Rookie

     I learned ALOT of things today. One is that it is a production to take a fair skinned, light eyed, TODDLER to the beach and not fry her like a southern chicken. 3 times I slathered her in SPF70+ and in my concern for her, forgot about myself. Therefore I'm the homestyle chicken here. I parked 6 blocks from the beach, thinking that with the mass amounts of people making their way to the beach since it was 90 degrees inland today (hush Valley people, I remember your 120s all to well) that it would be a good idea...I forgot until after I parked about the huge bag, umbrella, stroller, towels and child that I only had 2 arms for and panicked. I tell you what, I made it...somehow. Sometime I think "I've got this down, this is easy, kids?! bring them on, I can handle anything" and then a day like today happens and I realize I'm a rookie mom!

     In my rush out the door I forgot to make sure that my camera battery was charged. I was actually just bragging last night about how my battery has lasted almost a month now and I take pictures every single day. Well, of course, with my luck, my camera died 5 minutes after being at the beach. I should have just gone home then because I was pretty depressed the whole rest of the time.

     THEN when I got home I realized that I had taken the majority of my pictures on the wrong setting. I rely on my display on the back of my camera too much. Since it was so bright outside, I wasn't able to look at it so when I got home all of my pictures were very "cold". They had a blue hue to them. Luckily it's a decently easy fix in photoshop, but still a mistake that I shouldn't have made in the first place.

    So, because of my many rookie mistakes you won't get to see the pictures of Emily running from the waves with her Aunt Kaylee or the zillions of ladybugs that were attracked to the ocean today for some reason. or Emily eating sand. or the beautiful wildflowers that lined the beach because I am apparently STILL making simple ol rookie mistakes. These are the best of the pictures that I did get.

      So now that I've complained the whole time...I did learn something new. One of my professional photographer friend inadvertently taught me how to make my skys blue in my pictures. This is super exciting because I LOVE color in my pictures and one of my biggest complaints is that my skys are never blue. Well folks I figured it out!! and even though in these pictures the skies are kind of blue green from having to add orange to the pictures to make Emily not look like she was sitting on an iceburg, I am so excited to be one more step closer to getting my pictures perfect:

I don't know what it was about today but she could not stop throwing things!! Most of the time it was cute but I KINDLY disciplined her when she would take aim at SOMEONE...no one wants sand in the face.

     I hate the sand more than anything in the world and the time has come for me to get to go de-sand my daughter! YAY!! perfect way to end my day. :)