I Won Another Ribbon!

I have been anxiously awaiting the results of this challenge all week. I had a good score and new I would most likely win something, but I did not expect to win first place! I really loved these photos I took a couple weeks ago, but you never know if others will like them too. I am really excited about this because it is my first ribbon for a landscape. I wrote more about it on my photoblog http://www.jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com/ plus the full sized image looks much better so be sure to look at it there. Also check my photo out on the front page of this website: http://www.dpchallenge.com/ it will be there for the rest of the week.

"I'M A BIG GIRL!!!"

Potty training is complete and Sydnie was starting to outgrow her crib so we decided it was time to get her a bed. She was excited to get her "big girl bed" and could hardly wait until Shaun got home with it. When it finally arrived, she jumped up and down and shouted excitedly
"I'M A BIG GIRL!"

All of my girls decide that they wanted to have a sleep over in Sydnie's new bed. They insisted it was big enough. They were quite disappointed when I told them it wasn't going to work out. I did let them stay in her bed long enough to get this picture taken and read a few stories.

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.