I've got a bit of catching up to do!

April 29th was my 8th wedding anniversary. I can hardly believe it's been 8 years! Where has the time gone? Anyway, we couldn't just let the day go by without celebrating at all, so we arranged to have Melinda and Jacob watched for a few hours, and went out to eat (with Alex in tow) to a Brazilian restaurant down by the harbor. If you're unfamiliar with a churrascaria, it's really a fun experience: You choose your own side dishes at a salad bar, and then you have a stop/go symbol to use at your table. While flipped to "go", servers bring around meat on a stake, and slice it for you right at the table. When you flip it to "stop", they stop offering you meat until you flip it again. And let me just say, the meat is always fantastic at these places. I know in a few western states there's a place called Rodizio, which is what Jesse and I are more familiar with. Here in Baltimore, the place we went to is called Fogo de Chão, and while extremely similar, wasn't as fun/casual as Rodizio. Still, it was absolutely delicious.

We had originally thought to go have a steak dinner at Outback for our anniversary, but learned about Fogo de Chão just the day before we went out, and easily changed our minds! And since it was essentially all-you-can-eat steak there, among other delicious meats, we still got the type of meal we originally planned on! Plus I really like to go to these places - they always get Jesse talking about memories from his mission in Brazil. Although, I really could have done without his recounting of the time he threw up his entire meal because of the heat, especially since he chose to talk about it after I had stuffed myself completely full and had a heavy baby in a carrier, pressing against my stomach. Even after I suggested he switch topics, he kept going on and on and on...!!

Alex cooperated during our meal for the most part and only fussed a little bit while we were in the restaurant. Unfortunately I think Melinda and Jacob just about ran our friend ragged... when we picked them up, she asked, "Are they always this energetic?!?" They do tend to be a bit over-excited when they go to somebody else's house, and it's even worse when it's after dinner and close to bedtime.

Anyway, long story short, I also got a new camera for our anniversary! Hooraaaaaay! My old camera was getting quite outdated, being only 3.2 megapixels. My new camera? Here it is!! A Canon PowerShot S5 1S. 8.0 megapixels, 12x optical zoom, and a very very nice quality video capture mode. There's a lot of great features on the camera ... but I still need to learn how to use them all! I'm slowly working my way through the owner's manual, in between being a mom (and yeah, playing Mario Kart on the Wii). But for now, here are some pictures and videos we've taken with our new toy!

A couple close-ups of Alex (I could never get something this nice from my old camera!):



































Real Life in the Newson house... Mommy being climbed on, and Melinda and Jacob arguing over who knows what. (You would think, if Jesse wanted to try out the new camera, that he would at least wait for a nicer moment to permanently record??)



































Jacob being a super boxer on the Wii:


Melinda and Jacob set up their dolls to do "tricks" off the edge of their bunk bed:




















(And apparently uploading the videos to Blogger really diminishes the quality of the videos. I promise they're very nice! They look fantastic even on a full sized computer or TV screen! Guess I should start putting them on DVDs or something, huh?)