Katelyn's 4th Birthday Party

Last Sunday was Ivie's friend, Katelyn's, 4th birthday party at Bull City Gymnastics. I wish I could say that I have a ton of great pictures to share of Ivie and her friends bouncing, jumping, rolling, parachuting... You know, all the fun and active things you do at a Gymnastics party! But, I don't. Sadly, they all turned out pretty blurry.

I certainly can't blame it on my camera. I've got a pretty good one.

Which means I either have to blame it on the mode (we primarily used the "sports" mode that day - made sense to me at the time!), the lighting, or the rookie camera operators (Dale and me) that pretty much turn the thing on and start snapping. If the "Auto" function doesn't appear to be obtaining outstanding results, we just start guessing.

So I admit at the outset that these pictures pretty much stink. But I'm going to include them anyway. For 2 reasons:

1) This first one shows, wonderfully, how Ivie approached the running-and-jumping-into-the-block-pit activity, which was the first station of the day. See in the first picture how she is so eager, sprinting down the runway? Next, in shot two, as she's nearing the edge, she starts to think about what's about to happen. Then, in shot three, she comes to an abrupt halt at the edge of the pit, not ready to take the plunge, and seemingly angry at whomever put her in this awkward position. Finally, in shot four, with the instructor by her side, she takes the leap into the very soft blocks. And loves it. And goes back and does it again, over and over (although she never got to the point where she would run full steam into the pit).

So the first reason is because I love how this string of not-so-great pictures still manages to show certain aspects of her personality. Excitable, yet reserved, hesitant, and maybe slightly overly cautious. To the point of getting too stressed out about something that turns out to not be a big deal at all. Remind you of anyone else you know? Like maybe her MOTHER?


2) If you thought that set of pictures was bad, take a look at these! I even had to make them black and white to make them a little more stomachable! But, even still, there's something about them that just make me smile. And make me want to think that I'll enjoy looking at this grouping again someday in my printed blog book. Just a 4-year-old, without a care in the world, jumping down the trampoline.


Actually, now that I've had time to think about it, maybe the only reason I include these far-from-stellar pictures is to remind myself every time I see them on my blog that I really need to take those photography classes for which I received free admissions tickets when we purchased our new camera. Before Ivie was born. Because these sure would have been adorable pictures had they been in focus.