365 Photos - Week 5

This week my computer crashed on me so it's taken me a little longer to re-install the OS and restore my files.    Now that I'm back up and running I can post week 5 of photos.    Some days this is fun, some days it's a little hard.    I'm hoping by the end of the year I will be able to look back and it will have been worth it.   


Old Posters


Sunset from Parent's House


Waiting room inspiration


Campbell Water Tower


House Numbers


Pixel Portrait


A Sign of the Times

365 Days of Photos - Week Four

Week 4 of photos.


Soaps


Inspired by the bathroom.... weird and random? yeah probably.... It was quite an ordeal to find a working one. So I felt compelled to take a picture. And I liked how it turned out so there you have it.


My Obsession... Well one small basket of it, some scrapbook supplies.


A visit to grandpa's house. Right now our family is going through some estate "stuff", it's a long drawn out story, but I'm trying to help my mom out mostly via moral support, but it's meant several trips up to the house to try to sort things out.


Rum Shrimp. Yummm...



yet another trip to the brewery. I think it might be a challenge to come up with creative ways to capture all of our visits this year, but I think it will be a challenge within a challenge.


Look who has hair!!! This is the longest he has let it grow since we've been back together. He didn't even let it get this long for the wedding!! In part I think he is just rubbing in the fact that there is not a grey hair in sight... geesh! really? And he's basking in the fact there is no sign of any balding yet either, he's one happy full head of golden brown headed hair.

365 Days of Photos - Week Three

Week 3! I'm hoping to not run out of ideas and hoping I get used to the feeling be being the crazy girl carrying the camera around and taking pictures. (I like being the girl who just blends completely into the background, and feel a little self conscience if I feel like I'm standing out in anyway shape or form. I think over the past few years I've found my voice, but this is still a bit of a stretch, in maybe a good way) Here are the photos for week three:


ummm... Trying for one thing, but ended up liking this one better.


Brewery for dinner.


A favorite from the Academy of Sciences


Sunday @ Church.... Ok maybe not, we aren't exactly good Catholics, seeing as how we aren't even catholic or religious at all. But I've always wondered what the church is that you see as you come into Santa Cruz on 17 approaching 1. Turns out it's Holy Cross Church.


The requisite kitty photo of the week


a quick bite


Doggy Sitting

A day at the Academy of Sciences

We've really been wanting to go to the new Academy of Sciences. The last few years we've seen specials on how they've built it, how the dealt with the animals during the transition and how they made it all happen. Talking with a friend last week she mentioned she wanted to go too so we made an outing of it. It was an exhausting day, so many people, but a lot of fun too. I haven't been there since I was a little kid on a field trip, it was totally different going as an adult. We didn't get there early enough to do the planetarium or anything that required separate tickets, they were all gone by the time we got there. But that was ok, there was so much to do even with out the planetarium. My favorite animal was the leafy sea dragon, unfortunately I wasn't able to get that great of a photo of the light sensitive creature. And as always love the jellies and the octapus was facinating.

I'm still getting used to my new camera. I do love it... I'm extremely happy I got it. It takes amazing pictures, and I have the option of eventually getting different lenses for it. I was worried about the learning curve, I've never owned a totally manual camera and I was really worried about learning f-stops and shutter speeds and focusing and getting it all right was going to be overwhelming (I don't know why, but I was intimidated) however it does have a fully automatic mode too, so there is a fail safe fallback. I've made a commitment to try take it with me as much as possible over the next year and use it as much as possible. I'm definitely still learning. All the photos of our day are on flickr here.

365 Days of Photos - Week Two

Week 2 and I'm still going... so far so good. Trying to keep the pictures of the kitty to one a week, (we did find out for sure this week that he has started renal failure :( Since we won't be paying for a kitty kidney transplant, we are hoping that his kidneys still have time left and he will still has many happy years left in him. We've switched his food and are monitoring him for the time being.) So I'll apologize in advance for anyone following this blog if they get sick of pictures of the cat, but he's pretty much our child. We think EVERYTHING he does is cute... it probably isn't..... so sorry.

Self portrait

Kitchen shelf

Mom's Orchid

Berkeley Traffic Circle

Rock Bottom Brewery

Obligatory pixel picture. He got a new basket this week!

Winter Sunset

coyotes

I really could have gotten much better photos without the fence in the way but I'm a scaredy cat. I liked having the option of jumping back inside the safety of the house not quite sure what two wild coyotes were going to make of me. Next time perhaps I will be a bit more brave but they were quite something. This is the best of the pictures I took as they were hunting for gophers. Who knew?

365 Days of Photos - Week One

This Christmas hubby got me a digital SLR and I've decided to take on the 365 photo challenge for 2009. Hopefully I'll be able keep it up for the entire year. Here are the first week of photos.

Happy Holidays

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We just got back from my parents, I came down with a cold Christmas eve and am still fighting it, so as wonderful as it was to be with family it's also nice to be back home in my own bed. Since it's been awhile since I've posted (bad blogger) I thought I'd post a couple shots from the last couple of days.

Arizona 2008

We have been in desperate need of a vacation for months. He's been working A LOT of nights, I've been under a lot of stress at work and after the summer when we had been forced to replace our floors we were well over due. So when our schedules opened up a bit we planned a little trip to Arizona to catch some sun and a little fall ball. We splurged a bit.. ok maybe more than a bit and booked a room at the Royal Palms. This vacation was all about unwinding and relaxation.

On our first full day in the area we decided to spend a little bit of time driving around and checking out the neighboring cities as well as downtown Pheonix. We stumbled into the D-Backs stadium that happened to have tours. This picture of us was taken out front while we were waiting for our tour to begin. It was really cool to see the stadium up close and all the in and outs of the stadium, even if it wasn't our home team.

The second full day started out with a massage. Nothing says relaxation like a morning at the spa!!! We then headed out for lunch. Kyle really wanted to hit Margaritaville in nearby Glendale. This was partially due to a desire for slightly less expensive margaritas than at the hotel, but mostly out of a desire to replace the t-shirt that has gone missing from our Mexican visit :( At least we were able to get a great lunch and replenish his Margaritaville wardrobe. Afterwards we headed up to the town of Carefree (I kid you not). A totally cute small town, where we stumbled into an art and wine feastival. So after looking around for a couple of hrs we needed to head back to the hotel for our 3 course dinner / reservations at T.Cooks back at the hotel.

The last day of our trip we caught some fall ball. We've gotten into minor league games pretty big the last few years since the stadium is so close to our house and it's pretty cool when players make it into the majors that you've seen play locally. One of Kyle's favorites has been Kevin Frandsen who made it to the big leagues a couple years ago but spent most of last year hurt. Kyle really wanted to get an autograph and today he was in luck. Like a little kid we bought a ball and begged for a pen(ok maybe we weren't the most prepared adults) and Kyle caught him before the game for an autograph. Another one of Kyle's wishes/wants has been to get a foul ball at a game, today was his day.

Time to come home came way too quickly, I only finished a third of the book I took and didn't get nearly as much time by the pool as I hoped, but we are already thinking and hoping we can make this an annual vacation.