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?

March 6th. For real…

That’s it. The ONLY digital photo I took today. I have searched all over for those lollipops and finally found them in Charleston – and paid a ridiculous $4.29 or something like that for it…BUT picture it in photos (in Camden’s mental photo, he saw sticky colored faces and SAND all over the lollipop and the sticky face and wasn’t thinking this was such a good plan).
We shot 3 rolls of 35mm film today. Well, three rolls worth of shots across 4 cameras. We only got to change out one roll that was at the end and one is almost at the end. The changed out roll was 200 ISO recently purchased the almost done one happens to be 400 ISO that expired in 2003 – I am really excited about THAT film…but that story and sickness is for Drink More Tea :D

February 23 – March 5th…time flies when you’re having cough…

I only took the photo of these cookies to tease Mr. Hinkel with. For real. I actually had intended to take one to our meeting, but you know me, a little blond, a little sketchy, and yeah…sorry. forgot. 02.23

Meeting day, February 24, Abby just made herself right at home on the sofa in the classroom. Isn’t it cute how she…slipped in some webkinz…or something.


02.25
This dude. He kills me. I have been searching for RAINBOW colored large swirl lollipops (at least 3” but I would prefer 5” or so). I didn’t find rainbow, but on the commercial easter aisle at Wal-Mart, I did find duo colored swirl lollipops in white, with blue, yellow, green or pink – and they were cute and came in two packs with other decorated lollies so I bought one set of each color and two sets of pink (because I have two girls and they will wear white flower girl dresses in a couple of weeks and white dresses with pink lollies is just too cute…) Anyhow, no, I didn’t make an error on the capitalization of easter – to me, that’s the holiday with the bunny and the froo froo and the candy and it’s more like a commercial party of mahem and madness (don’t get me wrong, I like candy) – we celebrate Resurrection Sunday and commercial easter the Saturday before (Sause puts on a whing ding egg hunt).

On the 26th, Friday to be precise, we went to the Sixteen Cities concert at The Green Spot. Entry fee was non perishable foods for local food banks. A local worship band opened for them and it was super cool to see an old co-worker’s son on the drums – he seems to be about 9 or 10 ish. Anyhow, I took lots of photos with grainy ISO and it’s OKAY, I’m down with that. I would rather have a little grain than use a flash and this was good practice and a good test to see what the 7D would do in the dark. Manual focus worked out better most of the time. Meet Joel, the bass player. He and the drummer in the back were difficult to get photos of – and Josiah did keep stepping in front of whomever else I was focusing on :D Awesome concert, super nice bunch of guys – and we had a pretty good youth group turn out from church as well.

Saturday was official DAY OFF day for me (right up until I got called in to work) so we were heading to the park…and while we were there we saw this guy who had total iPhone-itis. Now, we were waiting for the big tsunami from the Chilean earthquake to hit us, and hit the Hawaiian Islands – but we never did see it. All we saw were state troopers clearing the beaches, kids playing in the puddle under the swings (after promising not to get wet) and throngs of people who had gathered round to watch for the tsunami. To be honest, I didn’t even notice them until we headed back to the car to go home since we couldn’t play frisbee on the closed beach.

we won’t talk about work.

Sunday. I missed church do to poor communication with Kurt about timing and dough rolling, I needed to leave the house at 9:30 without kids to get the dough at Gino’s rolled so they could open and I could get to church. While this was a solid plan, it failed. He started to leave BEFORE me, WITHOUT children. SO I rolled dough through church, and hooked up with kids after church and we went to the park to play for a bit. Kayla made me sick on the merry-go-round. Folks, this is not a good spot to sit and try to take photos, even if it seems unused and lonely, the minute you sit…they spin you. Rotten little things…02.28
SIGH in relief. There is no photo from March 1st because it’s FILM and still in the camera. There is 200 ISO color film in my 35mm Canon t50 and in my Minolta MG-X. I am dead set on shooting 3 to 10 shots a day with film to increase my abilities – and I plan to shoot at least a couple of rolls of film at Kortni’s wedding (one of those will be black and white, and one will be going into a cheesy 3 lens *toy* camera – and it will be FUN).

Just a funny. I was shooting through a cut off play dough container. I think with my cell phone camera. Shhhh. Don’t tell Kurt. March 2, 2010 (almost his 44th birthday folks).


Happy Birthday to Dad – our Fix it up Chappy repaired the cabinet in the bathroom – he removed the plywood he’d screwed on to cover the hole where the entire front face had been destroyed when a supply line blew off and flooded the entire bathroom, built a new frame around it and put doors on. Awesome. His assistant had a few suggestions apparently and was freely giving her advice and opinions. She was very dramatic about the whole thing, including the part where she was shouting,

“MOM! He’s got Dad’s TOOOOOOOOLS!! WIthout PERMISSION!!”

Zipporah was just bent on getting as many workbook pages as she could do – without doing any math because borrowing makes her brain hurt and then she has to cry.
03.03.2010

March 4, 2010. A bed bug has been spotted. See her?
It’s the curly haired version. They take up the entire bed and prefer to sleep perpendicular to the other occupants of the bed.

Narcissism. That’s my boy. Took a series of portraits of himself today because the ones I took and sent him via email for his FB profile were not up to snuff. And this? Maybe he’s smelling…his pits and needs to shower? I dunno. March 5, 2010

19th – 22th of February 2010

And here sleeps the hand that feeds us, exhausted, and still a little twitchy, but sleeping. Kurt actually hates it when I take his picture…while he’s sleeping, but to me, capturing his hand was significant. It’s a part of who he is and what he does. Calluses, carbon stains, burns, scabs & scars, strong hands made beautiful by the sacrifice of their own comfort so that others will not have to work so hard to eat, sleep, play and learn. This was actually late on the 18th.

It does count as brunch, even when served between 1 & 2 PM. Sunny Friday triggers allergy symptoms…countered by self pampering with sleeping in and having pancakes and coffee for a late lunch/brunch.

By computer screen light. Not exactly romantic, but it is cool :D




My Zipporah on the 21st at Sunset Beach! Isn’t she cool??







Camden. Whining at Mr. Hinkel’s today. February 22nd.

9th February – 18th - 2010

Look, I don’t even feel all guilt ridden about being BEHIND (again, some more, as usual). I will do my best to try to remember what’s been going on :)
Cam got a little lecture from the pediatric nurse practitioner on how not taking his allergy medication could have an adverse effect on his behavior, it could cause him to lose sleep and be unable to pay attention…and he could even have trouble in school. Go figure. His ear infection is gone though…and he said he’d try to be more responsible about taking his allergy meds and staying away from things he shouldn’t be around (anything fragrant basically…and tons of foods he likes).

Wednesday we hit Mr. Hinkel’s room (again). We had stopped in Tuesday to check on Cam’s newly formatted old computer – and he was reading to celebrate…okay, so really he was reading because he figured out that if he DOES SOME WORK he gets to use the computer that now connects to the internet…which means he can watch Stargate…
I cannot for the life of me remember Thursday, February 11th. I wish I could…it’s that brain damage again.

12.Feb.2010
Now, I still haven’t figured out WHY they set Camden’s computer up UNDER the desk, but there you have it, it’s under the desk instead of on it, usually they also have a pile of pillows and a blanket there…more comfy to feed the Webkinz that way.

Very late when I finally got home from Gino’s, but I still wanted to frost our Valentine cake for tomorrow anyhow…but the kids had eaten the frosting AND the bag of butterscotch chips. REALLY?? SO…I dumped some brown sugar into a pan with a chunk of butter, added sweetened condensed milk and stirred for half and hour to make caramel sauce to dump on Devil’s Food Cake – and it was YUMMY.

Folks, this is my Valentine, brought him to church with me ;o) I kind of like that streak of light :)






Sushi. Now before you go all queasy like – hear me out. THERE’S NO FISH IN THERE (well, maybe in the seaweed, like essence of fish or something) – it’s just RICE, seasoned rice vinegar and green onion wrapped up in nori (seaweed). I was too lazy to even mix up some wasabi! AND IT IS YUMMY!! Now we’re out of rice vinegar and Abby is really irritated with me. 02.15.2010

I had to take the car to Ford and have my oil changed (okay, 2,500 miles ago, but today I finally made it – on Feb. 16th). I was looking through a WIRED magazine and decided I should subscribe – there were lots of cool ads in it. I think I need one of these flashlights. It comes in chartreuse.



FEBRUARY 17th, 2010… the day that changed history. Okay, not really, because it really got here on the 16th and I took the photo of it after midnight…but it is the night (early morning?)(cuz that’s when the battery was fully charged)  my EOS 7D arrived…and UPS tried to deliver it to my NEIGHBOR’s house at 9AM and she wasn’t home so they didn’t leave it because it needed a signature and when I tried to track the truck down I discovered UPS customer center has an unlisted number so I had to drive there and get the number and was told my driver would be in around 6PM!! So, I wait. ALL DAY. And at 6:30, my truck still wasn’t in. I finally got my 7D at 8PM. That’s right, night time. Oh well, it’s a sweet new body :D Someday I will have a lens worthy of it, for now, it’s wearing my super beat up cheap 70-300mm telephoto – and I’m okay with that :D

Lobster Bisque. Since I had the evening off and this is what Sandy & I were going to do tomorrow…we did it tonight instead. Thursday night lobster bisque instead of Friday night and it was YUMMY!! (how could anything with a cup of melted butter, 6 cups of half and half and lobster be bad?) I only took about 10 photos of it – playing with the cool white balance adjustment on the 7D – you can set white balance using the color temp. adjustment!!! So much cooler than trying to choose between icons depicting lighting situations that usually aren’t all that accurate.
That soup might have been…unhealthy…just a teensy bit :) But it was after we went to the beach and the fog rolled in and we were freezing to death :D