16 different reasons why I love winter!!!!!!

Here are 16 different reasons why I love winter...

No allergys!

Snow! You can go sledding!  I love it when it snows, then melts just a little bit, and then freezes over...unfortunately, we have a bunch of thorny locusts trees at the bottom of our hill…so we have to fall off before we reach the bottom!   

Homemade hot chocolate, with a bunch of stale marshmallows left over from last year! (Okay, not really left over from then…but I do love stale marshmallows!) - you can’t have that in the summer!

Sitting by the fire on a cold evening, and playing games as a family.

Getting snowed in. (as long as you don’t have any fun activity’s that you have to cancel.)

Christmas Break!!!!!!

Ice skating

Putting up the Christmas tree…it seems like the lights always break though….=) Decorating, and seeing how many different ways you can set up the manger scene.

Playing sibling tournaments of volleyball two square in the garage.

Going Tuba caroling (my dad plays the tuba) and watching people’s surprised faces when they come to the door!

Watching “A Christmas Carol,” and “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

You can wear scarves!

Being in the angel choir in Bethlehem revisited, and (remember that time we ran into a barbed wire fence on the way to the bathroom?)=)=)

Getting assigned Christmas songs for piano!!!

Baking Caramels, Buckeyes, and Toffee for Christmas!

Most importantly, remembering what Jesus did for us on Christmas.

It was extremely gorgeous outside yesterday! Wow! 72 degree's! I was excited when I found out we (my sister Hannah and our friend) were going on a walk to the cove. The cove is a place about a mile from where we live, that we can walk to very easily. I was also thrilled that the weather permitted me to wear shorts, and flip-flops in NOVEMBER! Anyway, once we reached the cove, we walked along the very dry, very cracked ground (it hasn't rained in a while.) until we reached the water's edge. Hannah pointed to a fallen tree, and explained that she had come here a few days ago with another one of her friends, and had gone out to the log (To climb onto it) and had gotten muddy. The log was only a few feet out , and it didn't look very muddy to me...so I decided to go out to it and climb onto it. Besides, it looked like fun, and I had flip-flops on, not close-toe shoes. So I took off my flip-flops, and cautiously climbed into the mud and onto the log.
“See!" I yelled back. "It's not THAT muddy!" I only had mud up to my ankles. I stepped down back into the "not very deep mud." Only...my feet didn't stop sinking in at my ankles I kept sinking until it was half way up to my knees. I gasped, and then tried franticly to stumble back to shore. I succeeded, but not without getting really muddy.
Hannah smiled.
“You know Natalie,” she said “It would have been more exciting if you had fallen in.”

Hi there!
 I decided to write about what I learned in photography class this week. (I'll see if I can get it right!)
This week I learned about aperture (depth of field) and shutter speed (how fast the camara takes the picture).

We started out experimenting with the different shutter speeds. We found it worked out better to use a faster shutter speed when we were holding the camera in the daytime,( because we couldn't hold the camara completely still) and to use the slower shuttter speed at night, when taking pictures of fireworks, flashlights etc.(basically things with light.) It looked really cool with a slower shutter speed because it blurred the lights together,  Also, we needed to use as a tripod when taking pictures at night. We did one experiment with the camera where one person waved a flashlight that turned on at the camara. The second person turned their shutter speed to 10 seconds and took a picture. The flashlight in the picture looked like blurred, curling streams of light. It was really cool. After that we tried writing different word with light... though it didn't work very well=)

Next, we played around with the aperture. When you have a smaller aperture, the depth of field is shorter, and when you have a larger one you get a wider depth of field. So this meant when my depth of field was shorter, the object I was taking the picture of was focused, but my background was blurred. Also, when it was larger, everything in the photo was focused. It was really fun to experiment--especially with friends!