Monday, October 25, 2010

A Picture A Day...

...with not much to say....but needed to catch up anyway. Some days, like on sports days, I take a lot of pictures. It's a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of work to sort through them, so I put it off.

On regular days, there isn't always very much that inspires me to take pictures, so I take a few, and then put off looking at them.

On regular days, sometimes I put off taking pictures so long it's almost dark. Then I put off looking at those too.

Some days I just take a couple of pictures of flowers and call it good for the day...but it probably isn't good enough....so I put off looking at them.

Some days Eric surprises me with flowers which of course I want to take pictures of...but then I'm so busy admiring the real thing that I put off looking at the pictures I took of them. Can you tell that I'm pretty good at putting things off?

Then there's the sports again with too many pictures....

...and now the flowers are fading....so what will I do?

Take pictures of Brian shooting his new airsoft gun of course! Something new...woohoo!

And then a picture of Penny smiling at the farm. She's smiling, can't you see it? Is too.

After spending some time at the farm we came home and I hit the bottle. Root beer bottle...from Brian's root beer bottle collection. I was helping take a couple pictures for his digital photography class. It's fun to share what I know, and what I'm learning, and to learn from him. Sometimes it's good to have teenagers around....they are inspiring.

But now it's Monday...and it's cold and dreary...and I'm back to the flowers again. Inside. Aren't they beautiful a whole week later?

I think so too. A girl can never have too many flowers. The end.



Friday, October 15, 2010

Still Kicking

I thought that I had better update my blog just to let you know that I'm still alive and kicking. I don't think that I have writers block, I think that I just don't really have that much to say. Maybe it's not a good idea for someone that doesn't say much to have a blog. Oh well. But I do have photos.

This is Brian. We were heading out to run errands. It's funny when I run errands with Brian, we get great service and a lot of smiles from all the young female clerks. I wonder why that would be??

This is my little bug of a great niece Avery with my brother. My brother, his wife, and Avery's mom and dad came to Billy's football game last week. So fun to see them, so nice for Billy to have fans, and fun for us to go out to dinner afterwards. One of the funny things about being a parent...you lose your identity and become known as your child's mom....and that's ok. I'm proud to be Brian and Billy's mom. :-)

We visited the farm and the cabin last weekend. Eric's mom (see what I mean) was having a birthday so we had a little party. It was crazy warm. Here are Murphy and Rusty enjoying the dog days of October. What? Really.

Billy had his last baseball games of the season on Sunday and Brian had his last soccer game. It was baseball at 10:00 am, soccer at noon, and baseball again at 4:00. Another sunny warm day. Perfect if you ask me. Here is #10 hitting the ball on 10-10-10. Too bad I didn't take it during the 10:00 game.

This is Molly. It's hard to get a picture of Molly, she's camera shy. Or always on the move, when she isn't sleeping that is.

The cosmos are still going strong. I love cosmos, they bloom late into the fall. They would be the perfect flower if only they started blooming earlier in the season. I'm enjoying them while I can.

There are still a few petunia's blooming. This one is surrounded by fall leaves. The colors all sort of clash...but I like it.

And last but not least, one of the few Halloween decorations that I put out. It's a horse and a wagon with costumed characters....

....but my favorite part is the horse. Of course. Happy October, until next time.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Soccer is for Squares

Did the title get your attention? I didn't mean that soccer was for square people, I meant that soccer is great for square photos. I'm not sure why, I just looked over these soccer pictures and kept thinking...that one would look better if it were square. So...we have a post with square soccer pictures.
Brian is playing soccer twice a week....once during the weekend and one night a week. With the shorter days, the weeknight games get pretty dark by the time they are finished. They are close by so I usually ride my bike over to watch. When I got there this week he was jogging over to talk with this cute girl....Brian....it's time for soccer not flirting! Sheesh. Just kidding, she is cute though!

A lot of game days Brian isn't really feeling like playing. He'd rather just be at home, not go out again....I think he gets that from me. But once he gets there he gets into the game.

He's gotten better and better...mostly because his confidence about playing has improved too.

He has a couple of good friends on the team. This is Alec, it was nice to hear him hollering encouraging words to Brian. Alec has played a lot, it's a different sort of challenge to play on a team that isn't as good as he's used to...but he's kind and encouraging and having fun too.

The darkness made it challenging to take pictures, but the pink sky was pretty cool. Go Brian!

We've had a couple of weeks of truly gorgeous weather. Sunny, in the 70's, beautiful fall colors. Minnesota is a wonderful place to be right now. It will change....but we enjoy it while we can.

Typical mom, thinks her boys are too good looking for their own good. Nice profile Brian!

Lots of running in soccer, sometimes you just have to catch your breath. I would be laying down on the ground panting if I tried to run that much.

Brian get up! He popped up and went racing down the field.

Brian...don't turn around....there's another cute girl behind you. Girls everywhere, no wonder he's playing so hard. :-)

Zoom...there he goes again. Don't let the lights fool you, they are lighting up a different field on the other side of the parking lot. They're just there to mess up my photos. It's all about me you know.

What?...being selfish is not a penalty! Oh...it was off sides...I guess that is. Being self centered should be too. Actually, I just liked the lighting behind this young lines judge. Gotta admire him calling the shots on these teenagers.

Fresh air, getting out of the house, running, smiling, laughing, playing with friends, hanging with girls, respecting each other....

....nothing square about that....well....except for the photos. Play on.


Thursday, October 7, 2010

October Photos So Far

The camera that had a bath in Diet Coke hasn't recovered. Some parts work, but some important parts don't. Like viewing the photos, and the auto focus is messed up, and deleting images from the memory card....oh, and being able to adjust the shutter speed. Other than that, it's just fine. Not. So I've been using our original Digital Rebel. And am relearning where the controls are. Some I'm learning for the first time, because I had kept things on automatic most of the time when I used that camera.

And it's working. Sort of. I can't take too many pictures quickly at games....the camera gets bogged down and can't process things that quickly. I didn't remember that from when I used to use it all the time....but maybe I wasn't trying to do as much.

The colors and clarity are better with the old camera. The Diet Coke camera (Canon Digital Rebel TSi) had problems from early on. The good news was that it forced me to work around the problems and use the manual settings. The bad news was that I ended up with lots of duds before I'd get a good shot.

We bought the Rebel TSi in a big hurry, the day before we were leaving for a family reunion / wedding cruise. We suddenly couldn't load a memory card into our original Rebel. Bent pins? Maybe, but we didn't have time to figure it out. So we bought a new camera with no research. Bad idea. It seemed ok at first, but it was a dud. Apparently at lot of the Rebel TSi's are duds. After about a year we sent it back to Canon, they repaired it, it was better for a while....but it gradually got bad again. Focus was off, colors were off, exposure was off, everything was off.

When we sent it back I was feeling like I'd be lost without a camera....so on a whim I decided to look at our original Rebel again. We had set it aside and had sort of forgotten about it. I tried inserting one of our memory cards...nope...wouldn't sit. For some reason I tried another one and it slid right in. What? The cards were physically the same size, memory wise the one that fit was our smallest card.

Whatever, it worked. I used it until our Rebel TSi came back. A step back in technology...but it worked. When the TSi came back from the manufacturer I set the old camera aside again for well over a year....until the Diet Coke bath.

And now I'm appreciating that older technology again. It's heavier, the photos are smaller, it processes things very slowly....but it works.

I'm older and slower and heavier too...I think we'll get along just fine. And for now....having a camera that works is a wonderful thing.