New Camera!!!!

When Brandon and I got married his parents gave us a camera for our wedding present.  That camera went with us on every vacation and every move.  Almost every picture on this blog and www.51centadventures.com was taken with that camera.  During our time in Yellowstone the camera started to show signs of its 10 years of age.  It had a harder time turning on and the zoom focus didn't work any more.  I actually dropped it on Mt Washburn and it started taking fuzzy pictures.  Thankfully that only lasted an hour, but I knew the camera was on it's last legs. 

The camera lasted through the rest of our summer in Yellowstone.  But on August 21st, about an hour before the solar eclipse the camera took it's last picture and then died. I thanked it for it's faithful service.  

Of course I wanted to buy a new camera right away, but there were more pressing financial needs to take care of. I've been using Brandon's camera and my phone for the past six months. They've been okay, but neither one took photos like my old camera.  I kept telling myself that if we got a decent tax refund I would buy a camera.  So I was pretty happy when I did our taxes and found that we had a good amount of money coming to us. Most of the money went into savings (it's how we'll pay the monthly student loan payments this year.) but I kept a portion out for things we needed to buy.  And one of those things was a camera. 

My last camera was a canon and so I wanted another canon.  I prefer point and shoot cameras over DSLR's because I know I'm not a professional photographer. I have my hands full enough with 4 kids, I don't need to be worrying about a fancy camera.  I like something I can just pull out of a bag and grab a candid shot. Plus I saw a tourist in Yellowstone use this camera to zoom in on an owls nest and take a super clear picture.  That made me want this camera.  

I was so happy when I opened the box.  This is my Christmas, Birthday, and Mother's Day present combined.  

 It's been fun to have my own camera again.  In some ways I've kind of felt reluctant to go on any adventures during the past 6 months because I knew I didn't have a camera that would take good enough pictures.  Now that I have a good camera again we can go on adventures again!

And that means I have TONS of pictures for this post. 

Two Saturday's ago I had fun taking random pictures of the kids.  Here's Lydia and her guitar.

 This was supposed to be of just Veronica, but nearly everyone else photobombed it.

 Charlotte.

 And Derrick. 

 And we tested out the macro settings on Derrick's CTR ring.

 Then we had fun making the kids look like they can fly.

 It's so nice to have a camera that can take clear pictures again.

 Well at least most of the time.

 Anyway, after goofing off with that for a while it was time to get going with what we really had planned for the day.  We were going to a "Teddy Bear Clinic" at the hospital.  The kids each picked out one of their stuffed animals to take.  The idea was that if the kids could see their stuffed animals getting help from the doctors and nurses the kids wouldn't be so scared if they ever had to go.

 I thought if we went there right on time we'd beat the crowds, but everyone else must have had that idea because we stood in line for 20 minutes before we even made it into the hospital.  It's kind of good that we did that because Derrick was used to the big group of people before we went inside.  So he actually had a really good time.  The kids got nurse and doctors hats.

 Here's Veronica pretending to put her bear, Lucky, under for a surgery.

 Derrick was so cute with his little Hulk doll.  He wanted to do everything the other kids did.

 This machine demonstrated how well you washed your hands.  Derrick just liked seeing himself glow.

 There was a CPR demo area.

 The animals all got weighed.

 And stitches.

 We learned about tooth brushing. 

 The animals got X-rays.

 Here are Antler, Milky, Lucky, and Hulk after their long morning at the hospital.  The kids said it had been really fun.

 But we weren't done with our adventures for the day yet.  From the hospital parking lot we could look down on Pocatello and see our next destination.

 In the middle of this picture you can barely see some white pillars on top of a hill.  They are kind of hard to see because there is snow behind them.  These pillars are above the ISU campus and I've wanted to hike to them ever since we first visited Pocatello last year.

 The hill is called Red Hill and the trail head is across from the student center.

 It felt good to be hiking again.  We haven't done this in over 6 months.

 One of the booths at the clinic had given out sun glasses.  Derrick was really proud of his pair.

The trail isn't long, but we still felt pretty victorious when we reached the pillars. 

 Here's Lydia celebrating.

 Here's ISU's campus.

 Charlotte celebrating. 

 We had a picnic lunch up on the top.  Even though we haven't done this for 6 months it felt very normal.

 Charlotte and Lydia posing.

 Going down we took a slightly different trail and walked through some snow.

 When we made it back to campus we didn't feel like getting in the car yet.  So we walked around a bit.  Here's the obligatory picture of the Bengal. 

 We found a picnic table and Brandon pulled Nutty Bars out of his bag.  We "toasted" to a new year full of more adventures.

 Obligatory picture with the Buffalo.

 The weather was so perfect.  The kids found a snowball and destroyed it. 

 They all posed on these cement barriers.  I told Brandon that we would recreate this picture after all the kids graduate from ISU.

 Veronica had to use the bathroom so Brandon found an unlocked door at one of the science buildings.  When they came back out Brandon told us that there were fish inside.  So we went to the building to see those.  Veronica darted in ahead of everyone else which was fine, until we realized that the door locked behind her!  All five of us were knocking at the door trying to get Veronica's attention so she could let us in. It was really funny.  Finally she noticed us and came back and opened the door.  We went in and looked at the fish. 

 Then it was back outside to conquer the snow again.

 We went back home and I turned on a movie for the kids while Brandon went grocery shopping.  We'd got Coco from Redbox for movie night the night before and the kids wanted to watch it again before we took it back. I'd been really surprised by how good the movie was.  Derrick had seen it at the ISU movie theature with his learning center class and he'd been telling me that he wanted to watch it again.  All he could tell me was that it had a boy, a "ti-tar" (guitar), a dog, and skeletons.  I really liked the movie and so did all the kids.  Brandon and I may or may not have been crying by the end.

Anyway, part of me wanted to sit and watch the movie with the kids again, but part of me wanted to work in my garden.  And that's the part that won out.  Last fall we'd raked all the leafs into a pile by the garage to let them decompose.  I decided it was time to move the pile into the garden beds.  So I did that.  I listened to Baconsale podcasts while I worked and had a great time.  (By the way, Baconsale is probably the best podcast I listen to and I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in popculture trivia.)

When the movie ended the kids came out and joined me.  They had fun riding bikes on the patio.

 Brandon came home from the store and the kids talked us into having a picnic in the back yard. We have really missed being outside.

 Derrick was still full of energy so I decided that he and I should walk our DVD back to Redbox.  He likes going on the overpass and looking down at all the trains.  Veronica came along too.  It was a fun walk and a good end to a wonderful day.

 Now that I have a good camera again I can take pictures of my kids sleeping.  Here are Charlotte and Lydia cuddled up together as usual.  I thought that they'd be happy to have separate beds after sharing one when we lived in Utah and sharing the loft in the RV.  But instead they have shared the top bunk ever since we moved into this house.

 Recently we realized that Veronica could just have the bottom bunk and so we moved her over there and took down her little bed.  Their room feel a lot less crowded these days.

 We had some green fabric paint left over from a project so I decided we should make St Patrick's day shirts.  We planned to do them on Saturday, but then spent the whole day outside.  So we did them as a Family Home Evening Activity on Monday instead.

 Brandon cut out the template and I helped the kids paint their shirts.

 Then we wrote cute sayings on the shirts with a fabric marker.

 We love doing family crafts like this.

 I gave Derrick a list of suggestions, but he insisted I just write "Leaf" on his shirt.  It made me laugh every time I saw it.  We let the shirts dry over night and then the kids proudly wore them to school on Tuesday.

This week was a little rough because of the whole daylight savings thing.  In years past I've been a bit of a daylight savings time apologist. But getting kids ready for the bus that comes before 7:30 is hard enough without springing forward an hour so I wasn't so forgiving of daylight savings time this year. I think it was Thursday before I fully work up this week.

On Friday night the kids set traps for the leprechauns. Here they are laying out a net with Brandon.  When your Daddy went to SERE school he knows a thing or two about setting traps. 

 Charlotte also set this one up with a towel over the heater vent.  The leprechaun would fall through and get caught.

In the morning she was sad to see that the leprechaun had somehow climbed out. 

But he'd left gold and Lucky Charms so things were that sad. 

On Tuesday I'd naively declared winter over for the year and moved all the snowpants, gloves, and big coats to the closet.  Mother Nature rewarded my efforts with a snowstorm on Wednesday. That snow melted and was replaced by another snow storm on Saturday.  I told the kids that this was a bad trick by the leprechaun. 

 Veronica and I made rainbow fruit kabobs together.  When I bought the fruit for these I imagined putting them together with Charlotte and Lydia.  But Veronica was the one who wanted to help.  I like that she is old enough to do things like this.

 Here she is posing with our creations.

 Don't they look yummy? Almost makes you forget about the snow storm outside.

The kids liked them, but were a little distrustful of the kiwis.

 Lydia wanted me to get a picture of Rose's St Patrick's Day outfit.

 We had planned to go visit Craters of the Moon National Monument today.  But Brandon had signed up for a volunteer shift at the Chrome in the Dome car show at ISU.  So we changed our plans and went to that.  (And the weather probably would have cancelled the trip anyway.)  We aren't really car people so we walked around for about 15 minutes and then left Brandon.

 The kids and I went to Fred Meyer to pick up some pictures that Derrick and I ordered. We also bought seeds and a few other things for the garden.  And we impulse bought some flowers because I forgot how hard it is to take 4 kids into a store.

Here's Derrick with the pictures we ordered.

 He's really interested in rockets right now so I showed him pictures of some of the rocket museums we've been to.  He wanted to hold the pictures so we printed some off.  Now he keeps asking to visit these places and I'm trying to explain that Kansas, Texas, and Alabama are all far away.

 Here are the girls posing in their St Patricks' Day shirts. 

 And Rose again.

 Derrick has a super loose tooth that is hanging by a thread. But he won't pull it out or let us try.  This is kid of ironic because this kid us usually fiddling with EVERYTHING.  Case in point, he pulled the FIRE ALARM at the Learning Center on Friday.  He was not happy when the loud alarm went off and everyone had to go outside. When I found out about it I was like, "you won't pull your tooth out, but you'll pull the fire alarm?"  We are hoping that this time he can loose a tooth without literally loosing the tooth.  We have no idea what happened to his two bottom teeth that have already come out.

 When we got back from the store the kids watched movies (oh yeah we'd stopped at the library for I-pad time and picked out some movies too) and I played with our new garden stuff.  I started some seeds in a seed tray.

 And I potted our impulse flowers and strawberries.

 I'm glad we bought these flowers. They make me happy.

 Today we did some little Easter crafts after church. We made these wash cloth bunnies.  Derrick's ended up looking like a bug.

 And we made this egg tree. It was fun to work together to create it. 

The kids and Brandon all have spring break this week so we are looking forward to a little bit of relaxation and a little bit of adventure.  And since I have a new camera I'm looking forward to taking lots of pictures and sharing them all with you.  It's good to feel complete again. 

Thanks for reading.