Some lessons are hard to learn. And expensive.

The past couple of days have been rough for me. But I guess I've learned a lot. It all started when Spencer asked me to videotape his class play about geology, since Dave couldn't be there. No problem, I thought. But I knew the memory card for my camcorder was almost full, so I spent several hours the morning of the play trying to download some of the video to my computer. I had 5 hours on my internal memory, but I'd never been able to download it because my computer's CD Rom doesn't work and I couldn't install the software to read the video. I'd recently started taping on a memory card, but it was almost full too. So I deleted some videos from my internal memory - mostly mistakes from when the camera was accidentally left on. This freed up plenty of space for the play, but then I had to switch from recording onto the memory card to the internal memory. I was frantically trying everything I could (it was almost time for the play to begin and I didn't know where the owner's manual was), and I pushed a button that I thought was switching to internal memory when in fact I was reformatting the internal memory, completing wiping out 5 hours of video spanning the last 9 months of our life. This includes vacations, the family reunion, Christmas and most importantly Levi's birth and first four months of life. I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach and I freaked out. I tried not to think about it because every time I did I got mad at myself. I'd think of specific scenes I'd lost and feel bad that I could never see them. I talked to Kristen, who said she recently learned in her camera class that things that are deleted aren't gone, they're just inaccessible until they've been recorded over. I called the camera store, and they said they only did cameras, not camcorders. I spent hours on google, called camera and computer stores, and they all said the same thing - they didn't have the ability to retrieve it, or it was impossible and no one could do it. Ellen said if there's one thing she's learned watching crime detective shows it's that things are never gone. Some forensics lab somewhere could recover it. Christopher suggested I ask the police. I called Best Buy this morning and the Greek Squad guy told me it was gone forever and that it was impossible to recover it. I broke down and cried some more. Then I pulled myself together and continued my search. Finally I called some data recovery companies who said it might be possible. I'd have to mail my camcorder to them where they would have to open it up in a special clean room. They wouldn't charge me unless they were able to recover my data. But here's the thing - it's extremely expensive! I was thinking it'd be around $200. One place in Canada charges $450. One back East was $600. And one in Wisconsin was between $300-$400; he was the most helpful. He knew exactly what I'd done and what would be involved to retrieve it, citing an 80% chance of recovery. I got excited at the idea that it was even possible, but discouraged by the price. Dave thinks it's way too expensive and we don't ever look at our videos anyway. So I guess I will just keep it on there, never taping over it in case I can retrieve it some day.

We've been to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

Dave had a meeting in Santa Barbara last Saturday night (during an EFY dance), so we decided to make a family day of it and go to the zoo.

We spent a long time watching the gorillas. They always put on a good show.

Why is there such a huge difference in head size with this camera? I mean I know Dallin has a slightly larger head that Tyler, and he's a little closer to the camera, but come on. I think it might be the wide-angle lens that does it.It seems simple enough, but the boys LOVED sliding down this AstroTurf hill on cardboard in the play area. They did this for the longest time.

I told them now we don't need to go to the snow this year.

The kids were so determined to ride this silly train. But when we first got there the line for it was super long, so we decided to look at some animals first. They kept asking and asking when we were going to ride the train, until finally I just wanted to get it over with so we could enjoy the rest of our visit. I waited in the 40 minute line and called them when I was close.

Levi did great all day. He pretty much slept in the stroller the whole time, except when we took him out to go on the train.

I love how this elephant looks like it's just kickin' back with its foot up. They are such funny animals.

As we were leaving we kept passing workers who were putting the birds away for the night. It was a fun, relaxing day. After dinner I drove the boys home while Dave stayed for the meeting - then he drove a bunch of youth home in Kristen's 15 passenger van, getting in around 12:30. Thank goodness for Sunday afternoon naps.

Pinewood Derby

Well we survived another Pinewood Derby. We all especially liked Sean's popcorn car. Brennan couldn't get over it. He kept saying, "The car has popcorn on it!" and eating the ones that fell off after a few races.

Spencer's car did very well this year, coming in 4th place (although after the winners were announced he raced the 3rd place winner, his cousin Jacob, and won). But at least he got a box of candy. So he had a fun time and felt good about his car's performance. These things totally stress me out! Then I just sit there feeling bad for my wolves with their disappointed little faces when they lose.

Spencer won an award for funniest car, which was odd because he was going more for cool or scary. We thought the popcorn car was funny, but it won a different category.

Next year we'll have two cars in the race. Tyler is already drawing up his design.

Photo shoot tutorial

I didn't get interested in taking pictures until I had children. I had an old 35mm camera with no zoom, and all of my first pictures of Spencer were either blurry or too far away. I knew I had to get a new camera - one with zoom, and that made a huge difference. My pictures improved little by little through trial and error. A few years later Jen gave me a book about photographing babies, and I LOVED it. I'm sorry that I can't remember what it's called, and I'm not exactly sure where it is right now. But here are the main things I learned:

1. Get close. Then zoom in even closer. Babies are little, and the only way you can really capture their cuteness is to get super close. It's okay if part of the head gets cut off. The focus is the face.

This is a pretty cute picture, but you can't see Levi's face too well.

Much better!

2. Turn off the flash. I almost never use a flash - it washes out the face, distorts colors and makes everything look flat. There are external flashes and diffusers out there, but that's for fancier cameras.

3. Use indirect light (window, front/back porch, garage, under a tree, etc.). You may have noticed that the majority of my indoor shots are taken right next to my front window or sliding glass door. You don't want the sun shining directly on your baby, so a nice cloudy day like today was just perfect. And I know that we're often told to put the light in front of the subject and never behind him, but sometimes I like the look of light lining my baby's face in a profile view like the one above. You may lose some details in the shadows, but I love the contrast of light and dark.

4. Take LOTS of pictures! Now that most of us have digital cameras, it is super easy to take a gazillion shots. And the more pictures you take, the more likely you are to get a good one. Plus we can learn by trial and error much faster when we take bunches of pictures and can see them immediately.

5. Finally (and this is my tip, not the book's), have fun playing with your pictures. If you have one that didn't turn out so great because of lighting or something, don't immediately delete it. You may be able to salvage it later. For example Levi's forehead was slightly overexposed in this picture (it had that shiny look to it); but I liked it because he looked so cute sucking his thumb. So I converted it to black and white and increased the contrast for a dramatic effect.

You know it's time to stop when your baby gets fussy. My photo shoots are rarely planned. I just happen to notice that my baby is looking especially cute and happy and that the lighting is decent, and I take pictures quick before he gets tired/cranky.

River of water

After 5 straight days of rain, which was often very heavy with high winds, thunder, lightning and even hail, we woke up to blue skies and sunshine today. And as much as I love rainy weather, it was nice to have a little break. So we loaded up the boys and drove to the riverbed, which actually had water in it. Our town is dissected by the Salinas River, which is usually just an underground river that serves as our town's water source. The kids have been asking me all week to go there, since they've never actually seen it with water.

They got a tad wet and muddy while exploring, hiking, climbing and throwing rocks in the water. My boys love water, and I love the green hills. It's amazing what a little rain can do.

Dave visits Spencer's class

Spencer's class just finished a chapter about medicine in their reading book at school, and his teacher asked Dave to visit. I went along to help out and take pictures.

I thought he did an excellent job, and the kids were really captivated. He talked about proactive versus reactive medicine, and what they can do now to prevent diseases. They had written questions ahead of time, and he interspersed the answers to those along with interesting cases he has seen.

He spent a lot of time talking about the food pyramid and brought in a sample day of food for their age, so they could see how much a serving is of each group as well as good food choices. Spencer said no one wanted to eat their white bread sandwiches that day.

Then they broke up into groups and went around to different stations. Spencer manned the X-ray station. Yes, this X-ray is backwards. Of course Dave put a plug in about the dangers of smoking, especially since at least one of the X-rays showed serious lung damage from smoking.

I showed them how to use stethoscopes to listen to their hearts and lungs. They had a lot of fun with that. Spencer's teacher did the food table, Dave told more interesting cases at another station, and then the last table had test tubes showing the different amounts of fat and sugar in various foods. I told Dave he should hold onto his notes - he may be doing this again.

Random Updates

Brennan is finally feeling better after dealing with a yucky ear infection and a lymph node in his neck that was so big he couldn't move his head. No, he doesn't need eye protection to paint, but he sure wanted to wear them. Spencer had them out to work on his Pinewood Derby car, which they finished this weekend.

The boys love to get ahold of my camera. Tyler took this one of me and Levi.

Rain is always a big deal around here. It's going to be a wet week.

Levi has gotten into a good sleep pattern. He takes a morning nap, an afternoon nap and then 11-12 hours at night. That doesn't leave much time for playing, but he fits it in where he can.

Sometimes he can even hold his own toys. He sure loves his baths.