old pictures

for christmas i took some pictures of a few of my mom's old slides and made prints. here are some favorites.

whitney and i

grandpa lallier and ryan

spring break

this is a little photo documentary of some of our spring break adventures at the oklahoma farm. it started out with roy's soccer game. the weather was so nice for that day-the girls were even complaining of being hot. we knew we needed to take advantage of the warmth-(as i'm writing this we have an inch or two of snow on the ground...)

we love getting to experiment with photos in front of old barns-becky was kind enough to be the guinea pig for countless pictures-trying to figure out which angles and which light is the best. daddy and ryan 'uncovered' an old barn when they were clearing trees to make more pasture-we had great fun exploring. the kids replayed their pretend game down at the river-it involves anneliese being a princess, emily is her pet monkey, roy is the leader of the guard, and grant and dale are the warriors. they all use some form of british accent when they play-it is so fun to watch :)

spending time with family is my favorite kind of vacation-i had wanted to try and get the kids to the beach, but really they are happy with catching fish in the pond and playing dice and i'm happy with watching papa wrestle with the girls and nana holding a sleepy ben-so the beach can wait!

playing 'moose' dice is a fun tradition-and this time around anneliese was old enough to play independently. i now have another favorite way to capture honest expressions :)

my friend thuy and her family came down on our last day-we had fun catching up as we walked down to the river.

my cousin becca came out on our first day-she loves taking pictures as much as i do-and it is wonderful to have someone who likes to talk light and settings and all things camera related. she is so nice to take pictures of me-because as difficult it is to be on the other side of the lens-after reading this article it became very important for me to be in some pictures too-
i will be using some of the ones we got in the next post...

grant's birthday part 2

we celebrated grant's birthday a second time in a trip to oklahoma. he had to miss 2 basketball games-but it was well worth it to spend some time at the ranch house with the family. roy and dale were able to come and play and the kids kept busy with barbies, writing stories, putting together puzzles, drawing and some outside games when it wasn't too cold.  

we headed down to ryan and becky's to see the pigs, play with bamboo sticks, sit in combine tires and watch ryan and roy work on the new pig pen.

 papa took us down to the field to see a beaver dam and to check on all the new calves.

 notice the girls holding hands-because i don't think i've ever seen them do that spontaneously.

 another treat was a trip to the bowling alley-where i discovered that kids make a lot of great expressions while bowling...