T-BALL

 One of my favorite things this spring has been watching Liam play T-ball.  He loves playing and watching these young kids playing ball is very amusing.  I am sure it will not be a shock but I take plenty of pictures and love getting some action shots.  Instead of posting them all one by one I made collages to show the action of the play and still be able to post all my favorite shots.

This shot pretty much explains why he is still having a harder time catching the ball - I love it!!

First base - I love his "Michael Jordan" with his tongue sticking out and the concentration on his face. 

This play he was running to third and the ball was hit to the short stop who was having a hard time stopping it - Liam stopped running and tried to get the ball himself.  After a lot of coaxing (yelling) from Craig he finally continued his run to third. 

Here he was playing short stop, picked up a grounder and ran to third base to get the player out - He was so proud to get an out!  Some of the kids forget to touch the base to get the out so I love the shot of him actually touching the base.  He probably should have thrown it to the third baseman but since none of them can catch they tend to run to the base themselves.  

His swing - all of the bats are still pretty heavy for him, I need to bulk up his muscles a little.  Maybe some spinach and start lifting some weights. 

Stopped the grounder and threw the ball home instead of first base but I love his foot preparing for the plant to throw the ball.  He looks more like a pitcher. 

Sometimes it is so hard to see my little baby boy growing up but also exciting to enter a new phase with baseball, school, glasses, etc.  My dad used to be teased that he had to take a lot of pictures while he was hiking because he walked so fast it was the only way for him to remember what he had seen.  I am discovering that kids grow up so fast that taking a lot of pictures will be the way that I really remember all the memories I have of them as children.  These pictures will bring me right back to the days of watching him play baseball for the first time.

HDR photography

I had the opportunity to attend a webinar on HDR photography last night and am so excited to play around with this technique.  I even woke up at 2:00 in the morning thinking about taking pictures and then even using some of my favorite pictures to make them a little better.  When I woke up this morning I went to the computer and played around with some of my images. 

I finally feel like my pictures can reflect a little more the true image that you can see with your eyes.  This technique works wonders when you have a dark area with a light background and you want to be able to see the detail in both the light and dark areas. 

Here are some of my favorite pictures that I just did not feel like I was getting all the details in until now - I know I will be playing around with this technique a lot more soon.  I would love any feedback or if any of you have played around with HDR photography and any tips that would be great.  I can also maybe answer any questions you may have if you would like to learn more about this technique or at least where to find some of the information at. 

Easter egg hunt

All ready to go

With Easter being a week away we couldn't resist an Easter egg hunt while we were camping, it's a family tradition. 

we let the little girls go first and I think they missed about 5 eggs hidden in plain sight

Liam went next and picked up what the two little girls missed

I like how it looks like he is using his compass here to find eggs, future boy scout

Alex came running down the hill next, he had been patiently waiting

Following Uncle Dan, he led them to some eggs hidden in the dirt

Finally it was Megan's turn, she was in charge of finding the really hard ones Kayci had hid

Very happy about the stash of candy she had in front of her

The sunset at the end of the Easter egg hunt

 We had a wonderful weekend with the cousins and I will admit I still have not unpacked everything from the car yet.

Natural Bridge

Beautiful K

Handsome guy, even with a Utah shirt on

Eating a snack

At the top there is a road that goes over the rock bridge

Melissa's dream property

Native American village down by the bridge

mile walk along the river to a waterfall

nothing like a family camping picture but the waterfall was so pretty we needed to snap a shot

Walking into the cavern, Liam really liked the cave

We had a lot of fun exploring this Natural Bridge area

Butterfly gardens

One of the places we went while camping was Natural Bridge in Virginia (pictures of this to follow this post) and they had a butterfly garden.  They had a lot of butterflies and none of them were too shy to land on you and climb on you, I found this out in the first 5 minutes of walking in the door.

Then M became the butterfly whisperer.

  It took a little more convincing to get S to let us put one in her hair.  I am not positive she even knew it was there. 

 

This butterfly flew onto Caitlyn, she did not like it much and this was as close as she would get to letting a butterfly on her.

After seeing us put butterflies on S, Caitlyn kept checking her head to make sure we had not put one on her.  

 

We were trying to see how many we could get on one head but they were flying off quickly, K ended up with a couple at once.

A couple really liked M's hat.

Even Dan had a couple at once, though I think his plan was to plant them somewhere else, like Caitlyn's head.