Artsy fartsy....

.... as my dad would say. Here are some pics we took of the girls over the past week.

The photo of Zoey with our Christmas tree was done using the portrait setting on my camera. It suppresses the flash so everything has a natural look. Of course Zoey is dark but I think the glow effect from the tree looks cool.

The picture of Delaney was actually one of she and I but I didn't look very good. So, I played around with the filters in photoshop and ended up cropping everything but her out. I also then darkened the surroundings and lightened her up so it looks like a portrait. When you see the picture bigger her blue eyes just seem to glow to me and I love her silly smile.

I LOVE playing around with photoshop. It is a great creative outlet and I love figuring out new techniques to enhance my pictures. Sometimes I crop people out of pictures or into them. I usually take two or more shots of the same thing and then play around with all of them to create the best photo. This is especially helpful when taking group pictures. For example the family shot of us from the previous post is actually two pictures combined. In the first shot Delaney and I look good but Zoey is looking in the opposite direction. In the second shot Delaney was fussing but Zoey looked good. So, I cropped half the first picture and pasted it into the second. Now everyone looks good. Sometimes it takes a little tweaking and freehand paintbrush by me to make it look right but usually you can't even tell anything was done.

I also make personal signatures with my pictures to attach to my email and message board posts. Here is one I made with that picture of Delaney. It's so fun to see what you can do with a simple photo.

pics from our visit....

Here are some pictures from our trip to Clarence for Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving!

"Enter into HIS gates with thanksgiving and into HIS courts with praise: be thankful unto HIM, and bless HIS name." Psalm 100:4

This year we had a lot to be thankful for. My list is too long to write out but mostly I am thankful for the Lord's presents in my life. I asked Zoey and this is what she is thankful for:

Daddy, you (meaning me), sissy, Aaron & Amy (she is eternally thankful for being in their wedding so they always make the top of the list), Aunt Jen and Jessica, my Grandparents, Peter (who is her favorite person in the world these days), spoons, hangers, paper and the twins (meaning Sophie and Jack, because she thinks they have her binkies she always says them)

Interesting list huh?

We had a great time in Clarence over the holiday. We had Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Mag's house with the whole Fincel clan. It was delicious! I just wish we could have had more leftovers for this week. Then we visited with GG&GG and had a spaghetti dinner on Friday. Saturday we did breakfast with the Yorks and then had pizza with the Yensan men in the evening. Sunday we headed home and ended up meeting up with my parents for lunch on the way. It was a jam packed visit but we have to do it that way so we can see as many people as possible. Last night we all just collapsed and ate homemade turkey noodle soup for dinner, yum!

I hope you all had a great time over Thanksgiving and have as many things to be thankful for as I do.

dresses

Here are some photos of the girls in their Christmas dresses. I am taking them for professional pics next week but I wanted to make sure the dresses fit ok first. I am a little obsessed with dressing them alike. I have already gotten a few summer outfits for them and I just think it is too cute!

clapping

Delaney's new trick is clapping. Here she is performing.

Thanksgiving party

Zoey had her Thanksgiving party at school today. The kids did a cute song for the parents and then sat down to a little dinner. They had turkey, corn, applesauce and pumpkin muffins. They made the applesauce and muffins in class. They made pilgram or indian hats and place mats. On their place mat is their picture, hand print and written inside who they are thankful for. You can read her list below. I guess Delaney and her other aunts don't rate, ha! The whole party was really cute.

parade video

Here is some live action from the parade.

Parade!

Today was the holiday parade in Carthage. Zoey was so excited because she got to ride on a float with her school. They all decorated snowflakes and they were stuck on the side. The float itself was a giant shovel. Zach rode with her and they had a great time. Here are some pictures of them and other parade participants.

8 1/2 months!

Delaney's 8 1/2 month checkup went well. She is 16lbs and 27" long. Still my little peanut. Obviously from the previous pictures you can tell she has reached all the development milestones fine. Yesterday she attempted the stairs and got to the 3rd one before falling. So, now I have gates up everywhere. ACK! She really is the sweetest little girl, except when she is making her demon noises, and even those are funny. She plays by herself wonderfully and can entertain herself with a plastic banana forever. She absolutely loves knocking her sisters block towers down and grabbing anything she can get her hands on. She is sleeping great, usually 8pm-8am. The time change didn't seem to effect her at all. She is loosing her interest in baby food and has started begging for food off my plate. She still doesn't have any teeth though. As of this week she has started to let other people than Zach and I hold her. Thank goodness!

Bye Bye Binkie!

Well, for the past few months Zoey has been having some sleep issues. She would get up several times a night screaming because she dropped her binkie or had a bad dream or wanted something ridiculous like this one "I want to be an artist!" Yes, she woke up screaming at 3am that she wanted to be an artist. I mean screaming too like someone was stabbing her. It was driving us crazy!

So, after doing some research and asking for a lot advice we decided that one thing needed to happen. The binkie needed to be taken away. It can disrupt deep sleep and at 3 1/2 she should really be done with it. We decided that a few nights of her being upset because it was gone was a lot better than months of waking because she dropped it.

Last Monday morning I started prepping her for sending the binkie to the binkie fairy. I told her we would wrap it up and send it to her and she would delivery it to a baby who needed it. She was excited that it might go to her new cousin Sophie. I planned on talking about it all week and then actually sending it on Friday so we would have the weekend to deal with her. On Wed morning though she came downstairs with it and wanted to send it. So, we packaged it up, drove it to the post office and sent it away. The post master was really great and stamped it and made a big deal about it. Zoey was very proud. She even told our neighbor who was outside when we came home and called Grandpa and told him.

The first night I put her to bed early because I knew she was going to be upset. Boy, was she ever. She cried and screamed for a good half hour before I finally lost my patience and just shut the door and said go to sleep. Which she did after only a few minutes. Then SHE SLEPT ALL NIGHT WITHOUT WAKING UP ONCE! It has been over a week and she has slept every night straight through with no issues. I can't believe it! No more waking with strange requests or screaming about nothingness. Every once in awhile she mentions the binkie and tries to see if I'll give it back but I just say no it's gone and she drops it. I was so worried about taking that thing away but it has been the best thing I every did. We are all sleeping 100% better and I am so happy it is finally gone!

Thank God Delaney doesn't like them so I don't have to go through this ever again.

Tupperware!

If anyone is interested in ordering some Tupperware just let me know. I'm having a party next week. There are some great deals right now so check out the catalog at www.my.tupperware.com/veneziano . Thanks!

Standing! No!

Yikes, Delaney has started pulling up to standing! I can't handle it!

Light The Night '07

We had our Light The Night party last night. It went great. We handed out about 75 candy bags with tracts to our church enclosed. We also had hot dogs, punch and coffee for the adults. Everyone had a great time and I really think we touched some people's lives. Here are some pics: