Our last adventure of 2010: Snow Time

One of the books Erik checked out from the library a couple weeks ago was "The Biggest Snowman Ever" and since that moment on he has been asking to go to the mountains to play in the snow. I have slowly been collecting snow gear for the boys in hopes that once we have a cold enough storm and the snow sticks I could take these guys to the mountain. Today was that day.

We tried to get a early start, but had to stop at Big 5 to pick up some extra sleds. We packed up all our snow gear into the car and headed on our way. It was a bit crowded when we got there at 11, which we expected. Next time we'll get an even earlier start.

Now I truly understand what parents who live in snow mean. It takes you 15 minutes to get your kids dressed for them to play outside for 5 minutes. In our case it took us an hour to get there, 15 minutes to get dressed and for only an hour of fun in the snow, but it was worth it.

Elliot's was the easiest to get ready for the snow. I already had his snow suit from when Erik was little. I have to do comparison pictures of the two boys in their snowsuits at the same age. So cute, I almost die of cuteness every time I took at these pictures.

  

 

   

As I knew from past experience Elliot would freak out in the snow and Erik I was unsure of. I knew he was excited to get there and play, but I really had no clue how he would really react. That picture of him in the snow is honestly the last time we went. We were more than over due for another visit.

Erik got dressed first, but I didn't take a before picture, instead here is my oldest after a full day in the snow getting ready to leave. Probably one of my favorite pictures of the day. Anyway I got him ready and then sent him off with Daddy while I got Elliot ready. Elliot was freaking out and I figured I should just deal with it myself and let Erik have fun.

I guess one of the very first things my dear husband does it take Erik sledding down the hill super fast. Go figure, men are so clueless that way! So I come back to find them heading down again and to my surprise Erik did well with it. Last time he totally freaked out on the sled so I was happy to see him so content to slide with his parents today.

In the meantime I am entertaining Elliot who would much rather be with daddy than me with. I love my kids and give them lots of hugs and kisses, but when they are hurt I tell them to brush it off if it isn't serious. I am not a big coddler, or in this case since he is freaked out I just set him down in the snow and walk backwards to take pictures. He wasn't too happy about it, but it did make him feel a bit better. He tried to walk a bit and this is probably the only time he walked the entire day.

After daddy came back from his trip down the hill Elliot immediately detached from me and asked for his father. Not surprised on that one, kind of expected it.

Although I did try to take a more subtle approach to getting him use to the snow. I decided to sit down with him in it and just let him get comfortable with the idea. He played a bit around my legs, but hardly moved a muscle to be honest.

My oldest on the other hand had the greatest time in the snow today. We did everything, but of course his very first request was to build a snowman. This snow was terrible to build one so we did the best we could with what we had. Luckily three year olds are very distractible and didn't care that we didn't get very far.

  

    

Then after we half finished our snowman we decided to do more sledding. I asked daddy to go first because I wanted to get a good picture of him going down the hill. I am trying the "al servo" mode on my camera and wanted to test it in action. It definitely worked. After I got the shot of my husband, Erik asked for me to go down the hill. I just put the focus dead center and told my husband to focus on that. It worked and he got fantastic results too.

Our kids definitely go through phases on their "favorite" parent. Maybe its because Elliot is so dependent on daddy lately, whatever it is Erik and I have really been bonding and I love this picture and how it captures that. Also I really like this picture my husband took of me.

And of course my orally fixated child ate the snow and I told him immediately not to put it in his mouth, we were in a high traffic area, but daddy still captured this priceless albeit kind of gross moment.

During Erik's sledding adventure Elliot hung out on daddy's legs and felt safe. Even mommy couldn't hold him anymore at this moment.

After a couple times down the hills an hour had passed, it was close to nap time and time to head home.This is when Erik gave me a picture perfect moment laying on the sled. Love these pictures and there are a lot I'm saving for his scrapbook. Look on flickr if you want to see everything.

 Then it was time to unload and get undressed and head home for lunch and maybe a nap (no naps occurred). Luckily we didn't push it and the kids weren't grumpy about getting undressed. We have learned to not test the limits lately.

Here is our wintry wonderland until we headed back to the buildings and bright light of Southern California. Its great that this truly natural place is only an hour away although I will admit it gets insanely crowded at time.

Just some general notes about my strategies for photographing today. I initially was using AV mode since the conditions were completely unpredictable and the light was constantly changing. After looking my my histogram I realized my camera was over compensating for the white snow and I am not sure how to set my AV mode to stop the over compensation. I just switched to manually metering my scene and decided to just take my pictures 90% of the time in the shade. When we were doing the sled pictures I metered for brighter conditions. I definitely recommend doing that if you want your snow to look like snow and your people to look like people in these bright light conditions.