Love the Photoshop

Hey everyone, Mike here. For those who don't know I am in a degree program that is a mix of graphic arts, web design and printing. I get to learn cool stuff that I really enjoy. This wasn't a school project but I thought I would share it with you. I learned some really cool techniques from a tutorial and turned this photo......

Into this...

I didn't "draw" any of it. It's basically a compilation of 12 different pics or so. Just blended together so it looks relatively seamless.

Cool, huh? Well...at least I think so.

So big!

She's growing so fast. Here's another of her trying to talk!

Hello . . .

I have been seriously neglecting to post pictures of the kids and we've been doing so many fun things this summer. Here's an update and just a few of the favorites.

This was 4th of July morning (sad I know that I didn't get to it until now). I woke my mom up to go to a breakfast gathering/party that was in the field in front of her house that her ward was putting on (my home ward I grew up in). It was nice seeing my friends' parents there and catching up with them. Brooklyn's not in this picture because she was too busy playing kick ball water style with mini pools as bases. Good times!

After breakfast and partying, Mike and I took Brooklyn to Chuck-E-Cheese for lunch and played lots of games. We saved about 50 tokens from the last time we were there and got 10 more from a rewards chart she filled out on their website. We got a crazy amount of tickets. Like 170 or something like that. I've never been able to do it, but we did this time. With all those tickets we got, we still only walked out with an Airhead, a sticky hand toy, and a plastic lady bug. What a jip!

After CEC, we went to a friend's house to play in the water (again). They rented this cool bouncer thing except this one is like a giant blow up slip and slide and had a little pool at the end of it. (Sorry, no pics of it) However, I think Brooklyn got more enjoyment out of the trampoline. Thanks Aunt Rena for inviting us!

As for the rest of the summer, this is how Taylor has been spending it! We just cart her around where ever we go and she's just fine with it as long as she has her strap to suck on.

We also signed up the girls for swimming lessons (which ends on Friday). Brooklyn calls it Pool School and has a blast!

Mike came with us today and took these awesome pictures! He's so good at it!

Here's me and Taylor in the parent-infant class which consists of us and another mom and baby. Oh well, we all get to be in the pool at the same time together and it's only for a half hour. I know Taylor loves it, therefore, by default, mommy loves it to :)

Happy summer everyone!

Quote of the week . . .

FHE, what a wonderful night. Lately, we've been doing something a little new. I want to get Brooklyn interested in the scriptures, but reading them word for word to a 5 year old doesn't work very well. Luckily for Christmas, my grandparents got us the entire collected works on DVD. It's basically all the stories put to pictures and with and abridged narration. Well, we started this last week so this week I thought I would do a little sum-up from where we left off. So I asked questions like "Who translated the book of Mormon" and "Who was the first prophet in the Book of Mormon" then I asked her, "Who was Nephi?"

"Nephi is the greatest man in the whole world!" --Brooklyn (age 5)

By the way she said it, I'm not sure any other man is ever going to measure up. I love this age.

ok, ok . . .

After my flip out last week, I feel kind of obligated to post something about the Bachelorette yet again. I'm so happy for her now that the jerk is gone. I hope he gets back and his manager yells at him and says, "I told you the show would be good for you not to go act like a jerk!" and dump him on the spot. He seemed so drunk at his exit interview in the limo it was disgusting.

Adios Wes!

(I wish I was the one dunking him in this picture.)

Grrr . . .

Our computer crashed last week. I went without the internet for about 4 days. That's a really long time. The worst about it is that I had been working really hard and organizing and maintaining our budget records on excel and now . . . they are gone. I loved looking at all the files at the end of the year and knowing where all the money went. Now I'm back to the stunned and amazed shock at the end of the year. I'm not the one who does the taxes so why should it matter. I'll tell you why. It's that OCD in me that needs the satisfaction from working so hard and maintaining order. Now it's gone . . . and I feel cold. Okay, not really, but man! That was a lot of work. So now we have a bigger hard drive and I've reassembled the worksheet in excel to keep track of the finances among other things like download a day and a half of CDs from my collection onto iTunes. Word to the wise . . . back up your computer . . . everything.