One of my good friends asked me to take fall photos of her girls. I took my kids to the location I want to use to practice and see how the light would be. We got there a little late and we lost light really quickly. But, I think I got a few good shots. I didn’t get many of Ian because he was so busy running around!

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The Photoshop class was great! I learned so much more than I expected. The teacher was a professional photographer and obviously an expert at Photoshop.

He taught us some really easy ways to select specific areas of your photos. Then you can do anything you want with those areas–whether it be change the color, sharpen, or cut it out completely.

Probably the most useful thing he taught us was a way to sharpen photos. He said he uses the techniques he taught us on 99% of his photos. That was impressive to me. He is a professional photographer, with the best equipment money can buy, and he still feels like he needs to edit and clean up most of his photos. The next thing I want to do is learn how to create an action, so that I can easily use the sharpening techniques on all of my photos.

Here is an example of a photo I took. The first one is straight out of the camera. The other one I used the sharpening techniques. The difference is subtle, but I think it really makes the photo look so much better. (Sorry I didn’t put them next to each other, but I don’t know how to do it )

He spent a good amount of time talking about Adobe Bridge. Bridge is a program used to organize photos that is automatically installed with Photoshop. It is an extremely powerful program and I haven’t ever even opened it! I just use my Windows Explorer to organize photos and then I use Windows picture viewer to look at them. After learning about Bridge last night, I think I am a convert. Now I just need to play around with it, and see if I can learn how to use it.

Overall, I thought the class was extremely valuable. I will definitely be signing up for the Photoshop II class.

I’m taking a Photoshop class tonight and I am really looking forward to it.

The class is specifically geared towards photographers. It is being taught at a camera store in Sandy called Pixels Foto and Frame. It was highly recommended by the instructor who taught my photography class last winter.

I have a pretty good working knowledge of Photoshop. I use Photoshop CS3 to edit many of my photos, but I am pretty much self taught. Everything I know I either learned by trial and error, or by tutorials I have found on the internet. I know that some of the things I do can be done so much faster and easier. I am looking forward to learning where I can save time, and how I can make my photos look better.

Emma woke up this morning and had a change of heart. She came upstairs and asked if she could still go to North Carolina. We called my parents, and they still hadn’t canceled her flight, so she decided she wanted to go to North Carolina after all.. I thought for sure she would come home from school with another change of heart, but she didn’t. She came home very excited about leaving.

She is all packed and ready to go. My parents are picking her up at 8:30am. She will be off on her first vacation without me.

As I tucked her in tonight I wondered if she would miss me. I know I am going to miss her. I have gone on trips without her, but it is different when she is the one going away without me. It feels like she is so grown up!

She has been acting so grown up lately, too. She took a shower all by herself tonight for the first time. I turned the water on for her, and she got in all by herself. I watched her to make sure she did a good job washing her hair and rinsing all the soap out. It felt like a big milestone to me and I was reminded how fast she is growing up. She has been so helpful around the house. She gets herself all ready for school, usually the first time I ask She picks out cute outfits and makes her bed all on her own. I know she is growing up, but her shower today was one of those moments that made me step back and notice.

I am sure my big girl is going to have a great trip with her grandparents!

My mom and dad have been planning to take Emma on a little trip to North Carolina this week. She has been really looking forward to it, and counting down the days. I got an email last week from Emma’s school about a carnival they were going to be having this Friday while she was gone. We talked about it and I explained to her that she would miss it, since she would be on her trip. She said she didn’t mind missing it, and she still wanted to go on her trip.

Today she came home from school and burst into tears when she got in the car. She had a flier from the carnival with pictures of all of the bouncy houses and slides and treats that they would be having. I told her we had talked about missing it, but she said she didn’t know that it was going to be so much fun. She loves bouncy houses and cotton candy, so missing that would have been really tough for her.

I talked to her and explained that the trip was her choice if she wanted to stay home, she could choose to stay home. I could tell she was very upset and conflicted about the whole thing. I asked her why she was upset and she said she didn’t want to hurt Nana’s feelings, or make Nana disappointed. I was proud of her that she was able to think about it from another persons point of view. I was happy to hear that she considered Nana’s feelings too. I told her that I was proud of her for considering Nana, but that Nana would understand.

She decided to stay home this time. I’m sure there will be other times for her to have a trip by herself with Nana and Grandpa. I was proud of her and happy with the way she handled the whole thing.

Ian’s preschool had a trip to the fire station this week. All the kids got to shoot the fire hose. Ian loved it!

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Here are a few more shots from Princess Day. We stopped at a park on the way home and took these. At least Emma looks a little bit happier in these

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My friend Vicky told me about “Princess Day” at the Paul Mitchell School. They were doing a charity fundraiser where they invited little girls to come and be treated like princesses. They did their hair and gave them tiaras to wear. They they did manicures and made a picture frame. It sounded like it would be so much fun for the girls. We took them, and it was cute. I think Emma and Denali were both more interested in watching “The Little Mermaid” that they were showing on flat screen TVs. Emma looked like she was being tortured most of the time. I am not sure if she had fun or not

Emma did not want to smile. This was the best I could do. We did stop at a park on the way home and I was able to get some good shots of Emma there. They turned out pretty cute. The lighting was terrible in the Paul Mitchell School, but it was nice in the park. I’ll post some of those later in the week.

I forgot that today was September 11th.

I pulled out of my driveway to take Emma to school, and noticed the flags that the Boy Scouts put out in front of the houses on holidays. I racked my brain trying to think about what holiday it was. I asked Emma about it, but she didn’t know of any holiday either.

I turned on the radio and heard the names of all the people who had died in the tragedy being read. It took me by surprise, I gasped and then sighed. Emma wanted to know what was the matter. I couldn’t tell her for a moment, I had to wait, or I knew I was going to go from teary eyed to crying.

When they said that it had been 7 years ago, I was shocked. I felt like it was 2 or 3 years at most. Then I remembered I was pregnant with Emma at the time. I have such vivid memories from that day. I know that most people do. People can describe exactly what they were doing the moment they heard. I can too: I was flying on an airplane.

I was on my way back from Chicago. I had been there for a meeting. I left early on a non-stop flight bound for Salt Lake. About an hour into the flight the pilot came on. He said “Ladies and gentlemen, we are just over Des Moines, Iowa and we are going to go ahead and land here.” We were all confused. Why? Was there something wrong with the plane? Were we going to crash? A few minutes later he made another announcement and said the plan was fine, but there had been a “situation” in the United States.

As we landed, we saw fighter jets and National Guard pilots on the runways. I knew something was wrong, but it was hard to imagine what it could be. Immediately people started calling home, and while we were still on the plane we found out what had happened. Scott and my parents were very relieved to hear from me. They knew about the planes, but not where they had come from.

We deplaned, and everyone ran for the TVs to see what was happening. It was chaos. It was still in the early stages, and nobody was sure what was going to happen next. Were we safe in the airport in Des Moines? Nobody was sure, so they wanted to evacuate the airport. I knew we would be stuck there for a few days, so I decided to rent a car. I couldn’t wait to get home!

People were different to each other that day. Everybody talked to each other. It was like we were all friends. People made deals in the car rental lines, and drove places together. I met a couple from Utah, and we drove back to Salt Lake together. I don’t remember their names, and I never spoke to them again, but on that day it just felt normal to be friends with everyone.

Today when I turned on the radio, I was flooded with the same emotions I felt on that day 7 years ago. I am glad that I remembered. I think there are too many people in our country who have forgotten. Today we were all reminded.