Stevens Family Photos: Take 2

As you may recall, this past summer I tried to take some family pictures. You also may remember that it didn’t turn out so hot. I was extremely excited to try it again; we finally had all of our family here, and I thought I had learned a thing or two from the last time. Turns out I didn’t.

WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE SOMEBODY ELSE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING TAKE YOUR FAMILY PICS…INSTEAD OF DOING IT YOURSELF:

1) A person who knows what they are doing will make sure to get entire body parts in the shot-

 

instead of cutting off a foot in what could have been a truly beautiful picture…or a baby’s head.

2) Somebody who knows what they are doing can create beautiful and natural poses and smiles-

instead of getting the Village People,

 

or having the husband call out at the last minute, “everybody smile!” when you had just told everybody to make a funny face…yeah. I look like the moron in that one

3) Somebody who knows what they are doing can get the perfect lighting-

as opposed to having extreme lights and extreme shadows on the family (duh)…

or even better, having a rainbow crotch. There is never a good reason for a rainbow crotch. Never….Never. Ever.

…And trying to fix it doesn’t help much…

4) Somebody who knows what they are doing can ensure everybody is looking at the camera, and at least trying to smile-

and NOT doing any of the following:

going to the bathroom,

looking angry,

or trying to fall asleep/close their eyes in the picture.

 

5) Somebody who knows what they are doing can line up a picture correctly-

and does not let one member of the family think they are cooler than the rest.

6) Last of all (and this is an important one), a person who knows what they are doing will make sure the picture is in focus-

which is the opposite of not being in focus. In my defense; I always lined up the picture and made sure it was in focus before I went and got in the picture. The problem is, one of my little darlings thought it would be a good idea to unscrew my entire tripod and then try and put it back together. Ever since then, no matter how hard I try, I cannot get it to hold the camera completely steady when it has my bigger lens on it. In these pictures I thought I had it in a good spot; but unbeknownst to me, it slid ever so slightly once I left, and this is what we ended up with; a bunch of garbage (sigh).

And somebody who knows what they are doing knows that sometimes crying is cute!

Now. The following eight pictures out of the 400+ I’ve taken in the past week I can live with. Keep on swimming, keep on swimming… Some day I shall conquer the stupid camera. And I apologize for the double picture, but I wasn’t sure which one I liked better.

Snapshot of Summer: June-Sept.

Note: a few things we did this summer are not mentioned here because I’ve already blogged about them (ie, 4th of July and PCMC). A couple are repeats from other posts, but most stuff is just random things we did between June and the middle of September.

Bravo Performance

Splash pad with cousins

Ear surgery: this was a sad day. Morgan had 6-8 ear infections with in about as many months, so we were told to do tubes. He wanted to have nothing to do with the little robe, or even the little stuffed animal they tried to give him. Also…if Morgan were to ever become a drunk, he would be a VERY angry one. He was thrashing around and yelling for quite a while after he came out of the surgery…

 

St. George/Tuachan/Fillmore/Magic show in Fillmore:

Air Show: Hill Air Force Base- Thunderbirds

Monsters-this is just randomness from the boys one boring day:

Cabellas/Day Reunion: our reunion was at a super fun park in Utah County. Lyd, Sav, and Jessica were the only ones who were not able to come. We played children’s games and water volley ball; had a picnic; and played on the playground

Rifle range

Rootbeer Float Stand: this was in an effort to help the boys raise a little money and understand the value of work. We were out there for four hours!!!…and made $8.00.

Rodeo: we went to the Ogden Pioneer Day rodeo this year. It was a ton of fun! And there was a beautiful rainbow during the show.

Sprinklers: this is a small representation. There was a lot of sprinklers happening this summer.

Cameron:

I know you all know Cameron was born…but here are some more random pics just for the grandmas and such.

Building: this has become Mason’s favorite activity. He loves to build temples, apartments, hotels…entire cities sometimes.

Putting in laminate: one day the kids thought it would be a good idea to draw a mural on our white carpet in the front room with permanent marker. So…we got new floor.

Ok…never mind…can’t find the picture of our new floor. It’s laminate wood looking.

Hot Air Balloon Show: this was pretty fun- it was up Nordic Valley over by Liberty. It was fun to be up and close to the balloons while they were being blown up and floating away. The boys loved it! I had to go feed Cam during the show, so we took some selfies

Wiggle cars: there was a lot of this that went on this summer also. This is our neighbor boy. It was raining on this particular occasion so they decided to put buckets on their heads. haha!

Preschool/Kindergarten- Boys are enjoying school for the most part so far

Comic Con: Ok- I know there has been a lot of complaint about how crowded it was, but Cameron and I had fun!!! Bought myself some men (heh heh); met Alan Tudyk (from Firefly and A Knight’s Tale); and generally just had a lot of fun people watching!

Curiosity Museum at Thanksgiving Point: this is a SUPER fun place! It is expensive, and you should plan to spend an entire day there. We were only able to spend a couple of hours, so would love to go again. We came here for my birthday after meeting my parents in Provo for lunch. These pics are horrible because I didn’t have my camera. They were taken with Rob’s phone. haha!

Riding Lawn Mower: for a couple weeks towards the end of August/beginning of September we had the fun of having a riding lawn mower. So. Much. Fun

It’s been a pretty rad summer! Wouldn’t change a thing