So yesterday (or was that two days ago?) I decided that I wanted to experiment with taking pictures with a black background. Of course I needed someone to photograph, so I graciously volunteered Heidi. I took her picture, and then edited them in Photoshop. Here are some of the results:











To show you an example of how much you can do with Photoshop, here are the before and afters of one of the pictures.

Before:
After:

Pretty cool, huh?

Ben and I just got back from the beach last weekend and we had a blast! Our beach house was great, the weather was amazing, and the people we went with were so much fun!

Every morning we girls would go for a walk along the beach (either together, or if we got up at different times, separately), looking for beach glass. There was a lot of it this year.



On Sunday night, Elizabeth C. and I (with a lot of help from everyone else!) pulled off a surprise anniversary dinner for Mr. and Mrs. C. We went out shopping before we left, and sneaked the food and decorations down in the van and trailer without them suspecting anything. Mr. and Mrs. S and Mr. and Mrs. A did a fantastic job of keeping Mr. and Mrs. C away for two hours while we made dinner and the girls decorated the house. I was not expecting to be able to pull it off, but it turned out really well!


I loved having my camera down there - all the kids are so cute and so much fun to take pictures of!!

Almost every afternoon the older kids and dads (and Mr. S :) would go down to the beach and play football. We've tried playing it for the last two years, but I never understood how to play (I have never been a football fan!). For some reason, it seemed to click with me this year and I actually semi-understood what I was supposed to do :). So it became part of our daily routine. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and no one (except Mr. C - his whole leg is still purple...) got hurt too badly.

Lizzy and Dave!



These are only a preview of all the pictures I took, but they give you an idea of what our week was like. I was ready to come home by the end of the week, but I can't wait to go back next year!