Its been raining here lately so we’ve been stuck indoors.  I promised Jerah a fun day on wednesday so we went to the Explorit Science Center here in Davis.  As expected the boys had a blast.

Their favorite activity was this wind tunnel.  They had so much fun watching the parachuters fly up.

Job had an obsession with gears lately

They had this bike thing that you turn with your arms.  The skeleton on the monitor was mimicking his movements.

Jerah was thrilled about being able to touch a walking stick

Jerah didn’t quite get how to use a telescope

The other big thing was launching rockets.  Too much fun!

This evening we went for a geo caching trip on bikes around south Davis.

inspecting their loot

Finally the boys started to get bored

So we went and got food using our coolest find yet…free food at Cafe Italia!

If you follow me over on facebook you would have seen the newest addition to our family yesterday.  His name is Mark.  As in Canon 5d mark II.  2010 is looking to be the year of weddings for me.  I have several booked and several meeting scheduled.  My 40Ds are great cameras…but I needed more power, more reliability, and less noise.  Weddings take place in low light situations.  This means I have to shoot with higher ISOs than what my cameras could handle (ISO is kinda like film speed on film camera…you know…if you are shooting film).  The higher the ISO the more digital noise or grain there is.  The 5d is wonderful for low light, high iso situations.

The image below for example was shot last night using only the kitchen at the light source.  The other lights in the house were off.  There was no flash.  This was taken at the highest iso for the 5d: 25600.  In comparison, the 40d only goes up to an iso of 3200…and the grain is so bad you can’t make out details.

Nice right?  These next two were taken this morning with a much lower iso:  1600.  Once again, much much smoother than my 40d.

Hey there!  Hows it going?  Hope you had a happy new year.  We sure did over here!  But that is not what this post is about.  Today on the blog it is all about Christmas.  Did you know that we decorated our tree in the beginning of December?  Not sure if you did because I never shared pictures.  So here they are!

The christmas bunny was a big help!

If I was picking new year resolutions one would be to wipe this boy’s face off!  At least when I’m taking pictures anyway.

We also had chrismas way back on the 25th (imagine that!).  The boys made out like bandits.  So did I!  Got me some Rock Band 2 and a brand new bike.  But Christmas isn’t about presents…its about giving, family, some baby born in a barn, and blah blah blah.

Job is a huge fan of Handy Manny.  We got him a set of tools.

Jerah is in a skeleton phase.  He LOVES this puzzle at preschool.

If you didn’t notice he also loves to dress up!

Woah!  How did those pictures get to small?  And where is my watermark?  Ooops!  Must have picked my proofing action instead of my blog action when I was doing some batch resizing.  I’d redo them but you are lucky I even got this far.  So I wont.  I’d promise to be a better blogger.  But I wont.  You know me. 

Yesterday was a good day.  We went out to breakfast, did some geocaching in Sacramento, and had ethiopian food for dinner with family.  I asked the boys if they would make me something for my birthday and they said no.  However they did agree to let me take their picture.  And although I can’t say that they were perfect models, they were a little less aggravating than normal, lol.

Jerah kept licking the wall.  He finds it hilarious to be weird when I take his picture.  At least I got smiles!

For december instead of our long boring monthly meeting, WPNS did a holiday themed family fun night instead.  The kiddos wore their PJ’s, drank hot chocolate, sang carols with Santa, and watched frosty the snowman.

Jerah fell asleep on the way over, poor guy!

Santa!

Job really loved the hot chocolate…or was it the whipped cream?

Sometimes when I’m the “B” parent at preschool and am basically just watching kids play, I’ll bring my camera along to catch the action. This was the thursday before last.

I have a lot of posts coming up…baking cookies with the Orsers, decorating the xmas tree, holiday party at WPNS…but I’m going to share our most recent adventure first since its fresh in my mind.  Over the weekend we went down to Fresno to Aaron’s aunt and uncle’s house.  His grandma is turning the big 8-0 so they had a party and lots of family came.

The kids really love Bryan.

The big excitement for the boys was getting their rain boots.  I got a pair a few weeks back for my rainy day sessions but couldn’t find any for the boys.  Every time it rains they ask for their own boots.  They were thrilled to get a pair of their own from Karen and Dave…plus it was a rainy day so they got to break them in.

This is cousin Anne.  She wanted me to take a picture with Micky the scotty dog…I agreed only if I got to take some of just her first!

So there you go.