8th Grade Graduation

In my day, graduating from 8th grade was sort of expected, and not considered a rehearsal for high school, but here they go big or go home. Enjoy!

Proof she is still our little girl

Waiting to cross the stage

Shaking hands with the district superintendent

Shaking hands with the principal

8th grade class of 2012!

New camera insanity

We bought a new camera. An expensive one. I even broke my cardinal rule about staying away from evil empires and got it at Costco which meant I had to get a Costco membership.

Fancy!!!

And this sort of freaks me out a bit because they knew my name and email and where I lived and if that isn't a sign of the evilness of Costco then nothing is.

We got a bad boy Nikon D5100 which makes my old compact Sony digital with its puny 7.6 mega pixels look like a Polaroid in comparison. The Nikon has lots of lenses and settings and big words like "aperture" and "F stop" and I am still trying to figure out where to put the film in it.

Oh wait.

We tested in out in the house. Here I am running from the kitchen to the dining room and back. Wheee. Well worth the money, no?

Note to self, why haven't we bought dining room furniture yet?

What form! What grace!

And then we tried color sampling where you highlight a single color and it makes everything else black and white. We are so artistic, can you STAND us?

And then yesterday we went whole hog WILD and took it outdoors to the baseball game and played with the 55-300 lens (I don't know what that means so don't ask me. I call it the "big lens") for some telephoto shots (listen to me, all photo journalist speak).

 

There is a memory card that holds 5,000 photos (no, really FIVE THOUSAND PHOTOS) and so not only will my life be made better by wonderful pictures, I will become translucently paler sitting in my office deleting the 4,500 pictures that I DON'T want because I left the damn thing in Sports Mode.

Although this one, this one's a keeper.

Pallet of death

Chocolates hazelnut yummy. There isn't an epi pen big enough....

Scoliosis means

 

You own more white seamless camisoles than anyone else. Anywhere.

A couple of snaps

A few shots of the kids in all of their many activities. The school year is winding down now and summer sports are starting up. More to post later, as I've bought a new camera and so have endless excuses to take photos now.

Baseball season has begun for Minor 10s

But he'd really rather be doing this. Which he does, for an hour a day.

Catherine turned 13. Bon Anniversaire ma petite fille

No blog post is complete with a shot of Han Solo. OMG

Why I love my job

All the k cup coffee you want. Free.

The quest for shorts

I've never shopped for, ordered (and returned) so many pairs of navy blue shorts in my life. All I needed were elastic waisted shorts to fit over Catherine's scoliosis brace. She had to have short over, not under, her brace so she can tuck in her camp shirt (a requirement). For the $$$$ I am spending on this camp, you'd think they could give me a waiver on this requirement, but as my husband pointed out, we'd be making Catherine more conspicuous as the only kid not tucking in her shirt. And so my quest begun.

Let's count them off, shall we?

• Kohls: no
• Lands End: no
• Lands End again: still no (Thank you free shipping!)
• Old Navy: nadda
• Gap: not even close
• Target: yes, for William
• Walmart: Yes

YES!

For all that Walmart is Evil, they are very very GOOD when it comes to elastic, navy blue and CHEAP.

CHEAP!

I was looking for boy shorts there (which I nixed because they needed a belt loop for camp--Seriously camp, you are KILLING ME) when I found simple navy blue, cotton shorts with a full elastic waist. For $4.97 a pair.

It gets better.

Online, I found them for 2 PAIRS for $4.97. I cannot make shorts for $2.50 a pair. I can't even drive to the Walmart to BUY them for $2.50 in gas.

They arrived today. And they fit. THEY FIT. They don't look stupid. They are very comfortable.

I am one very happy mommy right now.