Beginning to thaw

Jeremy and I actually had to return to the work force today. I am very thankful that we have jobs that give us time off when the weather is bad. It was still rough though. We were pretty spoiled from sleeping in and wearing PJ's most days. It's not like summer vacation where you can actually enjoy being outside with little effort. Paxton seemed happy to see Jean, Sarah, Grace and Seamus (he's the cat) today. She may have been a little tired of only seeing our mugs for the last two weeks! After work, the sun made a rare appearance, so I grabbed the camera to get some pics of our icicles that are beginning to melt. There are some places that have HUGE icicles that I would love to photograph, but I'm a little nervous. I certainly wouldn't want to be around when they come down. Here are some shots of the melting ice.

A new/old goal

_MG_2386, originally uploaded by cyclechickmary.

I've been slowly re-introducing myself to the treadmill. Today I decided to step it up a little and actually break into a jog. I've got a plan and a goal. "They" say that if you say your goal out loud it helps you stick with it, so here it is. My goal is to run (ok, jog) the entire 5K at the Race for the Cure.

Lamby

_MG_2371, originally uploaded by cyclechickmary.

Almost forgot....here's yet another gratuitous depth of field shot. I'm having waaaaaay too much fun with those!

Blue-eyed girl

We had a rare day of good light today, so I quickly took advantage of it and grabbed the babe. We thought it would be fun to stick her in the laundry basket that was on the bed. I was extremely happy with how the shots came out. Her blue eyes really sparkled and since I actually had a shutter speed above 20 for once not too much blur! Since I only know how to post 5 pics at a time on here, you only get a few. Just jump over to flickr to see the rest.

Valentine's Day

We had a nice Valentine's Day around here. How can you go wrong when the day begins with chocolate chip pancakes? We decided to let Paxton try a little bit of chocolate syrup. She really liked it!

Future Rock Star

Paxton has recently figured out that she can make cool noises with her toy microphone (yes, it really works!). Here are a few shots of our budding rocker with her Dad/Coach giving her some pointers.

"Ok, I think you have the microphone a little too close...."

"That's better!"

"Sing it from the heart!"

Loving the spotlight!!

Practice, practice, practice...

And another gratuitous depth of field shot for the photogs out there! The keys on her toy make it even more obvious.

Happy 9 month Birthday Paxton!

For Paxton's 9 month birthday, we decided she was big enough to try out the rocking horse part of her Amish high chair. She had a blast!

Daddy thought she needed a hat.

I thought it needed to be in black and white.

She also had her bath in the "big tub" tonight! (Check out her reflection in the drain lever)

Splish splash....

Picture practice

Recently I was reading one of my favorite blogs, The Pioneer Woman (by all means check it out, you'll be hooked!). She has a great photography section and she likes to give little assignments. The submissions from her readers are very impressive! This week the assignment is to take some pics that show interesting depth of field. Basically that is a close-up of something with the immediate background being blurry. Since I've got the 9 month model who's always doing something interesting, I tried out the technique on her. The biggest challenge is to get her to hold still long enough for me to get a decent shot in our low light house. Here are a few examples.

Snow Vacation Part III

Even more pics from our "snow vacation"

Holly Berries

(I'm sure the people driving down 119 wondered why I was laying in the snow)

My snow man, Jeremy salting the driveway

Wishing it was warm enough to use this

Snow Vacation Part II

Here are some more pics from our snow adventures....

Trying to show that the snow was literally up to my knees.

Tom taking a breather from shoveling and surveying the land.

Tom working his way up Lloyd and Clara's driveway. This is after he already had shoveled about 100 yards of our driveway.

A rare day of no mail. Gee, I can't imagine why??

Some big pine branches that were in the driveway; one of the reasons we had no phone, cable or internet for awhile. I'm not complaining though. We had electricity!

Part III is on it's way!

Snow Vacation Part I

I'm so far behind here I don't even know where to begin. Let's go back to last week. The family from Indiana was planning to come in to visit for the weekend and the forecast was ominous. "Biggest snow of the season", "hazardous travel", etc. Well, they left extra early on Friday and managed to stay ahead of the worst of it. When they arrived on Friday evening the big flakes were really starting to come down. By Saturday morning, we had reached about 12" of snow. It was an impressive sight! Even more impressive was the fact that it was still coming down! By about 3 in the afternoon it was tapering off and the more stir crazy of the group decided to do some shoveling. I also ventured out with the camera! Here's a bit of what we encountered....

This is Jeremy's Mom's car. She couldn't make it the rest of the way of the driveway, so it got "parked" here. It may be here for awhile....

Me, just goofing off with a self portrait.

These are the grapevines along a fence by our house. They actually looked prettier a little earlier in the day, but it was snowing like crazy then.

Working on some close-up action. (Nicole, I'm playing with my aperture!)

More pics to come.....