More July Fun, Emma tries Gymnastics, and my photographyI

The two children's picnic tables we built got a paint job. What else besides Star Wars and Clone Wars symbols?! We ended up gifting the one with the black rebels symbol to a family in our stake whose twins are named "Luke" and "Leah." They host a backyard FHE once a month with donuts, ice cream, popcorn, and cotton candy and open it up to the community so we thought they could use some extra seating. They were pretty happy with the surprise!

 

Emma had a preschool field trip at Shining Stars Gymnastics. She was introduced to stretching, tumbling, balancing and jumping. She had a great time. I just wish we had the funds to let her participate in it more. She would love it!

July was a time of LOTS and LOTS of picture taking. I even got asked to shoot a wedding for Ethan's Kindergarten teacher. That was huge! But even with all the picture taking I did for other people, I still took pics of my own kids and was sure to get at least one pic of all my kiddos together too.

I truly have the cutest kids EVER!

 Shooting my first ever wedding for pay made me nervous. I took pictures at my sisters wedding but had never done it for pay before. Having to do a wedding gave me the excuse to go clothes shopping for a new outfit! That is something I rarely EVER do anymore. I picked out a white and black top and some black capris. I ended up not getting the pants. And boy am I glad I went with the capris! It was a HOT day for a afternoon wedding!

I had lots of fun photographing the wedding but I also learned some very important lessons. One being to ALWAYS check my camera settings, especially when going back and forth between taking indoor shots and outdoor shots. I forgot to change  my settings when going back outdoors for all the family photos and so ALL of them turned out BLUE and highly washed out. Luckily I was able to salvage them and learned quite a bit with my photo shop program. I hope to never make that mistake again! The bride and groom were very happy with their pictures so that's good! It was nice knowing the bride for my first time around too. I warned her that I was not a pro and knowing that she knew that and still trusted me to take good pictures made it less stressful.

Here are some shots of her pre-wedding shots and a few of my favs from the actual wedding day.