Playground fun
This is that thing in the playground where you hang on and then slide across while keeping your feet off the ground. I am 38, so it doesn’t work for me anymore, but it seems like a cool idea.
One thousand and one nachts!
I like the ferris wheel. I like the merry-go-round. I like the roller coaster. I like skyshot rides.
I don’t like 1001 nachts (nights – why is this ride German?). Nor do I like any of the rides like it. Anything that spins? Blech.
It makes a nice photo, though.
Upon reflection…Fun!
Okay, so here’s a photo of a little parking lot carnival that just finished up this weekend in Chilliwack. It was small, but it looked like everyone was having fun. What I liked was that it afforded me some fun shots without having to drive out to Vancouver.
The reflection is off the roof of my car (which I had just washed earlier that day). I’d love to say that I planned this, but I noticed it by accident as I was shooting other photos. Fortuitous accidents…gotta love them.
Nothing says Carnival like Mini Donuts
Well, that and a ferris wheel. If you’ve never had Mini Donuts, you should probably try them, and then see your doctor. They are greasy, doughy, cinnamon-and-sugary, and definitely not good for you, but they taste greasy, doughy, and cinnamon-and-sugary so you’ll love them while you hate them.
Washing by hand
Do you still wash your pots and pans, maybe even dishes, by hand? I seem to have some kind of block in my head when it comes to the dishwasher. I don’t like to put my pots and frying pans in there. I have this idea in my head that it doesn’t do as good a job as I do. Plus, I learned something last night.
After making dinner, I moved the pots and frying pan to the side of the sink and ran a sink of warm/hot water, dropped a bit of soap in and then washed the dishes. And I enjoyed it.
When I was young, we didn’t have a dishwasher, so there was no choice about how to was the dishes. My mom did most of the washing, but when were deemed old enough my sister and I started washing the dishes on a regular basis. We fought over who would wash and who would dry. I hated washing back then, but I love it now. In fact, I look back on that time pretty fondly. Stupid, I know, but nostalgia fogs the mind.
WordPress Photo Challenge: Celebration
I went through photos of fireworks and birthday cakes, sparklers and candles. Then I found this photo. I posted a very similar version of this a few years ago when my family traveled to Disneyland for the first time. My wife and I had both been before, but we took our kids for the first time. The experience was amazing. My son and daughter were the proverbial “kids in a candy store”. They didn’t know where to look first. They wanted to ride everything, see everything, experience everything.
By the end of the first day in Disneyland, the kids were exhausted but excited. They wanted to sleep but did not want to leave. As the fireworks were about to start to end the day, we came across this ride: The Astro Orbitor. My son and daughter stood, transfixed by the streaks of light. The only words were, “Awesome,” and, “Amazing.” It was a celebration of everything we’d done that day. One long party ending with a light show.
Happy Halloween! Scary pumpkin faces, anyone?
Here’s a bunch of carvings I saw tonight while trick-or-treating with the kids. I figured I’d share. Some of them were pretty intricate. A lot better than any of the pumpkins I carved when I was young. I hope you had a safe and fun Halloween this year.
WordPress Photo Challenge: Hidden
When I read the topic for this week’s photo challenge, I was stuck.
I thought about taking a shot of this lovely, vintage door someone near our house restored and used as a gate to their backyard. It makes me think there’s something great hidden back there and I can just see a hint of it through the old glass in the door.
I thought about trying to snap a shot of my kids hiding somewhere in the house.
Then, tonight, I opened up the fridge and had a flash of brilliance. The fridge. I’ve had those moments when I’ve said to my wife, “Have you seen the eggs?” Then she finds them behind the margarine. Or, “Do we have any peppers?” ”Yup, they’re in the back.” ”Back where?” ”They’re in there, I know they are.” Two weeks later there’s a nasty smell and then I find the peppers. Or what’s left of them.
Between the crispers and the shelves and the…well…there’s just too many places to hide in a fridge.
Hidden. The wordpress photo challenge.
Bragging? No. Really.
Tomorrow morning, at 8:00, I’ll be welcoming up to 240 9th Grade students to my school. Along with forty-eight student leaders, I’ll be attempting to entertain and inspire these students to greatness in their first year of high school. It won’t be easy. It will be fun. I will pass out when it’s all over. This post ends now, because I have to go read the script you see above one more time. And probably again. And once more…
Weekly Photo Challenge, part two: Up (in the air)
When we bought the trampoline last summer, my son was at times curious about it, at times petrified. The most he would do was bounce and only when no one was on with him. This summer he seems to think that he’s Dick Grayson (the original Robin in the Batman comics) of the Flying Graysons. He’s gone from terrified to a holy terror on the trampoline.
As a kid, I never had a trampoline, so watching my own kids is full of terrifying excitement for me. I’m always curious to see what they’ll do next, with my thumbs ever-ready to phone 9-1-1.
Weekly Photo Challenge: UP!
The kids and I had a wonderful weekend, with a lot of activity. This is but one. It’s not the most beautiful photo from a technical standpoint, but it’s one of the most beautiful photos I’ve taken because it’s my daughter executing a possible broken neck over a sprinkler shooting through a trampoline. Not a great backdrop, nor is it in the best focus, but it’s fun.
Oh, and she’s UP.
What happens when men play in a river?
The “dam” best day of the year. Actually, my friend Ryan and his brother did the lion’s share of the work on this, but I helped build it a bit higher today. There is little better in this world than using your bare hands to change the course of a natural force like a river.
Haha! Manly!
Love is so cute…
I visited the Alexandra Bridge on Sunday. It’s about a half-hour drive north of Hope and ten minutes from Hell’s Gate. And, yes, you read that correctly. British Columbia has some funny name places.
While photographing this suspension bridge, this couple came up and paused, nicely, and waited for me to take a photo. I informed them that they were never going to walk across this bridge if they were going to wait until I was done shooting this bridge. I also, in passing, that they could walk on as long as they were okay with being on my photoblog.
They were so cute. They were holding hands and being all googly over each other and making me a little jealous. My wife and I have been married for seventeen years. We have a ten year old daughter, who was accompanied on this trip by a friend from school, and a seven year old son. Marriage and kids are great. I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. But this couple, walking by themselves, holding hands and canoodling whenever they wanted, made me remember a time when I could grab my wife’s hand and not be joined on the other side by a sticky, melted ice cream covered hand.
It’s a Lego Disaster Zone
“I don’t know who made this mess, but I’m not cleaning it up.”
My son and I took on the task of rebuilding all of his Lego minifigures today. I started in the afternoon. After dinner, we took on the task of finishing the building project. We’ve not quite completed the job, but the count is at 145 at this point. We don’t have many left to put together, but I think the number will be well over 150. On one hand, that seems like a ridiculous number. On the other, they take up almost no space and, on average, are made up of four pieces plus an accessory. That doesn’t sound near as crazy.
Either way, I’m jealous of the collection of Lego my son gets to play with on a daily basis.
Where has my youthful excitement gone?
My daughter and son, while on a short walk tonight, picked dandelion poofs and made wishes and blew on them. It was fun to watch them re-enact something that my wife and I did when we were young. While I was watching them blow on dandelions, a thought occurred to me to which I did not give voice.
I thought, “Please don’t blow those seeds toward my front lawn.”
And there it was. Right there. My youthful, fun self died. I actually thought about my lawn instead of fun. Argh…I’m old.
When “Photo Friday” and the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge collide
Just over this dune is the Pacific Ocean. It’s beautiful on the Oregon Coast. I kind of wish I was there.
As Spring Break comes to a close, I’ve been thinking ahead to summer holidays (sad, huh?) and that we’re heading to Nehalem Bay in Oregon again. Add to that the fact that Photo Friday and WordPress’ own Weekly Photo Challenge this week is ocean, I though it would be fitting to post a photo from last year’s summer trip. It covers both mother nature and the ocean.
Mmm…cookies after a long day.
Today just seemed like a cookie day. My daughter, who turns ten in two weeks, loves spending time in the kitchen. She loves measuring things and mixing things and licking the MixMaster beaters. She finds great joy in adding ingredients to the mixing bowl. My day had been pretty good, so I figured, why not? Let’s make cookies. Below are the cookie embryos before they go in for some really warm gestation.
Afterwards, I can barely get the cookies off the baking stones before my family is swarming around like a bunch of starving raccoons. They’re all claws and sneakiness. It’s lucky I made it out alive.
So that’s how my day ended. How was yours?
By the way, thanks to WordPress for throwing my post from February 22 on Freshly Pressed. Also, thanks to all of you who subscribed and commented. I really appreciate your participation in this process. That’s what blogging is all about, after all, isn’t it?
SNOOOOOWWWWWW DAAAAAAYYYYY!
Today was a snow day. I’m a teacher, and could not make it out of our driveway, let alone to the highway to get to school. When the kids got up this morning, my wife and I were ready. We had breakfast and got out to the local sledding hill, which, conveniently, is right across the street from where we live. We were on the hill by 7:30 in the morning. No one else had even touched the hill with the exception of a overly ambitious cross-country skier who left us a couple of trails to follow. It was dark and the kids had never used their sleds before, but we were all excited. My wife cut the first trail and the kids followed that over and over again.
By 9:30, we had been sledding for an hour, there was a snowman in the backyard, and the driveway was clear.
It was a great day.
Ben; this time with feeling.
Another example of our painting with light experiment from last night. The dog tag he’s wearing is one of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation dog tags. The money from the sale of these dog tags goes toward spinal cord injury research.
Photography of Ben, version 2.0
When I first got into photography, it was painting with light and long exposures that thrilled me the most. I love shots that defy definition. I was a film photographer before a digital photographer and I loved learning about composition and depth of field. It’s amazing what can happen when you adjust your aperture. Then I bought a DSLR (about two years ago) and was able to manipulate so much more. Tonight, my son and I went into the basement to fold laundry and my wife and daughter were watching some cooking show upstairs, so Ben and I decided that, while down there, we’d make some photo fun. I gave him a flashlight and set the camera on the tripod, took out the remote shutter release and went to town. After taking some crazy photos, I decided that the better subject was Ben, not the lights. I lit Ben with an LED flashlight, and then, in the last half of the exposure I moved the flashlight around behind his head. He took it quite seriously, and I got back to why I wanted to get a DSLR in the first place.
Summer joy with total abandon
Is this not the picture of the joy of summer?
We went to a little work BBQ for my wife and the kids got to do a little swimming in the pool. Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I just went at a swimming pool with total abandon like my son is doing above. The arms akimbo, the momentary flight, the lack of concern for personal safety (while wearing a life jacket, mind you) makes me smile. In a time when playgrounds are being made more and more safe and people who, apparently, were never children are making decisions about child safety it’s wondrous to let my son run on the deck of a pool and jump in with total effort.
Pentax K20D; Pentax M SMC 5omm; f1.7; ISO 100; 1/200 sec.
The giant wheel of doom!
If you’ve been reading my blog you already know what Mickey’s Fun Wheel (above) did to my family. Here’s a brief recap: In March of this year my family and I went to Disneyland and California Adventure. We rode the Fun Wheel (or “Evil Wheel” as my family came to refer to it). I enjoyed it and my daughter and wife went to their mental happy places and my son screamed and cried.
Why am I posting it today? The high school year is coming to a close (here in British Columbia, Canada) and I’m wishing that we were going back to Disneyland and California Adventure for the holidays. I’m also planning a trip to “Playland at the PNE” here in Vancouver for all of my Wolf Pack students (student leadership group) as a reward for their hard work throughout the year. We’ll ride the roller coasters and take a trip on the Hellevator (or eight as I usually do). My favorite ride is the Coaster, a wooden roller coaster built in 1958; my favorite because it’s the only coaster I’ve ever been on where I thought I might die.
Only three more days before exams. Here’s hoping I make it.
Pentax K20D; Pentax DA 18-55mm AL II; f16; ISO 100; 1/80 sec.
California Panorama
You’re going to want to click on the picture to see it in a larger size. This is three photos stitched into one panoramic shot of the entrance to California Adventure. It doesn’t evoke the same nostalgic feelings as the Disney entrance, but it is impressive.
This entrance is directly across a huge plaza from the entrance to Disneyland.
Pentax K20D; Pentax DA 18-55mm AL II; panorama in PhotoShop, CS4
