Poppies

I've started a camera class, to help acquaint me with the camera I bought last year and the techniques I need to use it properly. While I don't have official homework, I am supposed to be taking pictures while experimenting with different settings. I'm still sorting through the concepts of shutter speed and aperture and how they relate to lighting, motion, and subject when I'm taking pictures. We also covered ISO- which I sort of understood already- and metering, which flew so far over my head that I'm proud to be able to recall the word "metering".

For the next few weeks I'll probably be posting some of the pictures I take. These poppies are from my back "garden" this morning. I don't know how I did as far as technicalities, but I love the blurred poppy in the background and the contrasting colors.

There are many cool old churches around here, one in particular that I'd like to visit with my camera. They all have amazing, crumbly old cemeteries. I'll make a point of going there soon and snapping some pics.

Cheers!

Randomness, 'Cause That's All I'm Capable of These Days

I'm going to state the obvious here: my bloggy juices have run dry. I used to balance so many post ideas in my head I had trouble keeping track. Lately... nothing.

There are several reasons, I think. Clearly, my family's loss isn't the least of them at the moment. Much of my mental and emotional energy is focused on my sister and her kids and getting back home to be with them (that's right, I'm still in England).

But my blogging blank-mindedness started before Jonas left us. I suspect that it's partially due to the winter weather. I'm finally getting tired of the gray days and the threats of snow. I'm ready for spring. I need sunshine. I'm craving a good dose of natural vitamin D.

Last week a friend came by to help me clean my house in preparation for my trip back to America. I won't lie: I'm nervous that I'll come back to kids strung out on Kool Aid and frozen dinners, piles of smelly laundry (and/or loads of pink and dingy-colored socks), molding food in the fridge, and a thick layer of dust coating every surface. We thought the least we could do was have it all cleaned before I leave. When she arrived she brought me to 2 bouquets of beautiful spring tulips. I've been staring at them lately, waiting for the spring fairy to emerge and spread her cheer throughout the land. It hasn't happened yet, but the sun did peak out from behind the clouds for a few minutes this morning.

And on a completely different topic:

I noticed a few sprouts on a head of garlic a couple of weeks ago, so I set it in a shallow dish of water. We all enjoyed watching the shoots sprout and reach up to the sky, high and healthy. That didn't last long, because they can only survive so long that way. I untangled the roots as best I could and planted them in a tub. (The same friend who helped me clean said her hubby had grown his own garlic in this way.) Now they're a little sorry looking, basking in the non-sun near my kitchen French doors. I think a few of them will literally bite the dust, but I see hope in a few. If I get the hang of this, I may never have to buy garlic again.


Oohh... Gotta go! I see a few rays of sun...

Friday Fill--In

Fill in the lyrics...with the correct ones or ones of your own :-) Have fun with this, don't worry if you don't know 'em...just make up something silly or do a silly one and a serious one! The most important part is to have fun with it.

Here we go!

1. Said the night wind to the little lamb, am I making you cold?
2. The first Noel, the angel did say, was somewhere far, far away.
3. SNOW!, Over the hills and everywhere.
4. It came upon the midnight clear, another few inches of snow.
5. Heather, Let your heart be light!
6. And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing while still in your bathrobe.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to finally seeing Heather and her family (I hope!), tomorrow my plans include dinner with Grandpa-in-law and Sunday, I want to have a car/truck/van to drive myself around in!

For more Friday Fill-Ins, click here.

And on a side note, apparently I found Narnia and it isn't at the back of a wardrobe. It's at the other end of a nine-hour plane ride from East England to the Northwestern America! As I write this, the snow is still coming down heavy and thick. If it wasn't keeping me stranded three miles out of town, it would easily be one of the loveliest sights imaginable.

(These were taken yesterday.)

My Wish Came True!

I was in a state of unfettered ecstasy until the sun came out. But I'll always have the pictures!

I Took a Camera On My Walk Today

(click to enlarge)

Recycled Post: Of Monsters and the Menacing Presence

I wrote this soon after moving into our last house in Germany. I was horrified to find that whatever the spider is, it's a European one. They live in Great Britain too!

~ ~ ~

It seems I was wrong about the previous tenants of this house leaving because of the smell in the laundry room. That turned out to be an inconvenient but manageable problem. (The waste water from the showers, dishwasher, washing machine, etc. is filtered under the floor of the laundry room. Periodically, we have to pour hot water into a small opening in the floor to clean the filter. Viola! Problem solved!) The most disturbing thing I’ve encountered so far in the house, and surely the reason for the move by the family before us, is the numerous co-tenants: what some would call spiders but I call monsters.

The first time we saw one was in the heating room. The older kids and I were attempting to get the heat running by jiggling switches, turning knobs and verbally coaxing the pipes and wires to heat our home. Suddenly Kristine was squeaking and pointing wildly at the window above our heads. Perched upside down above the window was a huge brown spider. Kristine and I ran from the room, but Sean was glued to the spot. Keep in mind, Sean is the guy who slept three feet from the top edge of his bed with the covers pulled tightly around his head in our last house because of the imaginary spiders he was certain were lurking between the wall and the head of his bed. In this moment all his worst fears were realized as he stood waiting for the monster to leap onto his head and devour it whole. His only defensive action: shrieking “Mom, help me! Mom, help me! Mom, help me!”

I reached into the room and yanked him out.

Once he was calm he exacted his revenge by arming himself and his sister with ladders, flashlights, helmets, gloves, a Mason jar, and a lid and catching it. He forced it to live out the rest of his life in a jar on the window sill by the guest bathroom. Before the end came he was joined by a distant cousin who had lived near the bottom of the stairs until it made the fatal mistake of showing itself to Tim.

I avoided Spider Death Row, hoping those two were the last of the monsters to be found in our house.

Then one quiet morning after the older two had left for school but before the younger two woke up, I was enjoying some welcome time to myself. I entered the living room and immediately had the eerie sense that I was not alone. There was a definite Presence there; I could sense not only a body, but its soul. Slowly, I turned my head toward the Presence and my eyes locked onto the largest spider I have ever seen outside an exhibit. It was frozen to the wall above the rocking chair, probably praying to God that its huge brown self would somehow blend into the creamy wall. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a glass and a postcard from Italy, and captured it before it could get away. Thankfully, these monsters don’t appear to be very fast and they don’t jump at you as you approach. I put it on Death Row while I considered its fate.

Yesterday I decided to let it go in the middle of the courtyard with our Jack Russell Terrier Gretchen near by. Even after two weeks of fasting on the window sill, this guy was huge. It ran wildly around for a bit, then high-tailed it toward the front lawn. Zach and I began yelping “Gretchen! Gretchen! Get it!” She ran around, excited but oblivious. She eventually found it, licking at it, then chewing it like bubble gum and letting it fall out of her mouth. It ran for its life, but hadn’t a chance with Gretchen ready to lap it up again and chew gingerly at it, a leg falling out of her mouth. That was the end of the menacing Presence.

I’d like to live in EB White’s world, where a kind spider would perch itself in our home and dazzle us by spinning complimentary words into its webs that allowed us to be admitted into the Guinness Book of World Records and to charge a fee for visitors to see the wonder of it all. I expect instead to come into a room one day to find a massive brown spider sitting in an arm chair, tapping the tips of its hairy brown legs together and saying in a low, sinister voice, “I’ve been waiting for you…”

Mountain Biking

This past weekend had me mountain biking. What was the first lesson I learned from that experience? I am NOT a mountain biker! LOL!

My boss and I have been riding bikes together for about a year. Last year had us out for daily rides at 6:30 in the morning riding along our river. We would usually ride about 10 miles each day. I love it. I've always loved riding. For Christmas, I got a new mountain bike. I knew that I wanted to go mountain biking this summer. I guess I didn't realize what mountain biking is. It's actually going down the side of a mountain on very small trails, with cliffs on one side and rocks and tree roots sticking out onto the trial. It takes skills, skills which I don't have. I was very much out of my league, and very scared!

I spent a portion of my day like this: LOL!!!


It was a beautiful day though. We were high enough to see two different mountains at once, which is pretty unusual around here:

You can see Mt. Hood directly behind me, and Mt. Adams (we think) off to the left of me.

We did have a fun day, even though we got lost in the forest and I was 1 1/2 hours late getting home. Yeah, not good! I learned some valuable lessons though: have a good mental attitude and don't trust a GPS system in the woods

Oh, what is that, another fork in the road, I'm sure we'll go the wrong way and

end up hours from the trail head!

Despite it all, I am happy that we went and I loved riding on forest roads, just not forest trails! :)

Trip To The Seaside

Here are some photos from our family trip to the English seaside yesterday. One of the things I enjoyed most about it was that we were on a peninsula, so despite the fact that we were in east England, we got to watch the sunset!

I loved the cliffs overlooking this part of the beach; like the White Cliffs of Dover with a beautiful red twist:

One of the two crabs Tim caught. This was the bigger of the two.

Before, during and after the sunset:

Sparkles Kicks the Proverbial Bucket

For Ian's birthday we bought him two goldfish, Plumpy and Googie, and a betta fish Sparkles. We were warned that they prefer warm water and to keep him as warm as possible. I didn't think it would be a problem, as we've had one before and he thrived. But... I kept that fish on top of the tv. Now we have a flat screen tv so keeping it on top is obviously not an option.

So, this morning poor Sparkles was found floating. He mananaged to stir himself a few times over the next few hour and all our attempts at recucitation failed. Don't worry, we didn't try mouth-to-mouth! But I put him near the stove to warm him up (and melted part of the container he was in!), Sean and I took turns poking him with a finger in order to shock him back to consciousness, and we swirled him around in his bowl. He would perk up for a second or two, then float back to the top or the bottom of the tank. Finally, I dumped him in the toilet. Just as he hit bottom, he stirred a bit and the guilt swept over me! But he stopped moving, and as Kristine, Ian and I stood over the toilet silently watching for more signs of life, Ian suddenly exclaimed gleefully, "I know! Let's flush it!"

Apparently he's not doing too badly with the death of his fish!

~Reese

SPIDER!

In Germany, we had these huge spiders that came into the house and gave us all the creeps. I wrote about them on our first blog, here and here. Heather got to see them firsthand, on her last night in Germany. Amidst all the shrieking and screaming, she managed to snap a couple of pictures. While waiting in line at the airport on her way home she showed the pictures to a Brit standing near-by who assured her they it was a harmless spider and that they lived in the UK also.

I sure was hoping he was wrong.

He wasn't. Look what we found climbing around and laying eggs on our garage:


It's worst thing I've discovered about England so far.


~Reese

Spring Is Finally Here

Sunday was amazing! I think spring has finally come. Dan took Mark out to the movies and the girls and I headed out. Initially our plan was to go to different areas around town and snap shots for Reese, like a church where we had Easter services together last year, the lookout showing the dam and lots of other spots around town. Well, we got sidetracked! We are good at that! So, it turned out like more of a photoshoot of my girls.

Here the girls are at the look out.

A memorial for veterans up by our park. Amanda is trying to solute for Tim, but she's doing it backwards. That probably means something awful, but Amanda is not known to do things "by the book".

Next stop was the pioneer cemetery.

A family plot that caught the girls' eyes. It had a brother and sister ages 3 and 1.

I think spring is finally here

So you don't think we ended our day at the cemetery, here McKenna is playing at the park.

-Heather

Japanese Beauty

This was the way I started my morning: turning on the computer to check my email/eBay/Fox News, and stumbling across this beautiful sight from Reuters on Yahoo. It is of visitors looking at landscaped fields of Shibazakura (Moss Phlox) flowers at Hitsujiyama Park in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture, April 30, 2008 in Japan. If I could, I would hop a plane today and go to this glorious place.

Wordless Weekend: A Peacock Butterfly Comes To Call

~Reese