Happy Birthday Jill

Jill is six. This is a poem she memorized about turning six.

"When I was one I had just begun.
When I was two I was nearly new.
When I was three I was hardly me.
When I was four I was not much more.
When I was five I was just alive.
But now I am six, and I'm clever as clever,
So I think I'll stay six now forever and ever."

--A. A. Milne

I want Jill to stay six forever too.
We had a pizza birthday. Pizza for dinner and fruit pizza instead of cake.
I think Jill got all of her birthday wishes granted.
She got money from Grandma Killian. And Petshops from Grandma Nancy.
And a beautiful doll from Grandma Jody.
Molly wanted to give Jill a present but Mom didn't have time to take her to the store. So she crafted a homemade gift. And wrapped it herself.
Here is the front:
And here is the back. Hmmmm, Grandma Jody, can you make any sense of this?
Mommy and Daddy gave Jill her own reading light and book holder because she is becoming such a great reader. (pictures to come) Also, tomorrow Jill gets to start piano lessons. I think six is going to be an exciting year!

Some Photography Practice

I've been trying to be a "light-hunter" like I learned in my Joy-ography Class. Here are some of my practicing pictures. I think I am getting a little better. What do you think?
(I love how her eyelashes look)


This one is maybe a little over-exposed, but I still like how it turned out.

This is totally a Jill picture smile. She is thinking about how she would rather be doing something else than taking a picture.

You will notice that there are no pictures of Elliot. This is not from lack of trying. That boy will not hold still long enough for me to set up a shot. All of my pictures are of the back of his head! I'll get faster though, and maybe he'll slow down a little!

Joyography Class

Today was the day of my photography class. (Thank you so much to all of you who voted for me.) I have to admit, I really don't know anything about taking pictures. Alls I know is, I don't like the way mine look. The pictures I have of my children don't match the way I see them in real life (or maybe just in my mind).

So I felt a little foolish at first, cause I didn't know the first thing about operating my camera. Seriously, I had to keep raising my hand asking for help. The teachers, Megan and Marisa, said that I must never used auto mode again, that I must always use manual. Well, I had to raise my hand and ask "how do I turn my camera to manual?"

(This is embarrasing but I am going to do it anyway.) Here are the first few pictures I took:
I know. Bad, right. But it's okay, because after spending the day learning about capturing light and what aperature, shutter speed, and ISO do...I think I made some improvements:

Compare the following picture with the previous one. I do think I improved at least a little.

Here is a little series of pictures where you can see that I am trying to capture more light. I took six pictures of this ornament, here are the 1st,
3rd,


& 6th.

Although I didn't have quite enough light on this cute little gal, I did like the composition.
Two outside pictures. It was hard for me to figure out all the settings inside. Outside was a little easier because there was so much more light. I like how she is kindof curved into an s shape
It took me a long time of playing with focus and stuff to figure out how to shoot this bird. But I finally got a picture that I like. Nice thing about still lifes, they don't wiggle around and change positions while you are trying to master your camera! :)
This picture is not amazing, but I did like the composition, if you notice in the background there is a ton of crazy stuff. That's what the whole Red Star Mill in American Fork was like. Just all kinds of weird, old, interesting, cool stuff. (I bought a painting for my bedroom. I found it in an antique bathtub.)Even though this little boy isn't perfectly posed, I was happy that I got tons of glowy light and nice bright colors.

I took 253 photos (until my battery died). I only liked about 20 of them, most of which were in the last 100. So I have a long way to go, but I think I improved quite a bit in one day. I can't wait to practice more tomorrow morning!