Vernon Volumes text

Vernon Volumes text

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Happy hour with tennis friends


On Saturday, Andrea hosted her tennis friends and their husbands for a happy hour with a little food and drinks. We chatted for a while and watched some of the World Series.


Everything turned out very nice, and we were able to have the big slider door open too since the weather was so nice. Connor and Paige were good about playing upstairs and when they came down for some snacks they were very cute about seeing everyone and saying hi.


Football with Logan, Connor and Paige


Connor and Logan were playing football out front and needed a defender, so Paige got drafted and jumped right in. She didn't put up much competition, but I was surprised the boys decided to let her recover the incomplete passes and let her score touchdowns. It was very cute watching them fall down when they tried to catch her and let her get past. She was so excited to score! Paige has such a sweet big brother, he plays so nicely with her.


Soccer in Gainesville


This Saturday, Connor and I drove for an hour and a half to Gainesville for a soccer game. It seemed like we drove out in to the middle of nowhere to play against a team there. 



The kids had fun warming up with some penalty kicks.


Connor practiced being goalie before the game, but during the game he played midfielder.


Connor was responsible for the throw-ins and did a good job with it.


Their team ended up losing the game right at the end, but they played hard and Connor had a great time. He really loved the monkeybars, that was his favorite part.

Ping pong with Connor, Logan and Danny


Connor had a couple of his buddies over this past week after school and I took a few pics of them playing ping pong. 


I love Connor's form when he hits the ball. I have a bunch of pics of him with this exact pose, not sure where he learned it.


Puppy pics!


The neighbors across the street from us got some new puppies recently. When the kids got off the school bus, they let the puppies out to play for a few minutes. I snapped a pic of Connor and Paige holding the puppies and I just love their big smiles while they're holding the little teddy bear puppies.

 

Some pics around the house with the new camera


Everyone has had to put up with me being a little annoying with my new camera lately. I'm still trying to figure it out and I also got a new lens (50mm 1.8) that I wanted to try out. Chloe and the kids were good about letting me snap some pics and I was very happy with how many of them turned out. None of the pics were planned at all, it was kind of a fun snapshot in to their daily lives this past week. I just snapped some pics of what they were wearing and what they were doing.





Sunday, October 19, 2014

Pumpkin patch with the kids



Today I took the kids to the Pumpkin patch near our house. It was put together nicely this year, with one flat rate to get in and no other tickets or extras needed. You could pay $1 to shoot a corn cannon, but we didn't get around to it. The rest of the stuff was included and the kids had a great time exploring and playing.


Connor's favorite part was the maze and the monkey bars. Paige pretty much liked everything, but I think her favorite part was the windy room with the fake leaves. She had a blast throwing them on Connor.

I put together a short video of them enjoying the day.

















Paige's crash



Paige crashed her bike on Saturday. She'd been out with the big kids riding in circles at the end of the cul-de-sac. Moments before her crash, they'd all left the cul-de-sac, and turned around at our house before going in more circles. I took a video of them, but stopped the video about 2 seconds before Paige made an unbelievably tight turn in front of our house. She was nearly touching the ground she was leaning so far over. Somehow she stayed upright.



As she came back around, I took another video and moments before the crash I told her to be careful on her turns.



Ouch. I had been telling her that it's just a matter of time before she crashes. It happens to everyone eventually. Thankfully it wasn't too bad and it was just one knee that got a little boo-boo. She was very upset about it. She's actually pretty good about using her brakes, but in the video you can see she panics and puts her feet down off the pedals. We're going to have to work with her to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Babysitter Jessie


We've been using a babysitter named Jessie for a little while now and the kids really have fun with her. She's good about engaging the kids and playing the things they like. When Andrea and I came home on Saturday night we saw them all maxing and relaxing upstairs. They all had dressed up together and their outfits were pretty hilarious. Jessie had on some Nerf armor, Connor had on a Ninja Outfit from his birthday party, and Paige had on her pajamas, with a Rapunzel dress over them, and a fur vest over that. She was sweating in it all, but she knew she looked so fabulous she refused to take any of it off. I had to grab the camera for a quick pic of them all.



Saturday, October 18, 2014

Soccer Saturday - Paige and Connor


Today was another day of soccer with the kids. The weather is finally cooling off, so it's pretty nice out recently. I took Paige to her soccer since we had to split up for a bit this morning to get both kids where they needed to be. 


Paige's soccer went ok. I could tell she wasn't really in to it as much today and she didn't really seem to try as hard as usual. It didn't help that there was a boy on the other team that was a bit of a bully. He kept grabbing and pushing kids including Paige. Paige has an older brother and we play rough quite a bit so it didn't seem to phase her much, but the little boy spoiled quite a few of Paige's chances and messed her up a number of times.


I took a few videos, but Paige didn't score and really there's just one video that sums it all up.


After Paige finished up, we drove over to meet Connor and Andrea for Connor's game. Connor's team won today 3-0, but Connor didn't get a whole lot of playing time. He only ended up playing for about 10 minutes the whole game, which was disappointing. He played pretty hard while he was out on the field. In the pics you can really see that he's still quite a bit smaller than most of the kids he plays against.





New Camera Nikon D750


This past week I got a new D750 camera to replace my D7000. It's a new camera from Nikon and so far I'm pretty impressed with it. It's a full-frame camera, which is a first for me. I have been buying lenses for a while that will fit the DX as well as the FX mounts on the Nikon. My 24-70mm 2.8 lens is still with Nikon to sort out the backfocusing issues, but the 28-300mm lens has been awesome on the new camera so far. I have also been very impressed with how well the camera focuses on people. Since I take mostly photos with people in them, it's nice to have a camera that recognizes faces and focus accordingly. It's also got the ability to transfer pics via wi-fi, so we're able to download them to our phones or other devices when we're not at home. Should be nice to be able to post to Facebook and stuff while we're on vacation.

Anyways, hopefully the camera lasts quite a while and we get some great pics with it.