Backed up three years

Oh, the bygone days of the film camera...buy a massive 36-exposure roll of film, snap away, and if you want to see the pictures you MUST take them to get developed. The ease and simplicity is nostalgic and attractive.
Now, we all have our snooty, flashy digital cameras. We think we're soo professional and fancy. But what we are actually doing is creating more work for ourselves. Instead of the measly 3-step process associated with the film camera (put film in, take pictures, develop...gratification) we have created a 5+ step process by owning a digital camera (charge battery, load memory card, take pictures, load on to computer, photoshop the good ones optional, arrange in semi-coherent manner for storage, store, send pics to be developed - this adds the additional step of uploading your pics to their site). This is insanity! Maybe I only feel this way because I've just finished sorting through 3 years of pictures that were downloaded to our computer, never put in any reasonable order and never developed. Needless to say, I'm making shutterfly very happy this month with my over 300 picture order. After sorting, arranging and uploading over 1000 pictures spanning 3.25 years these are some of my favorites:

Brynley daydreaming

Sydney afraid we're leaving her in the tent

The girls and daddy wrestling

Brynley seeing Sydney for the 1st time

Sydney bundled up at a soccer game

Fall picture of Brynley

Sydney in the park (9 months old)

Fuzzy head Sydney (4 months old)

Brynley playing in the rain (2 yrs)

By the way, we did actually go to Hawaii

Above: Akaka Falls Below: Syd at the luau

Brynley, the mermaid

Awesome beach

Just had all the pictures on Zach's Mac, not on the desktop. He switched them over for me this week, so I can tell you about the vacation we took six months ago. It was fun, and as usual, too short - which is always the case with vacations. We went to the big island again. Brynley's favorite part was seeing lava pour into the ocean at night. Sydney pretty much loved the sand and ocean and the occasional friendly sea turtle. Zach and I loved not being in Bolivar for a while and feeling like we could chill out a bit.

the top picture is the girls under a banyan tree. this one is of Waipio Valley, where a lot of taro is grown. It is a breathtaking sight.

The girls and I at the luau.

Brynley and Syd playing while the adults took turns snorkeling.

Yes, there a now wild turkeys in Hawaii. We were a bit confused as to why there were wild turkeys wandering the golf course behind our condo, but my dad let us know that the Wild Turkey Federation had just begun bringing wild turkeys to Hawaii.

Fall pictures....

were a BIG LET DOWN!! WE had soooo much rain - so between days when I was subbing and days when it was raining we had about 2 days to choose from to take pictures. Then, we get to the park, take a few warm-ups and as the sun was hitting the right spot...BAM...dead battery. How did we not check that before we left? Please enjoy the few not quite salvagable pictures we took.

Halloween 2009

This year the girls both decided they wanted to be Disney princesses. Big surprise, I know. After choosing and changing her mind nearly 10 times, Brynley was set on being Cinderella and Sydney chose to be her favorite, Sleeping Beauty. My mom sewed these both in about 36 hours on a whirlwind visit to their house. I helped a bit; maybe I can help more next year (if I am feeling crazy enough to do this again). Here are some pictures of the evening. The pumpkin was Zach’s masterpiece. He carved a fancy Cinderella against his better judgment, but it looks cool.

Our favorite dog

With Zach needing to work so much during August, the girls and I went to my parents house 3 of the 5 weekends this month. After we leave they miss grandma & papa and ask to go back, but the one getting the most requests from them is this guy:

His name is Chewbaca (my parents got him already named), but we call him Chewy or Choo-Choo. His is the most patient and gentle dog, Sydney has tested him out several times and he has never even snapped at her. He may be ugly, but he's a good dog.

A Momentus Occasion

Today we had a milestone day...Brynley lost her first tooth! She actually pulled it herself (not in bravery, she just couldn't stop fiddling with it). It was a blessing that little tooth came out the way it did, because Brynley had been very worried about how the tooth would eventually be taken out of her mouth. It popped out on the way home from a short run to Wal Mart. Check out her new, jack-o-lantern grin:

We're getting pretty late into summer, but when I had the chance to go visit my parent's farm again last weekend the opportunity to take some summer pictures of the girls was open. Clearly, I'm not a professional photographer, but around Bolivar there aren't a terribly large amount of prof. photographers that are very good and the ones that are good require a dowry-size payment for one or two photos. So, I'll keep snapping the photos myself and see if they gradually improve as time goes on. There aren't many of Sydney, as she would much rather chase the dogs or dig in the dirt than sit still for a picture. We'll get more of her later when daddy is available to help out.