Times Gone Past...

One of my good friends from my old middle school days in Saudi Arabia recently posted some pics on Facebook from a post-HS graduation trip we took to Hawaii. You may not believe a human could have taken quite so much additional flesh in only... lets see, what has it been?... twelve years but alas, it is possible. Skin shade seems to have changed slightly as well...

Moving on

I didn't really have it in me to post anything the last few days. Anyone reading this probably knows what happened to little Gracie but she's doing a lot better, healing up very nicely and she's going to be just fine. She was back to her old self within a day and a half. Its absolutely amazing how quickly she's bounced back and I can't express how grateful we are.

Thank you to everyone for your concern and support.

Playin' the Janie

Check out my new axe!... :)

Gotta love new toys

Heather and I have been wanting to get a new camera for some time but weren't ever able to justify it. Our old one broke a couple weeks ago, though, and as we have little kids, it was one of those rare times when the want crept, ever so slightly, into the "NEED" category - we can't have our offspring's childhoods go unrecorded, we need proof for the therapists down the road...

We got Heather an SLR (film) camera right after we got married and I have to say I was never all that impressed with the pictures it took - we never ended up really using it much anyway since that was right when digital was becoming mainstream and once we joined the crowd, the old fashioned way just didn't cut the mustard. This time we got a digital SLR, mostly because of the additional speed (you just can't capture childhood moments when you're up against a 5 and a half second delay) but I must say I'm very impressed with the picture quality! Much better that Heather's old Minolta (anyone know a starving photography student who needs a decent film camera BTW?...)

So without further ado, here are a couple of the first ones... (you can click on them to see a full-size image)







Heather and Grace in the backyard. It was a lot hotter out than it looks and the fence is about all the shade we get in the backyard since we haven't gotten around to putting trees in yet...








I don't know if I've posted any pics of Reagan since he's graced our family so here ya' go. He's pretty mellow and if we can just get him to stop barking at everthing that moves, we might just keep him... :)










Grace and Jane are lucky I married well because I know they didn't get their looks from me!!







Yeah, thats a pretty accurate depiction of her usual mood...







Heather went out with April and her mom to be the first ones to get their hands on the new Vampire book so I had the girls all day and had to find something to do to keep them busy. We ended up going to the zoo. Grace was afraid of the elephants so Brandon (trust me, you should be glad I didn't include his head in the shot :) ) gave Gracie his glasses and said if she wore them the elephants wouldn't be able to see her :)







Janie had a good time too and she REALLY wanted to get out of her stroller seat...





SEMI-DISTURBING IMAGE WARNING - - -
(just needed to throw that in there so no one gets mad at me...)






Seriously though, this was one of the coolest things I've ever seen! This Kestrel had "removed" this mouse's head and was just sitting there holding it in its claw with this look like: "wassup?! - yeah, thats right - and you're next if you don't watch it!"