Note on 02/04/14 - My apologies all - I am VERY behind on my editing and posting! I promise I've not quit the project though! More details later!

So this was another of those days where I picked my son up from school then decided to drive around nearby looking for inspiration.  Boy did I find it!  I realize I already posted a picture of deer, but this time as I drove by I spotted a large herd in a pasture accompanied by four bucks, two of which were locking antlers.  As my luck would have it though, once I drove around and pulled up to where I could swap lenses and get a picture the bucks had moved toward the back of the pasture and over a bit of a hill to where their legs look cropped in my pictures, which really bugs me :-/  They also stopped locking antlers for the most part, though when I looked at my pictures later I was happy to see that I got one, except they are mostly obscured by the hill. I still cropped and posted it as proof though, lol ^.^ 

See! Proof! :) I had to seriously crop this though because they'd moved pretty far back, and I wish their antlers weren't so obscured by the trees. 

A photo of Dekker's hand as he napped in his crib. :)

We were celebrating the birthdays of my niece and my brother when Dekker discovered the balloons!  We had so much fun watching him chase this big yellow one and spend a very long time trying to get a helium balloon down to his level by pulling the attached string.

Later that night I also decided to try another go at shooting the moon.  I took the Sunny 16 Rule advice (and used a little help from Google) to get it properly exposed this time and was thrilled not to have the moon blown out! However, I was disappointed that the surrounding clouds weren't visible in the shot, especially since they really added to the beauty of the scene. It seems if I want the clouds to show up I have to blow out the moon, and if I want good detail on the moon I have to lose the clouds (there weren't a lot of them this time around).  Anyone know how to get both?  Oh it probably goes without saying but I cropped the moon image quite a bit.  By the time I got my settings right it had moved higher in the sky and wasn't quite as big and bold as when it first came over the horizon, and the article I found online said it was better to crop than over zoom for detail. 

I was running short on inspiration so visited my brother and sister-in-law's apartment in our basement for some new material :) I liked the look of this strand of lights against the dark wood bookcase and red wall, though I go back and forth as to whether I'd like it better with the strand being sharper overall. 

I think I need to stop taking so many pictures in one day, it makes it difficult to choose which one(s) to edit and share! I had a picture of my friend's horse wearing a nice black dressage bridal and I really liked the end result... except I chopped off the bottom curve of the reins and it really bugged me! Anyway, while she was riding I went looking for things to take pictures of, and got this glimpse of the trainers' western tack. Then later just before we left I met this chestnut horse that had been turned out in the arena. 

When I picked my son up from school I hadn't taken my photo of the day yet so we decided to drive by the house I grew up in to look for inspiration. It didn't take us long, because on the way we stumbled upon a herd of approximately 20 deer in the trees!  Four of them were even right by the road! My lens makes it look further but the closest deer pictured below may have been 5 to 10 feet away from my car. :)

Dekker has recently learned how to stick out his tongue (usually mimicking us), and I just think it is so stinkin' cute!  He will often put his little hands up and feel his face after he does as if he's making sure he's doing it right. I love it! ^.^

What can I say? It's still winter.

My husband had been playing on the kitchen floor with our boys for a while before I had him gather them for this pic in front of the fridge.  I took some other photos of him wrestling the older boy while the younger keeps bringing him a kazoo wanting him to blow in it.  I might just have to make a collage of those for grins ^.^

On another note, I wish I'd had the baby put down the Magna Doodle, but you have to catch them while you can and that would have made him cry! I find it distracting but thought it would look awkward if I tried to edit it out :-/

I tried editing this picture at least 10 different ways before settling on what you see below.  Cyrus was heading to bed so I decided to get a photo of him in his dinosaur-themed room on his loft bed wearing his dinosaur pajamas.  I really struggled with the lighting, partly because his walls are predominantly orange and his ceiling light is dim and yellow (not until I'm typing this now did it occur to me to use a speed light >.< doh!).  One of my other pet-peeves for my photography is splotchy/uneven light on my subject's face, and that was the case with each of my pictures of him!  That and there was just too much color and busyness and yellow in the original, and the black and white and the sepia just weren't doing it for me. I know this picture doesn't "pop" (though I do like the contrast of his pjs against the rest) but I just liked the softer, more muted colors and tones, that and I felt it created a mood more suitable to bedtime.