Week 15

The lawn got mowed for the first time yesterday, and today he worked on spraying the yard, hoping to get a head of the dandelions and the crabgrass. In past years, those pesky weeds have won the battle. Day 99

Joe has decided to "embrace" the camera. I think he secretly likes it... I don't get smiles, but I get wonderfully expressive faces like this one. His brother shows me the back of his head. Day 100

Last fall, Mark came in and said "We have a pond out by the road." Or maybe he said swamp…either way, it was wet. Our incoming water had sprung a leak, and several days and a few hundred dollars later (boy, the excavator looked EXPENSIVE when it showed up…) our water was fixed. But we were left with a nice pile of dirt... It was late enough in the year that there wasn't much that could be done, but tonight Mark decided to start tackling the ground. I took a ton fo pictures of the cat, the dogs, the trees, but I kept coming back to this shot as my favorite of all that I took today.

We're such mean parents: the boys are required to go throw the ball for at least 15 minutes before they turn on the PS3 or computer…I was reasonably confident that I wasn't going to get hit by the ball when I was standing in this location... Day 102

I don't quite know how I managed it, but I walked out and told the boys I needed to be able to take pictures of their faces, so I could play with some camera settings. They actually AGREED. Without complaint. I told them they didn't have to smile, in fact, I didn't want them to, I just wanted their faces. I did a little retouching on this one, cleaning up a few obvious blemishes and tweaked the exposure just a bit. I love these boys' eyes. Day 103

I was going to just pick the picture of Will for today, but decided I couldn't stand not including one of the close-ups of Joe, too.

When we bought this property 7 years ago, it had some trees, but not nearly enough. Mark has planted a LOT of trees, and some have done well…some are trying to grow in sand…some got blown down in the Wind Storm of 2011…one got run over by a boy riding an ATV (but that one is actually thriving…). This is the first year that any of the new ones have seeds. I'm pretty sure those seeds have popped out in the last 3 days, because I don't remember them from the last time I was out there trying to take pictures of trees! Day 104

I got this Lego Robot in the mail a few days ago, but I forget to get it out and "play" with it. He makes a pretty good model while I take 40+ shots playing with metering and different exposure settings. I think he was beginning to wonder why so many of the shots were bad. I assured him it was me, not him. That, and the bad light. DAY 105