Playing with the Remer cousins!

Bounce House!

Butterfly Pavilion

Kali and Corey touching the sea stars.

Corey illegally trying to touch a butterfly.

I LOVED the butterfly room - so fascinating to see so many species and so much fun to take pictures of!

Grandma helping Kyle pet the sea star.

These leaf bugs were Corey's favorite. He's pointing to one - they are absolutely amazing - they look exactly like a leaf. These and the 'stick' bugs were a bit hit!

Kyle was fascinated by the whole experience - he would have loved to hold Rosie the Tarantula but you have to be three...perhaps they're afraid of Rosie being squished? :)

Kali was hesitant at first but then went back a second time.

I held Rosie because I didn't know when I would have an opportunity like that again. I didn't love it.

Littleton Museum

Today

I went outside to clear off the car and start it so we could take Kali to school - it was snowing like crazy. Ten minutes later we went to get in the car and it looked like this. I thought the coloring was so cool I had to run back in and get my camera. I love Corey's eyes in this shot...even if you can see how dry and cracked his lips are!

Mmm....

Corey was in charge of treats for Family Home Evening tonight. He wanted doughnuts with chocolate frosting. Doughnuts are a rare treat at our house - the kids were thrilled!

Family Reading Night

Family Reading Night was last week at Kali's school. They searved pizza, salad, cookies, and lemonade and had lots of games available for the kids. The favorite was the book walk (naturally I have no pictures of that). The same concept as a cake walk but in the center of the room is a giant pile of books and when your number or letter is called you may choose a book. Corey was satisfied with his first book - a book about Planet Earth (he's my science kid) but Kali played for about a half hour and came home with an armful of new books. The kids also enjoyed the fishing pond and bowling. At the end of the night there was a poetry presentation by a visiting librarian. She was great and really got the kids excited about poetry...you can see Corey there in the front row. I was practicing more with not using my flash so the pictures are a bit soft...but I was really happy to be able to take pictures during the reading without being disruptive with my flash and have them come out as clear as they did.

Practice.

I recently purchased a new lens for my camera. There is a bit more of a learning curve than I was anticipating but I've been working with it in my limited free time...all of these above were taken in automatic without flash. I'm not a fan of flash and am hoping to learn more about setting the ISO, aperature, and shutter speed to further reduce the blur/fuzzy edges. I'm really looking forward to an upcoming vacation and of course summer - to practice even more in better natural light. Ours is really "white" because of all the snow!

*edited: after looking over the photos again I do believe the flash was on for the second to last photo...her shirt is just a bit too bright.

Kali lost a tooth!

Kali was SO thrilled when she discovered that she had a loose tooth! Her friends have been loosing them for awhile now and she's been anxious to "be included." She worked and worked and soon it was loose enough that with a little tug from dad it came right out! And the first visit from the tooth fairy went without a hitch which suprised me a bit since we have a bit of an issue with strangers coming into our home at night, i.e. the Easter Bunny and Santa. Of course Kali and Corey think the tooth fairy is tiny, about the size of a bug, so maybe that makes her less threatening!

Sledding

We love the groomed sledding hill by the grade school!

Playing at the Ice Caves

We snowshoed out to the ice caves a few Saturdays ago and had a great time playing on the ice! The surface we're laying on is so smooth the kids would lay down and we'd push them around - Kyle really enjoyed this. The kids were all a bit cold by the time we got back to the car but what an Adventure!