My first blue ribbon!

I have been trying for months now and I finally did it! I got first place in a photo contest I entered! I won't re post it. Just look at my Valentine post from last week, it is the one of Kaylee with the hearts in her eyes. If you want to check my blue ribbon out click on this link http://www.dpchallenge.com/.

This week I also had fun taking pictures of my sister Nancy's kids and my friend Amber's little girl Breelyn.

Here is my favorite one of all the pictures I took that weekend, it is of my youngest niece Chloe. I think I am going to enter her in a photo contest. If she doesn't win a prize it won't be because she isn't cute enough that is for sure.

To look at more photos of Nancy's cute kids and the photo shoot I did with Breelyn, check out my photo website at http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com/

Happy Valentines Day!!!

I hope everyone is having a great Valentines Day. This post is late in the day, but I have been working on one of the pictures up until a little while ago. I have been shooting some Valentines photos for challenges I am entering, and thought they would be fun to share on Valentines Day.

We had a fun Valentines Day. Shaun and I both got the girls a some fun little Valentines surprises. Shaun and I haven't done much for it today. We actually celebrated on Saturday, because that was a better day for our schedules. Lucky for me it left me time today to shoot this:

Hooray! I won at last!

I finally feel like I might be getting somewhere with my little hobby. I finally won a ribbon for one of my photos! I entered this photo of Kaylee in a challenge called "Got Milk" and I got 3rd place! I got this little ribbon next to my picture and my photo is on the front page of the dpchallenge website for a whole week! So check it out http://www.dpchallenge.com/.

My ribbon winning entry:

Happy Birthday Kaylee!

I can't believe my oldest is 10! Where has the time gone? I think Shaun and I are both having a hard time wrapping our minds around this number. Wasn't she just a baby walking around on her tip toes? Now she is in double digits!!!

She had a great birthday, the Friday before she invited a few of her close friends to a birthday party at a place called "Jump on it" they have a huge room full of trampolines, all the girls seemed to have a lot of fun. Afterwards we had cake and opened presents. Brianne was so cute she had about $5 of her own birthday money left over from her Grandma, and took it to the book fair and spent it all on her older sister. She didn't spend 1 penny on herself. She was so excited for Kaylee to open it. She loves her older sister so much. I was so proud of her for being so thoughtful.

For her real birthday we went out as a family to In and Out Burger, and then came home and opened presents. She got a Webkins Ice dragon, Super Mario Brothers for the Wii and some fun things from her grandparents.

We love our Kaylee not only is she getting older in years, she is also starting to act older. She is very responsible, and we are not afraid to leave her home to take care of her younger sisters for an hour or so here and there. She is such a good girl and is always trying her best to do what is right. We love you Kaylee.

Here are a couple pictures from her Birthday. You would think will all the things I am learning about my camera, I would be able to take better snap shots. I think I am getting better with my other photo's, but getting worse with my snapshots. I had to convert these to black and white to even sort of make them presentable. She looks cute anyway.

Blowing out her 10 candles, she had cake for her friends birthday party but wanted cherry pie for her real birthday.

With her Webkins Ice dragon:

Christmas 2010 finally!

Well it has taken me awhile to recover enough from Christmas to blog about it.

Here is a picture of the Girls in their Christmas Dresses, I can't believe I got one with them all smiling and looking at the camera!

This next photo pretty much sums up our Christmas!

It is blurry and not the greatest. Somehow in the chaos of the morning, my settings got all mixed up, and all of the photos came out blurry. You think I would have noticed when taking them but that is the kind of morning we had. Shaun and I were both exhausted from the hospital experience he had the night before, and then to top things off, the first thing Sydnie did after waking up, was to throw up everywhere. The poor thing was really sick and didn't want to have much to do with opening her presents. But after seeing Kaylee and Brianne open a few she perked up a bit and decided to open some. Luckily one of the first things she opened was her pillow pet, she loved it and immediately laid down on it and started opening the rest of her presents. This picture makes me laugh because like I said it sums up our Christmas pretty well: there is Sydnie laying down opening her presents, the puke bucket in the bottom right corner, and my invalid husband in the background. All things considered we actually had a great Christmas. Believe me things could have been a lot worse and almost was!

We got a lot of snow over the holidays, and we had to deal with it both going to Idaho to see family and coming back. But at least it was good for something: Snowmen and sledding and the girls did plenty of that over the holiday.

Here is a cute photo of the girls making a snowman. I used a new technique I learned called "tilt shift" this really isn't the best photo to use it on but it sort of worked. You blur the top and bottom of the photo to make the things in the middle look miniature. It sort of worked. At least it worked enough to make me want to go out and take a picture that this was meant for and do some more experimenting.

As far as the rest of our holiday we had fun just hanging out around our house and relaxing. Shaun had the whole week off of work and it was nice to have some time together as a family. We also spent a few days in Idaho visiting family. We had a great Christmas party at my parents house. Once again my dad made great handmade items for all of the kids, this year was a fun little jewelry box made out of a single piece of wood. The girls love their boxes and have already put them to good use. The next night was spent at the Huls. We had fun unwrapping our "favorite things" gifts and then had great fun watching everyone dance to our new wii game, Just Dance 2.

P.S. I just updated my photoblog. I have some pretty fun photo's this time that you might want to see.

Two Birthdays!

I am so far behind with my blogging. I am planning on getting caught up in the next week so be prepared to get a bunch of post from me this week. I thought I would start with the Birthdays. We have two in our family right before Christmas. First is Brianne's then the next day is Shaun's.

Brianne had a great birthday. The Saturday before her birthday she had a friends Birthday party. She chose to go swimming for her birthday. So after cake and presents 5 of her neighborhood friends went swimming at the local indoor pool.

Here is Brianne ready to blow out her candles at her Birthday party:

A few days later we celebrated her real Birthday, she turned 7 this last year. We just got invited to the 8 is great meeting this Sunday. I can't believe she is almost old enough to be baptised. (well not for another year, but just going to that meeting reminds me it is getting close.)

Here is Brianne opening up here presents:

Is she all done? Nope there is another surprise dad is bringing up from the basement. What could it be?

Wow! She was surprised I don't think she had any idea she was getting this, just look at her face!

A new bike! Sorry this picture was out of focus not the greatest but the only one I got with her and her new bike.

Happy Birthday Brianne! We love you!

Shaun's Birthday

The next day was Shaun's Birthday and quite a story. It's also the reason I am so behind on my posts. My plan was to post about Brianne's Birthday and his Birthday on his birthday so I would be all caught up for the Christmas posts to come. Here is what happened instead:

Shaun called me early the morning of his Birthday. He has to be to work early and I usually get up early to exercise. He said he was going into emergency room to get some antibiotics for a cold. I wondered why he couldn't just wait and go to an Urgent care later in the day, he said he had time now and didn't want to wait. Well after the fact I think he wishes he did wait. Shaun told the emergency room doctors that he had a bad cold and that he though it was settling in his chest and he was having trouble breathing and even felt a little dizzy. With Shaun's family history of heart troubles the doctors immediately jumped to heart attack. They did a million test and found high levels of an enzyme that only is in your blood stream if there has been damage to the heart.

Well Shaun was in denial and the doctors were very poor at explaining things and we were left wondering what we should do. Should we do all the test they were calling for and miss out on Birthday plans and Possibly even Christmas (Christmas Eve was the very next day.) Or could things wait until after Christmas. After a lot of frustration on our part because of the doctors poor communication we finally decided to go ahead with all the tests. He had an ecocardiogram, x-rays of his chest (to check for blood clots) and finally on Christmas Eve they decided to do an angiogram. The whole family was really upset I had to calm the girls down from crying several times that day. Not only were they worried about their daddy being okay they were also worried about him not being able to be there for Christmas morning. Sydnie kept saying "Daddy's heart is broken!"

Well things ended up turning out okay. We were blessed and all of the test came back negative for a heart attack. He did have to stay in the hospital almost the whole day on Christmas eve. We got home from the hospital around 9:30 that night. Just in time to read the Christmas story out of the Bible and open Christmas P.J's. But we were all happy because it could have been a lot worse.

So Happy Birthday Shaun! It probably will go down in the record books as being the worst Birthday ever, but we are just glad to have a husband and a Dad who's "heart is not broken". We love you!

Odds and Ends

So I just realized it has been awhile since I have posted. I thought I would catch up before the Christmas photos start rolling in.

Starting with Thanksgiving, we had a fun Thanksgiving, everyone came to Utah and we had dinner at my brothers house. The weather was bad so we didn't know if anyone was going to make it. Luckily, they were all able to get through the storm. I didn't take many pictures just one. Sydnie loves babies and she couldn't get enough of her little cousin Chloe. She loved to hold her any chance she got.

We had our ward Christmas Party last Saturday. The girls all had their turn sitting on Santa's Lap

Kaylee's turn:

Brianne's Turn:

And Sydnies turn:

Sydnie did not want anything to do with Santa. We managed to keep her on his lap long enough to snap this picture.

And last of all I had to add this silly photo. Lu Lu loves to lay in my lap when I am editing photos at the computer. I was busy cleaning the house and doing the dishes, when I turned around and saw Lu Lu sitting here:

I'm not sure if she was just patiently waiting for me to come back so she could sit in my lap or if the computer seemed like a nice warm spot to take a nap. Silly dog.