while shoveling. Here we see Anna doing her best imitation of snowboarding. She was able to slide all the way down the hill and driveway this way.
Hmm, some dark trench coats and we would have Edge, Bono and Mullin Jr. from New Year's Day

What do you do when it snows and you homeschool?

That's right, you still clap out syllables in compound words.

Anna is not happy about possibly missing her school day tomorrow. She was supposed to have a pizza party and her whole class was going to one of the parent's homes after school to watch Black Beauty which they just finished reading in their literature class.

Finally! some real snow

These pictures (Click on picture for larger version) were taken after we received about 5 inches of really nice snow. This evening we are supposed to get 6 to 12 inches more and it is snowing very heavily outside at this time. I just just shoveled anther 4 inches so I think we are up to around 8 or 9 inches so far.The lights in the picture above are street lamps on our street. You can also see the 25 MPH sign through the snow.

Andrew

Andrew

Andrew shows off his "scary" face.