Slow week?!

Yep....not much going on around here....at least not really thrilling stuff anyway!

Monday, Nicole had her first piano recital. I am so glad to be done with that song! She's been practicing that little number since MARCH! I will really be so happy to never hear Matt, My Cat ever again in my life. :o) She did well...played her song a little too slow....and moved her mouth as she was counting, and was a bit distracted....which was evidenced by the fact that she let her eyes wander out to the audience during her playing! Oh well, she is her teacher's youngest student, and in my opinion did better than some of the older kids that started piano at the same time she did. If I get the nerve to try and upload the video we took, I'll add that later....I haven't even watched it though....that's how much I don't ever want to hear that song again! Here are some still shots though...

She's so talented, she plays with her eyes closed! just kidding....Mommy the master photographer only got one shot of her playing though, and I didn't check it close enough to notice that they were closed! Oops!

Flowers for our little performer.

The rest of this week was taken up with working on a little project for Father's Day. Which now Ron has a huge idea about, since I needed his help in editing the pictures.

We have a large wall in our dining area that has a picture on it that I'm tired of. So I wanted to take some cute pictures of the kids, blow them up, and make a picture wall. I decided to do a 16X20 of a group shot, and then surround that with 8X10's of each kid. I found some cute black frames for 50% off(woohoo!) at Hobby Lobby, and have spent the week trying to get shots of the kids...I finished off today and wondered to myself why I even try! I finally did get some good ones...but holy cow, my children do not follow instructions! I bet they will look back at these pictures one day and the only memory they will have is me freaking out at them to just look at the camera and smile! I hope that I can come to appreciate the pictures as well, as I gaze at them daily...and forget the frustration felt while taking them! ;o)

Here are some of the rejected shots....thank heaven for digital photography!

Riley really did do fine with the following of directions...it was the wind that kept "blowing" her shots! I crack myself up...

I'm pretty sure I asked for a smile....but instead I got this...

Ellie was much more interested in picking the flowers, smelling the flowers, not sitting down...pretty much anything was more interesting than looking at the camera.

Jared....in between the fake smiles and goofball poses I did get some cute shots of him.

There is the greatest place for pictures down by American Fork Hospital. Someone has a bunch of old cars, and they have built an old fashioned looking garage/gas station to store them at. The old rust buckets are outside, but the inside of the garage has a bunch of restored cars in it. Very fun for pictures!

The group shot....I have lots of these....between getting Nicole and Jared to just hold a pose and smile, and trying to get Ellie to just look at the camera....I almost gave up!

I think one of the most frustrating parts was editing all the pictures, and then downloading them to Costco for printing....only to realize that I needed to crop the pictures before I downloaded them. My editing and actions got all messed up if I didn't...so I had to go back and redo all of them...and I of course picked the photo sizes that require the most cropping (just FYI....if you are planning on printing your pictures in an 8X10/16X20 format, take the picture with a lot of extra space around it to allow for cropping. I, unfortunately, did not, so my favorite pictures that I chose to use lost a lot of their visual interest and charm because of it...dang it. Live and learn.:o) Oh, and 16X20 enlargements at Costco are mail order only. So Ron's Father's Day gift isn't going to be exactly complete when he gets it. Oops! Maybe the big print will show up next Saturday.