Thanks to my friend Susan who forwarded this to me.. Frances England (one of my favorite children’s musicians) released a song that you can download for free from her website to use to create your own “year in pictures.”  It’s for personal use only but I hope licensing options become available for photographers because this would be great for client slideshows!

Details on Frances’ blog here.. hurry though, the free download ends at with 2011..

For more music tips, visit Susan’s Facebook page “Music for the Bear-y young” where she posts great music videos for pre-schoolers!

PS, Frances she says she used an app called “8MM” to create those vintage looking movies with her iPhone, I’m totally going to download that!

So, I was very pleased that he finally, finally got back in the saddle on Monday and rode a horse!

But I’m getting ahead of myself, I wanted to document our entire day so let me start at the beginning..

Monday (Columbus day) daycare was closed but Jeff had to work so it was a Jasper & mommy day.   I decided to take advantage of the ridiculously unseasonable 80 plus degree weather and do something outdoors. We hadn’t been to Van Saun park/zoo this whole summer, so it seemed like the perfect day to do it.   I also vowed that I would NOT BRING MY CAMERA so that I wouldn’t be tempted/distracted by photo opps and would truly just be in the moment with Jasper, of course that means not such great images for this post, but hopefully good enough to document our day!

First I had planned on a nice lunch, but the restaurant I wanted to go to wasn’t open for lunch so we ended up at the Paramus Park mall at the Panera.   That hardly bears mentioning except that the mall had this really cool thing that I’ve never seen before..

Projected from the ceiling onto the floor they had a scene with various images, but when you would stand or jump on the image on the ground the scene would react. For example a water scene with fish if you stood on it would ripple where you were touching it and the fish would “swim away” from your foot.  In this picture there are Balloons that would “float away” when Jasper stepped on them:

Yeah, he really got into this!

This thing was a kid MAGNET! At one point there were about 12 kids on there and of course Jasper came running over to me complaining that there were too many people :)

Then we finally arrived at the zoo and I realized we had left his umbrella stroller in Jeff’s car.  Just as well because a) he hates his stroller anyway and b) it gave us an excuse to rent one of those little pushcart things that he DID want to ride in!  There was one sad moment when he asked me who was supposed to sit in the seat across from him and I told him that if he ever has a brother or sister that they would sit there.. but he got over it in a minute and promptly put bear there and strapped him in!

I had forgotten how small the zoo was, within about 30 minutes we had pretty much seen everything, which was just as well because it was HOT! So we returned the cart and got online to buy tickets for the train that goes around the zoo and the carousel. The wait between the ticket line and the line to get on the train was at least 30 minutes, I was SO proud of how patient he was, he didn’t whine once!

The train ride was a hit as always and then we headed over to the carousel.. I was so surprised when he wanted to get on a horse.  He told me to strap him in and then even told me to get on my own horse instead of hovering near him (!) but I thought maybe for his first ride that was taking it a bit fast!

He did great and wanted to ride again..

But he was OK when I told him everyone only gets to ride once so that everyone gets a chance.
Part II of mommy & Jasper’s day out was going to be a trip to a local pumkin patch/farm with hey rides, corn mazes etc but it was late already and the farm closes at 6pm. We might have made it save for the fact that Jasper spotted the playground through the trees on the way back to the car.

Not being one to delay gratification, he choose the playground over the pumpkin patch even though he’s been asking about the pumpkin patch ever since!

I thought it was a really fun day and asked him what his favorite part was on the ride home.. I don’t know why I was surprised when he told me that his favorite part was “the think that we walked on with our feet.”

Sigh.

Yesterday the day after the storm was a beautiful day and we’d been cooped up for a while so we took Jasper out for a Trikey ride. We are riding around enjoying the day and the wind starts to pick up.. and pick up.. then Jasper drops what he’s holding and covers his ears because it got so loud.. and then the trees started bending and then instinct kicked in and I literally grabbed him and ran in the house covering him with my body. It was SO windy after the storm- that’s when a lot of our county’s residents lost power, including my mom’s house while we were there visiting my parents and my sister and her boyfriend.

Jasper thought it was pretty fun to play with his castle by battery-operated-lantern light!

Speaking of Jasper, when I first got to my parents house my sister showed me a photo she’d found while looking through my parents’ boxes of old photographs:

Finally my family is convinced of what I’ve been telling them for three years: Jasper looks exactly like me when I was his age!

When I asked Jasper who this was a picture of, he said “Me and Peytie!”

Here is a picture of the REAL Jasper & Peytie:

Actually, Jasper & Peytie are much cuter than me and my friend in that unflattering little piece of history :)

We knew we wanted a King, and we knew we wanted a Tempurpedic, the only remaining question was deciding between the “Cloud” and the “Cloud Supreme.”  The difference is that the Supreme is softer, and for that extra softness you pay a $700 premium.

I’m quite sure that had we never laid on the Cloud Supreme we would have thought that the Cloud was the most.comfortable. bed.ever.  But comparing them side-by-side, there is an undeniable difference. On the Supreme I couldn’t feel ANY points of tension anywhere in my body, whereas on the Cloud I could feel it a bit in my lower back.

Given we plan on sleeping on this mattress for the next 10 years or more, I knew that if we let the price tag and not comfort be the deciding factor, the potential buyer’s remorse would drive me to the nuthouse.

So King Cloud Supreme arrived around lunchtime on Sunday..(and OMG it’s HUGE. Our bedroom now feels like it is half it’s previous size!)

Jasper was more than willing to help “break it in” as the sales person suggested we do. He’s a big fan of the new bed, when Jeff said that it was “Mommy and Daddy’s new bed” Jasper said “Yes, and Jasper’s too!”

He knows a good thing when he sees it:

Now all that is left is to order new bedding!

We went to Home Goods yesterday afternoon where I got some nice high threadcount plain white sheets (so we could sleep on it last night!) but they didn’t have any decent King Duvet covers (I checked TJ Maxx too.) So we need a Duvet cover, another sheet set and a Down Comforter. I was all set to order the down comforter on Overstock when I started reading the reviews, many of which said that some of the baffles had NO filling in them!

Do you have a favorite source for nice but reasonably priced bedding?

After a blissful night’s sleep last night (even Jasper seemed to sleep more soundly on the new bed!) I have to say that I’m thrilled with our decision, even though I’m still recovering a bit from the sticker shock!!

(I even once had a relationship ending fight over Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts..so I think you can see that this is a topic near and dear to my heart!)

I LOVE the rich bold taste of the french press I make at home, but Jeff thinks it tastes like sludgey jet fuel and he’s usually out of the house anyway by the time I wander downstairs and make my daily pot.  So it was Jeff that had the idea that he wanted a Keurig so that he could make himself a quick cup to go on his way out the door every morning.

For Christmas I got him one of the models that came with a sampler pack and also the Gloria Jean “Cappucino” box figuring it would be stronger than the other blends… and then I tried some. All I can say is EWWW!  I found every variety  either heavy with some sort of flavoring as if they’d dumped in too much of those international flavored coffee mate creamers or just entirely too week or bitter!

The ONLY k-cup in the sampler pack that I found to be decent was the Newman’s own extra bold organic. Which is nice because I prefer to drink organic coffee.  So I went onto amazon to order some of that figuring I’d use it on particularly bleary mornings when I didn’t want to deal with cleaning out the french press.

But you know what? Convenience is a powerful thing.. I found myself reaching for the k-cups pretty much every morning!  So I HAD to find a k-cup that I loved. Thankfully, the amazon reviews steered me towards this:

Coffee People Jet Fuel K-Cups for Keurig Brewers (Pack of 50)

Yum!!!

It’s rich, it’s bold and it even has subtle chocolate undertones.. not in an artificial flavor sort of way though. I just wanted to post about it in case any of you were in a similar quest for a good (k) cup of joe I might save you some trouble.   If you have any other kcups you’ve tried and loved, let me know!

Hope you all have a great weekend..Next week I’ll be doing a series of posts leading up to my trip to ImagingUSA (I’m so excited!!)

Anyway, Jasper was as happy as a clam playing football in the park with the guys.. except he kept interrupting the game so he could hold the football:

Jasper is really good at throwing and catching, but what he REALLY likes to do is kick.  Yep, he knows where the money is! Here he is lining it up:

And the kick:

Check out that form! The follow through, the head tuck.. mommy is of course thinking college football scholarship,  but I guess we’ll wait and see how pop warner goes. With Jasper’s antipathy for any group activities, it could be a disaster. Though as kicker he’d be the lone wolf that he likes to be! Plus, mommy won’t have to have a heart attack every time he gets tackled.

here is my favorite shot of Daphne from the day:

and my overall favorite:

(These were all shot with my 70-200 which doesn’t leave my camera if I’m outdoors – I dread the winter when I will have to make do with mere mortal lenses!)

So anyway, the beautiful weekend was marred only by the fact that a) I lost my favorite necklace to the apartment elves and b) Jasper Jeff & I all caught Madeline’s cold.  I was the worst off, I’ve been in a Nyquil induced haze the entire week and haven’t had the energy to string two sentences together!   Of course the timing sucks because now I’m a little worried that the cold will leave Jasper with some residual congestion or worse yet, water in his ears that will make flying miserable.. also, I have SO much to do photography wise before we leave 8 days from now and I’m so burnt out.

People email and ask me how I do it all, balance family, photography, day job, templates etc. The truth is that there isn’t really any balance, I work way too hard.   I get very little sleep as I am up most nights until 1am editing photos, and my relationship with Jeff suffers because I’m always on my computer.   It’s kind of miserable really, so much that I actually slightly dread each booking.  Part of me wants to raise my prices to the point that almost no one can afford me, that way I’d only do a few shoots a year!  But then I worry my blog will be too desolate, and my skills will get rusty.   So for now I guess I will just look forward to the inevitable winter month slow down, which has it’s own challenges like: what to do about a studio space?

I no longer want to shoot on 53″ paper in our dining room/Jasper’s playroom. I HATE having clients over to the house.  Having to clean it,  make sure Jeff & Jasper aren’t around, having to move the furniture etc.. I just don’t have the energy anymore.   So I’ve been pondering renting a space, but am not sure I have the volume (or want the volume!) necessary to sustain it.

So there is are my thoughts for the day (week!) I am no superwoman.  I am sick, burnout, tired and sooooo in need of the vacation we have planned for next week!

But, here’s the good news.. I DO have big plans for a blog revitalization project after I return with two AWESOME giveaways, one for a copy of LR3 and one for a gorgeous camera bag.  So please, if you can just bear with me  I promise I’ll do better in the fall than I have done in the summer!

Most of you know that I am madly in love with my Canon 70-200L f/2.8 IS II, it doesn’t leave my camera when I’m shooting outdoors. But indoors, it can be too long so I decided to use my completely neglected 24-70mmL f/2.8.

Since buying it, I actually have reached for my Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 over the canon because I noticed that I seemed to have a harder time nailing focus with the Canon. But a recent session that I used the Tamron left me less than thrilled so I recommitted to “figuring out” the canon 24-70, which is why I pulled it out for these Jasper shots.

When it nails focus, it is EXCELLENT:

The key word is “when.”   There were a bunch of soft shots, and I think I know why, and why many people say they need to “learn to love” the 24-70.

It’s a strange thing, to need to “learn to love”  a $1000+ lens, shouldn’t it rock your world out of the box?

So, this is my theory with the lens..

Most of us that upgrade to the 24-70 are coming either from a cheaper zoom like the Tamron OR from a  prime like the 50mm or 30mm. Those lenses have one thing in common: they are FEATHER light compared to the 24-70.

What that means is that you can shoot at lower shutterspeeds  and not get much if any camera shake.  But enter the 24-70 (known in the industry as “the beast”) and whoa, it’s heavy and my test shots show that I need to crank the shutterspeed up to at least 250 to beat the shake!

Now, that is all well and good on a full frame camera, but on a crop sensor that kind of blows because you are already battling with noise at ISOs as low as 400, if you need to use a really high shutterspeed too you will need to crank that ISO even higher and introduce even more noise!

Which is why I think if you have a crop sensor camera, you’re better off sticking with the Tamron or primes and save the 24-70 for if/when you upgrade to full frame.

Now the 70-200 is so heavy it makes the 24-70 feel like a cream puff, but the difference is that the 70-200 is stabilized and I almost NEVER miss focus with it.  Rumor has it that canon will be introducing a stabilized version II of the 24-70 and I think THAT would be a lens worth owning on a crop or a full frame body!

As usual, these are merely my opinions based on my experiences with these different pieces of glass, if you have any opinions, thoughts or questions I’d love to hear them!

Oh, and here is a shot of  Jasper after his haircut:

Yep- missed focus with that one!  More importantly, I miss his curls!! :(

Thought some of you might like to enter. The grand prize is $2500 cash, and three other prizes of $500 towards Sigma gear could come in REALLY handy to get the 30 mm 1.4 (first lens I ever fell in love with) or to put towards the highly anticipated 70-200 OS coming this August!

While most of the rides weren’t appropriate for the under two set, there was  of course a carousel:

and the “Jalopy” train which jasper did NOT want to get out of!

and LOTS to look at:

In fact, they had all sorts of fun crazy things they never had when we were kids, like a pool of water and these giant clear beach ball looking things that people go inside and “walk” which looks like a hampster running on a wheel.

And this bungee thing where you get strapped in and jump incredibly high into the air:

The night ended on a great note when Jasper and Jeff hit the hammer to ring the bell:

and won the coolest prize – a blue light Saber!

I think going to the “carmelo” will become a great summer family tradition.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Apparently every study ever done that has attempted to measure the relative happiness level of couples with children vs. couples without has concluded that the child free couples are universally more measurably happy.

The article also discusses how every parent instinctively rejects this notion outright, but still the evidence piles up.. apparently the stresses of parenting on an every day basis cause all sorts of stress, depression and marital strife.

Having experienced the marital strife first hand, I can certainly understand the premise.  Attending to the every whim of an often ungrateful, uncooperative unRELENTING little being is often thankless.. and yet, no parent regrets having their children!  Which is another observation the article makes – people tend to regret NOT having children but not the other way around. Which leads the author to conclude that there is some immeasurable transcendent satisfaction that we get out of childrearing – it’s just not always evident in the day to day drudgery that parenting can be at times.

I’m curious how having children has effected your own happiness and the state of your marriage/relationships?

I don’t think I’m necessarily “happier” but I am more fulfilled.  And obviously I can’t imagine life without Jasper!  But did it almost kill my marriage? Yes.  Do I refer to the Jasper’s first year as the “dark ages”? Yep.  Honestly, the thought of doing it all over again is terrifying to me, even though every time I see an under 1 year old my ovaries ache..a lot.