Web Cam

So I was at a friend's house today who has a camera built into the computer monitor. She also has this great software that can manipulate the images as they're being taken. We had a lot of fun with it. I had other plans for the morning that got cancelled at the last minute, so this was a really nice surprise for me. My days are usually so scheduled with driving or walking kids here to there, making meals, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, paying bills, doing laundry and sometimes even the outings are so pre-planned they lose their sense of adventure. I had a great time just doing something somewhat spontaneous! Elaine's a really great Mom and is always doing fun, creative things with her kids. She was showing us some other software that she recently acquired that allows her to create videos mixing photos, video clips, text and music. It has all kinds of special affects and she's made some really special family videos. But what I found most interesting was that she had let each of her kids (age 7 and 5) create their own videos about anything they wanted. One was very obviously made by a little boy - loud music and lots of lightning affects layered with photos of his action figures - and one was very obviously made by a little girl - pink frilly font and soft music over pictures of her dressed as a princess - but both were very impressive. I think I spend way too much time planning stuff to do with my kids and not enough time just doing stuff with them. I'm really looking forward to having them home this summer. We do have a lot of activities we'd like to do, but we also have a whole lot of time to spend together!

~ Dana