What we've been up to...

Let's see in the past couple days...I've taken a photography class, worked on our Christmas card & letter, hung stuff around the house, Christmas shopped, went to numerous stores looking for cheap wreaths and somehow still found time to be lazy!

A woman I met through MOPS, Erin, is a wonderful photographer and I found out she offered a "Moms" photography class for people, like me, who have a SLR camera but don't use it off automatic mode. Basically she teaches you to get out of your "green box" (you'll get that if you have a camera that's auto function is a green rectangle...if not, ignore me!!) And man did I learn a lot! Its going to take me some time to get used to adjusting my camera for the light and even understanding some of the terminology, but I am trying! I took a bunch of picts yesterday and some came out really cute, others not so much. But I was able to see what I did wrong and how to adjust it which is a start! I also schedule our newborn session with Erin, which I am so excited for. She is trying to expand her newborn portfolio and is running a special in the winter so we will be able to get some good ones of the baby, sibling shots and hopefully a few family as well. I can't wait!

I started getting Christmas cards in the mail a couple weeks ago and this really kicked me in the butt to get ours going. We have this tradition of having my dad take our family picture while they are here for Thanksgiving. So we spent about and hour or so in our cute little downtown taking pictures. We got a lot of good ones, but unfortunately it was so sunny (and I hadn't yet figured out the whole lighting thing on my camera yet) so we have sun spots over our faces. But I always have him take a TON so at least we have a couple to choose from and we did...so Christmas cards done! Next is the letter...we used to send this to everyone, then felt not everyone would really want to read it, so then we started sending it to family and close family friends. And every year we go back and forth on whether to not to actually do one for numerous reasons. I've been keeping a scrapbook of every letter/card since we got married and I love being able to go back and read them, so I think I will always want to continue this tradition if only for that reason! But anyways, we've got the rough draft done and just need to finalize, print and send it!

I hope to have picts of our house all decorated for Christmas soon. We still have to figure out how to hang the wreaths on the windows and then Jared has to set up the spot lights.Jayne has been pretty good about not pulling stuff off the tree...until this morning. She grabbed a ball off the tree and threw it. Yes, it shattered. Then while I was vacuuming that up the vacuum fell over knocking two more balls off the tree and shattering those!! Ahh, oh well. The joys of toddlerhood. We are ahving a Christmas party for our life group on Sunday and then our housewarming party next Friday so we will be busy around here for the next week or so. Stay tuned!

- T -