Yep, still painting

Went painting twice last week and again yesterday. That's the last I'll be doing for a couple of weeks, since we're going to Ohio and then moving apartments. I was hoping to get that wall all finished (except for the rocks) before we left, but it didn't happen. I spent way too long on those windows.

September Light

I took this today with my new lens. Pretty!

Kate does the Puyallup (or, "A fair is a veritable smorgasboard")

We spent Friday at the Puyallup fair. You can get in free before noon on opening day, and we took along our own food, so the only money we spent was for the bus. Good cheap family fun!



We've been to the fair almost every year that we've been here, and it seems like we always end up looking at the same things--the art hall, the hobby hall, and the flowers. We also took Kate to see some of the animals. She did really well. She wasn't always interested in what we were looking at, but she always enjoys getting out and being around people.



When we got into the hobby hall someone gave Kate a pink (unsharpened) pencil, and she held onto that thing for hours, happily waving it around and passing it from one hand to the other. (And whacking on things with it, of course--we had to keep her away from the flowers. Ooh, pretty! Whack! Whack!)







Coming home on the bus, Kate fell asleep on her daddy's lap. Awwww!

My new lens!

My 100mm macro lens came today. Wow--it's so much bigger and heavier than my 50mm. I've only played around with it a little, but I'm having fun. I can see that it's going to be tricky to keep the shutter speed fast enough in low-light situations (like inside). Here's one I took of Kate when I was first trying it out--it's pretty shaky, but her expression was just too funny not to post.

After dinner Kate and I went on a walk (while Doug went fencing) and took some pictures outside. I tried out the macro feature on lots of things, including some blackberries...

... and cute little toes.

This is supposed to be a good portrait lens, too, so we tested that as well. There's a patch of green lawn over at the middle school that we fondly refer to as "the salad bar," because we used to take Scott's dog Lucky for walks around the school and he liked to stop there and chew on the grass. Most of the other grass is all brown and crunchy right now, but the salad bar is a nice place for babies to sit. Kate thought it was pretty neat.



It's going to take some work to learn how to use this lens well. I think it'll be a fun challenge!

Nine Years

Today is our anniversary! We've been married nine years. I've been getting someone to take a picture of us every year on our anniversary (sometimes this is more challenging than others). This is the first picture with three of us! (Though we do have some cute belly shots from our eighth anniversary.) We had youth activities at the church tonight, so I took along the camera and we got some quick pictures in the foyer afterwards.

I asked Doug if he had anything eloquent and pithy to say about being married nine years, and he said, "Has it been that long?"

Kate at 36 weeks

Kate has been scooting backwards in her attempts to crawl. It's hard not to laugh, but she looks so annoyed--"Dang! Everything's just getting farther away!" She can get herself from her tummy into a sitting position, which is pretty exciting. Teething crankiness continues. We've been having her suck on ice cubes.

I wasn't sure if I really got any good pictures from this shoot. She was pretty distracted and wiggly--but when I saw her expression in that last one I just cracked up. What a funny kid.

Love at first height

My baby sister's getting married! She moved up to Ogden, Utah on a leap of faith--didn't get either of the jobs she was applying for, but met this great guy less than 24 hours after she got there. He's 6'8", she's almost 6'3". They're planning on getting married in December. Congratulations to Barb and Kyle!

Little Swinger

Here's Kate on the baby swing again, earlier this week. (I'm just playing around with a gif animation!)

Just Kate

Doug says this picture really captures Kate's "neutral" mood.

Yet more painting (and camera stuff!)

We went out painting three times this week. Doug has been a big huge help. I'm getting so close to finishing that wall. I've still got that building on the right with all the windows, and I need to go back and put the bars on some of the other windows. And then there are the rocks below, but I'm planning on doing a real quick job on those. (I hope....) The left-hand wall is maybe 75% done already, so it shouldn't take too much longer.

Sylvia's surgery went well, and they think they got everything. Great news!

I'm getting the Canon 100mm macro lens! I was planning on getting it with the money from the mural, and I would have been happy to wait (I'm good at delayed gratification), but I kept thinking it would be nice to have when we go to Ohio in a couple of weeks. So I talked to my mom and she said she would lend me the money till I get the mural done. The lens has been ordered and should be here this next week. Woo hoo! Thanks Mom!

"Fascinating..."

Look what Kate can do--she can raise one eyebrow! I'm so jealous. I've never been able to do that.




In that first picture she's only six weeks old. Amazing. Hopefully she will retain this talent, and it's not just some involuntary baby thing.

Duck!

We were at the park on Tuesday and saw this duck in the pool. She looks like she's having a good time.

Say it isn't so!

I'm going to say something that is sure to shock and dismay some people.

Doug doesn't like They Might Be Giants.

(Pause for collective gasps...)

Fortunately this has not been a big sticking point in our marriage, which is a good thing for me, especially since I've been wandering around the past few days singing "I don't know whether I'd rather be having a bottle of vinegar, I don't know whether I'd rather be having an egg, I don't know whether I'd rather be having an order of bacon or whether I'd rather be having a basket of garlic bread...."

Also fortunately for me, he does like a lot of "funny" songs, like stuff by Heywood Banks, Ookla the Mok, the Arrogant Worms (to name a few). Clever lyrics have always been high on my list. Actually the first time I saw Doug was at a filk-sing in a friend's basement. I guess you could say we "met" there, though I don't think I said anything to him at the time. He was there with his fiddle. I was there to sing songs like "Never Set the Cat on Fire" and "You Can Build a Mainframe from the Things you Find at Home."

Doug and I are a good match. Our senses of humor are very similar, usually. We laugh at a lot of the same things. Becky sent us "Title of the Song," by DaVinci's Notebook, and Doug just about fell out of his chair the first time he listened to it. (Incidentally, Becky just posted about going to the LDS music festival, so I just wanted to say that we were listening to Border Crossing's "Happy Little Duck" song the other day, and Doug said that the "vise-grip heart" line is some really nice imagery.) They Might Be Giants is just a little too random, a little too surreal for Doug. But that's okay. We're not going to let such a little thing get in the way of familial bliss. Even my sister Betsey, who embroidered "TMBG" on her backpack, likes Doug. She told me.

Right now I'm sitting at the computer in the living room, and I can hear Doug in the bedroom with Kate, playing "I'm a Little Teapot" on his cittern. What a cool daddy.

Kate at 35 weeks

We went painting again yesterday and I got a lot done. Hooray! Doing the Monday photo shoot out at Sylvia's house does have its drawbacks. There are some great places to take pictures, but Kate keeps having blowouts, and then I have to change her into her spare clothes, which are never as cute as the ones I picked out to start with. But we found a fun prop!



(Technical photo stuff follows:) I really need to shoot in manual when I do these pictures by the window. I underexposed by 2/3 stop, for the dark background, which works pretty well, but then the settings kept changing as I moved around. On some of them the shutter speed got down to 1/40 of a second and I didn't notice. Of course they were all pretty blurry, except for this one, strangely enough. Handheld at 1/40 and still fairly sharp. I'm the queen of camera shake, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Say what?

This dumpster was behind a gas station where we stopped the other day. I'm baffled.

Wheeee!

Kate's first time on the baby swing. She didn't know what to make of it at first, but then she decided it was great fun.

Still painting, and other stuff

We went painting three times this week. Work continues slowly. This image is stitched together (not very well) from two pictures. What I really need is a wide-angle lens.

Sylvia was diagnosed with breast cancer. Scary. She is tired but optimistic, and she has lots of people praying for her. I'm thinking I should try to get as much painting done as possible while Doug is still available to help out.



Kate is eight months old today! How time flies. She is getting so big. She just recently started putting weight on her legs when we hold her up (she's an odd child--I know most babies love to stand, but she just hasn't been interested), and she's also developed a serious aversion to being laid back in the bathtub. She loves sitting up and playing in the water, but if we try to get her to lie back so we can wash her--hoo boy! Maybe she's decided lying down is for little babies. She's making more and more sounds, and she told off Doug in baby language when he took away the nectarine slice she was sucking on at the ward picnic yesterday.

It looks like we're moving! We've been thinking for a while that we should try to get into a two-bedroom apartment, and I especially wanted one with a washer and dryer. We looked at one earlier this week, put in an application, and everything's looking good. The apartment is currently being rented by a family in our ward at church, so we got to see the place in good detail, and stand in the living room and try to imagine where we'll put everything. It's 1,000 square feet, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms (nice if we have company), a huge closet in the master bedroom, a washer and dryer, and a cute little lawn outside with a picturesque rock wall. (That'll be a great place to take pictures. Oooh.) We're going to Ohio in mid-September, so we'll probably do the moving once we get back. The rent is considerably higher than what we're paying now, but Doug will be teaching four classes this next quarter, instead of his usual three, and that should be enough to make up the difference. We feel fortunate and blessed to have the resources to do this.

I finally finshed reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (I'm reading very slowly these days). On the whole I liked it better than the last one. There sure was a lot of kissing going on. Don't they have any school rules about that sort of thing?

Happy Birthday Scott!

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Uncle Grumpy
Happy birthday to yooooooou!

Kate at 34 weeks

We went painting yesterday, so we did the Monday photo shoot out at Sylvia's house. Kate had a blowout right after I started, which is why she's wearing a different onesie in the first picture. (Gee, thanks, kiddo!)



Ooh, a green billiard ball! Shiny!

The scenic route

Doug missed the turn-off coming home yesterday, so we took a little detour and spotted these deer in a field, eating some apples that someone had put out for them. (I stood up on the seat of the car and took the picture through the sunroof. Ha!)