Easter egg hunt

Every year, one of the families in our neighborhood puts on an Easter egg hunt. It has always been an adventure for us- for a long time, we couldn't get Tyler to figure out what we wanted him to do, and then last year it snowed. But this year was great! Not too cold, and both kids were quite into the project of gathering eggs to put in their baskets.

The only problem came when one of Kaitlyn's eggs broke open early on and she discovered that there was chocolate inside. Stop everything! No need to look for more eggs, let's just plop down here and open these puppies up!

Eventually we talked her into waiting until she got home to open the loot.

Yummy.

Hogle Zoo

Last weekend was rather boring, if only because Christopher was gone on a mountain biking trip with his friends to Moab again. But he came home with a prize: a splint. He fell and broke his hand, as the little blue arrow shows you here. Thank goodness it was their last ride of the weekend.




At least he isn't in a cast. The splint he can take on and off as needed, which is nice. It has been fun watching him to try and learn to do things with his left hand only. Poor guy. Every time Kaitlyn sees the cast she says "Daddy broken".

Monday is my one day of the week that Tyler doesn't go to school, so I usually save things that take a long time for Mondays. And this week, I found a friend to go to the zoo with us. I haven't taken Tyler since he was a year old (too young to enjoy it), and now they are both old enough to know the names of the animals and their sounds.

They loved it! They both got really into telling me what animal they were seeing. Hogle is a pretty good zoo, actually. And right now they even have a baby elephant.

Right next to the elephants, there was a rhino resting in his pen. Kaitlyn looked at him for a moment, and then said "dinosaur!". Not quite, honey. But close.

And then we came to this cougar. She wasn't sure exactly what to make of him either. Until he made a menacing growl at her. I guess it sounded enough like "meow" for her to make up her mind, because she said "cat?!" Yup. Really really big cat.

I don't know why, but giraffes are kinda my favorite. I love how much their body structure looks like horses, but . . . distorted into something even cooler. I guess my kids were more interested in their juice boxes at this point.

And of course, we have to get at least one picture of the family on a statue animal.

This was Tyler's favorite moment, when he found some meekrats that were just as excited about him as he was about them. Tyler would jump up and shriek with glee when one came over to him, and then the meekrat would jump around and run off. When it ran back to see him, Tyler would shriek and the meekrat would play with him and they both seemed to love it. You can see in this picture that there is a meekrat checking out each toddler.

They have a carousel at the zoo with zoo animals for you to ride on. Kaitlyn really wanted the giraffe, but she was just as happy with the elephant. So happy, in fact, that when I told her it was time to get off she clung tighter and shook her head frantically. I finally had to pry her off, sobbing. Poor thing.

We even rode the train at the end too.

It really was a great day at the zoo!

Photoshop fun

I haven't made a post in a while, but we haven't done anything that interesting anyway. Well, we did get to go see Brian Regan perform as a date night, but I don't have any pictures of that. That was a lot of fun though.

I am still taking my photography class. I am really enjoying it, and I think I am gaining a lot more confidence from everything I have learned. I'm no pro, but it is a fun hobby. So I thought I would share my "assignment" this week. We had to take a picture and then send in the original and the edited version. And today, Kaitlyn decided to empty the toy box entirely and sit in it to watch TV.

The Original:

And the Edited:

For the other Photoshop nuts out there, I used Pioneer Woman's actions to burn the edges and warm the tones. Then I burned the glare on the toy box and dodged her hair, because your eye is naturally drawn to the lightest part of the photograph, and I wanted the focus to be on her and not the corner of the box. I also used the healing brush to smooth out the harsh shadow on the TV.

As for the actual shot, the things I learned in class really helped me get the settings right. I liked that the composition followed the rule of thirds (more or less), and my teacher reminded us how important it is to get on the child's level for candid shots. I thought it told a story here, which is always better than just a kid smiling at the camera.

Overall, I am pretty happy with it!

Cabin pics

I know the picture is overexposed- I had it on the wrong ISO setting. But I still love the goggles that Daddy got for Tyler.

We had a lot of fun last weekend snowmobiling- the snow was perfect. Very wet and packed down, so we didn't have to fight the powder.

Daddy also discovered that it was the easiest snowman he ever made- he just made the snowball and rolled it down the hill. Done!

The kids liked to help though. Kaitlyn would pack handfulls onto the base, and Tyler would throw some snow at it.

We're going again this weekend, and I'm really excited because it snowed today! Should be lots of fun.