19
One from the archives… from way, way back!
This is Cameron on his 1st Birthday, and today he turns 19.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! ♥♥♥
Panda Cup 2008
Thought it was appropriate to end a soccer filled week with some soccer picture.
The Panda Cup was in town yesterday and we went to watch one of the games after Sara’s soccer games. Told Melissa to pay attention and get some pointers from those girls. They are pretty aggressive!!
Had a hard time deciding which pictures to post (Greg picked these) because I ended up with just over 50 keepers, so if anyone is interested in seeing the rest, let me know and I will e-mail you the link to the album.
Teams were DFW Tornados ’90 Girls vs. Sting Soccer Club Girls (Sting won 2-0)
The girls both had a game yesterday, too. Melissa’s team lost 8-0. They don’t keep score for Sara’s age group, but Sara scored at least two goals. I was there for the first one, and she got a “high five” from the ref! I had to leave after the first 15 min. to watch Melissa’s choir concert.
The Windy City
No, not Chicago, but as windy as it’s been in the last few days, you would think it is!
Tuesday, Greg and Sara saw someone flying a kite on the field where Melissa has soccer practice, so on Wednesday Sara and I made a trip to Wal-Mart to buy some kites and she got to fly it at Melissa’s practice on Thursday. She had so much fun, and did really well, too, getting the kite back up into the air all by herself a few times after it crashed to the ground. It was a good thing that the kite is so small, because it was so windy that she probably would have sailed away with the kite if it was a little bigger!
I was sitting right behind her, taking pictures, and I kept telling her to turn around and look at me for just a second….. and this is the look she gave me. She looks just a little bit annoyed LOL. Whatever, mom!
Boredom Buster (1)
The power company shut off the electricity for about two and a half hours on Wednesday so they could do some work in our neighborhood. Of course it went out right in the middle of my shower… and the bad thing about having a tank-less water heater, after the hot water is out of the pipes, all you get is cold!!! I could stand it just long enough to rinse most of the conditioner out of my hair. Brr!!!
Anyway, the power didn’t come right back on like I was hoping, so I had to find things to do…. caught up on my reading first (Made it all the way to December 2007 with my Popular Photography magazine) and then decided to get out the camera and turn on the kitchen faucet. I put a serious dent in the shutter life of my camera! These drop shots are NOT easy!! I only ended up with a handful of OK ones out of the hundreds I took, and I liked this one best. Focus is the hardest part, and I’ve come up with a plan for next time: use the tripod and my remote!
Soccer Mom
And this is a soccer week!
Monday: 6:15pm Sara’s game
Tuesday: 6:15pm-7:30pm Melissa practice (I sent Greg with both kids)
Wednesday: 5:30pm-6:30pm Sara practice
Thursday: 6:15pm-7:30pm Melissa practice
Saturday: 8:30am Melissa’s game, and 12:30pm Sara’s game (Sara’s might get rescheduled)
More From Kemah
This little guy was in front of our hotel. We stayed in Seabrook, which is only minutes from Kemah, and they had pelicans all over town. So cute!
Waiting in line to get on the ferris wheel
View from the ferris wheel
Another view from the ferris wheel. You can see the roller coaster that Greg and Melissa went on.
Greg’s reason for going to Kemah!
Star Player
Sara had her second soccer game of the season yesterday and she did so well! At first we only had two players and the other team let us borrow one of their girls so we didn’t have to forfeit the game, but then one other girl showed up. It was so funny to watch them play. One girl didn’t want to get on the field at all to play and had to be forced out there… the other girl kept running off the field because she was hungry and wanted a snack, or she stuck her finger in her mouth and then held it up to see where the wind was coming from… and Sara played her little heart out.
I’m glad they don’t keep score for her age group, but if they did, it would have been something like 583-2 for the other team! I’m proud to say that Sara scored both goals for her team!! After the game, the other team’s coach and one of the other team’s parents came up to her to tell her how well she played.
Easter Monday
Need to squeeze in a picture of my tealight wreath, decorated for Easter, before it’s too late.
After the kids found their baskets and plastic eggs, we had fun making the eggs “dance” on the dining table.
More Easter Eggs
Yes, these are all girl eggs. Sara went crazy with the stickers, and the crayon, that comes with the dye tablets. Melissa and I had fun with paint.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (and yes, that purple egg is UGLY! Looks more pink, but it was supposed to be purple dye) The Easter Bunny must have gotten a little confused, too! LOL
Kemah
We’re back! Yesterday we were out the door at just after 5am and got to be squished in the shoe box (aka Greg’s car) for the next five or six hours. Fun, fun! (Not!). We stopped at an IHOP for breakfast and of course had to make a pit stop at Woody’s Smokehouse (The Jerky Capital of the World – ha ha!) so Greg could get some beef jerky. They have all kinds of jellies, butters and preserves, and I got some mayhaw jelly. Next stop was Kemah… or I should say Seabrook, where our hotel was. We were able to check in early so we dropped the suitcase off and then went in search of a Kroger supermarket because they had discount tickets for NASA. Stopped for lunch, and then headed to the space center. It was packed!!! So after we found a parking space, we headed to the main entrance and there was a huge line!! Not sure how long it would have taken to get in. Greg started complaining about the line and how he didn’t feel like waiting an hour, blah, blah, blah. We had already paid the $5 for parking. Oh, and I have to say that he asked ME what I wanted to do, and I told him that I didn’t want to stand in line and listen to him WHINE for an hour… and Greg said that he wouldn’t complain, blah, blah, blah. Well, he was already whining, wasn’t he?!!
Anyway… we ended up leaving and going to the Kemah boardwalk instead. First Greg wanted to stop at the fish market to see what they had and how much the crabs cost. It was a madhouse!!! I think everyone within a 50-mile radius was there. We were stuck in traffic forever and then we had to find a place to park! I guess that was the only good thing about taking the shoe box, you can squeeze it into a tiny little parking space.
After the fish market we went to the Boardwalk….. never EVER are we going to go to Kemah during spring break or Easter week-end! We didn’t even bother checking to see if we can park in the official Boardwalk parking lot, and just grabbed the first spot we found and walked. The crowds were worse than the malls on Christmas Eve! Greg stood in line and got us all-day passes (bracelets), including me, which he should have known was a complete waste of money because he knows that I usually don’t go on any rides. Besides, I was there to take pictures. Neither one of us went on many rides. The kids got on the carousel, and Greg stood next to Sara because she’s too short to go on by herself. Then Greg and Melissa got on the roller coaster!! Melissa even said that she wanted to get on, and no one had to talk her into it!! I was really surprised. Greg said she did really well, too. Didn’t even scream or cry! She was probably too scared out of her mind to scream LOL. After the roller coaster we all went on the ferris wheel. Had to stand in line way longer than was necessary, because they only let two people on per gondola, even though they could fit four. Sometimes they let on three, but only if it was one parent and two children. Pissed me off!! So we had to ride separately. After that we went in search for some ice-cream, but the lines were just ridiculous and I suggested going down the street where all the shops are (off Boardwalk property). We had seen a snow-cone place on the way to the boardwalk. Unfortunately they were closed when we got there, but the store next door sold ice-cream. We sat in the chairs in front of the stores, resting out tired feet and enjoying our ice-cream, and then browsed through a couple of the other stores…. and bought some fudge. Yum!
Thankfully no one wanted to go back to the Boardwalk, and we went back to our car and inched our way out of Kemah in search for a place to eat dinner. Ended up at Jack In The Box because both girls wanted to go there. I didn’t care, but Greg would have preferred a sit-down seafood restaurant.
This morning we got up bright and early and were at the fish market just before 7 am and Greg bought his crabs and some shrimp. Went back to the hotel for breakfast (they had the best cinnamon rolls!!!!!!!), packed up our stuff and we were on our way back home.
In all it was a pretty good trip. But, lesson learned. Never go back during spring break, and next time buy NASA tickets online.
Just one pic for now. Will have more to show next week.
And We’re Off…
We’re heading to Kemah today for a little getaway. I talked everyone into going to NASA (Johnson Space Center) … not that the kids have too much to say about it. Ha ha! Not sure what else we will do. Kemah has a boardwalk and we might walk around that for a while. And of course Greg wants to buy some crabs – yuck!! – and his oldest brother will meet us here for dinner tomorrow.
Have a great Friday, and I’ll catch up with everyone tomorrow!
6.5 Inches
That’s how much rain we got in less than 24 hours!!! The fist 5 inches fell in about eight hours and the last inch and a half we got yesterday evening and over night. Our yard pretty much turned into a small lake, and I think if we had gotten another half inch or so, we would have had a new address because we would have floated down the street!
Greg and I got to go outside in that downpour because we discovered two leaky windows.. the one here in the computer room and the one in Melissa’s room. We were only outside for about five minutes or so, trying to cover the windows with plastic. And not only did we get drenched, but it didn’t help at all and the windows were still leaking. We were able to catch the drips from Melissa’s window in a cup, but we had to use towels in the computer room because the water was running down the window pane. Thankfully we got a break in the rain for a few hours in the evening, and during the night it wasn’t as heavy anymore, and we didn’t have to get up to change the towels.
Of course I took some pictures….
Our rain gauge. First picture was taken yesterday afternoon just before I emptied it out, and the second one this morning.
From yesterday afternoon… our flooding yard.
Redbud in the rain.
And one from this morning. I don’t have rubber boots, so I dug out my beach flip-flops and went to stand in the lake. OMG that water was sooo C-O-L-D!!!!!!! You can see how deep it is.
Blue skies and sunny today.
Summer
Time for flip-flops, pedicures…… and regular shaving of the legs! Please forgive the blinding whiteness of my feet, and yes I did shave my legs, even though I’m wearing long pants.
Huh? What do you mean, it’s not even officially spring yet??
Bees
They really like our plum trees… there are hundreds of bees! And they’re NOT easy to photograph!
First Love
.. of the SLR kind 😉
This was actually Greg’s camera. He bought it in the early 80’s, looong before we met. I knew he had it, but assumed that it didn’t work because it was in a box in storage, and he was using a different camera (point & shoot). Then one day in 1998 I found out that it WAS still working, and dug it out of storage, along with the lenses and filters that he had bought. I had so much fun with this camera! It had no built-in flash and I had a speedlite for it, but something went wrong with the hotshoe and the speedlite no longer worked. I was heartbroken. The camera still worked, I just had to use ISO 800 film and it did OK indoors for the most part. I got a good 6 years out of that camera, and by then it was already 20 years old.
Greg surprised me with a Nikon N75 for our anniversary after I could no longer use the flash on the Minolta, and even though it was a nice camera, it never really compared. I still miss it, and it felt weird when I picked it up yesterday to take pictures of it. So very different from my D70s. And my favorite lens? 50mm 1.7
Fog
It was a foggy morning yesterday… made for a scary drive to school because you could barely see in front of you!
Had to make a trip to Wal-Mart and decided to take the camera, that was around 9:30 am, and visibility was so bad that I almost chickened out and turned around to go back home… but it’s only about 2 miles to Wal-Mart from my house, so I kept going.
This tree was on the edge of the field next to Wal-Mart. I was parked right across the street.
A picture of Wal-Mart from where I was parked.
And this was around 10 am, when I was on my way home, taken from the car (I was safely in the turn lane and NOT moving when I took this!) . You wouldn’t believe all the IDIOTS driving in the fog without their headlights on!!!!!
Comfort Food
And this is the way to eat it, right off the spoon!
Some of you were wondering about my setup, so I decided to take a picture of that, too. This is my kitchen counter, stove is on the left and the microwave is on the right (in the corner, facing the stove). Then to the right of the microwave is the sink, and kitchen window. If yesterday afternoon had been sunny, you would have seen the sunlight reflecting on the counter, and giving me enough natural light to avoid using the speedlight.
The Daily Click 