Super J.J.

I spent part of the evening taking J.J.'s 3-year photos out at the park. He was a lot of fun and did a great job. I had to play around with this one. I love Photoshop!

Two down...one to go

I'm very happy to report that Dusty passed another exam in his Microsoft certification quest today. He has one more left. After passing today's exam he has a MCTS. (Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist) He's going for the MCPD. (Microsoft Certified Professional Developer or Mount Carmel Police Department, can't remember) In celebration Dusty has promised to take a couple days off from constantly studying. Yea! I'm sure this involves watching episodes of CSI and Walker Texas Ranger and eating ice cream. Then its back to the books...or in the case one very, very, very LARGE book.

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Father's Day Dusty! We Love You!

Still one of my favorite photos of Dusty and the kids

And of course, Happy father's day to my dad!

Here's the video that I put together that ran at the end of church service today. The photos are of men in our church and their kids. One of my all time favorite photos is at the end.

Bits and Pieces

This week has been a long one! I've made 2 trips over and back to church camp in Illinois. (Dropping off and picking up) We spent yesterday evening in downtown Indy for the Southern Baptist Convention. Here's what I've learned this week...

This was so cool. It's not every day the kids from your church can sing with well known singer in front of thousands of people and have it web cast live. I'm not sure they all could grasp how special this was, but I was on the floor snapping photos grinning ear to ear! (Sorry I ripped off your photo, Pastor Jim, but it was better than mine. Too busy smiling, not enough time spent checking my camera settings)

Being backstage at an event is really fun also! Stinkin' spotlight messing up my shot.

It takes a good crew of adults to herd a crowd of 40 kids through a convention center. Oh...and kids love escalators!

Musings from Camp

• Kids are smelly after being at camp all week in 80 & 90 degree temperatures
• Always be in charge so you can casually put the most stinky boys on someone else's van
• (Sorry Diane and Sarah - I owe you a Starbucks!)
• Getting back at 10PM is infinitely better than returning at 1AM
• Empty your kid's bag as soon as you get home. The foul stench will only get worse the longer it sets

With that I'm off to empty out a duffel bag!

Rockin' the Convention

We took several kids from our church into Indy tonight for the Southern Baptist Convention. They were part of a kids choir that sang with Travis Cottrell this evening. It was a long evening, but the kids did a fantastic job. As we were walking through the convention center to our vans people would see them in their matching shirts and congratulate them on a job well done. Those kids felt like rock stars by the time they got to the vans. It was quite funny. And hey, I got to meet Travis Cottrell! I'll try to post more pics later.

My Favorites - Part One

I've been trying to keep in the habit of blogging once a day. Occasionally I hit a day, where there just isn't much to report. Dennis and Vickie watched Rachel for us this evening while Dusty and I ate a heaping amount of Thai food. I returned shoes to Kohl's and bought a magazine at Wal-mart. As you can see my day was full of excitement and suspense at every turn! So to give me something to post I'd like to introduce "Heidi's Favorite Pics". You're on the edge of your seat....aren't you. So from now on when I get in a jam I will just post a couple of my favorite photos that I have taken in the past. Hold on...here we go!

This is Rachel at 3 months. I didn't plan this shot, just grabbed the camera while she was laying in my lap and took it. Sometimes you just get lucky!

The back of the Statue of Liberty. Why? Why not! You always see the front of the statue or from the side with the NYC skyline in the background. I just loved the detail.

Going to Camp

Got up at 6:00 AM this morning to drive Aaron and 3o other kids from our church to kids camp in Robinson, Illinois. We loaded them in on the church van, a 15 passenger van and a mini van. We were quite the crew! I thought we was going to have problems with traffic since I-70 West was shut down between here and Terre Haute due to damage from the flooding, but we rolled down US-40 to Brazil and got back on the interstate with little problems. I'm glad we took that route because on the way back we could see that the westbound lanes of the interstate were backed up for 5 solid miles where they were routing traffic off! Hopefully everthing will be back up and running when we go to pick them up on Thursday. Thanks to Diane and Angie for driving and thanks to Diane for the photos. Here's a sample of our morning!