My boys and I ~Zoo take 2

I am joining Emily over at the anderson crew again today to get myself in the shot!

I thought I would give the information on my camera settings for these pics for a little change.

Whether you want to know or not!

These were taken in mid day sun.

I put the sun behind us.

The sun reflecting off the bridge did put some light in our faces though.

The zoo map my boy decided to bring into the pics did an even better job of putting light in our faces!

I am going to pretend he did it on purpose.

I took these with my Nikon D300s, 50mm 1.4 lens.

Aperture was set at 1.8

Shutter speed 1/4000

ISO 400 (after getting asked about this I decided I should probably explain! A lower ISO is better for bright light. I had just not changed it from earlier. It does not matter much on my camera

but if you have an entry level dslr it might make your picture grainy to have a high iso)

If you have a DSLR make sure you are USING it!

I like to encourage people to at least keep their camera in Aperture Priority (that controls how much is in focus).

That way you can at least get those blurry backgrounds for portraits.

I wore totally impracticable shoes to the zoo this time.

No tennis shoes!

I like to step out of the typical mommy uniform sometimes.

So I wore a skirt and boots!!!

I have found long skirts work pretty well with my boys.

I had a pretty interesting incident in a knee length skirt before though…

Little boys like to wrap their arms around legs.

Floor length is a much safer choice!!!!

I am going to miss this ~Decorating the Tree

Decorating the Christmas tree was a big deal when I was growing up.

We would gather around and wait anxiously for my mom to hand us an ornament to hang on our freshly picked out tree.

Our favorites were the ones we knew were ours.

The one with a picture of a cute baby on it and our name under it.

Or the one with babies first Christmas written on it and our birth year.

Knowing I will not always have little hands so happy to help decorate the tree I decided to give them free reign.

My youngest said the ribbon needed to be in a pile to keep the tree warm.

They were so happy to hang every ornament.

So many memories wrapped up in each one.

One day I will have a perfectly decorated tree.

The beads will be hanging nice and neat, not sagging down.

The ornaments will be all over and not in one spot.

What a sad little tree that will be.

I will enjoy my tree of today and the little boys that helped me decorate it.

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

To me my tree is perfect.

Chapter book series for 1st grade boys

*This post contains Amazon Associate links

I have mentioned before how much I want my boys to enjoy reading as much as I do.

With that in mind I try to keep them supplied with many books that will keep that fire going!

Here are some of our favorites.

1. Geronimo Stilton

My son eats these up!

He will finish one and then start it all over again.

The novels are written in a really fun way with lots of different fonts and a lot of colorful pictures.

They also have graphic novels that are written more like comic books and teach about different parts of history.

I love these!

2. Magic Tree House

My son and I really enjoy the Magic Tree house books.

We are pretty careful about introducing magic in our house so some of the later ones have a bit too much of that for me.

I do love how much they teach about history and different places in the world though.

The first twenty or so books are really light on the magic so those are my favorites.

3. Imagination Station Books

These are basically a Christian version of the Magic Tree House.

They are very similar but with the whole imagination station twist and a Christian perspective.

I buy every new one that comes out!

4. The Magic School Bus Chapter Books

I love anything that will teach and be entertaining at the same time so of course I love the magic school bus!!!

We also own all of the movies!

I am a little bit addicted!!!

There are many more good books out there but these are the main ones that make my little man really happy!

Unless of course it involves superheros…

This list is more about the books both of us really like I guess!

Hope this helps some of you!