SNOMG2016

I've left the house once since thursday (5 days, 1 time).  Surprisingly, not really feeling all that much cabin fever, its kind of been a nice relaxing break but I have to think back what the heck have we been doing for the past 5 days.  

Thursday with the rest of Charlotte we went out to dinner, grab a few necessities from the grocery store and hunkered down in the house waiting for the snow and friday morning when we woke up it DID NOT disappoint.

This was our driveway...a sheet of ice.


The rest was totally instagram worthy

It's amazing how much changes in a year.  Last year when Hunter was 3 he had no interest in playing in the snow.  Everytime we went out to see it he said he it was too cold and he wanted to go inside.  This year was complete opposite.  The excitement on his face when he saw all the snow Monday morning was one of those mom moments i'll keep in my head and heart forever. 

And even though I've seen snow a million times (growing up in NY), his excitement was contagious, I was like a kid in a candy store right there with him.  

So Friday was just snow day bliss.  We dressed in our long johns and slippers...

made blueberry pancakes

which led to apple muffins thanks to the recipe on the pancake mix

read books with friends

cleaned up the house

played nice as brothers

and didn't play nice as brothers

But while James was down for his long winter nap Hunter and I went out and played.  Snowballs, sledding he would have stayed out there all day if I let him! 

And guess what...Saturday we woke up and did it again.  Except instead of pancakes we had oatmeal - which led to me seeing the oatmeal cooking recipe on the tub - i see a trend here. hmmm

By Saturday at 10am we were all 4 out playing in the snow again. As expected James lasted about two minutes and whined to go inside.  Snow playing, lunch, naps, and little of this for Mom and Dad was really blissful.  It's not often we get to look out our back porch and stare at snow.  There's just something so beautiful about snow. (2 inches of snow that is).

Saturday night our friends (who are neighbors) came over with their kiddos.  We turned the fireplace on in the basement, the glow off the snow came in through the windows down there. It sort of felt like we were away in the mountains minus the hot tub in the snow that we were really wishing we had.

6 adults, 5 kids, pizza, cocktails, popcorn, movies, and dance parties...It was the most fun evening and I'm really mad at myself for not saving off any of my videos or pics from snapchat.  Maybe you caught it live on my snapchat ID -  lunsfordkm?  

Sunday we paid the price of keeping the kids up past their bedtime with a sick 4  year old.  Hunter V woke up with a 104 fever and here we are today on Tuesday with the same fever.

It seems to be going down a little bit so hoping this is the end. If not, off to the Dr. we go tomorrow.  

Hope ya'll out there are surviving your snow and school outages.  My parents up in Virginia got 40 inches!! Insane! xoxo

Ice Ice Baby

Yesterday was snow, today is Ice. Different, yet similar in A way that it means another day off work for me to take pictures and explore my new camera. So far, I've been tackling IOS and AEB/exposure comp. I read that if you are taking pictures of food on white dishes sometimes the colors of the food aren't as vibrant. You can move up your AEB/exposure comp setting from zero to +1 or higher and it makes the colors of the food pop more off of the white plate. For IOS, I had my camera set on the middle speed of 1600. Last night, I did some research and came across a good article that showed different pictures at different IOS speeds. It was making a point that a higher IOS speed at night can often times act as a flash and brighten your picture. Although you have to be careful because if you go too high, say 6800 or even to the 12000 it can make a picture pixelated. None the less, Jake and I just got in from a little play time outside where I took the same picture of different things moving around my IOS speed anywhere from 200 to 3200 and then the AEB/exposure comp from 0 to +1 or even 2 (but 2 is not good especially in daylight! I have sooooo much to learn and its all very confusing yet fun! I haven't even started to tackle shutter speed or aperture! eeeeek!

I know a few of you out there have DSLR cameras so if your interested I came across this little blog post (um, yeah ignore the blog's title :/) in my googling research that helped explain the basics of what these words IOS, aperture, and shutter speed even mean! I still have plans to read the instruction manual that came with the camera, but last night it put me to sleep :) It's much more fun to learn like this....







Now I'm off to iron some clothes and bake something. I could get use to this SAHW (stay at home wife) thing. TaTa!

SNOOOOOOOOOWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its a winter wonderland in Charlotte this morning we woke up to tons of SNOW!!!!! Jake and I hopped right out of bed and ran to go play in it!! I must say if i torture my dog this much with pictures I pitty my children. We had fun though and its crazy how something I grew up with my whole life just makes me giddy when we get it here, since it isn't too often. Not to mention, I'll get to leave work early today, and possibly not even go in tomorrow so that all helps in the excitement too :) hmmmm, sounds familiar from my school days...guess some things never change. Enjoy our playing in the snow pics!

Being bribed with his ball to pose, but of course he'd rather be playing so he's mad and refusing to give me a smile!

And this is we brush off cars in the south...with brooms! :)

Happy Monday everyone, hope you have a great week!