Day 120: Jump

 
 "Go outside!  Go outside!"  Owen loves this beautiful spring weather.  I like how you can see the puddle splash under his mid-air jump.

Day 119: Rainbow

Late in the evening I had a shocking realization that I hadn't taken any photos today, and I already used up my one cheat day this month.  So these are mixing bowls I bought myself for Christmas.  I was doing my holiday baking and I cracked my old glass mixing bowl, so I finally got to buy the pretty rainbow ones I'd always wished I had an excuse to buy.

Day 118: Old & New

I like the juxtaposition of the old wooden building and the new light fixture.  I honestly don't know what this building is.  It's something in the historic cluster of buildings downtown (school building? barn?), but I didn't have time to find out what it was.  I was actually pretty late getting home when I took this picture.  I just ran in, took some shots, and ran back to my car, not really paying attention to what anything was.

Day 117: Cloudy

Day 117: Smiles

Owen + Chip = BFFs

Day 115: Hair

Once again, I am playing around with shutter speed.  This time I used a faster shutter and a timer, and I flipped my hair up at the last second.  I did about 30 of these, and in most of them my face looks like a basset hound with its face sticking out the window of a moving car.  In this one, I actually look pretty normal, due to plain old luck as well as the channeling of my inner Tyra Banks who always says to smize (smile with your eyes).

Day 114: Running Man

Here is more practice with shutter speed, which is my photo assignment for the week.  This one is 4 seconds.

Day 113: Lights

Playing with slow shutter speed again-- this is Owen's airplane toy, specifically the propeller that spins in the front.  He learned to walk by holding on to it and pushing it around, and used to be one of his favorite toys.

Day 112: Jumping on the Bed

Owen was having fun jumping on the bed; I was playing around with slow shutter speed.

Day 111: Inhaler

Owen is a little sick and wheezy again, and we're back to the inhaler (luckily not too much, though).  Today he took his turn, and then he helped me "press the button" to give me a (pretend) turn.  If we let him play with the AeroChamber he seems to dislike the procedure a little bit less.  And Play With Me Sesame didn't hurt either.

Day 110: Artichoke

This is Owen's favorite vegetable (only vegetable?) lately. He will eat an entire jumbo artichoke by himself (in addition to the rest of his dinner) and then ask for more. I've learned my lesson and now Owen gets a whole artichoke instead of sharing one with me.

Day 109: Shoes

These shoes are a little high-maintenance. I can't wear them in the cold. I can't wear them if I plan on walking somewhere dirty. And I definitely can't wear them in the rain. So now that the warmer and drier spring weather is here I'm excited that I can finally wear them again.

Day 108: Church

By simply taking a right turn off one of my normal routes home, I found Old St. Raymond Church. It was built in 1860 and is the oldest Catholic church still standing in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. I like the imperfections on the building, like how the windows are hung slightly crooked and how there's a little chunk of siding that's chipped away. I've always seen the signs pointing to the "Point of Historical Interest" but I never had a reason to go check it out. I only had a few minutes to photograph it today, but I'll definitely be back to see all the other old buildings. I just love that stuff.

Day 107: Dandelions

Day 106: Late Afternoon

Day 105: Sun Bear

The sun bears at the Oakland Zoo were out enjoying this warm and sunny day.

Day 104: Puddle

Another. Day. Of. Rain.

This is a puddle in our driveway with a reflection of trees, taken during a short break in the rain this morning.

Day 103: "Spring Break"

WTF, "Spring Break"?

Day 102: Mushroom

This little mushroom sprouted up on our lawn seemingly overnight. It was wet outside after having rained all day and night, so the stem and grass are covered with raindrops.

Day 101: Garden

I came across this garden in front of the restaurant at Wente Vineyards. I was killing time while Jeremy was at a dentist appointment and we were sharing a car while mine was in the shop, so I drove around the vineyards. It was wet and rainy, and there weren't really any easy places to pull over and take pictures. When I got to Wente, I was going to turn around, and then I saw this garden. There were all kinds of unique plants and flowers, most memorably...Brussels sprouts (!) which you wouldn't exactly expect to find in a flower garden.

I have no idea what this flower is (I've never seen it before) but it really did look as bright and vibrant in real life. This was no small flower; the stems were several feet high.

Day 100: 35 Bottles of Beer

Jeremy's birthday always gets the crap end of the stick. It falls during a time of year when I'm busy and tired, and I haven't put much time or thought into the event in the past few years. Oh, and I'm usually sick. This year was no different, and when April 9th came around I had no gift, no plans, not even a card. Then a flash of inspiration hit-- BEER. 35 bottles of it, one for every year of Jeremy's life; some of his favorites and some new kinds to try. And the superhero cake was not just something that Owen would recognize and enjoy, but he could eat it, too (egg and dairy free, and quite tasty!)

Day 100!!!

Day 99: Easter Egg Hunt

How to entertain Owen: Hide a bunch of empty plastic eggs in the backyard for him to find. When he runs out of eggs and asks, "Are there any more?" take the eggs he's found and re-hide them; he'll never know. For an added bonus, fill the eggs with cotton balls.

Day 98: Bloom

This tree is right next to our front door and right outside Jeremy's studio window. When we moved here, it just looked like an ordinary tree. It was a surprise when these pink blossoms started bursting out last week. They look so light and paper-thin, which is what I was trying to capture here.

Update 4/19: Lately Owen likes to pick up flowers off the ground or pick dandelions and give them to me as presents ("pwesents"), including these flowers from this tree which have started to fall off the tree and land on the path to our front door. When I opened up Owen's window Tuesday morning, he looked out and saw this tree FULL of blossoms and said, "Pwesents!

Day 97: Easter Grass

In the tradition of kids having more fun with the box than the actual toy, Owen had a blast with the Easter grass from his Easter basket from Grammy. We played with the stuff for a good half hour or more, throwing it around, decorating each other, trailing it around the house. He even put it on my head and called me a princess.

Day 96: Roar

It's funny how Owen can forget about a particular toy for awhile and then all of a sudden it's one of his favorites again. Right now it's his zoo, which he got almost a year ago for his first birthday. He's really interested in all his little animals and the sounds they make, and he's been asking to go to the zoo every day. In this picture he is roaring like a lion.

Day 95: Reading

No big plans for Spring Break, but I hope to dig in to one of my growing list of books-I-want-to-read. Which of these will be the first?

Day 94: Slide

As Jeremy grilled our dinner out on the barbeque, Owen played outside and made his zoo animals slide down his slide.

Day 93: Gears

I took Sydney to the dog park after work today; this is part of one of the metal found-art dog sculptures in front of the park.

Day 92: Fence

This fence runs along part of the bike path next to our home. I like all the different colors of wood. I'm sure the variation is an unintentional result of fixing broken slats at different times, but I think it gives it some character.