Photos by www.melissalouise.com

Take 5 minutes to read this and if it doesn’t make you appreciate your parents, there is something seriously wrong with you.

Now we get to go shopping for a new (used?) car!  Any recommendations?

We drove to Moorhead and dropped the dog off with Scott’s parents, then drove to Sioux Falls & stayed at a hotel w/ a little waterpark.  Then we got up in the morning and drove to Mitchell to see the World’s Only Corn Palace!  Then we went to Wall Drug (of course!) and continued on to Hill City to the Crooked Creek Resort where we stayed the rest of the time.  I thought that it would be fun to do something other than just hotels w/ pools and since I was planning the trip, I rented us a cabin!  I honestly wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but everyone agreed it was a great choice! 

Anyway, here’s a collage of photos from our adventures – these are mostly taken w/ Scott’s iPhone (hipstamatic & shake-it apps).

 and another collage… (used the free action “lomo” here)  

I think my favorite thing was Bear Country.  I was totally thinking we’d maybe see like 1-2 bears WAY up far in the woods….but NO!  There were a TON of them up CLOSE!!  In fact, they said to not even roll down the windows…yeah, they were CLOSE so not a problem!  eek!  (oh, and the kids got some sex-ed since it’s apparently mating season!  haha!)  Anyway, when you are on vacation, don’t you just hate it when you want a family picture, but you are afraid to have someone handle your $4,500+ camera/lens?  Yeah….I am always nervous about that!  So I had my little point & shoot for a lot of the “family” shots – which was great until the rechargeable battery ran out!  Oops!  forgot the recharger!  But the photo in the middle I had someone take who I saw carrying around an SLR…and the far right is a self-portrait in the fun-mirrors at Reptile Gardens.Of course I wanted one last family shot outside our cabin right before we left, so I pulled out the handy dandy tri-pod!  btw for this photo (and almost all the other ones on our trip!) I just used “P” or program mode and a FLASH (GASP!)  Whatever, right?  I actually really like this one w/ the sun flare & all. 

That’s the short version of our fun-filled family vacation!   It feels good to be home!   :-)

Anyway, it’s called “Hipstamatic” and you can find out a bunch about it from this awesome blog.  And to get it for your iPhone just buy it from the app store ($1.99!!!  what a deal!!)  They also have a tiltshift app (but haven’t tried that yet!)

Here’s some random photos from our day today – we went out to eat at Q-Fanatic in Champlin - if you haven’t tried it, you really should!  Yummy!

Here’s what I LOVE about this!  With my photography, I find that I over-think EVERYTHING I shoot!  To the point of it not even being fun any more!  Is the lighting right?  What’s my aperture?  Shutter speed?  What ISO should I use?  Focal points or no?  White balance?  blaa blaa!  Yes, obviously when someone is paying me to take their photos I need to be constantly thinking of all of that and much more! 

But sometimes it’s just nice not to think and have it be OK to take crappy photos!  ya know?  There’s NO THINKING! (except if you want to switch out your “lens”, “film” and “flash”) plus no editing! - they instantly look cool without it!  Plus the frames are already added on! 

The only bad thing is they are only like 100kb (SUPER small!  i.e. not  print quality at all!)  But still fun!

Another use I found for it is to use as overlays on my regular photos!  I took a picture of our garage floor and overlaid it on these photos.  Then I took the outer frame and selected only that and laid it over the photos again.  Kinda cool!  Before I did that, I used Pioneer Woman “seventies” and “sunshine”. Just thought I’d share.  Can’t wait to take it on our family trip to SD!  I want to document our whole trip like that! 

Oh, the other bad thing is the only iPhone we have is hubby’s work phone!    So…………..I just might have to run out and buy an old iPhone and just use it as a camera?) 

I bet ya anything though that someone will come out soon w/ a digital camera that already has fun/cool options like this – but at higher quality.  I HOPE so anyway!  It’s so fun! 

• Slept in until 8:30! (that’s super late for us!)
• Scott took Buddy for a walk
• I was forbidden from being on the computer all day!
• We all went to Target and bought patio furniture for our deck!  We haven’t had patio furniture in almost 10 years!
• Went to Culver’s for lunch – yum!
• Went to Northtown mall and Scott, Jacob & Claire got new cell phones (a belated Christmas gift for Jacob & Claire!)
• Put up lights under the deck
• Put our flag on our deck!
• Ate dinner on our deck!
• Took some photos of Claire in the wild daisies
• Claire went to play at Jacy’s and Scott & Jacob took a bike ride (hence…the computer time!)
• Enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL weather and gorgeous day!
• Bonfire coming soon! ??

Hope everyone else had a great day too!  Thank you to all the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for our freedom to do all of the above! 

p.s. here is a shot from tonight….one of my favorites!