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 There’s just something special about holding a sleeping baby.

 I am fascinated with macro photography, although I haven’t tried it very much. I love that it gives different perspectives to everyday objects and shows the beauty in the ordinary. Or at least it can. 🙂

I know this isn’t a true macro photo, but it was fun trying to make an interesting photo with M&M’s.

 After her bath E3 was just in a fun, silly mood, so I grabbed K’s camera. And this time she let me!

I need to work with his camera a bit more- I was shooting without a flash, but forgot to change the ISO from when I was using it before, so the pictures were all quite soft and a bit blurry. Oh well, I keep learning!

 It was such a gorgeous day! My mom decided to wait a day before heading back home, and in the afternoon we all headed over to the park. The closer play structure was packed with kids, so we headed over to the farther one. The path we took wound through a wooded area, dense enough you could forget you were in the middle of the city.

As we walked through the wood, K pointed out a magic-looking tree with it’s roots growing on the outside a few feet above the ground. Looking closer, we saw that actually a tree had sprouted within a stump, and had stayed alive long enough for the roots to reach down around the stump to the ground.

 Sometimes when we get back from a trip or vacation, it seems like the entire trip comes down to the pile of luggage and things unloaded from the vehicle. I guess essentially that’s all it is, except for the memories of the experiences.

This particular trip was full of those wonderful experiences and memories that the kids and I will treasure for a long time. So Mom and Dad, I just want to say again, thank you so much for everything. It really meant so much to us.

 Before we left to head back home I wanted to get a good picture of Heart Mountain, which overlooks the valley. Heart Mountain always makes me first think of my childhood home, and then of my grandpa. I have memories of hearing about him hiking to the top of the mountain on the Fourth of July. I’m not sure how many years he did that, but I know several summers he hiked it, even into his seventies. We hiked it one year that I remember, I think I was a teenager, and I think everyone but me made it to the top. Thinking about it now, I’ll have to go back someday and climb to the top just to say I made it.

 It’s always so exciting when a photo turns out just like you want.

We celebrated my mom’s birthday early since we were going to be on the road: everybody came over for dinner, made by V. She also brought my mom a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, and I immediately thought, “Photo!” So I put them on some black fabric and bounced the flash off of the ceiling. The photo is straight out of the camera, not processed at all, only rotated to portrait.

 We had tried to go to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center on the fourth Friday evening when they had free admission, but decided not to because of the storm. So when my sister-in-law, V, had the day off, she suggested we go and take advantage of the quiet season special. We had so much fun! It has changed so much from when I was there last (which was probably over 20 years ago, ack!).

 This trip I finally got to meet my newest nephew, X, in person. I loved getting to know this little whirlwind.

Looking back through the photos of our visit, I realized I didn’t have very many of X. At lunch we were eating together, and he was just sleepy enough to be fairly still. I was trying to watch for an opportunity to take a great pic of him; I noticed the light coming through the window and grabbed the camera. I took several, but didn’t notice until afterward I had turned off the optical stabilization. Since I was shooting without a flash and with a fairly long focal length, almost all of them were blurry. Thankfully, I did have a couple turn out okay.

 My mom has a set of magnets that the kids like to play with. It comes with a couple of magnetic wands, a few magentic balls, and a bunch of colored plastic disks with a small metal ring around the outside. While the kids were playing with them, I thought the disks looked very colorful. Wanting to see what kind of a photo they would make, I dropped them on a white towel hoping to catch them as they fell.