I have a new member to my camera family. Please meet Charlie. (every good camera deserves a name, right?) Charlie's a Canon 1Ds Mark III. A whopping impressive addition to the gear bag. For the last two years, I've shot with a pair of Canon 5D cameras. A few things prompted me to change out. Most notably, Charlie's got wonderful weather sealing for those rainy events, 22 MP (up from the 5D's 12.1 MP), the dual-writing a single image to two cards at once (in other words, instant back-up of images), sensor cleaning, and some other more technical features which you could read up on elsewhere if you are ever interested. To say that I'm excited about the addition is an understatement! I also get a lot of questions periodically about my other gear. I use an assortment of lenses, however my favorites are 85mm 1.2, 35mm 1.4, and the 70-200mm 2.8IS. I also frequently use a 100-400mm 4.5, 24mm 1.4, 100mm 2.8 macro, 50mm 1.2. I used to shoot a lot with the 24-70mm 2.8, but have switched to prime lenses (meaning a fixed focal length) over the last year because I have simply enjoyed the image quality and wide apertures a lot more than the zoom lenses offer. Thanks to the good people at George's Camera in San Diego for hooking me up with one of the first available on the market.

Well, I had an unexpectedly long break from blogging...I apologize. I looked at the date of the last post and was shocked to see that it's been almost a month?! Yikes! What have we been doing? Having fun! Jason's dad came out for a visit from Philadelphia for the last week. The girls were thrilled to see him...so much that Holly packed her suitcase to go home with him. She was really disappointed that she couldn't actually go (we ended up having to make up the excuse that the airplanes don't have car seats for kids). PEZ helped soothe her sadness. Thanks Nicole for the PEZ princesses...we make good use of them! Anna celebrated her 100th day of kindergarten, which apparently is a big deal at the schools. We celebrated with a homework assignment of gluing 100 cheerios to a piece of paper. Fun times! In other school news, she brought home some books to "read"! WHAT?! Am I ready for this?! Pretty soon we won't be able to spell things in front of her like "Jason, where'd you hide the C-A-N-D-Y ?" and "Should we go to the B-E-A-C-H today?" and "Hey, Anna's due for her next S-H-O-T-S." Of course, since she's learning Spanish first, maybe we still have a little bit of time left. I told her how to spell "Bev" the other day and instead she kept writing "B-I-V" because saying the letter "e" in english is the letter "i" in spanish. She's going to be confused for a bit longer. Like the day she told me "B like Donkey". ha ha ha And, in other news...Anna's little grin is going to change! She has two loose bottom teeth, and one loose top tooth. She has really been excited about the whole thing! Showing it to all her friends, even called my mom to tell her about it (and Anna hates talking on the phone). Every night, she asks if maybe we shouldn't open the window a little bit to let the tooth fairy in in case her tooth falls out in the middle of the night. Holly is our beauty queen. She insists on wearing skirts and tights every day. And, each day as she's leaving the house for preschool we hear "I don't need a jacket. It looks like a boy. I'll be warm enough. Promise." Poor Jason, he just doesn't understand where it came from.

My best friend Lisa and her family are in-town for the weekend. Jason and Gehrin are going to be watching football all the time, the kids are running around, and Lisa and I are catching up on celebrity gossip (could Britney get any crazier?). Good times! We took a trip to the Children's Museum that opened in Paso a few months ago. A great place! We stayed for a quite sometime, and could have stayed longer...but someone brought pizza into the place for a kid's birthday party. It smelled so incredible that we finally had to leave to get pizza ourselves. ;) Holly takes a big jump into the ball pit All four kids together...Anna, Holly, Dani, and Alex Jason finds a rare quiet place in the Children's Museum PJs all morning...nothing better.

Several members of my family have a breed of called a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever It's like miniature Golden Retrievers in many ways, but even better. My aunt and uncle just got a new puppy and I'm so in love. Meet Cosmo. This will be the breed of dog I get when (if?) we finally ever get cat-free. Until then, the rule is that we can bring nothing more into the house on a permanent basis if it poops. (*but that adorable puppy face is just melting me*)

Since we flaked on going down to San Diego to see family at Thanksgiving...we made up for it between Christmas and New Years. We had a fantastic trip, loaded full of visit time with my brother's kids and family. My brother has two of the most adorable kids around, Devan and Erin. They are also 2 years apart from each other, and two years younger than our kids. So, when they all hung out together it was a bit like a tornado hitting town. Toys went flying, people started screaming, and it was exciting. =) One 5 year old, two 3 year olds, and a one year old. Whew! It was also a trial run to see how our family summer vacation is going to be...but on a houseboat for a week (are we nuts?!) in July. First off, the obligatory try-to-get-all-the-grandkids-together photo...so impossible that it requires candy. Anna loves to climb the big huge boulders at my brother's house. He lives out in Ramona, and they are amazingly fun! Here's what Holly's face looks like the second before she pegs you with a ball in the bounce house.