Awesome Bokeh!

A couple weeks ago, I got to take pictures at the LDS Portland Temple and a wedding reception of one of the Young Women I taught about 7 years ago! I was very excited and very nervous - doing wedding pictures is a BIG deal. I didn't want to screw them up. I thought it would be fun to rent a lens or two to make the pictures even better and I found the one I want to use the $$ I made from that day. It's the Canon fixed 85mm f/1.8 lens and these are a few pictures I took of Angela with it. I just love the bokeh (the blur in the background - I am a photography nerd) that this lens creates. It is so nice for portraits. It was a ton of fun to use at the wedding, as was the $1700, 70 -200 f/2.8L lens!(FYI - more expensive than my camera) That one will take a while longer to save up for! And the wide angle 10-22 mm lens was awesome. Another one I'll have to save up for! Drat - I need about $20,000 to get all the photography toys I want. Maybe I could win the lottery. I'll post a few pics from the wedding later...

We were in the neighborhood...

We had a wonderful visit last month from my grandparents and aunt Ann who were so nice to make a special stop to see us on their quest to the Redwoods. We had a great afternoon visiting, showing them the house and smelling the roses - literally - together. (o: Natalie and Sarah were excited the whole week and kept asking when grandma and grandpa "artist" were coming. (My grandma painted a beautiful painting we have hanging in our front room - thus the nickname from Natalie - to distinguish them from the other grandma and grandpa Thorup.)After all the visiting and playing in the backyard, we worked up an appetite for dinner. We headed to IHOP and had a wonderful time chatting over pancakes! The girls were gems and LOVED being with great grandma and grandpa and aunt Ann. At one point during the night, Angela got hurt and was very sad. I went to gather her up and see if she was okay, but she didn't want me - she reached out for grandpa! I think she got lots of points from grandpa for that one! (o: Thanks for coming to see us grandma and grandpa and Ann - we love you!

It all begins with a line...

Angela LOVES to draw alongside her big sisters. Up until recently she would mostly color on coloring book pages and draw circles and scribbles. Suddenly she has blossomed into another budding artist just like the big girls. She drew her first "person" this month and she draws whole families of them now. They are about the cutest drawings I've ever seen. She draws big eyes, a flat straight-lined mouth and with our encouragement, she started drawing eyelashes and straight legs. Every one of her people is carefully drawn and she can tell us who each one is in the family - often the pictures include a grandma or grandpa. She is so proud of herself and loves drawing even more with Sarah and Natalie.

A Whole New World

Well, I have been humming and hawing over doing a blog for a few months now. You might notice that my only other posts are clear back in February when I toyed with the idea of doing a blog, rather than my Preece Post e-mails. Well, life has gotten crazy enough that I think this will be the most realistic way for me to continue keeping in touch with all you awesome people. (o:

I have a few issues with doing blogs - like not having as much control over what the blog looks like - I'll figure that out later. I have other issues: worrying about privacy, having backups of my entries and being able to make a hard copy, etc. But the main goal of my Preece Posts was to keep a family history and keep friends and family up to date with our "goings on". Since the Preece Post takes so long to compile, it is becoming fewer and farther between... So short story long - I'm entering a whole new world of communication. I am now officially, a BLOGGER. I hope it will work well. I've done the Preece Post for 5 years straight and I guess I am a bit resistant to change, but here goes...