Summer - otherwise known as the non-blogging period

Once again it's been months since any kind of communication was alive on here.  Sorry.

But today, a summary of our summer.  Definitely fun and memorable.

 Fresh eats

 Funny story - saw my oncologist at the strawberry patch when the boys and I went one early morning. It was fun to meet his family!

 My VBS fearless co-leaders

 Loved the hydrangeas all summer.  Still loving them now in more of a fall hue.

 Baseball was fun for all of us this summer - definitely Ethan's sport right now.

 The boys were in the Mulan, Jr. musical at our church in June.  I didn't even give them a choice about doing it.  I wanted them to try something different and they were pretty cooperative about it and ended up really really enjoying the whole week and looking forward to next year.

The bottom picture of the two was Ethan's favorite scene because his role was to bump into the guy in front of him causing a domino effect where they all pretty much fell over.

 Father's Day at the pool

 Church camping trip.

Awesome time with friends canoeing, a little hiking, etc.

And this was the beginning of Ethan's passion for fishing!

 a trip to the zoo with the Martins

 Church camp for Ethan

 Oh, you're not in the Green Pants Family?

I'm not either but wish I was.

 I don't know.

This is the maturity level we deal with around here often.

 One of Grandma and Grandpa's visits this summer.

I think this was after Elliott's baptism.

 Church camp for Elliott

 Almost every Wednesday was spent at the Muny.

Mary Poppins was our favorite with Les Miserables coming in second.

 Poor Ethan was my "subject" many days this summer.

 Air Soft goggles are way cool.

Lots of Air Soft wars this summer.

 a trip to Wyoming for B and I

 The boys made a rope ladder with Grandpa while we were out West.

 Brian roped me into doing this 5K at the Cisne Reunion and before we knew it almost our entire family had signed up for it.  It was fun but I'm glad it's over.  Still being debated whether I will do another one.

 And my dad even got a medal for his age group at the 5K!

(And yes, we did eat biscuits and gravy after running 3 miles - doesn't everyone?)

 The best announcement of the summer.

And most creative baby announcement I've seen.

Amber and Rob secretly gathered all of the nephews, wardrobed them with these football jerseys and then quickly lined them all up and waited for the rest of us to figure out what was going on.  A lightbulb finally went off and we realized what they were telling us.

It's a little blurry, but the jerseys lined up say "Cousin Drake Joins Our Team 1-15-14"

Yay!!!  So excited for them!

 My 20 year high school reunion

Very fun catching up with these friends!

Wabash Days with friends.

Can't miss Wabash Days.

And now we're back to school, heavily into football, playing soccer, working, volunteering, etc.

Hopefully I will have pictures soon!

photography class

I've been taking a photography class online the past four weeks.

Its focus was on taking portraits.

Every once in a while someone will ask me to take pictures of their kids or family, and I thought this class might help me improve my skills with that so that I can do an even better job when the opportunity come up again in the future.

And, besides, I really love photography and want to learn as much as possible.

In fact, Brian will tell you that my camera is our third child :)

Anyway, these are some of the assignments that I had.

My subjects were very willing after I told them they would be paid for their work!

This first one was for a side lighting assignment.

This one was my submission for the specific age group photo.

We were to take what we had learned about photographing people of different ages and apply it.
I chose the boys' age group cause that's what I had access to and I figured that's what I photograph the most.


And this one was for a bonus creative assignment.
We were to take a portrait of someone but not of their face.

This last one was not for an assignment.

I just loved how it turned out and wanted to share it.

The last assignment was to take a group photo.

I had visions of getting a picture of Brian and the boys at a park near us, but the weather and our schedules this week just wouldn't cooperate.

I ended up submitting a photo that I had taken a few months ago with hopes of getting feedback on that one at least.

I really liked this class.

I feel like I learned a lot about taking photographs of people, and at the same time it made me realize that I knew more than I thought I did - gotta love that, too!

cheese

Oh my goodness these guys crack me up!

They were trying to do cheesy faces and poses,

but they couldn't stop laughing.

I hope that someday down the road - 

when they are teenagers or twenty-somethings or have children of their own - 

that they remember how much fun they had with each other growing up.

football fans

Who knew that flag football drew so many fans from so far away?

Love that they all take time to some and support the boys when they can!

botanical gardens

Brian recently had about a month-long vacation from work.

He is actually back to work now, but we were able to get a lot done and enjoy the time we had.

He was even able to get to Florida to see his family for a few days and catch up with some of his friends there.  

During the last week of his time off we went down to the Botanical Gardens.

I usually drag everyone down there a little earlier to enjoy the tulips or the cherry trees in the Japanese garden, but we just didn't make it this year.  We typically don't go during this time because the cherry blossoms have fallen off the trees and the tulip are pretty faded by now.  But who knew that the azaleas were blooming so fiercely?!  For some reason I never get an alert about the azaleas so I just don't think about them.  They were absolutely gorgeous!

The most fun part for me was that Brian brought a camera with him to shoot pictures too.

He was actually the original photographer in the family, but somewhere along the line (probably when the boys were born and I wanted to take pictures of them all day long) my interest in it kind of skyrocketed and I've pretty much taken over.  The camera rarely touches his hands any more,  because I'm always hogging it.

We don't do it very often, but it's fun to go on little photography jaunts with him.  He has a really good eye and it's fun to see things differently with him.  He taught me a ton about cameras and photography when I first started being interested.

Somehow, our quest for the day at the Botanical Gardens became getting an awesome blurred-motion running-water shot.  I think both of us had read how to do it and knew how to do it, but it was actually a pretty good challenge remembering everything and applying all of our knowledge.  I think you really need a tripod for a truly great shot of this, so maybe a little planning ahead next time :)

But here are a few of the images we ended up with.

Not bad for our first time I don't think!

Read Right and Run

This was the second year that the boys did Read Right Run with their school.

Last year it started storming the morning of the race so we didn't get to finish the 26 miles

at Forest Park as planned, but they did finish it at school because they have an awesome

PE teacher.

This year was the exact opposite weather.

It was absolutely beautiful.

Plenty of sunshine.

Not too hot.

Not too cold.

We were spoiled for sure.

They had such a good time.

I'm proud of them for doing all 26 books, good deeds and miles.

The good deeds were the hardest to keep up with.

Not the hardest to do - we would just forget to track them.

But they did it and are ready to do it again next year.

They even saw signs for a 5K Halloween run and were all over doing that

in October in our costumes.  Sounds fun!

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the zoo.

Along with almost every other St. Louisan I believe.

If you live here you know what it's like on those first nice Saturdays in spring and know what I'm talking about :)

Saw the new sea lion show for the first time and just walked around enjoying the day.

silhouettes

Absolutely my favorite photography project right now.

I'm on the lookout for an awesome place to do this with no weeds at our feet.

So hopefully there will be more to come.

I'm thinking the beach if we can ever get there!

4th Grade Camp

This kid was so excited to go to 4th Grade Camp a few weeks ago!  

And according to him, it was the best camp ever.  

He talked about it until he went to bed the night he got home,

and then started in again the next morning.

So much to tell us.

He was most excited about the archery sessions.

He got two bulls eyes in a row!

But he really liked every bit of it - even the food.

The best sloppy joe ever, apparently.

I'm glad he is outgoing and likes to be with his friends.

I'm sure this will be a forever memory for him.

baseball

I think I mentioned that Ethan started baseball practice in January, and we are in full swing now.

He L.O.V.E.S. baseball.

He has no doubt that he will play for the Cardinals when he grows up.

That's after he and three of his friends finish playing football in college.

You gotta be well-rounded, ya know.

He has a really great coach and team this year, and it's so much fun to watch him play.

He has been playing his much-desired position of first base for the past two games and has been doing a great job - most importantly having so much fun with his teammates.

 And no game is complete without sliding into a bag of sand at some point, right?

I'm pretty sure I should buy some stock in Clorox.

football

The boys have been asking to play football forever.

We've hesitated mainly for two reasons:

They play their games on Sundays.

We know that tackle football is a huge time commitment.

But we agreed to let Elliott play flag football this spring with the understanding that he might miss a few games if they interfered with church.  He was fine with that, and we have not had to miss any games.  We are late to half of them, but that's fine.

It's been fun for us to watch, and he has really loved it.  He has been playing Center for the most part.

Of course, he throwing bones to get us to agree to tackle in the fall now.

So far we are not convinced though.

 Every football player has devoted fans, right?