Summer...in review

Yeah.

Apparently, after taking a photo a day for a few months, I really loose interest in taking pictures.

So here is a recap of the first half of our summer.

This summer...

we played (and watched) a LOT of baseball



went to camp



had a mini reunion with 4 of the 7 families we traveled to China with



watched (and marched in) a parade



climbed some fences



played on the beach





a lot...




spent time with our cousins



learned to row a boat



trained for a triathalon



became an official "Lake Monster"



relaxed...



made friends with some farm animals



checked out the Chicago skyline from one of the tallest buildings in the world







and that was just July...

105/365 Spring Break

What do you do when you stay home for spring break and it's rainy and barely 50 degrees outside?

Play lots and lots of games...

98/365 Cousin

Cousin Mila

She spilled all the Bananagram tiles on the floor and then proclaimed my living room to be MESSY!

She picked them all up though (with a little help from cousin Lily!)

26/365

My mom came over to visit today. My kids LOVE to see Grandma (and Grandpa, and Aunts and Uncles...). Lily is no exception! The kids especially love sitting down and sharing their yearly photo albums with anyone who will sit with them for more than 5 minutes.

I have several photos of my mom and Lily from today's visit. This particular photo was my husband's least favorite because of the angle. I, on the other hand, sort of liked the angle, but wished I had included a bit more of the book.

I'm using this Project 365 thing to stretch myself and my photography skills. Chosing to look at things from new angles is one of the ways I chose to stretch (both literally and figuratively!)

15/365

Cousin Mila

New Year's Day at Extreme Trampoline

We celebrated New Year's Day at Extreme Trampoline. We bounced for two hours. I thought it was funny that when we got back in the car, Sam said "I still feel like I'm bouncing." It was really fun--the boys are already planning birthday parties for July and next December!

Since I'm still learning my new camera and couldn't figure out know how to take multiple photos in rapid succession, I had to use the automatic "action" mode. As a result, everything was set automatically and the super high ISO resulted in super noisy photos. But these photos capture our bouncy day--this outing is HIGHLY recommended!

We bring you this brief message from summer...

(Actually, these photos were taken on Columbus Day weekend at the Sleeping Bear Dunes on the Leelenau Peninsula in Michigan. Gorgeous summer-like weather!)

Love Your Shot Link-up

Canon Rebel XSi f/4.0 1/250 sec. ISO-100


Today I decided to participate in the Love Your Shot Link-up!

This is my favorite photo from our fall excursion to Michigan last weekend.

We were at a petting zoo and the horses loved to eat freshly picked grass from the palm of your hand. My son and daughter didn't like getting horse slobber on their hands so they chose to feed him hay instead.

I'm still a bit new and unsure of myelf in terms of editing so I tend to use the auto corrects and actions. I used PSE's Autosmart Enhance feature first. Then, I bumped up the saturation just a touch and added a bit of light with Pioneer Woman's Slight Light action. It was too light for my taste so I decreased the opacity to 50%. I finished up with Pioneer Woman's Define Sharp action.

Labor Day in Door County

Our final farwell to summer.

Visiting Grandma and Grandpa in Door County, Wisconsin.



This photo was taken about 5 minutes before we left this spot (Cave Point) and got soaked by a downpour!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Family bike ride along Lake Michigan

Summer Road Trip - Day 11

Louisville, KY

Louisville Slugger Bat Factory and Museum



We spent our last day of vacation in Louisville, Kentucky at the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory and Museum.



For our two little baseball fanatics, this stop was a hit.



We got to see how the bats for the pros are made and we got to take home a free mini bat.



Joey got to hold Mickey Mantle's bat.



My kids are great road trippers--maybe they have a bit of their mom and dad's wanderlust in them. We're sad to see it's over (Sam said 12 days just isn't a long-enough vacation. Next year he wants to take a 6 month vacation!)

Summer Road Trip - Day 9

Tybee Island, GA

We were all a bit jellyfish weary when we woke up on our final full day on Tybee Island, so we thought we would skip the beach in the morning and visit some of Tybee Island's other sights.

We headed down to the Pier and Pavilion, the south beach and the souveneir stores!







(I don't think we ever decided if Sam liked the snoball or not!)

But we came here to spend time at the beach, so it was back to the beach for us in the late afternoon. It was cooler, there were no jellyfish and rather than following the tide as it went out, we were able to watch it as it came in. The boys made sand castles and tried desperately to save them from the encroaching water.









And Lily found that this big, big ocean wasn't so scary after all!

Summer Road Trip - Day 8

Tybee Island and Fort Pulaski, GA

Day 8 on Tybee Island.

Otherwise known to us as "the day the jellyfish ruled the ocean."

We had such a great time at the North beach yesterday, we thought we would grab the same spot of sand on the beach again today.

The boys jumped right in with their new boogie boards--although Lily still prefered to look for shells.

Have I mentioned we're Lake people? There are no pests to worry about when you are swimming in the lake. However, on this particular day, in this particular spot in the ocean, there were pests to worry about. Jellyfish in particular. LOTS of jellyfish.

See the purple flag at the life guard station? If I would have paid any attention to those flags (like I would at the beach in Chicago), I would have noticed that the purple flag means "marine pests. Each of us (except Lily) got stung at least three times. I'll know next time to take a container of ammonia with me to the beach. No, we didn't pee on each other, but we were told afterward that the worst thing you can do is to go running out of the ocean, which is exactly what we would do every time we got stung.

After a few hours of that, we were all ready to move on to another activity. We took a short boat trip to see some dolphins (and a pretty lighthouse). We saw LOTS of dolphins. It's really hard to get a photo of them. But that's okay, because Sam was documenting all of the critters we saw on this trip in his journal.

After the boat trip, we stopped at Fort Pulaski. The boys in particular got a big kick out of this historical stop. Cannons, moats, more cannons and a jail cell for prisoners of war? What more could a kid want?

Crossing over the moat to the fort...(Sam is into posing these days.)