A photographic study of motion

Does that sound real? Photographically serious? Not that I really care, but I thought the title sounded kind of cool.

Tonight I grabbed Zach and forced him outside while drinking a glass of juice to get the action on digifilm, but then he apparently got inspired and we have him to thank for the following photos. He was on FIAH! Honestly for me? I was afraid of falling asleep and forgetting to get a picture again.

But he did a great job.

You say the zombie invasion is coming? Well, I have my own zombie here, to protect me.


















And if that pose doesn't' work, maybe this one will.



















And if THAT doesn't work, maybe Dead Bernie ala 'Weekend at Bernie's' will convince them that we are also of the undead variety.


















And if Bernie doesn't convince the zombies they have nothing to gain, the SPIDERMAN will save us!

April 28

So today I made spaghetti for dinner. And let me tell you, I am sick to death of grinding all Owen's food in the hand mill. He sees that thing and gets excited, FOOD'S COMING! Ummm, honey, food's already coming, you just refuse to eat it unless it's ground to an uncrecognizable pulp.

This time I decided to say 'screw it' (in my head, of course) and just gave him the bowl of spaghetti (chopped to the size of rice grains, but NOT GROUND!) and he had a blast picking it up with his fingers and trying to eat it. Of course he then hated the little grainy bits of noodles and sauce on his tummy and hands and fingers and pitched a fit about 0.09 seconds after this photo was taken.

(psssst....yes, I know I skipped a day. I fell asleep and awoke during the night realizing I hadn't taken a photo for 4/27. Oops.)

Crystal's Walk

Today Zach participated in Crystal's Walk, a fundraiser to benefit the local Candlelighters, supporting families of children with cancer. He raised donations and donned his rollerblades for an hour of trekking (gliding) around the park. He did a really good job and I'm proud of him, and he was quite proud of himself as well.

On the way there we found this tortoise. The sun was really bright and I didn't get a chance to play with the settings as Owen was getting antsy in the stroller. Poor baby, he spent a few hours sitting in that stroller today.












Here is a picture of Zach with his sensei, Kyoshi Steve. He has been given the title of Kyoshi, which is more than 'sensei' but I can't remember all the details behind it. Ask me a couple of months ago when he explained it LOL. Crystal was Kyoshi's daughter, she passed away 7 years ago, and since then the Kabboords have organized Crystal's Walk and Ride every year to raise money for other families. Part of the opening ceremony involved a butterfly release, all the children and Candlelighter families had a small envelope with a butterfly inside, which were gently opened allowing the butterflies to go up and away. Very beautiful and touching. Very hard to photograph, so I have nothing to show of it. It was a wonderful, albeit hot and tiring, day, Zach had a great time and he even won a raffle basket complete with Checkers game and Bakugan.

April 25

Saturday night...ahhhhh. Tonight's pic was an experiment of two sorts. One was lighting/tripod/timing etc. The other was testing my faith in Owen's sleep depth haha. I put him to bed (asleep) and then went and got the tripod, setting it up next to his crib. The room was so dark that I ended up turning on a small lamp, but then threw a towel over it...I just needed enough light to see what I was focusing on. Then...since it was still so dark, I had to use the flash to get the focal point set, but turned off the flash and took the photo with a variety of lens speeds, longest was 30 seconds.

It came out pretty light, not surprising with the slow speed and little bit of lamp light. However, you'd never believe how dark the room actually was. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but no matter, at least it's peaceful. And he didn't wake up!

Fun with Photoshop

Tonight (or well, last night, since I'm actually typing this on the 25th) dh and I went out to a small wine tasting with our neighbors, and we had a really good time. In the process I actually slathered on some makeup and decided to take a 'self portrait', you know, the kind where you hold the camera out at arm's length and take a photo. Holy cowabunga. My skin looks AWFUL! I want to burn the chip that has those images on it.

Anyway, today I looked up a skin smoothing tutorial since a basic blur wasn't going to smooth out my aging face and gaping pores and old scars. The result is kind of cool.... you know it's been touched up, but there's still a little reality there LOL.

Too bad I can't add some photoshop face cream, or makeup base, or something for real life.

And finally, posting today's post TODAY

Owen has been so sweet with his babies lately. Oh yes, he does still throw them on the floor occasionally, but now he actually kisses them, gives them 'bites' of his snacks and yesterday I caught him tipping his sippy cup up to the mouth of one of them. Just melts your heart.

If only he would give ME kisses, I'd be ecstatic.


















Then later, he showed his true colors. This is Owen, through and through.

April 22

Yes, yes...another desperation photo/post. I was soooo tired by day's end yesterday, and I really thought hard about not taking a picture. But I went ahead and took this gem for you. I will say, it's the best tasting pizza I've made yet. AND I got the crust in a better shape than I have before...never mind the cornmeal scattered all over the kitchen due to my spinning attempts. Now if only I could get the crust to slide from the peel (don't forget to put cornmeal all over the peel, idiot!) and get it larger/thinner, I'd be happy.

But it did taste good.

April 21

This is a desperation photo...an Oh no! It's late and I'm tired and I don't know what to take a picture of!

I found a little wine/beer store almost next door to Zach's karate studio, so I picked up some recommended Belgian beer. I am sad to admit that among the 6 (dh and I have since drunk them, splitting each one in half) I was really unable to differentiate between them.

Sorry, Dave!

April 20

Playing catch-up again...get used to it. Lots of photo apathy lately, so be prepared.

I did, however, get the sweetest shot of Elmo tonight. Elmo is literally the sweetest dog around. Too sweet for his own good, even. He lets Owen take food out of his bowl while he's eating, pull a bone out of his mouth and is so tender taking treats from Owen's (or anyone's) hand. Just a loving, gentle being.

Since I'm posting this late, I'll go ahead and add that any good thoughts for our sweet pup would be greatly appreciated. He's not been doing well, and we're not exactly sure since we've had 2 different diagnoses, but at the moment it seems to be a neck problem. He's had a good bit of muscle wasting, possible anemia (questionable labs), very lethargic, decreased appetite and much less interest in playing. He's been on prednisone for a couple of weeks, but suddenly had a big decline with wimpering/pain the past few days. More meds have perked him up a bit, but we are not sure how things will progress.

Here he is in his most basic mood...just as ready to snuggle (or put up with LOL) a baby doll as with anyone else.

Tres cool

And I'm caught up! Woohooo....

Zach was getting sprayed with the hos
e and I thought the water splashing off looked really cool. So I called dh to come do the spraying while I ran in to grab the camera. This was taken with a shutter speed of 1/1600, imagine if it had been the full 1/4000! Talk about freezing the motion. The second is just a full size close up, so you can see the water better. Both images are pretty large file sizes, sorry.

April 18

Yet more pics of playing outside. Zach looks all sly, hanging out in the baby swing...

















...but Owen doesn't seem to mind, he's having a blast in the big boy swing. You should hear his screams when Zach tries to go for a swing.

April 17

More and more Owen...you'd think I do nothing but chase this little monster around all day. Oh wait, that really IS all I do.

I have no idea what he was doing here, but it looks like he's tattling on someone.












And again, just looking cute.

April 16

I'm about 4 days behind posting, so I'll be quick and cut out the chit chat. Owen look so happy here....












...so why is he trying to escape? Remind me to add some footage to the height of that fence. He's getting quick.

Tax Day!

April 15...apparently a day dreaded my many. Luckily for me I have a hubby who is great with bookkeeping and money handling (not laundering!) and our taxes have been done for many weeks now.

Today was a good day b/c Zach's book arrived! I was freaked out by the estimated shipping date of 4/20, pretty much ensuring it wouldn't arrive on time for the due date, so I paid extra for the 2nd day shipping, and whaddaya know, it shipped out on Monday, the 13th. He was sooooo excited to see it, being able to visualize and hold the object for which he had worked so hard, he just couldn't stop saying how cool it was. It really warmed my heart to see how he was finally able to appreciate what he had done.












And then, how could I refuse these dying tulips. Doesn't it look like they are reaching out like alien hands, trying to grasp a few more moments of life?

Tuesday, April 14

Another day of not doing more than I had to. The have-tos are pretty much breathing and listening to make sure Owen's activites aren't too life-threatening. Dh was home today so the second have-to wasn't overly consuming and I could focus more on have-to number one.

Unfortunately, being lazy doesn't bode well for the prospect of taking good photographs (I think there's something very wrong with my lexical selections there but damned if I really care enough to figure it out and fix it). I managed to grab the camera when all the boys were gone to karate and took these specimens. One is a flattened penny from the zoo, from when Zach went with the granparents. The second is....Salt and Saltines! I bet you are bowled over from the excitement exuding from THAT image. I can barely contain even myself.

April 13

Is the weekend over? Is Spring Break done? I think so. I'm feeling a little out of sorts from the whole mess. My photo was a last minute refusal to succumb to the "I don't WANT to take any photos today!" devil. He didn't win, but the pic is a little weak.

I call it "Small Roses in the Dark". See if you can figure out why.

Happy Easter!

Holy cow, that Easter bunny is a crazy dude. He left a ton of eggs with candy and coins for the boys, and even had a treasure hunt for Easter baskets. One egg with a clue lead to another, and so on, until finally the goods were revealed in the trunk of dad's car. Tricky rabbit! Zach had a blast and Owen quickly realized that rattling eggs = sweet treats. His first ever Skittles and jelly beans were a huge hit.

Later it was on to Grammy's for more goodies, including lunch and an afternoon in the pool. Owen was DELIGHTED. I wish I had words to describe his squeals and laughter and cackling mixed with the occasional gasps and spitting, followed by more giggling. Of course having daddy for a playmate helps tremendously.

April 11

Today was just a busy Saturday, trying to catch up a little on cleaning since dh was home, and tomorrow being Easter, aunt and uncle coming up, etc. Don't know why, but I was wiped out by evening. I seriously contemplated not doing a photo, but I finally dragged myself up and took....guess what....another flower pic. These tulips I bought today for MIL for Easter, she is cooking lunch, so I thought some flowers would be nice. It's the sort of thing she would do for me.

April 10 - IT'S FINISHED!!

Zach's book, that is. He worked long and hard, we had to get creative and drive around for some of the photos, I did my share at the computer and his Spring Break has mostly revolved around it, but it's DONE and now we will anxiously await it's delivery. I am praying hard that it doesn't actually ship on the 20th as estimated, or we may be a day late for school. Yikes. Please cross your fingers that it gets here sooner.

So I have no photo for today, only a link....so you can preview his book for yourself.

Enjoy!
Zach's Sneaky Alphabet

April 9

Catching up, catching up...I swear, this blog will soon be like my laundry and it will perpetually be a week behind. Alas, I am who I am, no matter how hard I try to change.

Today was busy as Peri and Brontë had spent the night, so I took a little more effort with breakfast and snacks and had 4 kids to keep my ears tuned in to. Although dh mostly kept Owen occupied, which helped tremendously. I got a photo of them playing in Zach's bounce house. That poor thing has kept so many kids happy and it doesn't matter now that it's got holes and they are too big, they still blow it up, jump, and let it deflate around them.












Later I took another flower photo, something about the evening in the kitchen/dining room, I got great results like I did with the gladiolus. That one I printed on metallic paper (mpix.com) and it looks awesome. I'll probably have to print this one as well.

Our friends are coming!

Zach has been counting the days till today, ever since we learned last Friday that we'd have overnight guests. Peri and Brontë, daughters of this gal, are spending the evening with us and he's so thrilled to have someone close to his age to play with. If anyone clicks the link to her blog, please flog her because she is NOT keeping up with photos. Tsk tsk, Kathy.

I took some pics of the girls and they are my photos for today. Now, now, don't worry, I asked their mom if I could post them and I got the all clear. Aren't they cute?

April 7

Ok, I took a photo today, I was helping Zach with more pics for his alphabet book and figured I could use one of my 'practice' shots as a photo for the day. But when I uploaded them I forgot and deleted my own photos, saving only the ones he'd taken. Grrr. I could probably go undelete or something but I'm going to be lazy and just use one of his. Although I did touch up the coloring a bit to make it more of a true 'azure', for the letter Z, of course.

Spring Break!

Oh Emm Gee. I don't know how I'm going to get through summer break. I can't explain it, but things are just so much more chaotic when Zach is home with Owen and me. Zach is actually pretty well behaved, and helpful, but it's just another energy, maybe Owen feeds off of it, I don't know, but it's insane. Trying to attend to Zach's needs while making sure Owen doesn't do a dive off the back of the couch, or stab a pen into the TV screen, or rip the tail off one of the animals AND get some groceries, new shoes for Zach, do some laundry, help out with Zach's book project, get Owen to take a nap, get Owen to eat something decent, figure out why Zach's stomach is hurting, berate myself for not making sure Zach had his DS to help out with car sickness, etc etc etc...I'm exhausted.

We did actually get some work done on the book. Zach has such a grown up vocabulary and comprehension, but trying to get him to tap into that when he's writing sentences is worse than pulling teeth. No, "My dog is a lot of fun" is NOT a good sentence for your book, honey *gnashing my own teeth while looking for a wrench*. But we made some decent progress and he worked really hard, didn't give up and take the easy route, and I'm hopeful that it will be finished in a few days. He even took some really nice photos for it.

So my photo today is actually HIS photo, it's the image for the first part of his book. He is making a 'sneaky alphabet' book where the letters don't sound like they normally would, or are silent. He's certain it will get published and make him lots of money.

April 5

Sunday, boys at Grammy's. Fun day, right? No, sad to say. But it was at least productive. If you take away to usual bickering between dh and myself for any project that gets done, the sore wrists/hands and blisters from the hammer and the heat and sweat, it would have been a great day. But this is real life, right? I am glad that the garden is basically 'done' minus a few more plants that need to be put into the ground. And figuring out a better way of securing the lattice. However, the hard work is COMPLETED and it looks pretty damned fine, especially for a couple of city folks like myself and dh.

I had to take another pic of the tiny rose as well. It's so pretty. I've never had a living rose before.

April 4

This day, 9 years ago...Ok, you don't really want the gory details. But back when I was trying to get pg for the first time, I was tracking all the fun things my body was doing and April 4 was the day I set free the egg that was soon to become Zachary. The fourth day of the fourth month. Ironically, 'my' number has always been 4. I've always been drawn to it, and when you do the birth number addition, I end up as a four. Crazy, huh? Actually, I didn't pinpoint ovulation to April 4, I had pains for 3 days and I averaged it out to go with the 2nd day, which was the 4th.

Ok, back from the time warp...today we did work on the garden AGAIN. We did get the timbers placed securely with nails. Have you ever seen a 60penny nail? Holy crap, those are big. Had to drill holes, move the timbers, drill again, nail in the spikes, etc. It took a little while but wasn't so bad. It looks nice. Then came time to pound in the posts for the 'fencing'. Well, let's just say that tomorrow is another day. In the meantime, I took a photo of an itty bitty baby rose that my aunt so thoughtfully planted with the culantro. Apparently, they like each other.

April 3

Hooray for Spring Break! Today was the last day of school before the wonderful week of no homework. We will, however, still have karate. Sigh. But no 'have to' with waking times, other than Owen's schedule, and no worrying about signing planners or turning in papers. Wheeeee!

This evening we had plans to go out for Indian food with a friend and her family. Well, I guess technically they are all friends. But I met her first! Before heading off to the restaurant (where I learned that anything 'vindaloo' was too spicy for my poor hillbilly tongue) we went outside for a bit of playtime and photo time. Owen has been insisting on using the 'big boy' swing, and here he is enjoying it.

April 2

As I sat at the computer uploading the pics I'd taken the past 2 nights, I couldn't find any dated April 2. And the ones I swore I'd taken last night were dated April 1. I thought I was losing my mind (although I am certain that's happened already) I finally realized my camera was under the impression that it was leap year and March 1 pics were dated February 29. So all the exif data since then has been wrong. Sigh. I guess I need to figure out how to fix that.

Anyway, more night shots. These are even darker b/c I turned off the main porch light. I left the side one on, and you can see the spots of light as it filtered through the lattice of the pergola and covering foliage. It was so dark I had a very hard time focusing so I apologize for the lack of clarity. I had the shutter open for 25 seconds and in the bottom left of the pic there's a blur of gray, as Harmony ventured outdoors briefly and hopped up on the timber, and she did NOT stay still for 25 seconds. At least you can see that I've been working on the timbers! They are a bit straighter looking now.

















Then we decided to see if Zach could sit completely still for 25 seconds. Hahaha. Now that's a funny thought. All things considered, though, he didn't do so badly.

April Fool's Day

Bet you thought I didn't take a photo today, huh? Well, considering that I'm typing this on April 3rd, I could claim it was all a joke, in honor of the day, but in all honesty I did nothing to celebrate :( Maybe next year. I need to get some good pranks to play on Zach.

It was fairly late for photos when I finally got the camera out. I took a shot of the 'garden' that I am still working on. It started as one 8 foot segment of the fence, about 2.5 feet deep, and I put most things in pots b/c the last time I planted in the ground everything started dying. It was fenced off, but now we've taken down the fencing and I've cleared away 3 more fence segments so I'll have 32 feet by almost 3 feet. The landscaping timbers were just sort of placed there to get an idea of how it will look. I'll straighten them up, promise.












Here's also a shot of my culantro that my aunt brought up. Those are the spiny seed/flowering bits. I don't know if they turn into flowers or not, they sure are poky, though! I am going to trim them off. I don't need it to seed right now. And I don't like getting stabbed.