My camera died

And of course in the middle of a very important event - the girls' very first ballet recital. Apparently, it's our style, since our first camera died the day before Samantha's 1st birthday. I'm not sure what happened this time though. It worked fine all weekend. We switched out a memory card since we hadn't had time to download all the pictures from the weekend and it was working just fine through the first half of their performance. All of sudden it started putting lines through all our pictures and making them really blurry. Thinking it was a memory card problem, we put our original card back in, but we were still getting the same problem. We reset the camera at this point and it seemed to have fixed the problem. For about 6 pictures and then it went back to doing it. Maybe the memory card is bad and somehow fried the camera? Regardless, the camera is now over 4 years old, has taken over 15,000 pictures and has served it's purpose.

I have really wanted a Canon Rebel. And I'm not sure why. I know it takes awesome pictures - I have friends & family who have one and I've seen their pictures. But I don't think I really have it in my right now to learn how to use it properly. I'm not a budding photographer. I really just take pictures of my family, and while I want them to look great, so far I've been able to do that with my regular point & shoot. So last night when it came time for us to buy a new camera, I had a big decision to make. We have agreed we will get a Rebel, but it's something we're going to save for. So I really didn't want to have to charge it right now, when I know we've got other expenses coming up (two trips, car registration for 2 cars which thanks to CA has now doubled in price, etc). But was it worth it to put down half of that amount on another point & shoot? We must have gone back in forth for hours yesterday deciding what was best and finally came to the conclusion that for right now we would get another point & shoot, with the idea that it will become the backup/always in the diaper bag camera when we do eventually get the Rebel and we won't be going into debt for either camera.

But now on to which point & shoot to get. We researched online yesterday afternoon and then decided to take our list to Costco and compare those ones in person. I really thought I had settled on a Nikon which had some amazing features, when we saw another Sony (what we previously had) that has a Carl Zeiss lens - amazing for a point & shoot. The camera guy working there said that the Nikon did have more features, but that the Sony would take better quality pictures. So the Sony it was. When we got home last night I played around with it and I LOVE it. I'm so glad we made this decision. The pictures are clear, bright & so far always in focus! And it has an awesome "smile" feature, which when put on this setting will wait until the subject smiles and will automatically take the picture - perfect for our stubborn Lu who recently hasn't been a big fan of pictures.

I'll put a few pictures up later from our new camera and y'all can give me your opinion.

Oh and as an added bonus, to indulge my girly side - it's a beautiful ice blue color, which matches my cell phone ;)