March 9 – 16, 2010

I like this photo of nothingness. It’s pretty…and will make a good photo overlay for taking an ordinary photo and over processing it (which seems to be a current trend that I’m not exactly all that hip with…as in, I don’t really prefer the over processed look). Maybe it will come in handy on Kortni’s wedding photos.

March 10th.

Camden. At his very best. Groaning…Moooooom! Stop, don’t take my picture. Stop taking video…and since 1 minute 29 seconds of video is almost 500mb, sure. I’ll stop.

March 11th. Camden turned 14. We had a surprise party for him at Gino’s – he thought he was going to El Sombrero for shrimp soup with his grandpa…Awesome party, great turnout. We found a new fun party game for teen boys - “Tattoo the birthday guest of honor,” – not as bad as it sounds folks, we simply put a plain white t-shirt on him and gave the guests a pile of colored permanent markers – there were prizes for the best tattoo :) Abby and Ruby decked him out in Irish/Green garb since St. Patrick’s Day is approaching and the leprechaun beard was pretty funny!!

Friday, March 12th – I didn’t take this photo, I was driving. Camden took the photo while I was driving us all to Lincoln City where we were staying with the Wrights for the weekend so he could swim the Newport meet on Saturday & Sunday.

Saturday, after the really LOOOONNNNG day in Newport at the meet (Camden had to be there at 9 but didn’t swim until after 1 and they were WAY behind schedule and didn’t seem to care…) we went back to Lincoln City and hit the beach hoping a float fairy would leave us a beautiful glass ball on the beach…but no. We just froze. It was super cold! Pretty though, different waves on their beach than we get on ours, they get lots of big rolling waves, we have a lot of rocks just off shore that tame ours down a bit most of the time as they are coming in.

March 14th – waiting around for the next heat. Camden and Noah, everyone else is cropped out :D Cam was easy to spot, being the only bright yellow shirt hanging out – most of the collegiate fans at this meet were BEAVERS not Ducks.

 

 

 

Fashionista. AKA Abby. March 15th.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scans of directions that came with plastic toy (real) camera we bought today – it’s pretty close to a *pinhole* camera in that it’s lens is plastic & super tiny. It claims to be f/11 with a shutter speed of 1/125. This should be interesting since I just loaded it with a roll of 100 ISO slide film to cross process. Enlarge those directions and read them for a good laugh. Today is March 16th. Camera was purchased inside of a $4.99 cheesy easter basket at Grocery Outlet…it also had stickers, a really lame dry erase board that is useless because the tape that holds it down in the basket removes the dry erase surface with it upon removal, a box of mini stickers, a little tied together photo album that’s really just a few sheets of white paper between to cardboard covers in an obscure size…but all we wanted was the *toy camera* so we didn’t have to buy one on ebay for $6 and then pay another $6 to have it shipped to us…make sense?

February 1st through 6th, 2010

Alrighty folks, this weekly updating is MOSTLY awesome, except that  I have been using Abigail’s camera and it resets the time/date that tags the image data…so keeping days straight is wretched :D I will do the best I can to keep it straight.
February 1st was my mother’s birthday, folks, she is officially 36 this year…(just kidding, it’s a joke, she skipped her 36th birthday and decided to be 37 twice).
OY! It is also maddening that due to operator error, my phone was saving my images to the phone and not the mini sd card, and those stinking images have to be moved one by one to the card! GRRRR!
So, February 1, I find myself at Wal Mart after work, in thick fog…because we were out of milk at home AGAIN. Camden always gets the blame for drinking the entire gallon in one day, but he was innocent this time, he wasn’t home :)

February 2, after picking Cam up from the pool, I made him show me all of his ribbons. He got three 1sts, three 2nds and two 3rd place ribbons! Amazing boy! His fly is AMAZING now and we were all very impressed with his 200 IM and hope to see him swim that again! No ‘A’ times, but we weren’t exactly prepared to go to state yet anyhow. He did an awesome job at this meet and we are proud of him!

Wednesday, this photo is basically how I felt. Fighting off some kind of icky tummy bug for a couple of days left me wiped out. We met with Mr. Hinkel, left Camden’s computer there in the process of being formatted to Linux and updating drivers so he could get himself *back online*, however it stays in Mr. Hinkel’s room until Camden begins to show some effort in producing some kind of work. Camden still claims he doesn’t remember that part of the deal.  Remembered or not, that’s the deal (and all of the unreasonable, mean, brutal parents of teens say AMEN).

Alright folks, the dude in the sailboat is CRAZY! It’s cold, it’s raining…and that’s Kurt. We caught him taking half a day off on Wednesday (we were on our way home from Resource Link) to sail the boat to the California Street public boat ramp to pull the Zipporah out of the water for a while. Seriously, blowing rain, we had to run down to the casino parking lot so we could find a place to stop the car and take some photos – his location when we first spotted him was in the area where all of the commercial boats, barges and tugs were, and on the 101 side, there was no place to pull over and flag him down.
Thursday, that would have been the 4th, and I remember having gone in to Gino’s at 3:00AM to roll dough, suspecting that it wouldn’t be there, and guess what…it wasn’t. So instead of rolling dough, I made dough – scared the daylights out of one of the Register Guard newspaper guys on my way out – went home and went back to sleep. Dropped Cam at swimming around 3 PM and waited around for him at Gino’s until Dad called and said he’d pick him up and keep him for the weekend, he had some chores to do. SO, back home and back to bed (to the best of my knowledge).

Friday, PAYDAY. Okay, well, I nearly forgot to pick up my check. I rolled three tubs of dough and piled the car to leave for Lincoln City for the weekend. Hard to tell if we took photos on Friday because Abby’s camera time/date RESETS every time you shut the stupid thing off (yes, need to replace an internal battery because that totally BUGS me).  This suspiciously looks like me, on a last minute check of the *do I have everything we need* visual scan, before we head off toward town/gino’s/grandpa’s and then LINCOLN CITY…3 hours later than I had wanted to be leaving. Whatever. We got out of there and Angie knows about me and my straggling.
AND, I read several chapters in a really cool book, Rowing to Latitude, by Jill Freston that Mr. Hinkel suggested (and loaned me). It’s awesome so far…resulting in my not going to sleep last night until early Saturday morning.
Then for Saturday, February 6th…we have this STELLAR photo of Angie’s arm/hand, some blurry rocks covered with mussels and a wave that you can’t see that caused the chaos. Okay, so I knew lying on rocks only exposed at low tide to get a photo of incoming waves was a little risky, but Angie was already soaked anyhow after trying out a teeter totter rock unknowingly, so what did we have to lose except for a handful and pocket full of electronic equipment. UM…wish I had a nice wide angle, that would have been MUCH more fun than cell phone camera. At any rate, nothing broken. Just a little spray on us. SO, we tried some more :D 




(those are sandwiches they be eatin’)

January 17-25th - we are sick. AGAIN!!

Woke up at Annie's all congested again. Getting cough. WHAT?? Didn't we just do this like the entire month of December? You have got to be kidding me. First stop on the way home was TARGET for dayquil. GRRR.

This was a sweet treat for the ride home folks...even snoring is quieter than his norm.

To my knowledge, there aren't any photos from the 18th. I was sick and tired, Abby can't find her camera at all and no one else really takes photos. I am pretty sure I closed Gino's with Katie :)

Ruby was starting to get sick again by the 19th, stuffy nose means sleeps with me and takes over my bed. Poor thing.

Mr. Hinkel meeting on the 20th (also known as PAYDAY). Abby still hasn't found her Reading Comprehension book - and Ruby has misplaced her phonics book. Other than that, not such a bad week for production :D





Thursday the 21st I had the day off. Literally. I only got up to drive Cam to swimming...which he didn't have Thursday. Had I known, I wouldn't have even gotten out of bed. Grrr.

Friday...Camden swam his first MILE. The 1650 yd freestyle. He finished in FIRST for his division, which is pretty awesome for a first time miler!!

Saturday Cam swam 4 events, and I have decided I think his FLY is now his best stroke - the kid was AMAZING at it. He did awesome in the 200IM (that's one lap of each stroke).

By Sunday, Cam was getting sick. He still had 4 races to swim - the 100 breast, 100 free, 500 free and his lame mother missed his first race, the 100 back. Somehow, he DQ'd in the 100 breast, but having improved enough to cut over 30 seconds off of his time, didn't really care about his DQ, he will just pay attention more closely next time. His last race was the 500yd free and he was WIPED OUT by then. Sore throat, aching joints, cough...and said, "nah, I'm good, it's my last race, I'll swim it." He took second in his heat, 1st place going to an amazing kid named Trevor who was 11 and very nervous about swimming the 500 free for the first time. I had to go to work and Cam tagged along, but ended up going to Grandpa's to rest until I was off work...and he's still in bed today. I seem to be getting OVER this new cold/cough garbage, Abby has weathered it fairly well. Ruby is grouchy and scratchy throated and Cam is now down for the count. :o( Kurt is sick too, but welders just weld whether they are coughing or not apparently, because Kurt doesn't call in sick. He may have ONCE in the last 5 years...

OH! And today, I tried to make coconut soup. It's more like...citrus/chicken soup with coconut. I couldn't find thai chili paste anywhere...didn't exactly look. I wanted tofu and forgot to buy it and ended up using lemon pepper chicken...yeah. So, it's not bad, but it's not what I was craving (EZ Thai...takeout).

So glad I am on my way to work, that pile of clean laundry is intimidating. Even blurry.