Monday, July 19, 2010

DSLR + Photoshop

I'm having a lot of fun taking pictures with my awesome new camera, but I'm having even more fun rendering the pictures with photoshop. The pictures turn out great with the camera, but they turn out even better after I get through them with Photoshop. :D  Here are some examples!

These are pictures from the picnic, but after photoshop, the colors are more vivid and stand out.


I was asked to take wedding pictures for my friends, so here are some examples from that day.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Bestest Friends

Alden got to hang out with Sophie a lot this weekend. We went over to Sophie's house Friday night and played with her for an hour. They were running around and chasing each other. They were also throwing a football at each other and having so much fun.


On Saturday, we got to go on a picnic with Joe's family. Sophie's parents, Laura and Tom, were working but Sophie came and played with Alden.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Chipmunk Al

Alden loves fruit.  I guess it's a good thing, except when there's a choking hazard from shoving grapes in his small mouth, or he has three wet and dirty diapers a day from eating too much..... (Blueberries are the worst)  He's been eating a lot of grapes lately, and he loves to store them in his mouth for as long as he can. He doesn't usually chew them up until I offer them more, which sometimes can be a while because either he walks away and starts playing with toys or those were the last that I offered for the time being.  Yesterday, we went to pick Joe up at work, and I gave them some grapes before we left the house. He had those grapes in his cheeks for over 40 minutes!!!  What a weird kid....




This is a video that demonstrates what went on for those 40 minutes.
YY: Hey Al, where are your grapes?
Al: (Points at his mouth)
YY: You need to chew them up and eat them.
Al: (Pretends to chew)

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Campfires and s'mores!

Last Friday we went to Wal-Mart and saw corn on sale for 10 cents a piece! So we decided to make some fire and grill some corn. On Saturday, we packed out left over dinner from Friday (fried sweet and spicy chicken - Korean style) and got stuff ready to make a campfire. Our friends, Cody and Kyra, brought potato salad, rolls, and s'more stuff. We drove to Provo Canyon, only to find that all the parks had fire restriction signs up. We tried the Rock Canyon Park next to the Provo temple and found it full. We decided to try one more park, and found a vacant fire pit at the Kiwanis Park next to BYU. The dinner was soooooo good, and Alden had so much fun walking around the fire and helping daddy build the fire by throwing pine cones into the fire pit. Alden enjoyed roasting the marshmellow and hanging out around the fire.

Alden's roasting his marshmellow. He thought he was supposed to put it in the smoke and not over the fire. :D He didn't really get to eat any of his because he kept dragging it on the ground and getting gravel all over it. Ha ha. We put the corn in some aluminum foil with butter but I forgot to take salt with us. But it tasted great!

I sold my hair!!

I've been meaning to cut my hair for a while since I will be having a baby in December and will be losing a whole bunch of hair. Last time when I had Alden, it was such a headache to deal with 20+ inch long hair all over the house and in the shower... So I wanted to do something special if I was gonna cut it anyway and decided to sell my hair. I ended up having to cut more than I planned to but now it's nice and short, and I don't have to spend more than 10 minutes just to wash my hair... Joe and I decided to buy a nice DSLR camera to make it more special since I've been wanting a professional camera for a while. We used the money to get a Canon Rebel T1i from CostCo.

Right before the haircut. The guy that bought my hair was from Odgen area and he drove down to cut my hair in person.



Right after the haircut. It's really short, huh?


These pictures were taken with my new camera. It takes really nice pictures. I will have to practice more before I can really use the camera to its full capacity and take even more awesome pictures. :D Joe says with my new camera and the new Adobe CS5, I will be unstoppable. lol.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Our big boy Alden!

Alden's growing so fast!!! He is so active and talkative (even though most things he says don't make sense to us). He can say a few things now in Korean such as 이것도 (this one, too), 어딨지? (Where?), 이거 (this), 엄마 (mommy), 멍멍 (doggy), etc. He can also say Daddy really well. He loves to say 이거 daddy (this is daddy) and point at Joe. :D

I'm also trying to teach him the alphabet. He can recognize B, C, E, L, and N, and he can say A, D, and O. We're working on him being able to spell his name.

He loves the popcorn song from the Children's Song book. He'll do all the actions to the song and say "More, more" when the song is over.

We have a Korean children's song CD in the car, and whenever we're in the car, Alden asks us to put it on by pointing above his head (from the backseat in his position, behind his head is where the speakers are). He will sometimes try to say the words in the songs and clap when the songs end.

Alden LOVES, absolutely loves Toy Story. We watch it at least 3 times a week. Whenever he sees any Toy Story pictures or merchandise at a store, he'll point to it and say something unintelligible. lol. It's a good thing he's not as spoiled as we think he is because he doesn't throw any tantrums when I don't buy those things for him. We actually when to watch Toy Story 3 on the opening day, and he sat and watched the whole movie quitely! He has a Buzz Lightyear toy, and remember how Andy writes his name on the foot of his toys? Alden kept pointing at the bottom of his Buzz's foot and saying stuff to me, so I asked if he wanted me to write his name and he nodded yes. So we wrote his name in English on one foot and Korean on the other foot. :D

Following is a video of Alden trying to talk to our neighbor's dog. He lives behind a fence across the street, and Alden always asks to go visit him whenever we are outside. The dog is trained as a watch dog and barks at us whenever we go close, so Alden tries to talk back to him. Ha ha.


This video is of Alden trying to help Grandpa out in the yard. My dad does a lot of fixing stuff around the house when he comes, and Alden follows him around and tries to help him with the tools. So we finally got him his own toolbox, and he loves to play with the tools and pretends to fix things. The other day, my dad was outside trimming the trees, and I gave Alden his pliers so he could pretend to trim the trees with my dad. And then later, they were trimming the bigger trees with a saw and I took a video of it. Alden kept pointing at different branches after they were done with one and saying "이것도" meaning, "This one, too." Alden's gonna grow up to be a great helper around the house.

It's a GIRL!

We had an ultrasound done yesterday morning to find out the gender of our new baby. And... we're having a GIRL! We're so excited to have a little girl, and I'm sure Alden would be stoked to have a little sister if he knew what was going on... We're going to name her Eleen 시현 Rigby. Eleen, after Joe's grandmother and also grandpa Alden's wife. 시현 in Korean means "vision" as in Joseph Smith's first vision. We'll probably pick different Chinese characters though. Haven't decided on the English spelling of her Korean name yet. It's becoming to be a little challenge for us.... A little help, please? She's due December 5th, and we're hoping that she doesn't come late and end up being born on mommy's birthday on the 8th!


This is a picture that shows the "girl" part.... oops.

She's got a strong heart beat. 140 bpm is perfect!

You can see her little hands to side of her lower face in this picture. Her chin, lower and upper lips, and nose from left to right.

You can see her little fist in this picture. Cute fingers. :D She actually waved at us several times while we were looking.

Her legs crossed like a little lady. :D She was moving around so much during the ultrasound.