Strawberry field

Last Friday we went to pick strawberries with a couple of friends and their kids.

We went to a wonderful Tougas Family Farm and absolutely loved it there.  I personally LOVE nice people, and the people that work at the Tougas Farm are pretty nice!

It was just raining that morning, so there were barely any people on the field.  The strawberries were all ours!

Annika, G, V + E.

G just loved this yellow strawberry!

G is studying little bugs on the playground at the farm.

E and Annika are feeding cute goats.

It was hard to take any good pictures of Annika, because she was running with friends the whole time and refused to stop and smile.

So, I am going to post a picture of Annika from last week, when we had a play date at a mall playground.

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Happy Father's Day!

My kids are so lucky to have Joseph as their father!  He really is amazing!
G said to Joseph: "I love you the most because you were born in Texas like ME!!!"
Then Annika asked: "Was I born in Massachusepps all by myself?"

Poor lonely girl!

Happy Father's Day!!!

Joseph with the kids and his Father's Day gifts.

Scooter fun!

The kids LOVE their scooters!  They love them much more than bikes!
We went to a park a couple of days ago and had some fun (and exercise).

Equitation

We are going to sign them up for horseback riding lessons.  They love riding!

Backyard

Some flowers...

Some trees...

...and one crazy boy who figured out a way to make his slide a lot faster and a lot more fun!

Never a boring life!

G: I want a dog and a pool.  If I had to pick one thing I would pick a pool!

A couple of hours later: "Buy a pool or buy a house with a pool!  It's YOUR choice!"

Annika: Mama doesn't know how to do anything.  Daddy knows how to do everything.  The only thing mama knows how to do is to talk to friends in Russian.

Annika also likes to ask deep questions:

"So, a rock came down and broke all the dinosaurs....  Can a rock come down and break all the people?"

She is learning to ask questions like that from G.  He asks some hard questions.

Like: "What is at the end of space?  Why can't we just go there and look?"

He also wants to understand how it is possible that people didn't always exsit.  He asks: "Where were people when the dinosaurs lived on Earth? Did they just have their eyes closed and saw black?"

I think it is a hard concept to understand.  I talked to him about our earliest ancestors, tiny mammals that lived alongside dinosaurs, but he is just way too young to understand it all.  I mean, I can hardly understand it myself.

The topics that both kids are very interested in right now are: spiders, ants, metamorphosis, storms/weather (especially tornadoes) and dinosaurs.

Getting my edumacation! Learn me a book.

Today I attended "An Introduction to Digital SLRs" at "Camera Eye Workshops" (http://www.cameraeyeworkshops.com/).
It was a 4 hour workshop and, let me tell you, I got my money's worth!  The instructor, Chris Sanchez (https://www.facebook.com/chrissanchezphoto) was beyond great.  He explained everything very well to a small group of people with nice cameras that didn't know how to use them.
The class started with a little history of photography (such as who took the very first photograph) and how cameras work. Then he explained ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture, White Balance, Manual and Auto Zoom, etc, etc.
At first I felt so lost and I had the feeling that I would never be able to remember it all.  But, 2 hours into the class, I just GOT IT!  I GOT IT!
From now on, I will shoot in Manual, Raw Medium.  I can't see myself using the Auto setting anymore.
I am sure I will make mistakes at first, but I am excited to finally understand my camera and what it is doing!
We practiced taking a lot of pictures and were able to see what happens when we shoot with different settings.
Chris would tell us to put our camera in a specific setting, then take a picture that would come out horrible (over exposed, too dark, too blurry), then he would tell us to correct the settings ourselves and take a good picture.  He would then look at our photos and comment on them.
We did it several times, and the hands-on practice helped a ton!
In the end, for about 30 minutes, he talked about editing our photos in Photoshop, which was also super helpful.
Here are some examples (all shot in manual mode, all unedited):

Overexposed

Better!  (Perfect, if I say so myself.)

Chris gave us specific settings and told us to take a picture of him.  This is what happened.

He then told us to correct our settings ourselves.

First try: better, but still overexposed.

I got it on my second try.

Taking pictures in a shadow.  Too dark.

Got it!

Learning to take non-blurry pictures of a moving object in a shadowy area.  Pretty good!

Getting comments from Chris.

My picture that I took at the end of class.  Manual mode.

Overall, I learned a lot, and I highly recommend this class to anyone who lives in the Boston area!

https://www.facebook.com/cameraeyeworkshops