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I drive by this barn that's caving in about once a week. I haven't paid much attention to it lately, because the state has been repairing the shoulder of the turnpike for months. Today I was able to pull off the side of the road and when I did, I realized my barn is caving in even more! The first shot is today. The second shot was from December 2010.
The kids' school had their annual back to school picnic! I was totally dreading attending it because it was 106 out, but all I can say is wow!
Someone arranged for a fire truck to come by and spray the kids! I swear the temperature dropped 10 degrees. Needless to say the kids were drenched and super happy and us crazy-camera-people were running for cover! I did manage a few fun pics though!
Smurfity, smurfin' mushrooms! McDonalds has been promoting the new Smurf movie and the kids are having fun collecting the Smurfs. One morning I got up and looked in the backyard after we had several rain storms and lo and behold we had a freakin' Smurf village! What the heck!? I got this one Smurf to pose!
Danielle and Zac had their first day of school last week. I thought they would be nervous or anxious, but the got out of bed like nothing special was going on. But soon, they were scurrying around getting ready. There was talk of old friends, new teachers and the heinous..."What's for lunch?" Who knew the daily lunch routine would end up being the low point of my day, but the highlight of theirs!?
Well, here are the pictures of the kiddos in route to school! The first two were on registration day and they get to meet their teachers and we get to pay the bills. The next ones are the official "first day of school pics." Watch out 6th and 3rd grade!
We ventured down to Treasure Island this year with Kathy's sister, Jeanne and niece, Kimberly. A blast was had by all...well sort of.
I woke up at 2 am on Monday morning in severe pain. I had to drive to Walgreen's looking for tooth pain meds and applying it only made the pain worse. Luckily Kathy called around and found a dentist on Treasure Island and got me an appointment. One trip later I discovered I needed a root canal and was plied with antibiotics and good pain meds! I was also told to stay out of the heat until I felt better! Not cool, since we are at the beach!
So while Kathy and gang went to the beach I saw "Cowboys and Aliens" and the new "Harry Potter!" Both were really good (even with tooth pain).
By Tuesday night, I was feeling marginally better so I went along with the gang to see the Tampa Rays play against the Toronto Blue Jays. The kids had a blast visiting the sting ray tank. Kathy and I did not enjoy missing 4 innings to do so, but hey...it's vacation.
Zac was excited to see Ben Zobrist play since Zobrist plays the same position that Zac played in his little league team!
The next day we ventured out to see a movie star! How exciting! How glamorous! Um, like she totally didn't sign autographs! Seriously, it was all, Winter this and Winter that! Just kidding...Winter is a dolphin that was rescued as a young dolphin. Miraculously she survived the odds...most young dolphins do not make it in captivity and she also lost her tail! Disney is making a movie called, "Dolphin Tale!" We'll be seeing it and Winter was fantastic, if not even (Kathy don't fall over) inspirational! Danielle and Zac were super excited to see her and Danielle even sports a key-chain of the tail-less Winter!
Here is a shot of her playing basketball wearing her prostectic tale!
I started feeling even better by the next day, so I got up early and went for a walk to see if I could capture any wildlife photos. Here was my favorite! I swear the fish said, "Do you know my Dad?" but the Snowy Egret just said, "Gulp!"
Later that same day we did a beach photo shoot!
We ended the vacation with some breath-taking sunsets! Ahhhhh!
I read the most entertaining book! It's called, "Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children," by Ransom Riggs.
I loved it for two reasons. First it's highly entertaining and imaginative!
Secondly, it combines photography and writing of which I love both!
It tells a tale of a boy who loves his grandfather's stories until he believes that his grandfather's stories are more tall-tale than truth.
When he witnesses the death of his grandfather, he quickly learns there was more to his grandfather's life than what the tall tales let on!
Being a quick read, this is the perfect book to let your mind relax and take an interesting journey into the unknown. I think the original Twilight Zone could have done gangbusters with this story!
FYI - the photography in the book is drawn from private collections of antique photograph collectors. They range from the quirky to the extremely bizarre. The writer drew his inspiration from these unusual images! I put this in my, "Must Read!" list!
We had a nice (and cooling) rainshower one day and I looked out the window after the sun had peaked back out and discovered a slew of butterflies, bubble bees and birds on our purple flowering Vitex bush! So I ran out with my camera and got this fantastic shot! Per confirmation with a buddy of mine, this is a Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly! I call him, "Graceful Tiger!"
Danielle chose some interesting summer camps. One was a dance recital group where they did a melody of songs with choreographed dancing. Danielle did great! Two items of note that were entertaining...there was one poor boy in the whole troupe and the put him at the center of attention. I think he wanted to crawl in a hole by end.
The second entertaining factoid was during the recital the group sang part of the lyrics to a song called, "Always." I loved it and pointed it out to Danielle. I also told her Crystal Gayle did a cover of that song on one of her cds. I think Danielle had thought some of the material was original and she looked non-plussed! ;)
Later this summer, Danielle participated in a fashion show camp. She came home with a request for one of my old t-shirts. So I gave her one of them that has been washed so many times the arms are too short. At the fashion show I discovered she had turned it into a purse. She had also taken some of my magazines and crafted a headband made of paper and laminated it somehow! Thankfully she chose only the most tasteful of pictures! *SCHEW* I had looked through the magazines she selected and since it is summer some of the ads are a little more racy than I had hoped!
We have been back a while and I'm still behind on posting, so here goes a recap of the Boston/Cape Cod vacation we had! I think this is the longest blog post yet!
Pictured: Mark, Beth and Maddie Blackburn, Marie Heneberry, Meg Heneberry with Zac, Danielle, Chris & Kathy
We flew into Providence, Rhode Island and discovered they have the longest moving sidewalk EVER! It takes you from the airport baggage claim area to the rental car place. After an exchange of words at the rental counter, we were off to see Kathy's cousin, Marie's family. We had a nice grilled burger cookout! YUM!
We left from there to go to Kathy's cousin's Geri's house in Cape Cod. On the way we found DUNKIN' DONUTS! I was in HEAVEN until I realized they did not have the donuts I wanted. I told the girl there we had flown in from Oklahoma and could she please go look in back. She came out all excited and said they had them and packed up a box for me.
I left an extra good tip on the way out and then realized as we were back on the highway that she had discovered the wrong donut. I wanted the boston creme filling not the bavarian creme. Oh well..it was still Dunkin' Donuts!
We arrived safely at Cousin Geri's and talked for a bit until it was time for bed.
Pictured: Geri Medeiros holding her granddaughter, Eloise VanDussen. Jim Medeiros chats with Chris!
When we arose, she promptly pointed us in the direction of the nearest Kennedy-attending church and we were off to Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church for mass.
While I don't think I saw a Kennedy in attendance, one lady looked awfully Kennedy looking. So that counts! We then ran back to Geri's and changed and then took Kathy's 2nd cousin maybe removed or not? Luke with us to go to a whale watch in Province Town, MA. VERY interesting city.
We got totally lucky on the whale cruise! I was able to snap a shot of a whale-tale belonging to Coral the Humpback whale!
When we got back from the successful whale watching adventure, Kathy's first cousin once removed Katie arrived with her kiddos. After chatting for two minutes, all the kids decided to go swimming. I dipped nary a toe in the pool and decided that Cape Cod summers were markedly cooler than Oklahoma summers. The kids jumped in anyway, teeth-a-chatter, and had a blast and followed that up with a warm shower in the outdoor shower!
Pictured above: Luke, Teddy, Abigail VanDussen with Danielle & Zac!
The next day we took a mini-tour of Cape Cod and saw some Kennedy houses (Robert Kennedy's is shown), the Kennedy Memorial and capped off the day with some sunset photos on one of Cape Cod's smaller beaches.
While in Cape Cod we saw quite a few relatives, some amazing sites and capped it off with a sunset that warmed the soul (other than being swarmed by attack gnats!)!
Before we left, however, we were treated to an Irish jig! Thanks Meg and Abigail!
On the way out of Cape Cod we stopped at Plymouth Plantation. This is where you can see how the settlers "settled" at Plymouth. I can say they settled alright! They didn't even own their dirt floor homes. They just paid their employers until they made enough money to run away somewhere else. We also got to see how the Native People lived. It was pretty interesting. All I can say is thank God for air conditioning, furnaces and homes with floor and cable!
From there we moved on to Boston and the surrounding cities!
We went to see Marie and Fred Heneberry and have dinner in their house that was built in 1792! It is amazing that it is in such good condition when you consider wars, weather and time take their toll!
The next day Marie took us on a whirlwind tour of Boston. She had cleverly arranged the sight-seeing so that we would make a gigantic circle and end up close to where she parked. Close being a relative term...but that's Marie's and our secret! :)
We took a quick tour of homes that our relatives grew up in and even saw the closed down church where Grammy & Grampy Cotter got married!
After a little trip down memory lane, we were off to see Boston by foot, by car, by boat and train (or was that a subway..is a subway a train? Hmmm.....). Well, let's just agree that we did it all! You will notice some famous sites such as Fenway Park and the Swan Boats (which we rode!).
Now as an aside...while we were touring Boston we had an encounter with the mobster Whitie! I've never seen a Federal police escorted prisoner before...still haven't...you can't see inside the SUVs!
From this whirlwind tour we left for a visit to Uncle Joe and his family! We got another tour of the city! There is so much to do that you can't possibly squeeze it in, but we sure tried!!
We entered the city of Boston and amid all the high rises and modern architecture, this little dilapidated dock house still stands. I loved it! We then moved on to view some even older parts of the city...Paul Revere's home! We walked down hundreds of years old brick streets to see his house and in its day, it probably was a mansion. To me...looks like cramped quarters! We then continued on to see the church were the infamous lanterns were lit to announce that the "British were coming!"
Some more modern "commercial" sites were visit such as Quincy Market and we got to see the historic city hall!
We wrapped up our day with a fantastic view of Boston Harbour! What's not to love!
We got to see quite a few relatives on this juncture of our trip, but unfortunately we were not able to capture them all with photos...between the excitement of visiting and chatting, sometimes we forgot to pull out our cameras.
Pictured below are:
Lauren, Danielle, Shawna. Next is Patti and Bob. Then we have Liz and John. Uncle Joe. After that the group shot is Mary Beth, Uncle Joe, Patti with Kathy and the kids! The last shot is a the most unusual rainbow we've ever seen. It was mixed in the clouds and was floating over Uncle Joe's house when we left! Nice way to end a trip.
All in all, we had a incredible trip and we have to give special thanks to Geri, Marie and Patti who went above and beyond giving us tours galore. I don't know about them, but I got more walking in the 7 days we were there than I probably do in a month! ;)
