The Bonnie 5

ten

2014-11-20T11:18:00.001-06:00

leaf collector

2014-11-10T14:00:00.001-06:00

superwoman, age 5

2014-10-16T12:10:00.000-05:00

kindergarten

2014-08-19T10:49:00.001-05:00

So… guess who started kindergarten last week?? Yep! This kid!! She's been counting down for oh… about 2 years now, and finally her day has come! She absolutely loves it, she's made lots of new friends already, and her teacher is wonderful! This is my first time in THIRTEEN years that I have all 3 kids in school full time. All this 'spare time' I thought I was going to have hasn't happened yet, so I'll keep it short and sweet. Here are some recent pics of my new kindergartener!!

(I had to include a silly one. She's trying to push her hair back with wet fingernails lol!)

197 days until summer

2013-12-04T18:27:00.002-06:00

around here

2013-11-21T13:40:00.002-06:00

iPhone catch-up

2013-11-08T10:57:00.000-06:00

Well hello! Just stopping in with another of my WILDLY unpopular iPhone posts lol. ;-) As a double whammy, these are probably my least favorite iPhone shots that I've taken in awhile, but I feel the need to keep it going. They don't thrill me enough to even double post on Facebook (now THAT'S bad). ;-) If you'd prefer to see some that I like better, feel free to pop over here. Happy Weekend!

a pink dress, a pink cast and a bear

2013-09-28T16:36:00.000-05:00

the little pink cast

2013-09-13T21:24:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd give a quick update on Livia for those of you that haven't heard the news on Facebook. Thursday morning I took her to an indoor play center because she was begging me to "meet some new friends." :-) About an hour after we got there, she fell off the monkey bars and fractured two bones in her wrist. I have never broken a bone, hubby has never broken a bone and our 2 boys have never broken a bone. Leave it to the Tiny Tornado!!

Of course it broke my heart to see her in pain, but I was secretly hoping for oodles of cuddle time! WRONG. Two hours after the fall, she was up and running around the doctor's office like a banchee, and that was BEFORE the cast went on. She wasn't the least bit concerned about the X-rays or the cast going on... she was so excited to pick out the color! The only bummer was having to pull her out of swimming lessons since she'll have to wear the cast for a month. I'm just glad it wasn't anything more serious. A fractured wrist we can handle!

All I had to share was an iPhone shot. I hope to get some more photos with the real camera to document her little mishap.

I really REALLY appreciate all the kind words on Facebook!! I read them all to Livia and they just thrilled her! :-) Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. xoxo

the many faces of...

2013-09-13T09:10:00.000-05:00

Hello friends! Is everyone all adjusted to their back to school routine? We are and it feels great! :-) This is the 7th and final year that we'll have a preschooler in the house, and the 7th and final year I will break into a cold sweat when I get that ominous request from the teachers: "bring photo of preschooler for the bulletin board." I wasn't into photography when Collin and Drew were in preschool so it was always a challenge to scrounge up a decent photo, and for the first 3 years of TT's life she simply RAN... so that was a different kind of challenge. It sounds crazy that I wouldn't have any bulletin board worthy photos of Livia, but it's true...I don't. I have plenty of running away photos, headless photos, blurry photos (she still runs faster than even the most respectable shutter speed) and crazy face photos. But sitting still? Smiling? Well, no.

As I was about to pull one from the archives for this years bulletin board, I thought it was pretty sad that my last decent head shot of her was from November, 2012. So I met the challenge with steely determination and took my whirling senorita out for a few new photos.

And of course the collage of outtakes I shared on Facebook last week. :-)

Thanks for looking and have a great weekend! xo

a few from the fair

2013-09-03T12:29:00.002-05:00

four

2013-08-20T14:26:00.002-05:00

Note: I posted these on Facebook earlier, and the birthday wishes have begun to roll in. :-) The truth is she turned 4 on March 30th, but I haven't really taken a little series of photos with her since then. I took these photos this morning so I could squeak by with still calling her four. She'll be 4 1/2 on September 30th. :-)

orchids (and things I could improve upon)

2013-08-15T16:38:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to get better with my photography now that we're all settled in our new house... and what do you know? I took these shots the exact same way I would have a year ago. Boo. :-/ There are definitely some things I could have done differently/better.

Notes to self:
I meant to get a pretty aqua/turquoise background to use against the magenta flowers. (forgot)
Experiment more with depth of field. These are pretty straight on and more bluriness would be pretty.
Shoot thru the flowers, creating a blur in the foreground and focus on a flower in the background.
I thought the black and white would be way cooler. I'm not wow'd. Maybe different processing?
Experiment with backlight. These are front and side lit.
My shots always seem colorful, clean, straightforward and dare I say a bit boring?? I want to try thinking outside the box... haze, blur, something new! Something more creative, not a shot that looks like a stock photo.

Also, I didn't use a black background. I just placed the flowers in the sun and exposed accordingly, causing the background to go dark. (I was actually in a light bedroom with white bedding).

Maybe those thoughts will be helpful to you too! :-) Enjoy the rest of your week! xo

summer snaps

2013-08-03T20:03:00.000-05:00

Well hiiiii there! :-) I can't believe the ENTIRE summer has passed me by without popping in to say hello! Our summer consisted of baseball, baseball and more baseball. The boys' tournaments were last week, and we only have a couple weeks to relax before the kids head back to school August 13th. Can you believe that, the 13th??! This is the first year the kids will be in three different schools. Collin will start middle school, Drew will be in 3rd grade and Livia will be in preschool for another year. If you are local and see me whizzing by in my van, you may refer to me from here on out as The Blur.

Also... my photography has taken a serious hit this past year. The time to pick up my camera has been limited (I'm rarely even on IG these days!) so I decided to enroll in an online class. It's called Shooting 301: Fine Art and Visual Expression. I really want to get better and more creative with my photography. Gosh, there's so much I want to write on this subject, but these last few summer evenings are precious and I need to be with my family. For now, here are a few snapshots from the summer.

I hope this was a wonderful summer for you all! xo

april

2013-05-06T17:20:00.002-05:00

Hello friends! Well April certainly was a whirlwind. We ended our 45-something day hotel stay, went on a Disney cruise, oh and I almost forgot... we closed on our new house the day before we left on vacation. Whew! Exciting and fun, but I'm ready for some calm! :-) Here is a quick glance at our month in iPhone photos.

I've noticed that my last few posts have been collages and/or iPhone photos. I promise when we get more settled in our new home I'll take the big camera out for a spin! Have a great week! xo

where i've been

2013-04-08T22:56:00.001-05:00

Well HELLO friends!! It's been awhile! :-) I was going to do the whole **tap tap...... this thing on?** bit, but it's late and I'm sitting in a dark hotel room, my two boys on the pull-out sofa and Livia on a little cot under the window with her pink giraffe and a small army of water bottles on her bedside table. I didn't intentionally take a 3 month blog break, but I thought I'd pop in to let you know what's been going on. Our family of 5 (and really the tiny tornado counts as 3 people herself), has been living at the Marriott since March 15th.

It's April 8th.

The insanity is starting to set in.

There is a much longer version to this story, but the cliff notes version is that we sold our house before the one we're building is ready. This was due largely in part to a huge cabinet fiasco (read: us choosing these super fantastic upgraded modern cabinets that turned out to be giant rectangles of poo). So we had to have 5 bathrooms, the mudroom, the laundry room aaaaand the entire kitchen cabinets ripped out of our new house. Not fun. Then we had to race to find a custom cabinet company that could squeeze us in and get us back on track. I'm happy to say our new cabinets have been installed and we are nearing the home stretch. The wood floors are being sanded this week! Big happy face.

We thought a hotel would be our best living arrangement because most apartments require a 3 month minimum and we only needed about a month. So while 700 square feet, 1 bathroom and 1 closet might feel a little tight... on the upside our room has a full sized kitchen, and there is a gym, pool, and a basketball court.. and complimentary o'duerves in the lobby every Monday-Thursday evening. And someone makes my bed and does my dishes every day. :-) Always the silver lining.

To add another layer to the story, we're taking the kids on a Disney cruise and we leave April 19th. We're headed to Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and St. John. I don't think our home will be ready before we leave. But no problemo!! Life is good and my kids are healthy so I really can't complain. We have 3 storage units, 4 rooms at hubby's office filled floor to ceiling, and half of my parents' home filled to the brim. I think it's going to feel like Christmas opening up all of our things! :-) We will be gone for 10 days, so I'm praying our home will be ready and waiting for us!

A couple little snafu's have also been resolved. There was a little miscommunication between me and hubby, and the box I had packed and boldly labeled "Shorts!!! Cruise!!" was misplaced and feared to be in the back of 1 of the 3 storage units. Behind all the furniture. Having to buy shorts for 10 days for a family of 5? Pricey. But God smiled on us last weekend during our frantic search. It was the FIRST box we touched!! (I won't embarrass Doron by telling you that he jumped up and down and screamed like a girl when the box was found. But since he would be the one crawling over the mattresses and hauling out a houseful of furniture, I'll give him a free pass on that one). Also, there was a MAJOR snafu with hubby's passport. He didn't become a U.S. citizen until 2001 and he couldn't find his naturalization paperwork. No U.S. birth certificate? No paperwork? No cruise. And it was already booked. God smiled on us again, and it was found in a box with some old photos in the garage.

And because a post is no good without pictures, I'll leave you with some recent Instagram photos.

Oh WAIT!!! I almost forgot!! GUESS WHO JUST TURNED 4????!! That's right... this little señorita!! (Pardon her matted down hotel hair. Not to worry, she still has her beautiful curls!!) :-)

I hope to get back on the picture taking bandwagon when we're in our new house and settled. I don't even know if I remember how to use my camera... and as I was uploading these photos, I realized Photobucket has totally changed and I could barely find my way around. Yikes.

OK, back to the iPhone pics.

And one more thing. It's not often that I crack myself up, but it happens on occasion. If you follow me on Instagram, you've already heard this joke. Look at the middle picture in the top row. Livia is the one wearing the hot pink tutu. I titled the photo "the day Livia was out-tutu'd." Get it? The little girl to her right with a tutu 5 times bigger than hers? Oh yeah. Good stuff.

Sooo... that's where I've been and what we've been up to. I probably won't pop in again until after our cruise, so I'll see you sometime in May! Happy Spring, friends! xoxo

twenty twelve

2012-12-31T16:24:00.002-06:00

Thanks for the memories, 2012! You were the best yet. xo

the day the tornado met her match

2012-11-27T10:32:00.000-06:00

Hi friends! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I was just sitting here going through my 2012 photos and ran across a few that cracked me up. These were taken back in October for Collin's birthday party, but the pictures weren't "good enough" (good enough for whom I'm not sure)... so I never shared them. My goal for 2012 was to be more organized. Perhaps my goal for 2013 would be to get over myself.

When I say the Tiny Tornado is fearless, I mean fearless. She's up for anything and everything. Remember when she nearly tackled the 60 year old Islands of Adventure employee when he told her she was too small to go on the Jurassic Park ride? So I thought these pictures were pretty funny. I think on this day she met her match.

What you see here is Livia, Drew's best friend and Drew on the free fall ride. Everyone is happy. (Of interest: Drew and his friend are the same age. Long legs, anyone?) When the ride goes up, people are happy.

When the ride goes down... well you see what's going on here.

Does big brother (blue shirt on the right) seem to be delighting in her misery? Why yes I believe he does.

Aaaand... back to happy.

Hope these brought a smile. Have a wonderful week! xo

squares to share

2012-11-17T14:50:00.000-06:00

Hi friends! Just wanted to pop in and share a few Instagram favorites from the past few months. If you follow me on IG (karlibonnie) you've seen most of these, but if not, here's what we've been up to. All of my IG photos are taken with my iPhone 3G, and I think my upgrade comes in February - yay! :-)

I have my IG account set to private... it feels a little weird to have strangers just a click away. That probably sounds weird since my blog is public, but it takes a little more effort to visit someone's blog rather just right there on their phone. I have accepted requests to follow me from people I don't know... for example if your IG name is Susie Momtographer, well that sounds pretty harmless. But if you are a teen boy (yes that has happened a few times - I have no idea why!)... in those cases I have graciously declined. Lol. ;-)

Instagram is such a fun, creative outlet for me and it makes me happy to share these with you. :-) Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend! xo

snow white

2012-10-17T11:07:00.000-05:00

When we returned home from our Snow White pictures last night and I opened my camera bag, I had to chuckle at the fact that I brought 2 other lenses (my oft neglected 50mm, and my 70-200mm) just to play around with. The nickname Tiny Tornado is no joke... like she'd sit there and let me change lenses. I will say, however, that our romp through the forest was slowed down a bit by her horrendously uncomfortable blue heels that gouged into her tiny pink toes. (We heard about the toe injury for the entire 90 minutes after we returned home until our ears could take no more and TT was escorted to bed. The howling was so severe that she received a visit from Doctor Dad, who donned a homemade cape and a sword, but was more weird than anything else and probably frightened her to sleep).

The blue heels were not our biggest challenge of the evening however. We began by trying to convince Livia that the little strips of tight elastic in the arms were in fact comfortable, and the scratchy material under the skirt was pillowy soft. This is not foreign territory for me. In my 20's I developed a serious case of wool-dar. It kind of like radar, except it's the superhuman ability to detect even .00002% of wool (or other scratchy fiber) in any given garment. My wardrobe took a serious hit as one by one, non-cotton materials were banished from my closet. TT has inherited this aversion to all things uncomfortable (pinchy elastic and cheap tulle included) and woe to the person that doesn't attend to her socks immediately when they are "crickled."

But I digress. I needn't mention that once again I brought my secret weapon (grandma), and we made an evening of it. 80 degrees on October 16th? Yes please and thank you.

Happy Wednesday!! xoxo

the day drew played hooky

2012-10-03T17:12:00.000-05:00

Well, the month long coughing virus has slowly made its way through our family with Drew bringing up the rear. He hadn't missed any school so far, but developed a mystery coughing attack at 7:35 this morning and asked to stay home. Being as this isn't my first rodeo, I didn't fall for the coughing attack but declared it a mental health day and called in that he would be sick. Wouldn't you know it but 5 minutes later he was bounding through the house. Very mysterious!! Ahem.

I have been very distracted lately (I have big news that I am so excited to share with you soon)... (no I am not pregnant)... and mom guilt has set in. I haven't been giving my kids 100% and it's been making me feel awful. So this morning I packed up Drew and TT and we headed for the zoo.

Pictures you will not see:
1. The one of Livia holding the white rat with the pink eyes.
2. The one of me taking deep breaths and telling myself everything would be ok once we got home and I could bleach her.
3. The one of Drew (who refused to touch a single animal all day, but decided maybe a tiny rat wouldn't be so bad) getting pooped on by the white rat.
4. The one of Livia holding the snake.
5. The one of Livia kissing the snake. (Yes, KISSING).
6. The one where I started slapping the back of my neck and shrieking "it's ON me!! it's ON me!!"

I was going to give the obligatory "snake warning" before posting pictures of TT holding the snake, but I just couldn't bear to post a picture of a snake on my blog. Same goes for the Naked Mole Rats. So don't worry... no snakes or rats or other animals that fall into the what was God thinking?? category.

So let's begin.

So there you have it! A little time to reconnect with my youngest two. It was wonderful. <3

summer skies

2012-09-23T18:38:00.000-05:00

At last... the much anticipated summer skies post!! OK, so it was only much anticipated by two people (Hi Natalie! Hi Andrea!), but still. :-) I mentioned in my spring skies post that I would try to do another collage for summer, and two of my favorite blog buddies kept me on track to finish it, checking in and encouraging me along the way. Thanks friends! I probably wouldn't have done it without you! xo

My summer skies collage isn't as much a testament to my photography skills as it is to my memorization skills. Last Friday as I was adding the last photo (no kidding, the LAST photo), Photoshop crashed. Amid fervent prayer to the Photoshop Powers that Be, pleading that I had recently saved my collage, I reopened it to find 7 photos missing. (sinking feeling) I couldn't even remember which photos I had used, let alone where I put them in the collage. It's not like I had 16 photos waiting neatly in a single folder. I was using photos from throughout the summer and two of the photos were from the iPhone vault. (Trust me when I say you don't want to go delving into the hideousness that is my iPhone folder). *cue horror movie soundtrack*

Anyway, I'm pleased to report that no Macs were harmed nor husbands snapped at in the redoing of this collage, and somehow I managed to put things back together.

Hope you all have a wonderful week... and Happy Fall! :-)

26 of ten

2012-09-20T13:10:00.000-05:00

Prologue: In my attempt to be more organized in 2012, I began practicing for some Christmas card shots this week. Yeah that's right. In September. Remember my 2011 Chirstmas card faux pas (trying to put THIS on a single card)? That little design misstep resulted in me having to send out the photoless Christmas card of shame, so I figured a good three month head start only made sense. Livia was still a bit under the weather, so we shipped her off to grandma and papa's house and decided to start with the two most cooperative subjects.

But only a few minutes into the session I got a good sense of how the evening was going to go.

(please visualize 147 similar examples here)
So hubby and I decided to divide and conquer (extracting little brother from the scene) and do one subject at a time. An excellent idea in theory.

Uh-oh! Someone spots little bubby behind the camera.

Seriously not working. (This is what happens when brothers are also best friends).

But the evening wasn't a total loss. I got some shots of Collin that thrill me to my little core. What you are about to see here is a LOT OF PHOTOS. It would be a lot easier for you the viewer if I had split the photos into separate posts. Or at the very least put some in collages. But in an effort to make my life easier, I'm just going to post them all at once and be on my way.

Also: I do not mess with skin tones. Whatever they are they are. All this magenta, green, yellow, blue stuff baffles me. You might just see every color of the rainbow, and that's just the way it be! ;-)

Now for 26 pictures of my ten year old.

Whew! You made it! Thanks for looking & happy Thursday! xo

we have a preschooler!

2012-09-14T17:19:00.000-05:00

**sweep sweep sweep**

Oh HI!!! Just dusting off the ole' blog here. It will be fun to see if anyone is still checking in! If so, hello! :-)

I think you all know me well enough to know that I don't do pictures on the first day of school as I prefer not to toy with my sanity. Livia went to school for 2 days, came down with an 8-day cold and finally made it back to school yesterday. She had been doing a preschool countdown since 50-some odd days, and I didn't even get a goodbye when I dropped her off on the first day. Here are a few snaps from her third day of preschool. And in the interest of full disclosure, these were taken in the evening as we don't have time to dilly dally taking pictures at 8:00 in the morning. Screeching into the parking lot at the last second is more like it.

No room for the 'a' apparently. (a-L-i-v-i) ;-)

Jet pack??

Thanks so much for looking & have a wonderful weekend! xo

what we've been up to

2012-07-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

The alternate title to this post is 'the post where I share a ridiculous number of photos and you're afraid to ever visit me again.' Well I don't want that to happen, so this will make up for me being MIA for 2 weeks... and it will get us through the end of July. Deal?

OK, let's begin with fireworks. We've all seen fireworks shots that blow these away, but I'm sharing just a couple because I took them with my new camera, and I was amazed at its ability to shoot at such a high ISO. Since we didn't go to a big fireworks show, I didn't want to be the dork with a tripod on my driveway. I handheld these shots, and they were taken between an 8,000-12,800 ISO. No noise reduction in post. I was just walking around aiming at the sky. (I'm not knocking tripods, by the way. If we went to a big fireworks production, I would have totally taken my tripod!) :-)

We've also been doing a bit of this...

And a LOT of this.

Are you watching the light changing in these photos? (all taken at the same game) Yes, that happens when double headers last from 6:00pm to 10:00pm. It gets dark.

And then there was the photo session that never got blogged (aka 'the photo session where you'd swear I'd never used a camera before in my life...') Anything I could have done wrong technically, I did! Geez.

Don't blink!! You might miss this rare sighting by brother #2... everyone wave hi to Drew's back! :-)

The whole point of this little trip to the park was for Livia to model the new headband I made her. Stay tuned for a headband re-do.

I have posted (and subsequently deleted) a million more photos for this post, but I'm guessing you're experiencing a bit of an overload. So I will end here. Hope you all have a wonderful week! xo