Florida - Family Pictures

Unfortunately, all family visits must come to an end, and life must go back to their normal rhythm.

We really enjoyed our relaxing vacation in Florida - my mother and father were great hosts!

And as usual, we must have our standard "group picture" - taken in the screened in lanai:

I should have positioned Scott differently - the palm looks like it is growing out of his head!

This one is a little better, although you can see the remote control in my father's hand (Brian held it in the last picture):


Of course, we have the outtake:


And the rejected background:


A bonus - Erica let me take a picture of her:

She spent a lot of time curling her hair and I thought it was so pretty.

And we have a wrap on Spring Break Family pictures

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Parasailing

We've done the parasailing thing before - the first time in 2006, when Erica (7 years old) went up for the first time and had a blast. That year, we even convinced my mother to parasail.

In 2008, a very nervous Brian (8 years old) parasailed for the first time and received high-fives from the flight crew as well as the others on the boat. That year, we convinced my father to parasail with us.

So it's a tradition for us to parasail when we visit Florida on spring break. We always go back to the same company - Ranalli Parasail, located at the Diamond Head Resort on Fort Myers Beach. They offer a 1200 foot ride (the longest / highest ride you can take on Fort Myers Beach) with a great flight crew. In the past, up to three people could take flight on their parasail rig, but now, they have the capability to fly up to six people at a time. This meant that our entire family could go up together.

It was another beautiful day in SW Florida - the air was warm, the breeze refreshing and little clouds dotted the sky. Our family got on the boat at 1pm with another couple and the boat jetted off to the middle of the ocean.

The crew guy who set us up in our harnesses was nice enough to take a picture of us:


The woman from the other couple saw my camera and also offered to take pictures - she has a Nikon D90, so she was familiar with the general operation of mine.


I believe we used this blue and yellow chute in 2008. It's so pretty against the blue sky.

Here we are, ready to launch:


And we're flying!


It was really nice to be able to experience the flight as a family - we chatted about what we saw up in the air and when we were dipped into the water, had fun getting each other wet.



Back on land, we enjoyed walking a bit along the beach. A lovely day.

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A Trip Down Memory Lane

The embedded slide show includes pictures from 1999 to 2003, film that I had developed at Seattle Film Works / PhotoWorks. I received an email from PhotoWorks this week that they were closing, that I had over 1000 pictures with them that they would transfer over to Shutterfly. I didn't realize the breadth of photos I had developed through PhotoWorks, and I am so glad they had all these archives of my film pictures. Pictures from before Brian's birth, all the way to 2003, just before I bought my first digital camera. I plan to have Shutterfly send me the archive DVD of the full resolution files so I can save them on my computer, load them up to my Flickr account, organize and tag them.

Click here to view these pictures larger

I didn't realize when I developed my film with Seattle FilmWorks/PhotoWorks they would provide these archives. Back then, it was very tempting to drop my film off with the Wal-Mart or whoever had the best deal. Being consistent will save me hours digitizing my archives.

Even in today's digital world, I think it is still important to be consistent with your photos. Delete the bad photos, organize the rest, back them up. Choose one photo printing company and print those photos out. I know I've been bad about the "printing the photos out" part, especially since I've been consistently blogging these past three years. I still plan to get my photos into photo books and the like. Receiving these old photos in electronic form has just emphasized that (and most of the photos already reside in scrapbooks).

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Farmer's Market and Wetland Preserve

Saturday morning - and it's Farmer's Market time.

But that's after a nice early morning run as the sun rises -

It's perfect running weather - mid 50s when I start and mid 60s when I finish - this means shorts and a t-shirt, the first warm weather running of this year.

I go to the Farmer's Market with my parents - they eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruit. I picked out two mangoes (they were delicious) and a pair of sunglasses (I left mine in IL).

But most of all, I like looking at all the beautiful produce.


Today's family outing - the wetland preserve - a large wetland area, complete with lake and board walk that winds through the 2500 acre facility. It was a great way to enjoy the evening.



Crocodile Lake, where we saw a crocodile, sunning himself on dock:


Scott points out the Croc to Erica:


I didn't capture it well at all (and hence deleted the picture), but on the left side of the lake, there's a grove of trees where hundreds of birds roost at night. In the evening, they fly back to the shelter of these trees. Next time I'll bring my zoom lens to capture this amazing sight.

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Tradition - Mini Golf

Friday - March 18
It's our second day on spring break - the weather is perfect. I ran 4.5 miles in the cool of the morning, then relaxed around the pool, and did some reading (I'm reading The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother).

The kids slept in and played in the pool. We have one or two excursions planned, so our main activity will be relaxing.

Today's after dinner activity is a tradition for our family - Mini Golf at Castle Golf.


I have at least two other pictures of the kids in these stocks - it's fun to see how they change over the years.

As we rounded the back nine, I noticed the moon rising in the sky. Tomorrow is the "super moon", but tonight's moon is really nice, so I snapped a couple pictures.


As usual, Scott had the lowest score, then me, then Brian and lastly Erica.

I don't think the kids really care about the scores - just that we had a good time.

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Taking Ownership

Sunday was the big day - we officially became horse owners.

All I can say is thank goodness Erica knows what she is doing, because the rest of us really have no idea what we've gotten ourselves into.

We board Caesar at a barn a mile away from his previous owners' location, and the previous owners have been so helpful and will continue to work with us and Caesar.

We're getting Caesar ready -

We watched Bonnie administer de-worming paste and we're glad we didn't have to!



Caesar received a haircut - his mane is really scraggly and looks better completely shaved off. Once that was done, he was ready to be transported:


Bonnie and Matt loaded him up in their trailer and drove the short mile to the new stable. Caesar took a walk around the new arena, his new stall and he settled right in.

The next day, we went over to visit:


Caesar seems happy and so does Erica.

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Special Visitor and Dinner

[A bit of a cross-post between this and my photography blog - sorry if you've read both posts]

I learned a week ago that my sister, Teresa, would be traveling to Chicago for work and planned to drive down to visit us! She arrived Saturday afternoon.

The photo taking started almost immediately.


Brian took this picture, using my big camera.

[Hand held at 1/40second exposure time! That's a steady hand!]

I planned to make pasta, but the kids suggested we try out the local sushi/fusion place.

We walked into the restaurant and were transported out of the midwest. We faced an industrial scene with waves of neon and pulsating music. Oh, and the obligatory fish tank in every Asian restaurant, but without the koi:


The wasabi is so pretty, piped into flowers:


We ordered three sushi rolls as an appetizer. I had to fend off the hungry masses for an additional 10 seconds to get this shot. They only gave me one try.

The carnivores also known as my family inhaled the three dishes in less than 2 minutes. Seriously. Poof! All gone.

So we did what any normal sushi loving group does - order more! We ended up consuming 6 sushi rolls between the 5 of us. Again, just as appetizers!

Because after the sushi came the main courses. Since it is a "fusion" type of restaurant, I ordered a very non-Asian duck dish.


Needless to say, we had lots of leftovers to enjoy for Sunday lunch.

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The 2011 Calendar

I think I am ahead of schedule, having created the 8x10 layouts for our yearly wall calendar. Like last year, I'll create the calendar on Shutterfly.



I thought I was all done, but I didn't realize that I can add little pictures to specific dates on the calendar grid - you know, like a picture of Rascal on her birthday, or a picture of Scott and I on our anniversary. So, it's back to the photo archives to search for more pictures to upload to Shutterfly. It will only delay things by one day (those who receive these calendars every year can rest assured they will receive one by the middle of January).

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Day 357 - Christmas

A wonderful day, starting with the view of the backyard:


The bonus of having older kids - they don't wake up before the crack of dawn. This was the first year the adults got up before the kids. Around 8:30am, Brian woke up and we sent him into Erica's room to wake her up [otherwise, he wouldn't be opening up gifts until the afternoon].



And later on in the afternoon, the kids played with some of the new toys:


After dinner and another round of Clue, this time with all five of us [I won this time!].


A Great Christmas!

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355/365 - Clue Game

We had a full day of last minute Christmas preparations, cleaning and laundry. For me, the day started with a much needed run outside - the sun was shining and the road was clear of snow and ice. I have a feeling I won't see these conditions after today (lots of snow in the weather forecast).

I headed out to run errands, but stopped off at Starbucks first.


After my errands, the kids and I spent the rest of the day cleaning and preparing for Grandma Fay's arrival, just in time for dinner.

After dinner, we broke out this year's new CLUE game. Seriously, we have at least 8 versions of the game and there seems to be a newer version each year.





Erica won tonight's game.

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The Day After Thanksgiving

Tradition - to pick out our tree the day after Thanksgiving. We started this tradition eight years ago, being new to the area, just having moved into the house. So this will be the ninth time getting our tree. We go to the same tree nursery, and on the ride back home, we stress about that tree tied to the roof of the truck, fearful that it will come off. Because it nearly did eight years ago and we haven't forgotten about it - seeing the tree out the side view mirror of the truck, something one should never see.

I think the tree place changed their policies around securing the tree to the roof of vehicles, because in the past, they had always helped with the rope and the weaving of that rope through the tree trunk and branches. Not this year - they give you some twine and you are on your own. They must have had other customers experience what happened to us, eight years ago - and maybe even lost the tree to the pavement. I shudder to think about that!

But enough about tying the tree to the car - here we are with this year's tree:


And the start of the decorating:




We were so lucky to have a beautiful, sunny day today, after yesterday's rain, sleet and sprinkling of snow. But a bit on the cold side, so we only got the indoor decorations up. And unpacked some of our favorite holiday friends:


We finished up the day with a trip to the movies to catch the latest Harry Potter movie. A great post-Thanksgiving day.

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327/365 - Happy Thanksgiving

From our house to yours.



We didn't include Rascal in the picture - too much work.

And some of pictures leading up to the whole family:





On this cold, rainy Thanksgiving, we are so thankful for our friends, family, our warm home and so much more.

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288/365 - The Family Picture for 2010

Long story short, here is the 2010 installment of the family photo.



Taken in the backyard, with the remote shutter release.
Of course, the entire event was fraught with the usual drama and silliness as the kids had to check each picture as it was taken. We really gave our neighbors some comic relief with our shenanigans.
Some of the outtakes:




And then we added in an extra dynamic - pictures with the cats:


This is as good as it gets with three cats who don't really like each other:


Because soon after, one of them always gets away:

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