Pic of the week...The beginning.

I've decided to do a new "weekly" posting inspired in part (OK all) by Cynthia. Last night while we were enjoying yet another beautiful night at the Sonoma Farmer's Market she remarked, "I'll be looking for the pic of the week this week". This of course got me thinking...maybe I should do it weekly and pick my favorite two pictures of the past week and let you all decide which one wins. That part will be done via Facebook, of which you are all friends of mine so look for it.

In honor of the inspiration from Cynthia and her decision for last weeks picture, the pic of the week is of her gorgeous daughter Alexia. This was taken at Lake Berryessa last weekend. Lexi caught the first fish of the day all by herself. It was an awesome day with tons of fun had by all. 

The day started off with a harrowing 2 year drive to get there. Cynthia said it would only take like 45 minutes but she totally lied. It took an hour and a half. It was a windy barf inducing journey with me, my mom and 4 kids. Thank god I drove because there for sure would have been an incident of barfing had I not. After finally making it most of the way, we started looking for Coyote Beach as per our directions from Cynthia. As we wound round and round  the lake we were sure we were lost. Exit after exit of beaches whizzed by us and the kids slept in bliss and my mom and I started up our dialog.

Me: "Why wouldn't Cynthia have picked a closer beach? We had to have missed it. Great now we're lost...call her..."

Mom: "There's no signal."

Me: "Of course not, why would there be a signal when you need it?"

Mom:" I'm gonna be sick."

Me: "Check the directions again."

Mom: "I already read them to you!!!! They didn't change in the last 5 minutes."

Me: "Read them AGAIN then! I'm sure you skipped something!" 

Mom: "I know how to read JENI. Turn left at East Shore which we did, then arrive at Coyote Beach. Clearly we're lost. Just keep driving....(mumbling) we just had to drive all the way out here when we could have swum at my house... Oh there's a signal finally!" Calls Cynthia. "We're lost, where the hell is this coyote beach? We just passed the visitor center, I'm pretty sure we passed it." 

Cynthia: "Don't panic...you didn't pass it. Just keep going a little further and look for East Shore and turn in and go to the left."

Us: "Are you sure cause we have been driving forever and we had to have passed it...blah blah blah blah blah."

Cynthia: "stop panicking and keep driving" hangs up.

Us: ".........Oh there it is..turn in here. I'm positive her directions were wrong though." 

In fact they did say turn left at East Shore when it should have been right, but really the sign where we actually did turn left indicated East Shore, hence our confusion. After arriving and setting up camp for the day we got right into the lake. It was beautiful...the water was warm, the air just warm enough without being too hot or too cold...just right. All the kids spent the majority of the day in the water or fishing on the other side of the inlet. 

We lunched, the baby napped and then the ranger came. Two rangers actually and they were carrying a large rattlesnake. OK it was actually a rubber snake. They invited us to the snake demonstration which of course the kids thought was awesome. And it was...learned about snakes and then got to touch them.

 Lexi and her fake snake

 And then came the real ones...

 Kayden had no problem touching either snake. She thought it was so cool.

The girls really liked playing with the fake snakes. 

Kylie is all about looking cool while playing with fake snakes.

At the end of the day everyone was exhausted but it was truly an awesome day with the kids. 

I can't wait for the annual girls/kid camping trip in a couple weeks at the Lake. It should be a blast, but you won't know anything about it, because what happens at camping stays at camping. Plus you wouldn't understand the jokes anyway cause you had to be there.

In conclusion, and due to the fact that I just started this and I have tons of pictures already from my new camera, I decided to go back and pick my favorites from the last few weeks. That will be in it's own posting. Now don't get crabby just because I said you guys could pick your favorites. You will get your chance in the coming weeks so just shuttie. Although I am feeling rather generous today so for a bonus just for my loyal followers, I will allow you to suggest a picture from any of my facebook albums for a special feature which I will call "Overall favorite". I will announce the winner when I feel like it and try and write a little something something about the picture. But I will save that for another time...so have fun looking at my pictures and I can't wait to see what you come up with. Should be interesting. 

My new obsession...his name is Canon

It's been awhile my faithful 12 followers. I can never think of anything to write about..sad right? I get home from work and if both girls are still napping the only thing I can possibly do is lay down and take a catnap. What has my life become? Oh yeah, the life of a mom. Its all well worth it let me assure you, but sometimes holy crap do I just want to lay down for a little while without the pitter patter of little feet down the hall as the precursor to a little face appearing at the edge of my bed to "whisper" to me. Anyhoot the real point of this post is to blather on about my new favorite thing...my Canon Rebel T2i. Cost me an arm and both legs but it was so worth it. I have no idea how to use it most of the time so I just randomly change settings until I see what it does.


Of course when I bought it my husband was all like "can we afford that?" and I'm all "no, but I'm gonna buy it at Best Buy with 18 months of free financing". Then he was like "we should get another point and shoot" and I'm all "seriously our kids are only this size for a short while and I want the best pics I can". Then he went off to look at video games which was so totally not helpful. Listen, I can't help that the old camera broke. See the thing is I have been drooling over the DSLR camera for like a year and he has been like we have a perfectly good camera and until that breaks we are NOT getting another one, blah blah blah. And I'm all dude you are hella annoying with your sound reasoning. Of course he was right which is just so flipping lame.


Conveniently enough the old point y shoot broke the day before Easter...and I swear on baby Jesus I did not break it. It just stopped working, Erin and Shawn were there...I have witnesses. So now I have no camera and two completely gorgeous kids that must be documented for posterity.On the outside I was like son of a bitch now we have to buy a new camera. Of course inside I was like "YEAH!!! What's up now bitches!!!! Suck it old camera!". I'm pretty sure my camera wanted me to have the new one. It sacrificed itself to the greater good.


So now that I have the new camera I am learning how to use it and cannot believe the quality of pictures. But that has led to the purchase of an editing program and a wish list of presets a mile long. I'm getting pretty decent I must say. Here is an old pic I took. Pretty good with my old point and shoot.

But here are some taken and edited with my new camera and edited in Lightroom.

look at the color and detail....awesome right?

So now all thats left to do is learn how to really use all the features. I got a sweet Groupon deal for an all day beginning photography class in September where I will hopefully learn all I need to know to use my camera. I have taken over 1000 pictures now and even the baby looks and smiles now...maybe I torture them too much with posing? Nah...thats just crazy. Until next time my friends...