Hot Fun in the Summer Sun

Mark’s parents got the boys a pool so we broke it out Monday when the temperatures broke 100 and had an absolute blast. Mark and I can fit into the pool with the boys, amazingly enough. Elias refused to sit down in the pool until we brought Noah out and plopped him down. To my surprise, Noah did not react negatively to being plopped into the cool water. He really loved splashing around. At one point, Mark was trying to get him to float on his back and accidentally dunked his face underwater! Noah was upset and sneezed several times, but he very quickly recovered. The only other time Noah got upset was when he was getting squirted in the face with water by Elias who was playing with the hose.

Noah and I are very fair skinned, while Elias and Mark are more olive in complexion and can take more sun. (Naturally, we were all wearing sunscreen.) After about 15-20 minutes, Noah was getting fed up with being splashed and squirted, so we got out of the pool and let Mark and Elias continue playing. Noah and I sat happily in the shade on the patio for another 20-30 minutes. It was a beautiful day and the pool was a really refreshing way to cool off! Elias kept getting in the water, sitting down and saying, “Ahh. That’s nice.”

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Tonight

Sorry for the brevity, but tonight was awesome.

Be sure to come back tomorrow as I announce the giveaway contest!

All Photos Taken Today

Click a photo to bring a larger version up in a lightbox, then navigate through them all.

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Fun Outside [120/365]

I’m very happy to be living in a house for the first time in almost ten years. It’s spacious, there’s a garage, we don’t have to worry about upstairs or downstairs neighbors and most importantly, there’s a backyard! It’s not a huge backyard or a particularly beautiful backyard, but there is grass, a small patio area and the kids and animals love it out there.

On this day, he tried squirting his plants instead of actually watering them so it’s a good thing it rained earlier.

Elias is obsessed with water. Every time he goes outside, he runs over to the faucet and wants his squirt guns or watering can filled. He planted two different packets of seeds on Earth Day. I’m not sure what they are, but only one of them sprouted. We have some more flowers to plant in containers and also haven’t set up the compost bin yet, which I really want to do soon! We’ve procrastinated because we don’t have anything good on hand to use as the brown matter. We have green matter coming out of our ears and I hate throwing it all away, so we need to get somewhere to buy straw or go on a nature hike or something!

Leah has always been an indoor cat. She’s been out on our deck over the years, but I’m not sure her paws ever touched grass before. Since we have a high fence up she couldn’t in a million years jump if she tried, we’ve been letting her out in the back yard. It’s more like she’s demanded to go out there. I like that she can enjoy some time out there, but we need to be careful to make sure she doesn’t eat the grass as it makes cats throw up. Mark had to clean up that little science fact after she returned from this trip in the wild outdoors.

I have no idea what this expression is about! Notice Leah in the background eating grass.

Noah hasn’t spent a lot of time outside without being held by someone, but now that I’m pretty confident he’ll catch himself if he falls and won’t bust his head open on the concrete, I’ve started letting him down to explore. He got so dirty after this that he was immediately put into a bath. I guess we could put down a big blanket to help prevent him from getting so dirty, but I know he won’t stay on it. Sometimes I wish I weren’t so freaked out by my kids getting messy, but dirt all over his legs and outfit really bugs me!

Me, reflected in our back door.

I’ve probably mentioned this numerous times, but I’m so excited to be back into Project 365 and taking daily photos again. I’m also excited about this blog, though who knows how long it will last this time. I always seem to wind back up at LiveJournal when I start publicly posting personal details. It’s hard to get back into public blogging after several years of being gone from the “scene”. Most people I know who blog have ads or sponsored reviews or are otherwise being paid to do so. I’m hoping I’ll be able to hide behind my photos if I feel like retreating instead of giving up the blog altogether.

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[14/365] Self-Portrait

I’d only taken four other pictures all day long (of my dinner) and I didn’t like how any of them came out while reviewing them here at the computer, so I decided to try a self-portrait. (Actually I tried it about 7 or 8 times.)

This photo was taken in a dark room by monitor light and no flash. I had the camera set up on the desk, but it couldn’t have gotten much further away from me. Times like these are the few I wish I had a lens other than 50mm!

I did some selective color here in post-processing.

Edit: I took some time to play with it and did the eyes better. I also like the colorization better here too. Here’s the first version of this one in large format.

I saved the PSD so I could play with the hue and make my eyes different colors. I made them pink for my own amusement.

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