Mother's Day 2009

For some reason I agree to go out to the lake on Mother's day to clean up and organize our campsite.  I don't know if it is because mother's day is the weekend before the long weekend in which we go camping at another site for that weekend.  Maybe it is because I love spending mother's day out in nature with the ones I love...the bad part is that I end up working harder on mother's day than any other dayof the year.  We were disappointed this year, when we went to our site we saw it was totally different...this is what our campsite used to look like.  

At cleanup last week they cut down all the big old trees and now we have a much larger site, but it is empty and no big trees so we spent all day trying to re-organize the whole site because things are not the same...in the end it will be good but a lot of work for mother's day :)

Living in the frozen North it takes awhile for the lakes to thaw out but it is still beautiful, I think living somewhere that it takes a while to thaw makes you appreciate summer more...kind of like one of those things where you go without for a long time you appreciate it more when it comes...but even frozen somethings are still beautiful.

I am usually behind the camera so pictures of me and my children are rare...and even rarer to get them all together...since only Ariel and Connor came to the lake with us for clean up I only got a picture of the three of us.

My daughter Ariel loves to pose for pictures...most of the time anyway...ones of us together are rare but when we take one they are usually pretty good ones :)

While Christopher was preparing me a wonderful steak dinner I took the two youngest children to the local provincial park to play and snapped some shots...I think this one is a great one too...but like I said pictures of me and my kids are rare and this one took a lot of effort since it was a timer picture :)

I tried a few differnt things at the park and it is funny how shots that you wouldn't usually take turn out so well...this shot is of my daughter Brittany looking out at the ducks...no face but a great shot of her.

This one I love the glimpses of expression you get on my children's faces...even though you can't see it all...makes you wonder what they are up to?

I took a few different shots of this but I love this one...it isn't the best look for them but it is the most honest look for them...they are usually fighting and angry with each other...the love is there deep down but this is the way they usually look...I think it turned out quite well :)

While playing on the gym equipment Brittany suggested they stop long enough to let Mom get a nice picture...and here it is.

Over the Easter holidays I took a bunch of pictures of the kids but I had a hard time getting a good one of Brittany (she likes to make weird faces) so she was eager to pose for me so I would have pictures to do scrapbook pages of her (those were her words) and I really like this one :)

My husband bought me 2 tickets to see Keith Urban in Edmonton in September for Mother's Day...so this will be a expensive gift as it is 3 1/2 hours from here to the concert and then a hotel as we won't want to drive home after...but it was thoughtful.  Ariel says she is making me something and by the sounds of things I will be lucky if it is finished by father's day...but it is the thought that counts :)  Overall it was a good day...untill it came crashing down...I dropped my regular lens for my camera (I stumbled and lost my balance while changing lenses) it is totally destroyed...so after spending hundreds on my mother's day gift my husband had to order me a new lens as I am supposed to take graduation photos less than 2 weeks from now...hopefully it is here on time.  I was devistated as without my camera I am lost and now I can only take pictures from a distance, guess it is time to dig out the old camera...Canon Powershot S3-IS...I know a good camera but I haven't used in months I think I forget how :)