Cora 3 months!

Cora is 3 months yesterday! So many changes. Over 10 pounds, grabbing everything around, drooling like crazy, eating like a champ, sleeping longer and so smiley! 

Ann and Michael's Baby shower!

Congrats Ann and Michael! Here are a few pictures from the baby shower in late January, 2015.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsk81BxrR

Cora's First Thanksgiving!

I am very late on posting this, but here's a link to some pictures from our first Thanksgiving with Cora!

https://flic.kr/s/aHsk5VmRK4

Folk Fest 2014

Folk Fest has come and gone again. I was happy to go and practice some more with the camera. Odd lighting, fast movements and far away seating all provided ample challenges. A lot of manual settings and a bit of color tweaking in post processing helped bring some pictures to life. Here a few of them.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wessmith82/sets/72157648361326828/

BBQ and friends

A little celebration with friends and family. Thanks Scott for hosting and everyone for being there and for your generosity and support.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wessmith82/sets/72157648173846571/

Shady Grove YMCA 5k

A friend and YMCA director asked me to take some pictures of a 5k race they were hosting. I have been trying to better my photography skills, so this was a great opportunity to test some things out. I took a lot of pictures and some came out pretty well. Here's a link to the set.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wessmith82/sets/72157648236190805/

Jared/Karen/Wes Birthday party at Bryan Park

A few pictures I took at our birthday party!  Some baby pics, dog pics and hanging out with friends.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wessmith82/sets/72157646347140125/

Happy 2014!

It's mid January now. Hope your year is starting off well. We've been busy getting the garden ready for early spring. We had dirt delivered after I made a couple raised beds. Each bed is 8 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 16 inches deep.

When I built it, I didn't think 16 inches was all that deep. After filling them with dirt, all I could think was "that's a lot of dirt!" so I think it worked out well. I put chicken wire on the bottom of the raised beds to keep moles out. We put ground cover around the edges of the beds to keep the grass and weeds from creeping into the beds. We have PVC piping on the inside of the beds to allow longer, thinner PVC pipes to bend over the bed which will hold up some clear plastic sheets to make a greenhouse effect for the beds.

We built a fire pit and added a rain collection barrel we got for Christmas. We've been busy with work, school and hobbies and fun projects. Here are a few pictures.

Flickr

I got a new camera recently, as a wedding gift from my parents. It's an Olympus E-PL5. It's a small camera that can switch lenses. I like the idea of a DSLR, but know I'm not willing to tote around a full size professional camera. This one is small enough (for me) to carry around, with the advantage over a point and shoot or iPhone camera of being able to have quality, removable, interchangable lenses. Not to mention it has a great sensor and can do nearly as much as a full size DSLRs. I'm just starting to learn and have been enjoying the process. I'm fidling with setting and filters and trying out some post processing applications on trial basis like Aperature and Lightroom to see which one I like. I've been posting pictures on my newly created flickr page. I also added some of our wedding pictures, which were taken by Paul Reitano, a good friend and great photographer! If you'd like to see all of them, go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/106896102@N02/sets/

Vote for Layla!

Layla wants you to vote for her in the couch dog contest. Click the link and maybe she'll win a new couch!