Hospital visit

8am we had an appointment at the UofU hospital.
Everything went well and we're doing ok. Becky just needs to rest and take it easy due to the pain.
Becky & I are sad but we'll be ok. The doctor said we can try again in 6-8 weeks. We drove over to Grandma's house to have lunch with the kids and then we went home. Becky rested and I went out with Emily & Parker to get my mind on other things.
The kids had a lot of fun.

Parker's Trophy

Today was Parker's last game of the season.

Emily gets a trophy

Sean called me and wanted a shot of the catwalk where they were laying fiber optic cable.

In the evening Emily had her last game of the season but she already wants to sign up for the fall. She loves soccer.


She was so excited to receive her trophy.



Parker even played a really good game.

One bleep bleep day

I had to take some photos today for work. Mayan stuff
and Spaghetti Mama's.
First I had to make sure Sean was still up for being in my "Family" photo. He told me he had to back out because he was having some kind of "Bleep bleep day"...

but Kristy was able to convince him otherwise. He was not going to be disappointed.

I also found out that the only reason he was down was because nobody has given him a Fish Card in a while. His FISH TANK is empty.

Sean had to meet with Dick (probably to discuss the empty FISH TANK).
I think Dick gave him some Fish Cards because after the meeting he was a lot happier.


At around 3:30pm we met at Spaghetti Mama's for the photo shoot.

They brought out drinks first, including two specialty drinks! We only got to try one of them though...
Kayzin poured the other one into Brandi's purse.


They had to move to another table.


Kayzin didn't seem to mind...


but Sean on the other hand...


The waitress thought the kids might calm down with some happy chicken nuggets.


She was wrong, the calming effect wore off after a few seconds.



After a little over a dozen photos I got one shot that looks pretty good.
This is the one!



I had fun. Sean & Brandi said they can't wait to go out as a family again.
Sean gives family time at Spaghetti Mama's Two Thumbs Up!

It's a definite must do!

Dream Girl

"I like her hair and her dress and how she's holding the corn like that." Parker told me.
He fell asleep with the bag in his arms.

3x3 is 9 3x7 is 21 3x10 is 30

Stayed home with Parker and did laundry and dishes. Becky and Emily went to a wedding shower. Parker & I played Star Wars Lego, Oblivian and Cyber Claw. Then we practiced multiplication. Parker knows how to times by 3 all the way up to 10. I'm amazed!

A look behind the curtain

For Thomas, Kristy and anybody else who is interested.

On July 21 I posted this photo:

and this is the original

You might've noticed that the original has no clouds. Mother nature wasn't making clouds that day so I decided to add in clouds myself.

I'm a huge fan of clouds. 

1st you need clouds. If I ever see clouds I like, I snap them and keep them on file for later.

For this photo I used these clouds.

I use Adobe Photoshop CS3. If you have an older version of Photoshop you should still be able to follow along. You might even be able to blend in clouds using Barney's Pixel Fun. I can't be 100% sure though since I don't use B.P.F.

2nd step - Using the Move Tool in Photoshop drag the clouds onto the building.

Position them however you like them and then switch the blending mode on your Layers palette to Darken.

Now, depending on your image you may need to edit your clouds a little. Plus, from my experience, this trick only works with photos that have a white sky. Since the sky in my factory photo is completely washed out it worked perfectly. 

I added the clouds this way because I wanted to keep it easy. Although you could add clouds in a different way. There are usually several different ways to manipulate something, it just depends on the photo you're working with.

If you have a photo like this
here's another way to edit in a different sky.

Open up a vertical cloud photo out of your cloud photo archive and drag the cloud photo onto the tree photo using the Move Tool.


If you don't have a cloud photo archive you should really start making one.

Now take the Magic Wand tool and select the blue sky. Simply click anywhere in the blue area.

If you click to make your selection and some of the sky wasn't selected, like in this photo where the branches divide the sky into sections, then go up to Select and choose Similar and all other colors similar to your selection will become selected.




Now, with the cloud layer active hit Apple + J to move your cloud selection up into its own layer. On a PC it's Control + J.

Then go to your Layers palette and turn off the original cloud image that you dragged in by simply clicking off the eyeball on the left of the layer.

and voilà!

24th

The day started with pancakes.


Today isn't just Pioneer Day, it's also Sean's birthday.
So Thomas and I walked over to see him for a little bit.




Kayzin didn't want me to leave.


Josh didn't want to leave either, he wanted to go to the playground.


We didn't go to the park... and Josh wasn't happy about that.
Before the parade I said hi to Owen, but he feared for his life.





The Parade!


More to come...













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