I know this is a day early, but I’m headed to the BlogHer conference tomorrow afternoon, and have some fun BlogHer news coming up tomorrow!

We had the girls’ double birthday party on Sunday, and they had chosen to go to a gymnastics place nearby. It was especially exciting (for all of us) because after the party, the kids went with hubs’ parents to their house (about six hours away) for a week.

The kids have a lot of cousins on my side, and I wasn’t sure how many would be able to come (summer is so busy for everybody), so I let the girls invite one friend each. I feel a little bad about that, because I know that they would’ve loved to have more of their friends there, but this is the first party when they’ve ever invited non-family members, so I thought it was an okay compromise.

Here’s a picture of Essie and her friend climbing up the big inflatable slide. This was at the very beginning of the party, when I was still up in the balcony area with my camera.

And this is Erv and Essie on the steps and platform above the foam cube pit.

It was kind of difficult for me to get the settings right in this building…between the bright colors, the fluorescent lights, and the fast movements, the pictures were a little off.

Through The Lens Thursday is meant for self-improvement, so please….constructive criticism is welcome!

Through The Lens Thursday is a self-improvement photography project that Alison of Writing, Wishing and I are doing this year.

Don’t forget to join our Flickr group or share your own posts if you’d like to follow along and work on your own photography! And use the hashtag #throughthelensthursday to connect with others working on it, too.

Next week’s prompt is LOOKING UP.