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.

If you weren't aware...

9 weeks

16 weeks



















20 weeks

 
can't wait to meet our new little girl at the end of December!

seven

 




















Josh's birthday was a few months ago, and we finally got around to taking his seven-year-old pictures!
It was kind of a cloudy morning so Josh got to wear one of he favorite shirts; I'd been waiting for a nice sunny evening, but it never seemed to work out. As usual, Josh doesn't hold still very well, so there weren't a ton of photos that were focused as I'd like, but he's cute so I guess it's okay.
I really wanted to take someone's pictures with this old chair. I know it's become cliche to have a piece of furniture out in a field, but this chair was perfect, and it's the only picture of Josh in a chair in a field, so it's not cliche for him! Most likely, I will pick one from this first group for my wall; I am partial to the top two but haven't really decided yet. I like the composition of the bottom one as well, but as an 8x10, some of it would get cut off, and the effect might not be the same.


A.

Here we have some leaning poses. I think the bottom left is the best here, though if he were smiling better I might pick the top right for the composition.

B.

We finished with the chair, and of course then Josh started smiling. I like his face in all of these a lot, it's just we already have lots of pictures of kids standing in tall grass! (Or in this case, yellow clover). I don't know which I like best here.

C.

This group shall hereafter be referred to as: the time everything was in perfect focus, but Josh wasn't actually smiling good for me. Although his face in the bottom right frame is hilarious.

D.






















These few are okay, just not spectacular in any way:

E.























And finally, when Josh started being too silly and I knew we were done.


F.

















 So, are there any that you would pick?

oh yeah...May.

So we talked about June. Do you want to hear about May? Cause that happened too. At the beginning of May, the grass was still yellow.



















But as it grew in, some of it looked very strange. I couldn't remember if it had been this way before, but for some reason many different plants-grass, weeds, etc. Were coming up with tinges of red and purple in their leaves! I wonder if it was something in the soil? It seemed very curious and was everywhere around our community, though I didn't notice it anywhere else.

As the end of the month neared, the grass was green again, and the red tints seemed to disappear without a trace.




















The end of the school year came with the end of year pow-wow. We missed it last year because of a funeral, and I seem to remember it getting canceled or something the year before, so everyone was glad to be able to go this year. The kids got to hang out with their class one last time, and Elora even got her hair decorated with the flowers blooming all around. The other girls were very jealous.

May also brought some pretty wildflowers, and wildlife! We saw a toad in our garden, a snake in our yard, and lots of turtles on the road. May was a pretty good month!