Jonah's 7yr pictures up Cedar Mountain

This year I promised Jonah we could take his birthday pictures when we went up Cedar mountain, on our visit to Grandma's house this year. I was picturing lots of aspens (which we rarely see in South Dakota) and how good they'd look with Jonah's blue eyes and blonde hair. I knew we'd be up the mountain at a less than ideal time- midday- because that's when my class reunion would be, and we wouldn't really have time another day.
As expected, the light was really bright and hard to work with. We got lots of fun pictures of everyone while we were there, but when I took Jonah's portraits, it was hard to find good spots for a really nice picture. But we did get a few! It didn't help that he's so wiggly and can't focus.

A. This group definitely has the best light, at least on the top two; his face isn't too shadowy and the background isn't to blown out and white.  These don't have the best smiles of all, but I'll probably pick his wall portrait from this group.
























B. We had to get a few horizontal pics to mix it up.

 C. The trees are pretty and he's smiling good, but the light is meh. Especially in that bottom right one. The top right is probably the best.


D. I like the location of the top two pictures a lot. The bottom ones, I took like ten pictures there, and these were the best ones. Silly Jonah.



Which do you like?

colaborative works

In our bag of kid activities for Sacrament meeting, we have four or five notebooks of lined paper, so the kids can draw while they sit and listen. As you know, Elora loves to draw, (and name her characters)

 



and at least at church, the other kids enjoy it too. Joshua has always liked drawing monsters,

 
 

 
 while Jonah is starting to move beyond stick people with big tummies.

  Eli has just recently jumped from scribbles to stick people and monsters too.

One day several months ago, I was looking through the notebook pages trying to find a blank page. When I couldn't find one, I decided to just add to the scribbles already on the page. ( I don't draw at church very often at all these days, and I didn't want to take up a page someone else could use.)
The scribble made some nice hair, no?

Another day, I found some half-finished drawings that Josh or Jonah had done, so I decided to finish one. This was fun!



In fact, I decided Josh wouldn't mind a little embellishment to a few more of his monster drawings. This was the first addition done, drawn quickly and to Joshua's delight.



Of course, then Elora had to try it too. Copycat.



 And one time, I think Josh is the one who sabotaged Elora's drawing, with the monster coming out of the genie lamp. Haha. Elora always makes cool outfits for her characters.

And at some point, Jonah found a pair of pants Elora had drawn without an occupant, so he decided to fill and color them himself. (Green is Jonah's favorite color, and therefore Eli's favorite as well.)

 



Once again, I turned the tables on Joshua's monster: now the guy his creature is attacking has a pet monster on a chain that's even bigger! Mwaahahaha.



Of course, my favorite addition wasn't exactly Joshua's. But he did get a good laugh out if it.

Another birthday, another photo

We finally took this guy's photos about a month after his birthday. We found a beautiful friend's yard that had varous nice places to take photos, and we went when the lighting was beautiful! Unfortunately, this is a six year old boy, and they didn't exactly pose perfectly, and it was a little frustrating, but I think we got a few good ones!
One cool think I in this yard was the barrels for honey. I know it's become cliche, but I really wanted to try a few pictures with the barrel background. There are a few that might work here, though the light was a little harsh in some of them:

A
I love his serious face; I just wish the light wasn't reflecting right on his face.

B
I was playing around with textures in a couple of these.

In this last group, this is more the angle I was picturing, but the light is a little weird on his hair. I can't decide if I like it bright, or faded.
C



















This property also has an excellent white fence! Jonah smiled cute for several of these, though the best smiles have that dumb road in the background. Oh well.

D
The bottom right most looks like Jonah.

E
I think the top left has the best composition; I wish they were all like that. But his face is cute in all of them!
























F
I really love both of these. I just wish they were vertical to fit on my wall better, haha.




 We saw some nice places around our friend's young fruit trees. It was soooo pretty, and I was dying because Jonah just would not smile normal. Silly kid!

G
I like the angle of the bottom left, and the overall picture on the bottom right, but I just wish he was smiling more sincerely.

 H.
 In a couple of these he's smiling pretty cute. The light was getting dimmer at this point so I hope they will print well.




































In the end, Jonah was getting bored, so we tried to grab a couple more pictures before it got too dark. None were too great but it was still fun. If he was smiling in this top left one, I would love it! The rainbow in it is so fun.

I.

J
I wish I had noticed this fence earlier, but at this point the light was too yellow.



















And to top off the day, all the kids chased rabbits around the yard. Yep, the whole town is overrun wit them! In the evenings, you can see them in the street, andwe see them in our yard too! What a pretty day.

five

Jonah turned five this summer (yes, we have lots of summer birthdays.) We tried to take his annual pictures several times over the last month or two, basically any time we went somewhere pretty, but none of them worked out like I wanted. We did get a few that are useable at unexpected moments though. What do you think?

A. These two are my favorites. He's not smiling big, but I love his blue eyes and how it captures him doing something he likes: collecting rocks. I love the overall picture of the first one best with the colors in the sky and the composition, but Jonah's face is the cutest in the second. They both have a little bit of a blur to them though. Which would you pick?


































 I also kind of like this one from the same day. It's very zen, even with the blurry leg.



















 B. This is the second best group of pictures, which were taken on an outing to Spearfish one weekend. Jonah was distracted and wouldn't sit for me for more than a few seconds; and his smiles look a little weird. I messed around with different effects on these pictures.

 


C. I also tried some of those same pictures in black and white, just to see how they looked.

 

D. This group was the most disappointing. The light was so pretty, I was excited about taking them, but Jonah kept getting swarmed by bugs and he would.not.hold.still. Every single one is blurry, not to mention he was only really smiling in one of them. The one pictures that is the least blurry, he's not even looking at me. Ah well.

life as usual



I haven't talked much about our little family in the last few months... so I am going to do so, in no logical order.

 Eli has decided he would like to join the ranks of the "Terrible Twos" before he turns three. He isn't as prolific in his exploits as Joshua was (Joshua made it a priority to empty at least one toothpaste, a shampoo, and some shaving cream at least three times a week) but he has made his mark. I caught some photos of some of his recent exploits:

 

Here he is making lunch after church by cutting up the butter, with the fridge open, while we all got dressed. Great job, buddy!

 

 

 

I wonder what happens to eggs when you throw them on the floor?

 

 

 

Last week we were bringing a cake to District Conference. An hour before we left, Eli thought he'd help out by cutting the cake. With scissors.

 

 

It's funny how he smiled for the pictures. When Joshua was two, whenever I'd catch him at something he'd just start bawling, even if I wasn't acting mad!

See? Toothpaste accident. Could happen to anyone.

 

 

 

Oh yes, in other news, this November Josh finally lost his first tooth, with the second one lost a month later. He was very thrilled with the tooth fairy's contribution to his piggy bank.

 

 

 

We also had a birthday party last month:

 

It was for the biggest boy in the house.

 

 

 

Daddy was happy with his cake, but not as happy as we were with the yummy dinner he made for St. Patrick's Day! Corned Beef and Cabbage with a mustard sauce..nom nom nom. If you 've never had this before, the meet is not pink because it's raw, it's just preserved that way before you cook it. And yes, this plate is laying on the floor mat so I could have enough light to take a good picture.

 

 

 Speaking of events in March, this month Eli and Jonah had a lovely day painting. Usually I can only get Eli to sit for any length of time painting, but this day Jonah enjoyed painting on Eli best of all.








Speaking of crafts, I'm pretty sure I totally skipped November on my blog, in which Jonah, Eli and I all made turkeys. That weekend, Elora decided she needed to make one too, so she copied mine..thus no reason to post mine.

Jonah's turkey

Eli's turkey

 

Elora's turkey that looks almost like mine.

 

 

Speaking of being creative, March afforded us some weather that lent itself to creativity. One day it snowed like crazy, so Eli, Jonah and I decided to start a snowman...it didn't get very big, but they had fun. Josh informed us that it looked like a giant slug.



The next day, it was crazy warm, which made the snow much stickier. The three of us started to build up our snowman more, but the boys got bored. Luckily when Elora came home, she was excited to help finish it. As there are no sticks around, we used some stick-like remnants from our garden to decorate the fellow. Or is it a lady? Josh didn't actually help at all, but he insisted on being in the  picture.




And for our final story...Jonah got a huge goose egg when we came out of District Conference last week. I'm not completely clear on what happened, but he was sitting in the rock border around the church and holding his forehead, so I think he somehow fell right on a rock. Ouch! the picture doesn't do it justice.
























Hmm. We did also go bowling. But that's another post.