Family picture - NOT FAIL!

Today started off bad...the baby woke up early and horribly grumpy...we went out to brunch and he fell off the table face first into the window sill at the restaurant and split his lip open and was bleeding everywhere (not exaggerating, it was horrible!), found out that the strobe lightbulb couldnt be replaced - I would have to get a whole new one (very expensive)...and the little guy wouldn't nap...UGH!

Finally got him to sleep and hubby let me get out...I was going to do a 7 mile bike ride (I haven't ridden my bike in about a year and a half - except for one little 5 mile ride in April of last year)...but, it felt so good to move that I did a 25 mile bike ride (or should I say - it felt good until about 15 miles in and then it was hard, but still good!)...cleared the head...

Got back, figured out the settings of the strobe - since I was able to figure it out while on the bike (dont need a new one and I'll be able to retake the cake smash - yeah!), watched the little guy walk all over the place, and then finally took the picture I've been meaning to take for forever...and I LOVE IT!!!!!

T1i, 50mm f1.4 (cause the 24-70mm was too heavy for the tripod)...pic: 1/160, f3.5, ISO800...
I'm getting a HUGE poster size of this one tonight...I took it by placing the camera on a tripod right outside the door, and then we are inside the house facing the open door...I was able to focus, and then because the self timer beeps and blinks, the little guy looked at it - LOVE!

PS-you can see his busted lip in the pic...poor baby!

What a day!

Last week, ebay ended there free any-price listings, and because my husband has a lot of toys that he sells, we put up a TON of auctions during the last day that we could.  This meant that they all ended this week.  Normally I can keep up with packing, but with all of this, I simply couldn't - so, we spent from 8am till 3pm packing boxes...with a whole bunch of little guy-tainment thrown in there to keep us smiling.  I could barely fit in the car when we finally were ready to head to the post office.  But, it is done - thank goodness!

After that, it was a nice relaxing evening as a family...little guy sometimes laughs at the most random things, and the weirdest thing about it is that he will laugh hysterically at it one day, and then we will do it again the next day, and he'll look at us like we have two heads, and not laugh at all.  Today, he decided that it was fun to laugh at a ball rolling back and forth...and even the cat was amused:)

As for the picture...it was evening - around 5:30pm and very cloudy out, and it is very dark in the house.  I should have used the Speedlite, but I'm out of batteries (you'd think by now I would have gotten some, huh?), so to compensate, I used a crazy ISO6400, shutter speed 1/100, f3.2...unfortunately, you can tell, and this picture really does just have way too much grain to be a "good" picture...I used Noiseware but even that couldn't get the details back...I had also gotten a few closeups of him that would have been spectacular, but the grain just ruined all fine detail - lesson learned :(

Must get batteries for the speedlite!