My Mother's Birthday

Justin: Click the August Archive on the right to see all the pictures as there are quite a few, again.

My mother's birthday was this week so we went to Knoxville to be with her and celebrate. My sister and her family came in on Friday where Stace and I went in Sat morning as we both got out of work late Friday. Throw in the storms in the area and having to drive through the mountains, well, yeah - we opted to wait. So we got in before noon and we all just hung out and visited, which was nice. Later on, after a wonderful dinner of grilled steaks, we lit the candles on the cake and my mom opened her gifts. This is where the budding photobug in me decided to rear its head. The only photos in the list here with a flash are the blowing out of candles and my mother licking icing off of her fingers. I am a huge fan of natural light and love to pull off shots using everything "au natural", so to speak, which is why I don't mind having some blow outs, like the window behind my mom, the highlights in Stace's hair, etc. These pics are untouched and I am actually very pleased with them. The light in the living room at that moment was just plain fun.
We all stayed up late talking and catching up, having a couple glasses of wine and relaying stories of our most recent antics.
Sunday my mom fixed a wonderful breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy, waffles, bacon, cantelope and bananas and apples. We cleaned up for her and then took Hayden out to the new little water park there in Powell next to the high school. This is where most of the pictures come from as I wanted to experiment with the camera and the water, etc. There are a few things I wanted to try but didn't... oh well.. Practice, practice, practice..

I hope everyone else had a great weekend.
Be safe.