Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Portraits: Sarah

     I have a small group of girls that I teach on Wednesday evenings at our church. We recently had a photo shoot with the girls and everyone enjoyed it. My favorite time was letting the girls see what we'd captured during the shoot. They were so excited and told their opinions about each picture - which ones they liked, which ones they didn't and why. It was so fun.
     This is Sarah - she is grand-daughter to members in our church. We've known her family for a long while now. Her cousin Abby is just 6 months older and the two of them together is just hilarious. Besides teaching them at church, I also see them every week for piano lessons. Sarah loves to laugh & has a good sense of humor. She was a great model for these pictures.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Camp 2013

Getting settled at our house continues - slowly but surely. We spent two days last week shopping for furniture & were somewhat successful. We still need more (plus the cabinets in our bathroom & kitchen finished) so alot of our stuff is just sitting around. I spent a good amount of time this week preparing a slideshow from Camp in order to show it at church on Sunday morning, so I decided to post it here. Only I can't get it to load - it's probably too big a file. I'll try again later as I'd love for you to see it. So, since I can't get it to load, I'll do the next best thing and post pictures :)

Camp was great - I was counselor for the girls and I enjoyed every minute. This was our first year doing camp, so we naturally tried to keep it somewhat small. I had 6 girls - all of them great. The first night we went out for a walk & to take some pictures. (once again I'm having problems with blogger - I can only get one picture to go large - all the others stay small. Any suggestions? I'm really tired of this!)



 
After lessons the next day we went to a camel farm - everyone enjoyed it. The girls actually kissed a camel (gross!) and said it was the highlight of their week.






Besides camels, there were miniature donkeys, miniature horses, llamas, and alpacas.







That evening we took more pictures (a fun way to pass the time & the girls really seemed to enjoy it) And, we actually got a little more sleep than the first night. ;)

We held camp on the farm of one of our church members. The girls slept in the loft of their barn (fully finished inside) and the boys had the house. It was so peaceful there. And the tractors made for good pictures.
 

The last day of camp was Independence Day and we had lots planned.  After morning lessons we took a "hayless" ride out to a field on the farm. In this field are the remains of a dugout that the family lived in back in the 1890's when they first homesteaded their farm. It was so neat. Being the 4th, we took along flags & poppers and our driver made sure we had a wild ride. :)



Here Abby sits atop the dugout that her ancestors lived in.

 
Everyone joined in on croquet games
 

We went bowling in the afternoon
 
 
After bowling in the afternoon, we headed back to the church for an Independence Day Parade. It was small, but great fun.
Sitting around waiting for Parade time

On the float
Amelia decorated her bike to ride in the parade
More croquet

After the parade we had a cookout & fireworks. It was a great ending to a great week.

 We had lessons every morning & services every evening. We also had craft time, object lessons, singing & went swimming each day. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures during these times! We'll have to do better next year.  All in all, we really enjoyed it, and can't wait to do it again.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

An Exciting Week



We finally made it - we slept in our new house last night! We've been moving all day today & getting settled. We also ran a family camp this past week. Camp ran Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday. We had such a great time! More to come on that later on...... and lots of pictures! I am so backlogged with blog posts it's ridiculous. But, except for three birthdays, my month looks fairly open. Unless something unexpected pops up - which it frequently does. So, no promises - but rather a wish to post a lot some this month. :o)