Our Olympian & Recent Family Photos

Kailie had her last day of gymnastics on Monday and we were excited that the instructor gave our medals this year. Kailie was thrilled. We have watched some Olympic Youtube videos of gymnasts over the past couple of months to encourage her in her hard work and to prep for the Summer Games this summer so she was excited to get a medal of her own.

Kailie has always been ahead of the game verbally and in many things she does, and gymnastics has been a great way for her to learn that some things take a lot of hard work and struggle. I hope to find another class for her in Washington shortly after we arrive to keep some familiarity and to encourage her to keep working at improving. 

Jaron continues to be a busy, busy boy and rarely stops to rest. He is definitely exhausting, but pretty stinking cute so that usually makes up for it. He is continuing his diaper modeling career, although I am having a harder time capturing him (or the diaper) without it being a complete blur. I am working on learning how to capture him crisply in motion on my manual mode journey.

Speaking of manual mode, I am still chugging along teaching myself as I go and I am really enjoying it! So much that I already have half a dozen new lenses on my "someday" list and I was drooling over a Nikon D7000 at the store the other day. I know I have a lot to learn and a long way to go, but I think I am doing pretty well for three weeks on manual mode and teaching myself through trial and error. I really want to take a digital photography class once we move to Washington and perhaps a Photoshop course as well. 

We finally got our photos back from our family shoot almost a month ago, and some of them turned out darling. Others are just so-so, but mainly in the me department. I must have lost more weight over the past few weeks than I realized, at least in my face...either that or I'm really good at taking pictures of myself from angles to look skinnier (see picture from yesterday, below). The scale is not telling me I'm shedding pounds, but perhaps the muscle I'm gaining is taking up less space!