LORI......

LORI...I TRIED TO EMAIL THESE...IT WOULDN'T WORK...ENJOY!

Photography

(kit lens 18-55mm) 55mm 1/60sec, f/5.6, iso 800

(kit lens) 29mm, 1/30 sec., f/4.5, iso 200
Here are some of my favorite pictures.

My method: I had Jackson looking out the window in his bedroom, the room was fairly dark, and the only light hitting him was the natural light coming from the window. Normally you would want a 45 degree angle for the lighting, but when you have a busy kid, and no lighting equipment you just need to be happy with what you get. The great thing that made this picture possible was that Jackson woke up in a very somber and quiet mood. Usually he is so excited, he is jumping up and running around in his crib that it's impossible to get a good shot. I put him next to our brown sofa in his room and told him to look outside. He sat there and looked outside for quite a while. This made it possible for the inexperienced photographer -yes, that's me- to adjust all my settings and try taking a picture. These were the best two. Because he was sitting in front of a brown sofa in a dark room, the whole back ground turned black. I then used my 30 day trial version of light room to apply the sepia/ black and white like style to the photos: I believe the preset was called "antique". I've learned since taking this photo that you should try not to take off the chin -which is what I did on the first photo. I should have either stepped back a little, or taken more off his forehead and none off his chin.

My last suprise to me was that I was using a fairly high ISO setting on both pictures. I was told that anything above 200 iso makes most pictures look like crap. However, my first picture was set to iso 800, and it still turned out pretty good.

Motorcycle Boy

Jackson has his arms in the motorcycle position saying vroom vroom.

Jackson now loves to wear his helmet, because it means motorcycle time.

Whenever I tell Jackson that I'm going to work, he says: "Vroom, Vroom."

Then he goes outside with mommy and watches me drive off.

However, today was Jackson's lucky day.

Jackson went on a ride up and down the drive way with Dad.

He was so excited. On the Bike he kept shouting Vroom Vroom.

Here is a video of Jackson talking about his experience on the motorcycle.

Fun in the Sun Part 2: Larrabee

Walking down the trail together.

Jackson clinging onto Mama's hair.

Jackson trying to hit the camera; apparently even kids don't like the paparazi.

Picking up rocks together

Jackson sometimes will grab my nose, or cover my eyes when getting a ride. He is so cute and funny.

Shanna took this picture when I wasn't paying attention, but I really like it for some reason. I'm not sure what I was doing, maybe skipping a rock.

Fun in the Sun Part One

Caution: Jonathan Post

These are some pics of us at Silver Lake.

Okay, here's my review of Silver Lake. If you don't want to read a possibly boring review just read the last sentence in this blog. This place is a visually stunning location, but then again so is nearly every place here in the northwest. So its a nice woodsy, green location. A cool part of this park is that you can rent canoes, rowboats, and paddle boats. We rented a paddle boat, since it looked to be the funnest, however it was a lot of work. Maybe we are just really out of shape, but by the time we got to the middle of the lake we were both tired and ready to come back. After a while we realized that it doesn't matter how fast you kick your legs on those silly little paddle boats, you will always go about the same speed - which is about 0.5 mile an hour. So, if you get the paddle boat, its best just to relax and go slow, and not wear yourself out.

Also, there were a ton of geese at this lake. This equates to tons and tons of goose poop. There are some sections of the park where you can't walk anywhere because of the carpet coverings of goose poop littered all over the grass - and into the lake. This tottally grossed me out, and almost ruined the experience for me. The water at the lake is very warm here, propably about a 100 times warmer than lake Whatcom. It would have felt nice, if it wasn't for the huge amounts of goose poop surrounding the lake. I give this park a 5 out of 10, cool location, but also very gross. Take away the poop, and it would easily be a 9 out of 10. Someone needs to hire a bunch of rednecks with shotguns to clean up the place and get rid of the geese, and it would be an amazing park. We spent an afternoon at Silver Lake.

GREAT WOLF LODGE

We just spent a fun weekend at the Great Wolf Lodge just south of Olympia. It's and indoor waterpark and hotel. It was a great little getaway for the fam. This hotel is perfect for families with all ages. We weren't too sure how Jackson would do for a few reasons: 1. He hasn't slept anywhere but his crib since he was nine months old, so we weren't sure how he would sleep. 2. He is not a huge fan of water (other than the tub) but we want him to be more comfortable with it so we are trying to spend more time at pools and splash parks. and 3. We haven't traveled further than Marysville in the car since last summer (we flew to Vegas in Sept.) and didn't know how he would do in the car. But we figured that you just have to jump in and deal with things as they come. He did awsome!

This was one of Jackson's favorite things to do there. He couldn't quite get the ball into the hoop, but he kept trying anyway.

He also loved sitting on these jet skis and squirting water at other kids. The funny thing was he would get mad when he got sprayed.

He even took Brooklin for a ride!

There was this huge bucket that would fill with 1000 gallons of water and then dump every 15 minutes or so. Just before it was ready to dump you would hear a bell and people would run to get under it to be drenched. I never went under, but Jonathan was a brave one!

This picture is as it was dumping.

A look at two of the bigger slides. The best one was called Hurricane or Tornado or something like that. Liz and I went on it together, I don't think that I have ever heard her screem so loud in my life. It was pretty scary, and I was the lucky one who was facing forward, so I saw what was coming!

Wavepool

Jonathan being the entertainer on the way home. They were both fast asleep by the time we hit Marysville. Which made for a quiet ride the rest of the way home!

We really enjoyed getting away, and will definately be going back!

Fireworks at Maritime Heritage Park

Note: this is not your average post, that's right this is Jonathan. I've taken over the blogging for today. Actually, Shanna is right beside me walking me through this.

On the 4th of July, Liz and Scott invited us to watch the fireworks with them at Maritime Heritage Park. This was my 1st year being able to watch the fireworks in a while, since I usually have to work. I was especially excited because this year I attempted to take pictures of fireworks using my canon rebel xsi. After we laid Jackson to bed, we took off to the park on my motorcycle, while Ma and Pa Jones stayed home to watch Jackson. When we arrived we met up with Liz and Scott and their friends Jonathan, Jessie, Jason, and Crystal. My wife did most of the socializing while I stood in the back and nerded out with my camera gear. I set up the tripod, and here are a few of the pictures that I took.

Warning: taking pictures of fireworks is pretty hard, at least for a newbie at the camera like me. Most of my pictures didn't turn out, these are a few that were halfway decent.

The kids in the back ground were playing with sparklers

I really like how the lights make a diamond shape when using long exposures.

Jessie drawing in the air with a sparkler

The first fire work shot of the evening.
This is the Death Star exploding.

This was the last shot of the night, I edited the picture so that the red smoke would look like an explosion of blood. That's something you won't see on my wife's girly blog. HA HA HA.