Walking the line: It was the day after Christmas... (sort of..)

So Jacki posted a blog entry on the day after Christmas and I figured I would add a little to it as well...

Starting off Emma got a dress from her sister Emilie (in DK) and she really really liked it a lot. Couldn't get the thing off her and she was more than willing to pose... (I guess I should be somewhat concerned... hmm...)

A really great thing about Christmas is that Jacki baked as you may have read on her blog. One of her creations were these cookies (sorry they are gone by now).

ohh and for table decoration. One of Emmas favorites was the Christmas candle. It is kind of pretty.

Along with the meal we got boller. Just one of those easy things from DK. It's not much but when you get them nice and warm from the oven with a wee bit of butter they are good :-)

Ohh and as you may also have read. Emma got a new dog. This one with it's own little bag, comb, treats and pink bow in the hair. So this will be Francine (for now anyway). That naming started off when we went to Ohio for Thanksgiving and Aunt Judy got a new dog. Franco... so when Emma got home she had a little Franco and now a Francine (pink bow in the hair it must be a girl). (ohh here is Emma with the "real" Franco)

Ohh before I forget. For Christmas I got a new lens for the camera. I didn't really talk about it that much. Just about a couple of times a day for 2-3 months or so.
The old standard kit lens is ok but it does have issues with low light, clarity and sharpness compared to fast glass (ohh and yeah the sand from the beaches in DK didn't really help much... hmm).

Anyway the lens I got is this Sigma 17-70mm HSM Macro for my Nikon. If you want to read more about it you can find it here

Anyway. With this new lens I could capture a large part of the living room in low light (after bed time) hand held and not end up with one big blurry mess. The after unwrapping mess was quite enough ;-)

And speaking of capturing photos hand held in low light situations. Here is one from Emma sleeping in here tent. It's a hand held photo taken with nothing but the night light (yeah well and a slight boost to ISO 800).

Another shot I got was on Christmas day visiting with the peeps. This is from the deck as the sun was setting (yeah it was cold...)

As you can see Jacki is not the only one cooking. Here is my dear mother in-law cooking and getting some support in her hard work ;-)

One of the nice things about the new lens is experimenting with the wide angle part of the focal range. One could as an example get on the floor and capture the nephew chasing a ball like this.