Model perfect

If you've already seen these, please feel free to move along. We took the girls to Portrait Innovations for their five year-old pictures this weekend. I swore I wasn't going to buy as much as in the past since they also have school pictures this week, but I did.

Their photographer was Ryan, and of course the girls thought he was super funny. I LOVE Lily in the picture below because that is such a natural smile for her.


There was a family there with 18-month old triplet boys. Two of the three boys totally melted down, and I really felt for the parents. I remember how hard that two year shoot was when they were mobile and not really into listening. I had my parents there for reinforcements and was still exhausted after the hour-long shoot.

But now it takes us about 20 minutes, even with two outfit changes.

Bragging on my girl

When I dropped the girls off at daycare this morning, their teacher wanted to show me something. Apparently they've been discussing morse code and the symbols for each of the letters. During free time, Lily spelled out her name correctly in morse code from memory.

Now, she's probably since forgotten it, but I'm glad she was interested enough to work on it in free time too.

Madeleine also talked to me about it, but just SOS specifically. I guess I need to brush up.

Roller Coaster....of love

Lily was singing this song all weekend. They apparently played it at her gymnastics class last week, but it totally describes our crazy weekend.

Saturday morning we went shopping at Old Navy because I realized we didn't have any light jackets and it was chilly. They have nice coordinating things, so the girls look similar but not matchy-matchy.

In the afternoon we went to the fair at Saint Rapheal Church in North Raleigh. I remember going when we first moved here and thought the girls would like the rides.

I think we're almost to a point where they're outgrowing the kiddie rides. They got bored on some fairly quickly, but the Scrambler and the roller coaster were more exciting. They also had more fun on rides where they sat together rather than alone.

Sunday afternoon was Nixon's birthday party at Davis Drive park. Nixon's mom had an animal educator bring out 8 animals for the kids to touch and learn about. She had a rabbit, a python, a turtle, a blue-tongued skink, two frogs, a tarantula, an opossum, a hedgehog, and hissing Madagascar cockroaches. It was an all-girls party, and I was surprised that almost everyone wanted to touch even the slimiest animals.

Lily checks out the tarantula.

I don't have a lot of pictures of Madeleine with the animals since she was on the other side. But she was super thrilled to hang out with her friends from her old class at EPLC.

New Camera

It was finally time for a new point and shoot camera. The last one was about 3 1/2 years old. I'd sworn by Olympus cameras for the last 15 years, but I was over this one. I got rid of my first one when the flash quit working. They wanted more to fix it than a new one would cost.

So, then I got a new Stylus. I couldn't get a battery to last more than 15 pictures (and yes, I bought new ones). Nothing ever seemed in focus. I'm tired of the expensive, proprietary memory cards. I'm tired of the flash indoors being too harsh and overexposed. I'm tired of having to crop and edit and not having anything I like SOC (straight out of camera).

Since I've had good luck with my Canon DSLR, I went with the PowerShot SD1400IS. The biggest advantage over the next model down is that it shoots HD video. I'm not huge on video, but it's nice to have when you want it.

So all these pictures are from this weekend. Saturday Grandma and Poppy Goodman came down for a picnic in Bond Park. Sunday we did grocery shopping and hit the pool in the afternoon. Monday we played in the backyard all morning, took a nap, and then asked if we could go use Grandma Sherry's sprinkler for water play. They only stayed in the sprinkler maybe 5 minutes.

The video below's from Bond Park. It made me think of the opening to Little House on the Prairie. Of course that was before I saw the "Keep of the slope" sign.

Patch Update

I finally took the girls back to the optometrist today. I'd finally had enough of Lily looking over the top of her glasses, so I wanted to see if they could adjust them. She still looks over the top, so we'll see.

I also talked to Dr. Tucker about Madeleine. After our last appointment, he's decided that maybe we should wait and see how she does with the glasses and if she uses her right eye more now that she can see out of it.

We go back in November.