Our long long July 4th weekend

How long can you stretch out a holiday weekend? In my case, I am on my 4th and last day of my long long 4th of July weekend. What did we do this weekend?

Well, there was some visiting with cousins up in NH. They are the only family I have out this way (the rest of the family we have up here is actually Adam's family - well, my family too but you know what I mean). I took a couple of photos of Angelica at the pool:
Angel probably has a BMI of -3. She's 7 years old and hasn't broken 50lbs yet. She's built like a twig...but she's not frail - she's probably as healthy as we should all hope to be.
I like this photo better - One of the things I want to work on this summer is to learn how to shoot in full manual. I have a crazy habit of staying in Aperture Priority (AV) mode on my camera. While it's cool for tricks like blurring the background and capturing bokeh, it's not as helpful as shooting in full manual. I think it would help making sure what I want in focus is in focus. I find that in both these photos, Angelica's face is only softly focused when I wanted her face to be more focused.

Besides breaking out my camera, I finished a long awaited scrapbook for my friend, Michele and started making the invitations for her little one's birthday. Adam and the kids put up the tent we got him for Father's Day in the backyard. They tried twice to sleep in there overnight. We're in desperate need of blow up beds or camp cots or something - last night they all came in at midnight because out old Aerobeds did not hold up and flattened out by then. I'll have to photo the tent the next time they put it up.

We did a lot of swimming this weekend - here in New England it's been 90+ (or around there) for the entire weekend. We went to Auntie Sandie's pool on the 4th and yesterday to cool off. My favorite picture of the weekend:

My favorite people in the whole world - love you guys - here's to a great summer ahead!!!