Did you feel it . . .

did you notice a slight hesitation in the rotation of the earth yesterday, a jolt in your forward progress? I'm pretty sure it happened because for the first time in forever I left the house for a family gathering WITHOUT my camera. En-route I realized I had left it behind and pondered what I was going to do, to which my darling son retorted "talk to people". Being the self-appointed events photographer, that crazy aunt or in-law who is pointing the camera in your direction at every turn, I was camera-free and quickly in serious withdrawal. Fortunately for me, my sister-in-law was sympathetic and let me play with her Canon 50D. Oh my, if I had a clue how to use all the buttons on that wondrous machine I could have had some serious fun. However, realizing my son was right, I put the camera up and spent more time visiting and relaxing and having a very Happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a warm and happy Thanksgiving and a fruitful 'black-Friday' shopping day. And since this is a 'photo diary', here are a couple outtakes from last week's Christmas card efforts. Yea, they're crazy like that!

Take 1 . . .

After scheduling, rescheduling, and re-rescheduling, today was to be Christmas card picture day. The morning skies were sunny and beautiful blue, and the temperature relatively warm with just a bit of chill. Somehow my aspiration of getting two teenagers up, showered, and all the other miscellaneous tasks involved in getting a teen "suitable" for pictures, I found myself faced with the reality that we'd be lucky to be out by noon. If I've learned anything about photography this year, it is to avoid mid-day sunlight because it is so harsh. No big deal, I re-negotiated with Thing1 and Thing2 to do the pictures towards evening so we could capture the evening sunset light. Mother nature had other plans and those gorgeous blue skies turned gray and suddenly it started getting darker by the minute. My frustration boiled over and I grumbled, and growled and blamed everyone for dragging their feet, being too difficult to schedule, impossible- - - everyone but mother nature. I may not remember a lot of things from my childhood, but I do remember that 1) it takes 3 licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop; and 2) never mess with mother nature. Accepting this would be a practice run, I had to giggle along with the kids. I would love to show some of the out-takes, but these kids have too many legal connections and my terms of use are rather restricted. (haha!) At any rate, here are a few from take 1:

Fiddle Sticks! . . .

According to the teachings of 'Cat's in the Cradle' (by Harry Chapin), isn't it supposed to be later in life when the kid(s) have no time for the parent? I have had to ask each child to please SCHEDULE me on their calendars. We were supposed to attempt pictures for Christmas cards last weekend - no good for either of them! Then we were supposed to attempt pictures for Christmas cards Wednesday because they would be out of school....last minute friend outing vetoed the plans. I managed to snap a few of Ryan while waiting for Allyson to get ready, but for the life of me, pretending to be a photographer off the cuff just isn't working for me. I have re-scheduled for this Sunday...and there will be a penalty assessed if either of them even think of canceling.

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, son?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then, dad.
You know we'll have a good time then."
~~Harry Chapin~~

Sailors take warning . . .

red skies at night, sailors' delight,
red skies in the morning, sailors take warning . . .

Each morning I stand in the garage and watch for the bus with the kids along with our cat, Ike. Ike is probably one of the only kitties that MUST watch for the bus. Seriously, he is adamant about it and won't settle down until I pick him up and carry him outside to wait with the kids. Truth be told, I think it is less about the flashing lights on the bus than it is about his inquisitive nature - he is especially intrigued by bugs, birds and the girls that come around from the house out back. At any rate, this morning eagle-eye Ike spotted a rather rotund bluebird perched in the evergreen tree beside the driveway. Once the kids were on the bus, I deposited Ike back into the house and grabbed my camera - after all, this bird was rotund! After photographing the bird (not such a big deal once I looked at my pictures), I noticed the gorgeous red skyline on the ridge.
In my mind I immediately recited the sailor verse dad taught me as a child - and while we might need to take warning about rain or something - the silhouette of the trees against the red/blue sky was beautiful.

Random ...

Still recuperating from Saturday night's party and the never ending scraps of toilet paper from the mummy game, I thought I would post some non-party, non-autumn scenery shots that were actually not even taken by me! These are a few of the photos taken by my teenage daughter that I uploaded to the computer for her to process. I get a chuckle at the wide variety of subject matter and while it is clear that some of the items from her collection were for the school yearbook - others were just plain random... or so they seemed! I get such grief from my family for some of the "random" things that I photograph - well, this just goes to show, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Give a kid a camera and be amazed at the random things they find photo worthy. I believe this should buy me a bit of latitude from the 'what on earth' comments....at least for awhile.

Whew! . . .

No trick-or-treaters here any more ... at least not on trick-or-treat night.
Ryan had a few of his friends over on the actual Halloween
and costumes stayed on for maybe 40 minutes,

[quick shot of early arrivals]

and the mummy game went south ... quickly!

My husband and I took refuge in the family room, but I might as well have stayed in the room with the witches and goblins because every 5-10 minutes - it was "you need to go check on them"; "you need to tell them to keep it down"; "what are they screaming about - you need to check on them . . ."

whew, trick-or-treat is more exhausting as the vampires, witches and goblins get older.