Piggies

Jillian finally has enough hair to do pig tails!

Well, sort of.

They aren't perfect.

  And I am definitely not the world's best toddler hairstylist.

Don't look at her extremely uneven part.

But I still think the piggies are cute!

Now I just need two bows the same color.  Don't pigtails need bows? :)

Birthday, Splash Pad, and Baseball

This post is a little late, but while we were at my parents house a couple of weeks ago we also celebrated Eli and my Dad's birthdays since they are only a day apart.

Eli wants to play drums just like Papa so they had a snare drum cake!

Eli - 3 years    Papa - 21 years

We also went to the Bentonville Square splash pad.  Jillian doesn't really like pools but she LOVES splash parks and sprinklers!

Eli had a little collision with another boy.  He got a little scrape and was very proud of his bandaid.

Sharing a snack.

Sister loves it when Daddy twrills her around!

My thoughtful boy.

We also fed the ducks at the park.  We actually did this twice because Eli likes it so much.  These particular ducks are slightly aggressive and will come right up to you if you have bread for them so we had to keep Eli from getting too close.

Daddy trying to keep sister from getting in the water.

Eli thinking about climbing across the bars on the playground.

Holding on for dear life!

Getting some help from Papa.

Eli loved going to the Arkansas Naturals game.  One of the players from the other team gave him a baseball.  He was in Heaven!

He was so excited about his balloon hat!  Unfortunately, the people sitting behind us were less than thrilled.

The whole family at the ballpark. (minus Jillian who was with a sitter.)

The kids got to run the bases after the game.  We weren't sure if Eli would make it that long but he was so good!  Here he is running the bases with Daddy.

Running from second to third.

Coming home!  See the huge grin on his face!  He had a great time!  We can't wait to go back to Meemie and Papa's house!

Edits

Of course, I could not resist editing a few of those manual pictures.  I always tell myself I'm just going to touch it up a little bit, but I end up trying lots of different combinations and not being able to make decision about what I like best.  Sometimes I like the edited pictures to be more drastic than the original, and sometimes I like the pictures to be softer.  That being said, I somehow managed to pick a few edits I liked and posted some Before/After pictures below.  What do you think??

Manual

So I've had my new camera since February.  Yes, I still call it my NEW camera.  lol  I have taken hundreds thousands of pictures since then, most of them on the auto setting.  My camera takes beautiful pictures on auto so I wasn't concerned with learning how to take pictures manually.  Plus, the manual setting was kind of scary!  Most of my pictures are of my kids, and if you have kids you know you only get once chance to get a shot.  I was always afraid I was going to miss my kids doing something really cute while fiddling with my camera settings.  Well, I'm getting over my fears!  Or at least I'm trying to.  I've been practicing using the manual setting and I couldn't believe I actually got some decent shots (and by decent I mean it isn't way over or under exposed and looks at least semi-focused!)  Ha!  Take a look!

These are all SOOC

Of course, there were also many not-so-great shots.  Here are a few.

I'm going to keep practicing.  I'm sure there will still be lots of times where I revert to the auto setting because I'm scared I won't get the shot.  But I'm going to try to leave the camera on manual as much as possible because for some reason I almost feel like auto is cheating now.  Happy shooting!

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