Lizards and stuff...

I took some pictures of different things today. When I was getting ready to post I realized that I was missing some information. So the lizard, don't know what kind it is. Not too many of them in Alaska. Don't think its a gecko, maybe a chameleon? Also took a picture of the waterfall below. Don't know the name. It has been raining quite a bit and there was a lot of water flowing over the falls. Nice and pretty. I do know the hovering girls below, my lovely daughters, Kaitlyn and Kali.

Bath Time

I had my the day off yesterday so I was helping with bath time. But instead of really helping I grabbed the flash and camera and went to work. I converted a few to black and white and they seemed to turn out all right. You may be able to see in the first picture we had to bribe Owen with candy. Like I have mentioned before I am not above bribery. Lighting was, shoot through umbrella camera right. More here. ~Erik

The Dress of Drama

Let me start out by saying that my wife is a saint. She is always doing nice things for people, and at times to her own detriment. At Kaitlyn's school they have a gift tree for needy people in the community. Of course Angela grabbed a fist full of stuff to get and one of the items was a dress for a little girl. Now I being a bit selfish would have just run down to the store and grabbed a dress and called it good but Angela wanted to do something a bit more special. She decided that she wanted to make a home made dress for the little girl. Very novel, like I said she is a saint. Spending no less than 30 hours on this dress, she was finishing up when it happened. Her automatic button hole maker was broken so she was going to do it by hand. She used a knife to cut the hole and had a slip of the hand. The cut ended up being about 2 inches long and according to Angela had ruined her dress. This is where I come into the story, I was out when this happened. I got a call on my cell phone and Angela was sobbing uncontrollably. This doesn't happen very often, OK never. I thought, "Oh great, an axe murder killed all of my family and Angela is cut in half barely able to make a phone call." Once she calmed down she recounted the story of the button hole, stating that she had ruined the dress and that she was a failure as a human being. It makes me wonder if Mother Teresa ever had days like this. I got home after the call expecting to see a dress that had gone through a paper shredder. I was pleasantly surprised to see only minor damage. As you can see by the picture below she was able to stitch it up and you can't even tell something went wrong. I hope that the little girl that gets the dress loves the dress as much as Angela does. There are a few more pictures here. Kali did a wonderful job modeling. ~Erik
Strobist Info-Shoot through umbrella camera right, a few shots with grid camera left behind subject.

Sledding Fun

After Thanksgiving dinner the kids went sledding down my parents driveway. It was a bit to dark to get some normal pictures so I set up my flashes. The kids had a really good time sledding down the driveway and running back up. Kali doesn't like sledding too much, she is kind of afraid... but Owen and Kaitlyn sure like it. The picture at the bottom shows the set up. There are some other pictures here. ~Erik

Kali's Birthday

Kali turned 4 today and it was pretty eventful. She had a friend over early in the day then in the evening Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Kim and Aunt Missy came over. Angela made a crazy Hello Kitty cake for her. As you can see by the picture above Kali has Angela's ability, or lack there of, to blow out candles. You can see from the picture that it isn't from lack of trying. She got a Hello Kitty coloring book from Grandma and Grandpa Massey. Also she got a talking cat from Grandpa Stan and Grandma Debbie. You can see from the last picture that she is keeping in touch with here grandparents in San Diego. There are more birthday pics here. ~Erik

Halloween Fun

I love Halloween. By the way, this is Angela. Erik would never say that he loves a holiday. I, on the other hand, love all holidays. I especially love holidays with my kids! Kids just light up and get so excited about all the details and fun events. Halloween is especially fun for me because of the costumes. Most years I will rope Erik into dressing up and doing a big family theme, but he was off the hook this year. I let the girls pick what they wanted to be and then pick out patterns and fabrics. I love the way their costumes turned out! Did I mention I love Halloween? Kaitlyn was an angel, Kali a pink fairy princess, and Owen a vampire. I had a lot of fun with their costumes this year (partly because I just got a new sewing machine that is amazing). We also did a lot of fun things leading up to Halloween. We entered a pumpkin in the local library's pumpkin painting/carving contest and won the grand prize. It was supposed to be a literary character. We did Frogilina from the Froggy series by Jonathan London. If you haven't ever read a Froggy book, you should. They are so cute. Maybe I could talk Erik into taking pictures of our pumpkin and posting them. Anyways, I have gone on and on. Sorry for my rambling. Happy Halloween everyone! Enjoy the holiday season (I know I will).

Keller Family Photo Shoot...

Here are a couple shots from the Keller's photo shoot. With 3 boys under the age of 4 they did very good. Things were getting a bit cold and I was asking the kids to keep smiling. The boys weren't having too much fun until Kali decided to start acting really weird for them. It made the boys smile, don't know what's up with Kali. She takes after her mother. Crazy. ~Erik

Dolly Varden Lake Cabin...

The summer is coming to a close in Alaska and we wanted to get the most out of it. Kaitlyn starts kindergarten on Monday and we wanted one last family trip before it school starts. We went to the Dolly Varden Lake Cabin last year with the Hansens. We had such a great time that we decided to do it again this year. I have gotten a few comments from some of my friends that the kids always seem so well behaved. As you can see by the pictures they are... Kali, smiling on the boat ride, Kaitlyn driving the boat and having so much fun. Kali gently helping her brother through the forest. Owen standing so reverently and obediently on the boat next to his sister.
The term still shot is very true in our family. For a brief second (usually less than 1/60 of a second) the kids are great. Kali really did have her arm around Owen, this was right before she tried to push him in the Lake. Owen was being obedient, right before he screamed at his sister, climbed on the seat and tried to kamicazi out of the boat into the lake. Kaitlyn was very independent driving the boat, until she almost ran aground.

There is always a tremendous amount of work to get all the stuff packed, the kids loaded and drive to our destination. The trip to the cabin was even more memorable (not a good thing) than normal. The drive to the lake is about 35 minutes on a bumpy dirt road. As luck would have it, it began to rain, not just a sissy rain but a downpour. Angela and I thought, hey maybe it will stop by the time we get to the lake, No. Kaitlyn started going into a panic about the road flooding. She had seen something on the news about China flooding, apparently the images were disturbing. The only thing that calmed her down was the fact that I said we were pulling the boat and we could all jump in if it flooded too much. The whole time Kaitlyn was freaking out Kali was sleeping. We finally made it to the lake, rain still dumping and Kali waking up. She caught the tail end of Kaitlyn's fit and was able to pick up the baton and run with it. She started wigging out about the rain and the fact that we were all going to die.
Usually I have my camera out for tender moments like this but I didn't want to drown my little precious (yes the camera, not Kali). You will have to use your minds eye to picture the scene. I would like to say that I acted compassionately and lovingly like a father should, but I was threatening to beat everyone. It was an ugly event. Don't be judgmental, if you have kids, you have dealt with something like this. Eventually (about 45 minutes later) we made it across the lake and into the dry cabin. Angela will fill you in on the ensuing events tomorrow night. Stay tuned. ~Erik
Here are all the Dolly Varden Cabin Posts... Post 2, Post 3, Post 4

Sample Platter and Increase Your Creepy Efficiency

We have a random assortment of pictures this week. The first are from a hike we took with some friends and family on Memorial Day. It was totally last minute, but we rounded up a ton of people to go. Other than Kali falling into the river and getting all wet, we had a nice time. Thanks again, Becky, for packing Kali out after she got all wet. The next set is from Kali's gymnastics, end of the year celebration. She was in a class with just one other little girl, and they had a blast. They gave them medals at the end. It was really cute! The last pictures are from this morning. Owen got his hands on Kali's apple and was going to town. He was playing on the stairs and loving life. Erik can't ever pass up a good photo op. ~Angela




As you can see on the side of my blog there is are quite a few links to some of my favorite blogs. It can be very time consuming to clicking through all those links to see who has updated. I talked to a guy at work and he showed me RSS readers, many of you probably already know about readers but I am new to the game. You can subscribe to different web pages as long as they have a feed and the reader will do all the leg work for you. I tried out a couple this week. You can see from the pictures below that I tried Google Reader and Feed Demon. Google reader is nice because it is web based and can be accessed from any computer (my recommendation). FeedDemon you have to download and install on your PC but it can be synced to different computers. RSS readers helps streamline blog stalking, hence increasing your creepy efficiency. ~Erik

Soccer games and Hairdos

Kaitlyn had her last day of soccer today, and we finally got around to taking pictures. She's done great and really improved. It was called a jamboree today and the gym was packed, the kids were tired of being there and Erik thought it would be a good idea to snap a picture of me. I think my expression says it all - we didn't want to be there. But, Kaitlyn sure had fun (especially with the boy sitting next to her in the medals picture). She thought he was cute.


We were cleaning up the yard and Erik took a few pictures that I thought were gorgeous! He is such a great photographer. Kali looks like such a doll. The last pictures are the before and after of the summer hairdos for the boys. Erik thought Owen needed the same look as him - hair in the winter and shaved heads for the summer. Handsome boys, nonetheless.

Anchorage and New Bike

The kids and I took a trip up to Anchorage on Friday to visit Erik's sister, Beth. Erik has been working a lot, so I decided I would just take off. It was so fun for me and the kids. First, Beth took us bowling. Kali got bored halfway through one game, but Kaitlyn loved it. Then we went to the zoo, where most of the animals were sleeping, but the kids seemed to have fun. The Anchorage zoo is pretty small and all the animals are pretty much from the area so that they can survive the winters here, but it's always good for an hour of fun. Thanks, Beth, for hanging out with us - we had so much fun!


While we were in Anchorage we got Kaitlyn her first bike. She has been begging and pleading, but I told her it wasn't warm enough yet. Now that most of the snow has melted off, I decided it was time. She loved the bike. She seemed to take to it a lot better than her old tricycle, and she was zooming up and down the street. The last picture is one I took right after we got home. Erik was out working on the boat and got my attention. I had to take a picture of what we were seeing out the window. Kaitlyn was so worried that the moose would charge and kill Erik. I assured her Daddy was fine, but it's still a funny picture. ~Angela