day 32: new years day @ parentals

My siblings are SO good with my kids.  Today my sisters spend hours looking up Lion YouTube Videos for B.  As you can tell, he LOVED it.  And E couldn't stay away either.  I feel so lucky to live by family so that I can have these moments often.  Later in the day my sister, her husband and two boys joined us.

We spent a few hours at my parent's home and then spent the afternoon/evening at my grandparents' home to watch football, play games, and otherwise have a wonderful time.

I love the composition in the picture above.  I love that I captured so many people (I'm normally a 1-2 person type of photographer) and I LOVE that I captured some shadows and highlights with the beautiful natural light at my parents home.  And, just because I love natural light and had so many pictures that I liked because of said light, I have to include two more shots just to document some precious moments.

day 31: sick new years

Yes.  This is the shot for New Years Eve.  We spent the evening at my parents house along with my cousins and grandparents.  And while a shot of us throwing confetti would certainly show that it was New Years, and I did capture those, what I really remember was snuggling this one while my family played games in the other room.  He was NOT feeling well and while Hubs ran to the store to grab some medicine, I sat and cuddled my sweet boy.  AND somehow got a picture with my arm held out in front of me.  I love this kid and I kind of love when he's sick...just for the cuddles.

I'm also officially 1/12 of the way through my project.  AHH!  I have so much I still want to improve on.  Namely, low light situations.  My whole purpose in starting this process was to improve my "every day photography".  And while I've noticed significant improvement in my "staged" photography (meaning a situation that I dictate the time of day a photo is taken and sometimes clear things out of the way), I still want to improve on my "quick, it's a terrible lighting situation, but I can't let this moment slip away!" moments.  Just compare today's photo with day 32 and you will see the difference I'm talking about.