Reina, Dave and Emily Visit

It’s Monday evening and I’m finally getting around to reflect on yet another busy weekend. On Friday evening we entertained Brad and Lisa’s little girl, Reina for the evening and a sleepover. The kids get so hyped up when anything new happens, we had very giggly girls all evening, a late night followed by some very tired kids Saturday.

On Saturday, Dave and Emily from Chicago came to visit for the night. Dave and I went for a run, we all went for a walk in the woods and we had some great food and chatted away for the evening. We had some drinks too, or rather Dave and I had way too many drinks….and so, just like the kids the night previously, there were some tired adults the next day. Thanks you guys for coming to visit, we loved having you.

Lynne is now away for the week. She is out in the great state of New Jersey; she’ll be back on Friday. Have a great week everybody.

Old Pictures of the Week....A Very Cute Little Girl

This weeks old pictures are of a very cute little girl, one that would grow up to be extremely smart, kind, caring, compassionate, a wonderful mother and a wife to make any man proud and as pretty as the day that photo was taken. You’ve probably figured it out by now, this cute little girl is Lynne when she was about two and half years old, I was not yet born. I love these photos.

Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day everybody, I trust everybody who was expecting flowers and/or chocolates got what they wished for. I saw many great pictures of both on Facebook today. We had a relatively exciting day here, it was a hyper exciting day of course for the girls who emerged this morning all dressed in beautiful reds and pinks.

After our own modest celebrations, the kids got off to school to do their celebrations. Brooke worked with Connor to do a few cards, see picture below, and this afternoon we had an army of people over doing cookies and arts and crafts.

The Magic School Bus

The girls and Lynne are off out to Purdue this afternoon to a musical, The Magic School Bus. The Magic School Bus is a well-known series of children’s books about science with the main character, Mrs. Frizzle, a schoolteacher who takes her class on scientific adventures in her school bus. Well they have a touring musical on the theme of Climate Change and today they are at Purdue. They should have fun.

Other than that it has been a relatively normal week and weekend. The children have mostly been playing around the house in dress-up clothes and for the most part behaving well with infrequent bouts of antagonizing (mostly from Connor).  Shown below are a few photos from the last few days. Have a great week, Happy Valentines Day everybody.

Old Photo - Annapurna

This weeks old picture is one of Lynne’s from her travels. In case you were unaware, right after she finished her PhD in 1996 she spent 6 months travelling with one of her best friends, Kate, through Asia, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries.

Whilst in Nepal she did lots of hiking and I think her most memorable was a 10-day hike to the Annapurna base camp on . I don’t have many additional details on the photo below other than it was taken on that hike. I think it speaks for itself. 

HDR Photo Processing

On Sunday morning our extraordinary great weather continued with a beautiful blue sky and temperatures in the 50s. I took advantage and took a little tour out to our local nature reserve, Celery Bog, to take some pictures for my new photo obsession, HDR photo processing. It’s quite cool and if you’re interested in learning more, take a look at this excellent website that has it fully explained with some superb and amazing photo examples.

I have only started playing with this and have lots to understand before getting better. Shown below are some of the pictures I took and below each picture I show what a HDR processed picture looks like. For those that are interested in more details, shown at the bottom are some details.

Camera mounted on a tripod, set in aperture priority mode at f/22, ISO 100, an auto exposure bracket set at -2, 0 and +2, no flash, focal length 67mm. The three resulting photos were processed in Aperture 3 using a HDR plug-in from Photomatix. 

Iron Lady, Musical Instruments, Sewing and more.....

As normal we had a relatively action packed weekend. On Friday, Lynne and I were treated to a night out since Randy and Lorraine offered to take the kids to dinner followed by a night at the Lafayette Symphony’s Lollipop concert. This was preceded by a hands-on instrument opportunity. Many thanks once again. 

We took advantage with dinner at our local Vietnamese restaurant followed by the movies to see The Iron Lady, which I thought was just about OK. They could have done more with the story but Meryl Streep played the role extremely well. 

Saturday we were invited to an Australia Day party, one of Lynne’s colleagues comes from Australia and they throw a party every year. Sunday was more like a normal day, Lynne was working with Anja on her sewing technique, we did some cooking, reading followed by swimming in the afternoon.

Happy Birthday Håkan

Happy Birthday Håkan. For those of you who are relatively new to reading this blog, Håkan is a very dear friend of ours whom we met whilst living in Sweden. When we moved to the US, he then moved to Purdue and studies with Lynne for many years, completing his PhD work with her. We saw him virtually every week when he was here; the kids (or rather Anja) referred to him and still do as Uncle Håkan. Wishing you a very good birthday.

Super Bowl XLVI

Most of you will of heard of The Super Bowl, the final championship game of the American Football NFL (or simply football as they call it here). As you can imagine, it’s a big deal in this country. Indeed it’s a big deal worldwide with a TV audience of well over 100 million. It’s a de-facto national holiday.

Well this year it’s being held in Indianapolis, about a quarter of a mile from where I work. The city has been a zoo over the last two weeks. Over a hundred thousand people are expected to celebrate throughout the city each day this week.

This morning a work colleague, Brian Huckabee, and myself took a little photographic tour of the city at 7:30am for about an hour while the light was good and before the crowd got going. It was an interesting tour with many photo opportunities.

The blue fountain picture was actually taken outside my work’s headquarters. This year’s game, Super Bowl XLVI (46), will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium, starting at 6:30pm, between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. Madonna will play at half time. I took way to many photos, shown below are some of my favorite shots but more can be seen here. My favorite is the first one of the JW Marriott downtown. It's a majestic building that I see almost everyday. I love this photo, obviously I played around with the colors and exposure levels as I processed the photos.

Old Pictures - Zanzibar

I’m going to try to re-start my “Old Picture” series. I did post a series of old photos quite some time ago but have not done so in quite some time. I’ve set myself a new ambitions goal of at least one a week. Let’s see how I do.

This weeks old photo is actually two. One of Lynne and myself from our weeklong honeymoon in Zanzibar. The picture of me was taken right outside of our little cabin. The picture of Lynne was taken on this deserted beach on the northern tip of the Island. We had this entire strip of beach to ourselves, it went on for as far as the eye could see.

Marissa and Steef Visit

Another quiet day here, although Isabel is feeling just a little under the weather with a cough and a sore throat. Sufficient for her to actually agree to take a nap this afternoon which is something to behold. She must be sick.

From yesterdays post, I decided to take a couple of pictures of Connors cars. We also had Marissa and Steef over yesterday afternoon for a visit. Thanks for coming guys. Our discussions ranged from chess moves, photographic equipment, summer plans and crystal growth and engineering. The girls for their part played dress-up and did some coloring.

Have a good week everybody.