Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from us and Gromit, the “Happy California Cow”!

Winning runs in the family

Well, we have a winner! Dave placed second in the professional division in the Colorado Balloon Classic photo contest! Hooray Dave! Here’s his winning entry:

If you’re not familiar, Dave and I have a friendly rivalry in this photo contest. Dave went to this event as a kid and placed in the photo contest every year that he entered photos. Every year. I think they even gave him an award for being the person who won the most awards. Ha!

Once we were dating I started going to the event with him. Then we both started entering the photo contest… and the rivalry began! In the four years that we have both entered the photo contest I have won, twice, last year neither of us placed, and this year Dave won. I’m happy he won, and I have to admit that it is a pretty cool photo - but the rivalry will continue next year. Its on!

Vineyards and beaches

This weekend, we took some time to explore our new state before Dave starts work Monday morning. We had a great time visiting new places and doing new things all while getting to spend more time together - a luxury that we haven’t had while Dave has been so busy finishing his PhD!

On Saturday we checked out some vineyards and did some wine tasting. It was really interesting to taste new and different styles of wine. I never knew so many different kinds existed! By the end of the day (and after a few too many glasses of wine) we joined a wine club at a vineyard. We will receive two cases of reserved wine a year and get free tastings and other perks all year-round as members of this club; so friends and family come visit soon! We even got to go to a members-only party that day with (more) free wine and food - we even got to pick up our first case of six bottles of reserve wine. I think that will hold us for a while ;-)

On Sunday we went to the beach after church to see what that was all about. We’ve been to the beach in the past with other family members who live in California, but never by ourselves and never with Gromit. I’m not the biggest fan of the beach and don’t like the sand, but I was willing to give it another shot. We packed up a small picnic lunch to take with us and headed out to a beach that Dave found online. We enjoyed our relatively sand free lunch and then took Gromit out to the water to see what he would do. At first he was scared as the waves came towards him and he would jump back and run away as they got close to him. After a while he got more comfortable and was having a blast running along the water edge and playing in the water! When it was time to go he wouldn’t leave - he just sat down in the sand and refused to move. Silly dog! It was a great time, even if I did end up with a sandy dog ;-)

We had a great time exploring parts of our new home state. While we still love and miss Colorado, we are certainly having a great time here in California. Hopefully Dave’s new work schedule will allow us to have some more weekend adventures soon!

Girls weekend in Yellowstone

This past weekend I went to Yellowstone National Park with a couple of girlfriends for a fun photography weekend. We had a great time driving around, trying to find wildlife, taking in the park views and taking tons of pictures! I really enjoyed getting to know our new camera. I think I’m really beginning to get the hang of the manual settings and had a lot of fun seeing what a few setting adjustments could do to my photos. Here are some of my favorite photos from the weekend.
 



















The highlight of the weekend was being caught in the middle of a herd of bison on Saturday morning. They were in the road and all around the cars, just walking across the road as they pleased. It was a little scary, but it was also really awesome to see these animals up close and personal! I got some video footage of the incident. Ignore our crazy talk ;-)

We had a great weekend and I am so excited that I got such a great opportunity to use our new camera. I think another photography trip is in order - and soon!

Its a… camera!

After months of debating and contemplating over timeline, price and model we finally decided to take the plunge and purchase a DSLR camera! We went with a Canon EOS 60D. Say hello to our new love.

 
We fell in love with the image stabilization options on the lenses, quality of the lenses, ease of use, the flip out LCD screen (!), sensor clean system, shutter speed, and the list goes on and on. It even came with a 18-135mm lens. Since we were making such an investment we decided to up the ante and also purchase the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM telephoto lens. I know, we’re crazy. The only problem was that the actual camera body was out of stock at our store so it will arrive on Thursday morning, or so they guaranteed me. Perfect timing for my trip to Yellowstone this weekend :-)

I have taken a real interest in photography and I am even looking into some professional classes. Who knows where this interest will take me, but I am so excited to work hard and find out! This is the perfect camera to let me play and learn with manual settings and fun features. I am so excited to take some awesome pictures!

So, who wants their picture taken?  ;-)

Sarah - newborn photographer?

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go and visit one of my BFFs and her super cute, super sweet newborn baby girl. I’ve been really into photography lately so I was excited when she agreed to let me attempt to take some newborn photos of her little girl. The lighting inside the house wasn’t optimal, so we headed outside to see what we could get before the rain started (since afternoon storms are so common in Colorado). So, without further adieu, here are my best pictures of Miss Makenzie Quinn and her beautiful mama!

 

Clearly this was my first attempt at newborn photos, but I hope to get more practice in the future. The good news is I have some fun ideas for future sessions and ideas on how to get some better pictures, sans rain. Ha! I hope I get the opportunity to try again soon. Thank you to Trisha and Makenzie for being such great sports, and thanks again to Susan for the continued use of her camera!

Summer 2011 Road Trip - the rest of the trip

Ok, so my idea of posting every night went down in flames when we started doing evening activities which we got us back to the hotel at 11:00 p.m. or later and then we were to meet the rest of the family for the next day’s activities at 8:30 a.m. We ended up being really tired but we had a great time in St. Louis!

Monday

On Monday we headed down to St Louis with Dave’s extended family - 12 people in all. We got a bit of a late start (getting 12 people packed, organized and ready to go is quite a feat) so it was decided to have a lazy afternoon at the hotel. Since we had some down time, Dave and I decided to venture out alone to eat at White Castle. Neither of us had ever been before and we were anxious to see how the burgers tasted. The verdict? They were pretty good, but not something that we would crave all of the time.

Later that night everyone took a trip to the arch - a St. Louis must do activity. We paid our $10 to take the ‘pods’ to the top and look out of the windows. We think it was more fun to do at night because we got fun pictures of the city with all of the lights.

 

Tuesday

On Tuesday we went to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. Practically the entire inside is covered in mosaic. We were able to take the tour and were given the explanations and meanings behind man of the pieces of art inside. It was a really interesting and beautiful place.

After the cathedral we headed to the St. Louis Science Center to look around. We had a lot of fun looking at all of the exhibits at the center, but our favorite thing was the Life Science Lab where we got to dress up in lab coats and goggles and do science experiments. Dave and I had a lot of fun extracting wheat DNA and solving a crime using fingerprint patterns!

That evening we went to a Cardinals baseball game at Busch Stadium. The humidity was so high that we were sweating just sitting in our seats! EW!! We still had a good time even though the Cardinals lost the game… and it was an embarrassing loss.

Wednesday

We spent most of the day on Wednesday at the St. Louis Zoo. Our favorite parts were the Penguin exhibit where you were so close to the penguins and puffins that you could almost touch them (and it was super cold in the exhibit - a welcome break from the heat and humidity) and the sting ray exhibit where we got to touch sting rays and sharks.

 

In the afternoon we all took a trip the the Anheiser-Busch Brewery where we took a tour and got to sample beer for free. And in the evening we went to see Legally Blonde, the musical, at the Muny which is an outdoor theatre. Even when it started to rain a little bit the show went on. It was another fun day!

Thursday and Friday

We had a great trip but it was time to head home. We stopped over in Nebraska on Thursday night to visit our friends Laura & Kyle who we haven’t seen since their wedding last year. It was so nice to be able to catch up in person!

We picked up Gromit from my parents’ house on Friday and headed home. We had a great trip, made some great memories, visited with many of the people we love, but it is so nice to be home.

Here’s to our 2011 road trip!

Hangin’ with the fishes

On Sunday Dave and I took a trip to the Denver Downtown Aquarium. Neither of us had been there before so it was really fun to do it together!

If ever you were considering a trip to the Denver Downtown Aquarium, know that it is kind of expensive. An adult admission is $16 and you also have to pay $5-$7 to park your car. Imagine what it would cost if you brought kids along. Yikes! We did figure out that if you sign up for their email list ahead of time you get a buy one get one free admission coupon in your email! So that’s what we did!

Dave and I had a lot of fun spending time together and we took turns using Susan’s awesome camera to take pictures of different animals. Here’s what we came up with. Enjoy!