Hurray!

Finally!  My new camera has arrived!  It has been three LONG months since the sorry demise of our last digital camera.  Our last camera met it's sorry end during a crazily heavy rain storm in Hong Kong while we were trying to enjoy a laser light show on the pier.  It had been a good camera, but after a serious fall through some super wet and slippery fingers it only took lovely modern art looking pictures with lots of colors swirled around to bring us joy.  Unfortunately it didn't show any faces or scenery, and it could not be rescued.  We were going to have to get a new one.

I do a lot of research before I buy digital cameras.  We take such a wide variety of pictures that we need a camera that will do well for most situations.  I'm not quite ready to buy a fancy digital SLR camera, and to be honest, I don't think that I would really want to lug a huge camera with me everywhere.  But I want a camera that has a long zoom so that we can get good pictures of our kids in their activities, even if we are sitting in the back of a dark auditorium or in the nose bleed section of the football stadium.  I need something with lots of options, but also something that is easy to figure out as well.  After lots and lots of perusing Consumer Reports and amazon.com, I finally made my choice.  I decided that the best camera for our needs would be:

 The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V!

We decided to get one right before Christmas as a Christmas gift, but I was hedging my bets and waiting for some sort of awesome sale.  After waiting for a bit I just decided to run by Best Buy when we were doing some shopping in Springfield and pick one up.  I got to the store and got to play around with the display model, and I loved it even more than I thought that I would.  But when I went to get the box, there were none on the shelf.  After talking to a salesperson there I found out that there were none of these cameras available at any Best Buy in the four state area.  It also wasn't available to purchase online to ship.  That's okay.  I would just go home and buy it from amazon.  But I got home, and it wasn't available through amazon either.  

I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  No place in the country sold this model.  They were all unavailable for purchase.  I looked at other cameras, but none of them seemed as good as this one for us.  I decided that I would just wait as long as it took.  I just didn't think that it would take this long.  In the meantime we had to make do with our iPhone cameras.  Herman has a newer model that took okay pictures, but mine is an older model, and the pictures were all grainy.  It hurt my heart to have grainy photos of our Christmas and of Laney's and JoJo's birthdays.  But it just was what it was.  It just meant that I was going to be extra happy when the new camera came available.  Finally, last week it showed up available for shipping from Best Buy.  Hurray!  I grabbed the chance to get it before it disappeared again, and after a week of waiting I about mauled the UPS driver when he arrived at our door last evening with the package.

I played around a bit with the camera, and I am so happy to finally be able to document the fun moments of our family through pictures.  One of the cool features of this camera:  It has a smile meter that will monitor the subjects of photos and not take the picture until a smile is detected.  This is especially important when we take pics of Minsy because she does not want to smile in pictures.  I think it is a cultural habit.  She will pose for the pictures with her hands in a peace sign, but she won't smile, no matter what we say or do.  If we do catch her smiling it is always because we catch her by surprise.  Hopefully we will now be able to catch her gorgeous little smile from now on.  

Here's a sweet little picture of Minsy and JoJo!

Also, JoJo lost his first tooth on Sunday evening.  He pulled it out himself and was so proud.  He made sure I got a picture of it when the camera arrived.  He's got some crazy hair going there, but he is so proud of his new smile!  Mommy, on the other hand, was super sad that he lost the tooth.  I just don't want him to grow up at all.  I'm not ready for him to get grown up teeth.  That will only mean that the years that I can hold on to him alone as my baby will be slipping past too quickly.  Boo for my babies getting older so fast.  Yea that at least I can capture the moments with my new camera!