Another Great Christmas

Another Christmas has come and gone. It was a lot of fun to watch the kids open their gifts and to open some stuff for me as well. Chels bought me some lights for a photo studio. Now I have to figure out how to use them correctly. I set them up and took a few pictures. Here is one of Tiaree.

I am excited to get this going. I have to get a brown background so I can take some head shots of my sister. Other than that I will just figure things out.

Christmas was good all around for the family and our trip to St. George was a blast. Kind of a whirlwind trip, but it was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures.

Did Santa eat everything.

Barbie Rapunzel, exactly what she wanted.

Anyone see a pattern?

Optimus Prime...the Transformer that can't be transformed.

 

She is opening Barbie in the Three Musketeers, the ring she is wearing was out of her stocking.

This is only a few of the pictures that were taken. Christmas was a lot of fun at our house and everywhere we went. I'm glad we got to spend time and have fun everywhere with our family.

Cool Picture from the Other Night

I love taking my camera and doing quick shots, sort of like shots from the hip. Anyway, I opened the door at Sam and Cait's for Erik and Ali on our progressive dinner and this is what I got. I think it turned out pretty cool.

I just thought this turned out pretty cool.

New Idea...Possible Tradition

A little while ago Chels' mom had an idea to do what she dubbed as the progressive dinner. Basically we start at someone's house eat part of a meal and then head to the next person's house until you get to the last house and have the 'main course'. So we scheduled it and did it on Saturday, December 19th. This was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. We started at Erik and Ali's apartment for soup. Jared and Emily brought a veggie tray since we didn't go to there house because the downstairs neighbor smokes and it is seeping into their apartment something fierce. I thought it would be fun to take a family picture at all the different houses.

Erik and Ali's

After a great soup and some veggies we headed to Sam and Cait's. This was probably the longest drive of the whole trip...sarcasm doesn't come across right in text. This stop on our trek was a cheese ball. As we got there Cait had put it out on the table and we were all chatting when we noticed that about half of it was gone because the kids started chowing. After meeting Officer Watts we all got our portion of cheese ball and took this...

Sam and Cait's

Following this we headed back to my house for the main course. With dinner at Grammy's on Sundays, she was ok with us skipping her house and doing the dinner at our house. We had a yummy taco bar that was a unanimous decision between the family for the main course.

Taco Bar Dinner

And for the final family picture of the night.

My House

It was a lot of fun and I hope that we can get this going again next year.

Merry Christmas.

RIP...for the time being

So I've had a loss in my IT family. My HP laptop has decided to give up the laptop ghost, for the time being. I think that there are some hardware issues and I was dumb and didn't get the extended warranty. So for now I am without a laptop. I'm hoping that one of these days I can get it fixed or get me a new one, but it is Chels' turn for a new laptop, so I'll have to work on this old desktop machine that I have for the time being and go back to using my work laptop more often. Well I just wanted to share that sad bit of news with you. Thanks.

Pictures While Driving

So I carpool to work, which is awesome because it saves on gas. Well the other night my friend and I were driving home from work and I grabbed my camera because the sunset looked really cool and I was going to try and snap a few shots while we were driving of it. Well I didn't get any of the sunset but decided to try taking pictures while we were driving on the freeway. Here is one of the shots that I really like. I'll post others on the Whadda Photos...

 

Another Fun Sunday Dinner

Today was Sunday dinner at the in-laws. It was a lot of fun. We had an awesome time and I got the camera out and took some pictures. Usually the Sunday dinner at the in-laws is eat and hang outside and chat, but when it's snowy outside then it makes it a little cold to hang out outside. So we tend to find things inside todo. Tonight the kids worked on a gingerbread train, that I never got pictures of, and then we just hung out.

I was washing dishes...

...and saw a cool reflection in a spoon and had a great idea for some pictures. Lucky for me I have a great sis-in-law that was willing and patient with me as I tried to be creative...

Once I was done playing with that, I finished the dishes and we all sat around the TV and watched some old home videos. As we were watching them I was laying on the floor taking pictures and go this one...

All in all it was a great evening, thanks Grammy for a great dinner. I also want to give a big shout out thanks to Ems, the fluffy white sheep, for making a nightgown for Tiaree. She is awesome with a sewing machine and I'm glad becuase my wife and I would have taken all week to do what she did in a single night. And the nightgown looks awesome, pictures to come later. But here is one of her cutting out the fabric.

Thanks Ems and Ali for all you help tonight. Thanks Jared and Erik for marrying such awesome women.

Picture and a laugh

Today's picture comes from one of the longest drives in to work ever. Total 2.5 hours to go what usually takes between 30 and 45 minutes. I wasn't driving so I thought it would be cool to pull the camera out and take some shots. I thought that the water drops on the windows looked cool. Then I thought, I should take a picture out the windshield when the wipers are moving and here's how it turned out.

ISO 200 45mm f/8.0 1/125 sec

 I thought it looked pretty cool.

Now for the laugh. I have a Volkswagen Jetta and really like my car. I've had it now for two plus years. I've read in the manual that I'm supposed to have a 6-disc CD changer in the trunk. They have pictures in the book of where in the trunk it could be located, so I'd look. Where the manual says there is a box that may be like and amplifier or something, but no cd changer. I just figured I didn't have the cool version of the car.  Last night I was looking for a way to change the break lights and such on the car and found a little compartment, that I've never noticed before. I thought, 'hmmm, what's in here?'. So I opened it, alas, the CD changer. I was laughing at myself and went and got Chels so she could laugh at me, I mean with me. So now I have a cool radio system in my car, sweet. Well it was there all along, I just wasn't cool, or smart, enough to find it. Well now that I've embarrassed myself I will go.

Enjoy the picture and the laugh.

Pictures With Snow

On Saturday it started snowing at our house. It was coming down prety nicely so I told Bree to put her shoes and coat on so I could get some pictures of her with the snow coming down. I took two with my small lense and took two with the long lens. The first two didn't turn out as I wanted them too. The first one with the long lens, the auto focus wasn't on so it turned out blurry. The final picture turned out pretty good. I liked it. Judge for yourselves...

Maybe Now...

Things are getting less hectic for me and so I'm hoping that I can get back to doing the Photo of the Day. It was kind of crazy there for a bit, but now life has settled a little.

So for today, I'm going to post a new Photo of the Day. And hopefully it won't be like the last few. Today's picture was taken yesterday and then I messed around with it in Lightroom.

ISO 800 28mm f/6.3 1/80 sec.

You can see the original picture on my photos blog. It is the first picture on that entry.

Photo of the Day - Cutie Pie

So I have four kids, 3 girls and 1 boy. It makes for some fun times around my house, especially when my son wears his shirt that says "Are sisters really necessary?" It is pretty funny. Yesteraday I grabbed my camera and was taking some pictures of my cute kids and got this shot when KK and I were just chillin' in the front room. She's eating a cookie in this picture and then we wonder why she doesn't eat her dinner. Silly child...

She is such a cutie pie. She has such a personality and can hold a great conversation for only being 3.

Picture of the Day - November 05, 2009

I got to a point today at work where my mind was tied up in a bunch of differnt things. It's what happens when I am working on multiple projects at once. So I decided to get out of the office and take some pictures. I went up to the Fort Douglas cemetary near Red Butte Gardens in Research Park. I'm playing with some of the things that I learned in my class the other day at pictureline.

Here is the original picture, then I turned it sepia for fun...

ISO 100 75mm f/5.6 1/160 sec

It was nice to get out for 30 minutes to take some pictures today. I will be posting more of what I took today on Whadda Photos... later today.

What a Slacker I've Been...

Sorry for being such a slacker. I don't know how many people read this blog, but I know how I am with some of the blogs that I am a regular reader of and how it's just a little disappointing when there isn't something new to read. Not that you are all disappointed that I've been gone for 2 weeks. Well, I'm back, for this one entry and we'll just have to see what happens. I did take a class on my camera today and they gave me some ideas of things that I need to start doing. So maybe I'll get out and get some pictures taken.

Well today I have a Picture of the Day. Tonight we, meaning the scouts and leaders, went on a tour through the Cathedral of the Madeline for our activity. It is a beautiful building inside and out. I have lived in Utah all my life and have never gone into this awesome building. (Awesome in the true sense of the word) This building has some awesome artwork in it and it looks really cool on the outside as well. I will have to get back in the daylight hours for pictures of the outside, but here is one I took of the inside:

It was really neat to go on a tour of this building. If you want to take a group, you can go to the website for the Cathedral and there is a visitor link where you can find information regarding tours of the building. We were guided on our tour by Deacon Lynn Johnson who was very good and the boys had a great time hearing from him.

Been a Few Days

Well here it is...Wednesday andI have been a slacker at this blog stuff. I haven't gotten out a whole lot to get pictures taken, I need to soon though. I find taking pictures a good release and something else to do. Over the next couple of weeks I will be working on a side project and probably won't get out much, so I'll either ignore the blog stuff or give you pictures from the archive.

Today's picture was taken on our trip to Logan a couple weeks ago. It was one of those times that was a right place, right time to catch this picture. I have tried to get pictures kind of like this where you have just a second to react and my timer is usually on or something that doesn't get me a good picture. This one turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

ISO 200 300mm f/5.6 1/320 sec.

Good Morning

Good Monday morning to everyone reading this, hopefully on Monday. If not on Monday, good enter day of week here morning to you. I got up this morning and rode the train into work. It wasn't too bad, except as I was on the train I kept seeing light flashing and thought it was the train lights. Nope. It was lightning. I discovered that as I was walking to my office from the train station near the University of Utah Institute this morning, in the rain. Oh well, what do you do. I'm not afraid of a little rain, I did live in Ireland for two years.

Well here it is Monday again. It was a great weekend. Friday night was a Halloween party at some friends, Saturday was Priesthood Leadership meeting at the Conference Center, cleaning the garage, and a session at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. Sunday, we took our 4 kids and ventured to the Conference Center for the general session of our Stake/Regional Conference. I was amazed at how well the kids, bored as they were, behaved for the almost 3 hours we were there (2 for the session, almost 1 for getting there early). I have some good kids, when they want to be. I also finished Paths of Glory, a new book by Jeffery Archer. It was great and I'll review it later on.

I took a few pictures over the weekend. I saw something this morning that I thought would be an awesome picture, but because I took the train, I didn't have my camera. My point and shoot hasn't made it back to the work bag since I let Jarik use it on our recent Logan trip. Maybe I'll get lucky one of these days and get a picture of what I thought was so cool. If not, you'll live forever in suspense.

So here is a picture from the weekend that I will say is going to be the PotD for the weekend. And hopefully I can post something again later, with more pictures.

Picture of the Day - October 14, 2009

So tonight I got bored and started playing around with my camera. I don't have any lights specifically for photography, so I used a desk lamp with a sheet. Didn't work. I wanted to play with the depth of field stuff again. Didn't work how I wanted it to, I'm guessing because the shutter speed was so high that it just gathered in all sorts of light. If you have some pointers on depth of field, please comment and let me know. I'm using a Canon Rebel XT camera in the Av mode. Thanks...

Here is a picture that I took and it probably worked the best out of the few that I took. I'll post the others on Whadda Photos....

ISO 200 25mm f/4.5 0.6 seconds

Picture of the Day - October 13, 2009

Today's picture of the day comes from the trip to Logan on Saturday. We were having a potty break in the Nutrition Sciences building on the USU campus. The kids sat on the stairs and I took this picture from below them.

I've got some work to do on these types of pictures. I didn't change my settings from taking pictures outside like I should have.

Picture of the Day - October 12, 2009

On our trip to Logan I took 354 pictures. I added a bunch of pictures to the archive so that when I miss my normal PotD, I have a bunch of new pictures to pull from.

Today's PotD is of the statue called Synergy on the Utah State University campus. I have always thought that this was a cool statue and I've taken many pictures of it, but this is probably one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Fun Saturday, Sick Sunday...

It was a fun weekend, minus the sickness that seemed to jump in and take over the house.

Saturday started with Jarik's soccer game. They didn't do very well, but Jarik had a good time. He loves playing goalie and does a pretty good job at it. He even stuck in there while they were kicking him when he was trying to get the ball. He likes soccer, so that is good. And I think it eases Chels' fear of him playing football, although he's told me he wants to play football. we'll see what happens.

After the soccer game we headed to Logan for the day. We spent some time on campus and then headed to First Dam and then to the Temple, then to Adam's Park, and on to dinner at Bluebird (thanks again Sam and Camilla). Then we headed home. It was a fun and exciting day, which is good because of what has gone on since then.

We were all sleeping well when I hear Chels jump up and say, KK just threw up. I was gone so I didn't hear it, but there is nothing better than being woken up in the middle of a great night sleep just to clean up puke. Not the only time I'll get this awesome fatherly responsiblity this weekend. After cleaning up the mess and getting KK's bed ready for her to sleep in again, I came in my room and laid down ready to go back to sleep, feeling very nauseous myself. Willing myself to get to sleep, the nauseousness went away as I drifted off to sleep. Sunday morning came and Chels and Tiaree both woke up with sour, nasty stomachs, I decided to take Jarik and Bree to church with me. I was feeling pretty good and went thorough the day with a headache. Then last night after dinner I started feeling sick again. I just figured it was the headache and that it would go away once I got some sleep. So in bed by 10:30 so I could get up for work. And then it happened again, this time it was Tiaree that had just thrown up. This was disgusting, causing me to loose it a little. Eventually got it all cleaned up and then back to bed. The alarm went off and the sick stomach feeling hit me pretty hard. Anyway, to end a long blog with probably way TMI, I stayed home from work.

With one final soccer game and Koins for Karsen at Chili's, it will be interesting to see if the stomachache goes away before then. I think dinner from Chili's will be more of a take out thing for lunch tomorrow. Time to get something to kill the migraine that is now going on two days worth. Stupid headache.

Picture of the Day - October 09, 2009

Today's picture of the day comes to you once again from the picture archive. I was going to go out and take some pictures today but that never did.

I was goofing off down in St. George when we were down there last. Sitting around bored with nothing to do you...find things to do. This was a fun picture to play with. I do have others of this globe that I took as well.

Legacy Bridge - PotD

Today I finally found the key for the padlock and got out of the office for about 45 minutes and took some pictures. I choose as my subject today the Legacy Bridge on the University campus. It is the bridge that spans Mario Capecchi drive. It is a pretty cool bridge and was built for the 2002 Winter Olympics here in Salt Lake City. I had in mind that it had some different aspects to it and so when I got there to take pictures, and those aspects weren't there, I was a little disappointed. What do you do? Well I just decided to do my best to take some pictures that would be cool. I'll let you be the judge. I'll post one of my favorites here but will post the rest on Whadda Photo and Video blog.