Easter gifts and biking

Will got two packages in the mail this week - one from each of his grandmothers!

A bunny and a Peter Rabbit book that makes sounds from his Meme!

…but you can see what he really likes playing with (the packaging)!

And a duck piggy bank and a duck cookie that was in an Easter egg from his Grandmama! Will is REALLY into ducks - he goes nuts over them:)

...but this one he couldn't wait to eat!

This past weekend we tried a new bike seat we got for Will. We went with one that sits in front of the adult - it's supposed to be safer and more enjoyable for the child. He had a ball! He seems to love it, and I'm so glad because I think we'll really enjoy having it this summer. Evanston is a great place to bike around.

And finally…

The very first signs of spring up here! This tree in our backyard is blooming. It's the only one…no other trees have leaves yet, but it is so exciting to have some color outside now!

Easter

Easter seemed to have snuck up on me this year. It didn't occur to me to fill an Easter basket for Will until I woke up yesterday morning. Oh well - he didn't even know it was Easter! Before church I tried to get a family pic with my tripod…

After church there was an Easter egg hunt for the kids in a park across from our church.

Will and his friends Charlotte and Noah

I wasn't sure if Will would understand the concept of hunting for eggs and putting them in his basket, but he caught on pretty quick! He had a lot of fun!

Our friends Matt and Debbi and their little girl Charlotte were in town from Boston and we had them and our friends Dave and Courtney over for lunch. We had ham with cajun mustard, marinated asparagus, potato salad, green bean salad with bacon, walnuts, and goat cheese, deviled eggs, and homemade gluten-free biscuits with honey cinnamon butter.

And for dessert we had gluten-free strawberry rhubarb pie with fresh whipped cream!

It was a great day celebrating Christ's resurrection with friends!

First camera and bath time!

Will has turned a corner on his tolerance of bath time - he's gone from hating it to loving it…

Probably because his dad makes it so much fun for him!

And last week while Matt was in London again Will and I went on a little shopping trip to Target. I let Will pick out something and this is what he picked...

His first (pretend) camera! He may have been slightly influenced by his momma, or the fact that it is Elmo - every one year old's favorite pal!

Who knows - maybe one day I'll be able to teach him a thing or two:)

A lesson on aperture

I am taking a photography class on Saturdays from a lady in our church and this past Saturday I was asked to talk a little about portraits and share some of my pictures! It was a lot of fun for me to prepare for this, and I thought I'd share a little bit of it here.

One of the things that I wanted to show is the affect of different apertures when shooting portraits. Specifically, how aperture effects depth of field - how much of your picture is in focus. When shooting portraits you generally want to get the face in focus, and everything else blurry.

Aperture is measured by f-stops, and the lower the f-stop number, the higher or wider the aperture, and the blurrier your background is going to be.

An easy way to think about it is:

the lower the number (high or wide aperture) = the blurrier the background (good for portraits)
or
the higher the number (low or narrow aperture) = the more in focus the background will be (good for landscapes)

I'm way over-simplifying this, but if you've never taken your camera off "auto", this is a good place to start. Put your camera on aperture priority mode (A or AV mode depending on your camera) and play around with the aperture. Your camera will automatically adjust the shutter speed and ISO so that your picture will be correctly exposed, and you can see the affect that aperture has on your photos.

Look at the examples below. I wrote on the picture which f-stop number I used.

They are all straight out of camera (SOOC) with no editing and shot in the middle of the day with the sun directly overhead so they aren't the most flattering, but I think you get the point:)

Make sense?