Let it rain

While I don't normally like rain, it's pretty fun when you make your own rain. Daddy and I did a flower photo shoot yesterday at dusk. Since flowers kind of look nice in the rain, we decided to get out a watering can and make it rain on the flowers while filming the "rainstorm". This is the best kind of rain because you don't even get wet.



You can see the highlights from the photo shoot here.

The amusing thing is that the flowers in the shoot are all in vases from Valentine's Day. The dew is created by using a water squirt bottle. The rain, of course, is courtesy of my bee watering can. The puddle is from the aftermath of the rain. Photography can be pretty sneaky you know.

The Marshmallow Project

To celebrate the 100th day of school, we had to do an important building project--we had to construct something out of precisely 100 toothpicks and marshmallows. This seemed like a huge amount of work, so I tried some smaller versions as well as sketched some plans earlier in the week. One of my small projects was a porcupine with a marshmallow body and toothpick spines. This seemed promising since you can add spines until the total number of things adds up to 100. I sketched a marshmallow and toothpick Aidan on my whiteboard. I even attempted to create eyes, nose, and mouth by writing on the marshmallows with Sharpie marker. While this was great in concept, getting an actual marshmallow Aidan to stand up proved difficult.

Finally, yesterday was the big day for creating the full scale model. Mommy and I worked together on a marshmallow house. This was working out nicely until the roof collapsed and destroyed the whole structure. Since it took the better part of an hour to make the house, we were both very unhappy.



Eventually, we went back to the porcupine idea and built that. However, we found that the porcupine looked more like a turtle at scale, so we changed it to a turtle. At last, the marshmallow project was complete. I used 60 marshmallows and 40 toothpicks in making the turtle.

Here's a documentary video.



Here's a link to some photos of the project in progress.

Aidan and the Alligator

One of the best things about downtown Walnut Creek are the variety of animal sculptures that I can perch on. As you know, my favorite is the cougar. This past weekend, I spotted a very nice alligator to sit on. This was especially appropriate since the letter of the week in school was "A". The "A" poem was Allie the Alligator.



Check out the complete slide show here.

New Orleans

Daddy just came back from New Orleans where he was at a conference. He intended to take some pictures, but few of them came out well. Click here for the highlights (such as they are).

Slow Motion Autumn

You know, people say that California doesn't have seasons like the east coast. This isn't really true. It's just that the seasons kind of occur in slow motion, so you don't notice them as much. For instance, right now it's what you would normally think of as fall on the east coast. The leaves are turning and falling off the trees. There's a crispness to the air. The trees and bushs are covered in nuts and berries. Here's a short photstream to give the flavor.

Photostream

You will notice a new feature to the blog---a photostream. This is a looping slideshow of pictures posted to Flickr. Many of these appear as links in blog entries. If see a picture you like in the photostream, just click on it and you'll bounce to Flickr where you can download it or order a print.

Arizona - One Last Time

This is the last of the batch of highlight photos from Arizona.

Arizona Desert Museum

Photo Safari

Yesterday, Daddy went on a photo safari---a very long hike in the Diablo Foothills in search of pictures. Here are some of his best shots (view as a slideshow for best effect):

Plants

Animals

The large bird in two of the shots is a hawk. The creature that looks like a dog is a coyote. Daddy wants me to tell you that these photos were all taken with his 70-300mm lens, which is amazing. Only with the super powers of zoom can you get pictures this close of a coyote.

Finally, here are some scenes.

All of these are downloadable or you can make prints.

Sabino Canyon

As I mentioned before, we went to a place called Sabino Canyon on your recent trip to Arizona. There used to be a tram that wouuld take you all the way to the end of the canyon, where there is a nice waterfall. Sadly, there was a flood in 2006 that washed out the top half of the road, so the tram only goes halfway up. That meant we had to walk the other half of the way.



It was a hot day and for some reason I only wore my Sunday School shoes on the trip out, so my feet got sore fast. I didn't want to go on with the hike. I would sit down in the middle of the trail and refuse to go on.



Eventually, this became sufficiently annoying to everyone that we all turned around to go back.




Still, it was a very pretty place. Here are some photo highlights.

Reid Park Zoo

These are some photos from the zoo in Arizona. I had a great time pretending to be a peacock. Here are the photo highlights.

Wine Country

Yesterday Daddy and I went to wine country together. Our official purpose was to pick up wine shipments from the two wineries that we are members of. Unofficially, the purpose was to go on a photo safari during the colorful fall season in wine country. We visited Trefethen and wandered around the barrels there. We also visited a new winery--August Briggs--up in Calistoga. Their winery is in the shape of a big barn.



We wandered around the grapevines and got a lot of nice pictures. Next, we went to Duckhorn and found a whole bunch of secret trails around the property.




I also got to take some pictures with Daddy's camera. Here is a nice one of Daddy.


We had a great time. Here's a link to all the photos (run the slideshow in fullscreen mode for best results).

Campanile

Here are some fall pictures of the campanile at Daddy's work. Check them out here.

Pebble Beach

Daddy recently went to Pebble Beach for a conference. He also got to play some golf. He said it was the most beautiful golf course he'd ever seen. Here are some highlights.

Pixieland

After church, we went to Pixieland. It's about at the end of the season and Pixieland is only open on weekends. After October, it won't be open at all. I really enjoyed driving in the cars. I try to time myself in line so that I get the yellow one. The shot up above is using something called a "panning" technique. Daddy sets a slow shutter speed and follows me with the camera as a drive in the car. The result is a motion effect.

I also "won" a new stuffy---a cute white bear. I love him very much. It's the lead photo in the "highlight reel" entry below. Daddy intends to put one of these up in his office.

Hawk Hunt

Two weeks ago, Daddy and I went on a hawk hunt. At first, it was looking like a pretty unsuccessful one as we only saw one hawk. But, in the end, we saw 6 hawks, a couple of ducks, a whole bunch of bulfrogs, and a bunch of squirrels. I also liked trying to figure out the types of trees by looking at the leave and the seeds and comparing them to Daddy's tree book. We saw a bunch of oak trees and couple of other kinds like manzanilla as well.

Photo Extravaganza

Daddy's been taking lots of photos. Here's a full sized slideshow highlight reel for those in a hurry.

For those with more time or if you're looking to make some prints, here are some Shutterfly collections:

Aidan putting on jammies

Harvest Festival

Church Membership

Pixieland

Note: Shutterfly now has a full screen mode for slide shows. This is a huge improvement in judging the quality of prints. you lose a lot of the detail at the small size slide shows that Shutterfly used to have. You should check this out to see the pics in all there pixel glory. There are a number of really great shots in this mix. The shots of me with my friend white bear are highlights. Also, several of the shots of Mommy and me (particularly IMG_7200.JPG) are also really good. For Mommy fans, the solo shot of Mommy is super crisp.

Mommy's Plant

Daddy liked this photo so much, he wanted me to make an entry just for it. Here's a picture of one of Mommy's plants in the evening light. Click on the image to see a full-size version. Order prints (if you wish) here.

Smiley Balloon

I really love this balloon---so much so that I had Daddy take some pictures of it with his new camera this morning. You can also see a slide show
here.

Sunset Ride

As you know, Daddy loves to take photos. Here are some pictures of his ride home from work today.



Drive Home Sept 2007

Bedtime with Aidan

My bedtime routine hasn't really changed that much over the years. I still get read several stories, Mommy and Daddy still sing songs. Maybe the only thing that has changed are the details of the last bit. Right now, I like to be tucked in with my "stuffies" to the side of me. Sometimes, there are so many stuffies that it's hard to fit the covers over all of them.

Daddy decided to take a couple of photos of me in bed. They're pretty much impossible to take with a normal camera since Daddy used no flash and with only the nightlight in my room. You can see them here.