Oh boy, a whole week

The week just flew by, it's the every day being the same thingy, there is usually not much to write about and then the week just flies by with Karate, piano etc.  I am still taking pictures pretty much every day and the plan had been to post my POTD every day, well, you can see how far I got with that. I'll try to do better (yet again)

I think I am having camera issues, my really good expensive D300 takes really awesome pictures, except when it gets darker, the pictures are really dark and no settings get them to where I want them. I have had to crank my ISO up to 3200 and it wasn't even dark, that was just my house during the late afternoon hours (granted, no sunshine) Anyway, I contacted my insurance company to see if they can have somebody look at it. I used to think I just didn't know how to do the settings right yet and struggled and struggled and got frustrated. Then I had the brainstorm to do a comparison set-up with my old D40, using the same settings and same lens and here are the results 

looks quite different, doesn't it? The bottom one was shot with the D40. I never thought that there could be something wrong with a camera. Oh well, I guess I'll find out soon enough

Gabrielle had a friend sleep over and yesterday I took them and Rachel to the little park area where we had so much fun in the summer. Man, it was cold. We just walked around a bit and I took some shots of the river and the ice.

it was so cold, it wasn't even funny! I couldn't wait to get back in the car. We then decided to take a ride to the Incline Plane. My kids never took a ride on that thing (other than in a stroller and they can't quite remember that time), so on we went. That was fun, Gabrielle was screaming at first (the girl who hates rollercoasters), but I think she enjoyed it

at least we had something to do and got out of the house.

then I had this longing for Kaffeetrinken. That's the traditional german afternoon get-together, where you have coffee or tea and something sweet. So we raced home and I made a big pot of tea in my good china, set the table nice with a white tablecloth and got a little cake out of the freezer. It was great, it really reminded me of growing up and the girls got a kick out of it. Michael didn't participate in any of it. He didn't want to come along and preferred playing his game. Oh well

last but not least that night I got a couple of pretty nice shots of the moon, freezing my tail off on the porch :)

the photo is cropped and blown up a little of course.

All in all a fun day!

I have a few pages to share, my 365 page from last week

and some of the challenges at DD

these were actually artjournal pages, that was a lot of fun!

Rachel is always such a willing subject :) These were taken while we were at the WEstmoreland Mall last weekend

Michael and his games! He was playing over at Helen's house, when Johnny was home. He tried to teach John how to play and got so disgusted with him, it was hilarious!

this was for PixelCanvas. WE were supposed to lift this awesome paper page. It had so much dimension, I tried to get that with the shadows. It was fun and then, here is Rachel again :)

you can tell I really liked those shots I got of her that day :)

Well, that's it for today, gotta go :)