raising heller

jana's journal

ok well steven's nephew bradley got married on november 7th to camille. it was a beautiful wedding in the spokane temple and we were glad that we were able to be there for it. welcome to the family camille!

out of the 125 pictures that steven took, we didn't take one picture of the bride and groom. steven took pictures of pictures of them so maybe you can see them here. these were in the temple foyer right after their wedding.



i thought their cake was really cute.

waiting for the reception to start.

waiting for the reception to start as well.

i am glad that we got a picture of him smiling because this was a long day for him. we actually had to leave the reception early because he finally lost it and just cried and cried. he was literally sick and tired and needed to go to bed.

.jackson was quite the ladies man all night. i can't say enough about him and the ladies. the other day i walked into nursery and he was scratching a little girls back while she did a puzzle. i have had moms say how sweet he was to their daughter telling them how pretty they look and comforting them when they were having a hard time. i think it is really cute now but will i think that when he is 16? well he was true to form at the reception and was taken with one of the brides friends. he followed her around and sat by her and tried to strike up three year old conversation. when she left, he flirted with an older lady at the candy station and managed to get her to get him a large bag of candy. he then moved on to another young women who had him sit on her lap and eat cake with her. i practically had to peal him away to take him home.

lily ran around with her cousin paige the whole night. paige is only 10 months older but she lives in utah so this is the first time they have really gotten to play. they were inseperable.

lisa and dave (parents of the groom) me and steven and lani. lani's husband couldn't come so steven is going to be photoshopping him in.

jana's journal

some of you may have noticed, others maybe not. but let this serve as official notice that the heller family.org is no more. our new domain is www.raisingheller.com. we still have thehellerfamily.org domain so our email addresses haven’t changed.

“why the change?”, some of you may ask. well, i was on the phone with a friend the other day and he asked why we didn’t call our blog “raising heller”. i had never thought of it. it seemed like a pretty cool play on words to me. you know, raising heller (3 of them) and also raising a little hell. or something like that.

the new theme is probably only temporary until i can find one that i really like. if you have any suggestions, feel free to share.

p.s. – www.thehellerfamily.org will just redirect to www.raisingheller.com, so if you forget the new name, that’s okay, just go to the old favorite.

words

kailey and i coming back from one of our many pre-movie bathroom/drink refill trips.

pretty scary vampires huh?

if you look close enough, you will see that our eyes are golden so we aren't too scary (maybe a little creepy.)

as for the movie itself? well it wasn't as good as the book (but what movie is?) it definitely had it's moments. i really like the robert pattinson, i think he was a perfect edward. he was as close to my idea of edward that anyone could get. i am looking forward to the next one and am hoping that it will be a little bit bigger budget, maybe that will take care of the issues i had with this one. i had a really good night. i am paying for it today but i definitely think it was worth it.

jana's journal

lily was in her bride dress when this picture was taken. she looks like quite the little model.

the kids were playing dress up and this is how the boys were found. i thought it was really funny.

lily got hurt at one point and i was comforting her. i don't really know why i included this picture since i look kind of funny but for some reason i like it. also, i know you can't tell in this picture but, my hair is actually braided and then twisted up. for those of you who haven't seen me in a while, can you believe that my hair is so long that it's almost halfway down my back?

jana's journal

with costumes this year we decided not to spend any money. lily really wanted to be a unicorn and i searched online for cheap ways to make one but i couldn't find anything. i happened to be at a playgroup and was mentioning this when the hostess of playgroup ran to the closet and came out with this. she said lily was welcome to borrow it and oh was she happy.

jackson and his friend payton. at one point during trick or treating payton ran up behind jack saying "fireman, fireman, fireman" and when jackson turned around he say very sincerely, "i love you."

jackson's costume was a little easier because he didn't really care what he was. steven called his sister lani in utah and asked if they had any old costumes and she sent us a bunch. it worked out really well. he decided to be a fireman like his uncle dave for the actual day but at other events he was also a teenage mutant ninja turtle as well as buzz lightyear.

asher's costume i found for .99 at children's place the year before and i thought he was so cute in it. the problem was that as soon as i put it on him, he refused to smile. he just walked around like a little zombie the whole night. he didn't complain but he wasn't happy about it either in fact i think he just seemed confused the whole time.

jana's journal

his hair is curlier in the back so i thought i would show a picture of the back as well.

jana's journal

so, for halloween we had a bunch of friends over, one of which is a photographer. he has a really nice camera and a bunch of gear. well, i was snapping some pics with our canon rebel XT, and he let me use his flash. i couldn’t believe how much difference a real flash made. he aimed the flash at the ceiling. the idea is for the light to bounce of the ceiling and illuminate the subject from above. it really made my pictures stand out. so, i was shooting some more stuff the next day and was a little disappointed to be back to my built-in flash. so i had an idea. what if i positioned a small mirror in front of my flash at about a 45 degree angle to bounce the light of the ceiling? believe it or not, it actually worked very well. i had to hold the mirror in fron of the flash the whole time, so it made it a little harder to shoot, and sometimes i didn’t have it angled quite right so the light was pretty poor. but when it worked, it worked really well. it just made the light a lot less harsh evening it out and making the shot more 3-dimensional. so, if you want to try improving the quality of your photos, give this a try.

picture 1 – this was taken with my camera and the nice flash
picture 2 – this was taken with my stock flash
picture 3 – this was using the small mirror

photos, words

jana's journal

jana's journal