Mommy's new toy

We had a lovely, full, long weekend. Rob and Dorothy took their tandem bike on a several-mile stretch of the mayor's Bike and Hike, we relaxed, made homemade ice cream, grilled out, drove to a nearby woods and took a nice walk. There was also lots of complaining, because, well, we have a four-year-old. But Mommy did some complaining too this time because the new toy she'd ordered fully a week ago had not yet arrived and she had to wait until Tuesday for the UPS dude to deliver it. (Incidentally, why do mothers often refer to themselves in third person?) Anyway, today my parcel finally arrived and I somehow managed not to run out to the sidewalk, pounce on the UPS man and rip it out of his hands when it finally got here.

One of my very favorite things in the world is taking photographs of my beautiful kids. I consider it a hobby, privilege, duty and job perk all in one. My favorite method of storing our family photos is to put them into books using the software available at Blurb.com and have them printed. I'm holding our most recent edition here in my hand. I choose different layouts for different batches of photos and add some text--it isn't complicated, it doesn't take long, the results look great, and I don't have to go to one of those schmaltzy estrogen-filled scrapbooking stores at any point in the process. Anyway, it felt like the weak link in our photo situation was our camera, which does a perfectly fine job but not a beautiful job like some nicer cameras. So we upgraded, and it finally arrived today! Now my next crafty project is definitely going to be to learn to use it better so that the new weak link in the family photograph situation is not the, er, photographer.

But happily it seems to do a pretty good job without me even knowing how to use it properly yet. I'm afraid my sewing machine might get dusty in the next week or two while I'm chasing my poor kids (and maybe even the long-neglected cats) in my attempt to master the digital SLR thing.