It came.

 My new camera came. 

Earlier in the week, actually.  I just couldn't bring myself to post it on the web everywhere.  It felt too special. Too big of a moment.  And I would never want someone to think I was bragging and full of myself.  

But, it did come.  Today the lens came for the camera (I ordered the Nikon D7000 from Best Buy for much cheaper than Amazon had it listed and the Nikon 35 mm f/1.8G lens).

 The first night I got the camera body I immediately opened the users manual.  After learning about manual mode and becoming fairly confident with it, I am most certain I want to soak up as much knowledge as I can with this camera before just rushing to use it full time.  I'm telling myself I am a student of the camera and have lots of time to learn how to use it properly. It's ok to start slow.

 But, even with starting slow I just HAD to shoot something! 

This collection is what we call "Today was cleaning Day and everything and everyone was dirty from head to toe and the lighting is not how I like it in several photos and I know why but don't know how to fix it and in between the babies, house, dinner, and baths I didn't have  a chance to figure it out yet. "

 This is about as real life and unscripted as we get around here.

For these photos I turned the camera on,

changed the ISO a bit (which is SO easy to do on this camera, major time-saver),

and fiddled with the white balance. Which I was fairly unhappy with in a few of the pictures, so I need to spend some time studying that soon.
But that's it. I didn't even mess with the other gazillion buttons and settings and changes I could have made.  And already I like the picture quality much, much better. So it can only get better from here, right?  

For now, I may stick with the old camera (or at least finish posting the rest of the photos I took with it that I like)..we'll see. 

I am excited beyond words,

loving how these turned out. 

Did I mention excited?

It came :)