Day 212: Swirl

July 30, 2012: I don't even know what kind of plant this is; I think it is some kind of flower that lost its petals.  It was very windy and I had to hold the stem to get a clear shot.  What I didn't notice was the swirl in the background, and I don't know how it got there, but I like it.

Day 211: Branches

Amongst all the lush, green pine trees, stands this one, dead and a little scrawny, but I like the silhouette.

Day 210: Megan's Wedding

This weekend our family headed up to Plumas County for another Gallagher wedding, this time for Megan and Scott.  The wedding was at the Chalet View Lodge in Graeagle, and what a beautiful location it was.  We stayed at the lodge for the weekend, making it kind of a family mini-vacation, and the first time I've been away from home in almost a year.  I had so much fun photographing this weekend, that I couldn't help but post way more than just one photo for the day.

Chandeliers were one of the many personal touches I noticed throughout both the ceremony and reception, and it was a lovely way to dress up the rustic location.  I loved the vintage look of this one that hung from the wedding ceremony arbor.

Owen and Jakodi are so cute together.  I don't know if it's their FaceTime relationship or what, but they are fast friends every time they see each other.  Normally Owen needs some warm-up time with people he doesn't see often, but not with Jakodi.  He lets her hug him, and if she's not around he asks, "Where's Jakodi?"  We joke about their future betrothal.

See?  It could happen!  Jeremy would be thrilled about it, because if Jakodi and Owen had kids, it would be the closest thing to Seamas and Jeremy having kids.  I am not making this up.

Owen had his very own place card for dinner.  He ate off a real grown-up plate and sat on a grown-up chair with no booster seat.  He refused to eat his chicken and vegetables, and Jeremy and I spent most of our dinner chasing after him, but other than that, it was a very nice dinner.

These initials hung at the entrance to the dance floor, and that doesn't surprise me at all.  :)

Jakodi, back in her flower girl dress, ready for dancing to begin

This was supposed to be the father-daughter dance, but they had a little visitor, making it the father-daughter-granddaughter/niece dance.

The dancing started after dinner, with a great band that played a fun mix of music (Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, etc.)  Even I almost felt like dancing.  I got to sneak in a little dancing with Owen, who definitely does not take after me-- he's got mad skills on the dance floor.

The party went on long into the night, but Owen and I went back to our room early.  Before I turned in for the night, I had to go check out the glow of the paper lanterns at twilight.

Day 209: Snail Watching

If Owen sees a snail, we HAVE to stop.  We watched this one for a good five minutes.

Day 208: Potty Trained

Owen said, "My teddy bear is sitting on the potty because he's a big boy!"  So I guess the teddy bear is potty trained, but still not Owen.  At least this shows that he hasn't lost all interest in potty-related things.

Day 207: My Big Green Teddy Bear That Jonathan Gave Me

Jonathan tried to give Owen this teddy bear a few months back, and Owen wasn't interested.  Fast forward to today, and it is immediately one of Owen's favorites.  He insists on holding it, even though it's clearly almost as big as he is, and also little burdensome to carry.  I strapped it into a seat belt on the way home from Neecie's, which Owen thought was hilarious.  And its name is "My Big Green Teddy Bear That Jonathan Gave Me."

Day 206: Paintbrushes

I hate cleaning paintbrushes.  In fact, the preparation and clean up that goes into painting projects discourages me from doing any painting whatsoever, whether it is for an art project or for the walls in my house.  But since I'm teaching a summer school art class, painting and paintbrush cleaning were inevitable.  After soaking all my brushes overnight in a big bucket of water after our action painting yesterday, I knew I couldn't put it off any longer.  I took them all outside and hosed them down with a spray nozzle.  Just like the pros do it, right?  But look how pretty they are now with the white bristles stained all the colors of the rainbow.

Day 205: Action Painting

I haven't done this art project in years, so what better time than my summer school art class? It's action painting, reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's style.  It is always messy, messy enough for me to wear my painting clothes in case I get in the line of fire.  I love that when the kids are "throwing paint" I can hear it splat onto the paper.

Day 204: Drying Off

The weather has finally been hot enough to enjoy our (unheated) pool.  We are definitely high-maintenance when it comes to the pool, weighted down with a beach bag, towels, water noodle, life jacket, floaty boat, water shoes, etc.  I'm glad that Owen is having so much fun "swimming," because I think it's important for him to feel comfortable in the water.  Maybe in the next few years we'll do swimming lessons, but in the meantime, we just splash around and play in the water.  He loves it!  Yesterday he stayed in the pool too long and he got so cold that his teeth were chattering, but he still didn't want to get out.  Today he didn't let that happen, and he got out of the pool all snuggly-warm with Jeremy's Spiderman beach towel.

Day 203: Stairs

Jeremy got a random text from his old friend Joe asking us if we wanted to meet up at the Oakland Zoo.  I can't even remember the last time we saw Joe and his wife, Rachel.  It was definitely pre-kids, which means it was probably about 4 years ago.  Owen was excited to meet two new friends, Kyle (3) and Connor (4 months).  In typical Owen fashion, he just wanted to be wherever we already were, and didn't ever really want to move on to something else.  He climbed these stairs all by himself to the "Leaping Lemur" exhibit (which should be called "Sleeping Lemurs" instead, since they are always hiding-- buh dum chhh!) It was a pretty typical zoo trip, made a little extra fun since we got to see some old friends. 

Day 202: Peet's

I love that Owen is my little coffee buddy!  When I get coffee, he knows he gets to order water in a straw cup.  And that's a big deal for him.  Normally I am a Starbucks girl.  (That's what Owen calls all coffee places, and he even knows he will get a green straw.)  But I get all these Peet's gift cards, and so summer is a good time to drive a little further and try something different.  It was such a beautiful day today, and Owen and I spent a good 45 minutes sitting at this patio table, looking at birds, running around, and waving hello to passersby.

Day 201: Climbing

At Grandma and Grandpa's again today, Owen found this ladder in the backyard.  It was just as fun as climbing a standing ladder, and it was even a little bit of a climb since he had to walk uphill. 

Day 200: Zzzzzz

After spending the morning at Grandma and Grandpa's and going down for a late nap, this was Owen, still napping, close to dinner time.

Day 199: Habitot

I won't focus on the fact that instead of taking 40 minutes to get here, it took an hour and 40 minutes (road work on Ashby), or that after driving around the block several times to find the poorly-signed entrance, we couldn't find parking.  When we finally arrived at Habitot, Owen and I were both pretty cranky.  The important thing, though, is that Owen had a blast.  He wanted to play with everything-- the rocket ship, the art room, the play store, the toddler climbing/reading room, and most of all, the water play area.  When they closed at 12:30, I had to carry him outside, tossed over my shoulder, kicking, screaming, tantrum-throwing.  As we crossed Shattuck to head back to the parking garage, I tried to maintain my inner-calm, and then Owen saw a cat strapped to the back of a bike, said, "Kitty!" and all was well.

Day 198: Busted!

We weren't even gone that long, but it was long enough for Sydney to revert to her food-scrounging ways. We got home and found this package of crackers all over the floor. It had fallen out of the pantry onto the kitchen floor. The cardboard box was almost completely intact, but the plastic tray and bag inside were totally mutilated, and obviously the crackers were gone. Look, does she even look ashamed of herself?

Day 197/Part 2: Little Feet

I originally chose another photo for today, but I keep coming back to this other one.  Is this cheating to post two photos for one day?  I took them in the same spot within a few minutes of each other, if that makes it any better.

Owen was playing out in my parents' backyard, which he loves to do so much that it's usually impossible to get him back inside.  As he was pretending to be a pirate looking for treasure, he got himself stuck in this little spot, standing on corrugated sheet metal between a fence and a very pokey tree.  "Mommy, I need help!" he said, so I helped free him, after taking this picture, of course.

Day 197: Cottonwood

That creamy white bokeh you see in the background is the backside of all the other leaves on the tree, which look and feel like fuzzy white cotton.  These two little leaves were turned around, while the rest faced east toward the morning sun.

This cottonwood tree is at the top of a hill in my parents' backyard.  As a kid, I would play underneath it in my sandbox.  Now, it seems to get bigger and bigger every year, despite the pruning my dad has to do to keep it under control.  Every spring, the little fluffballs of cotton drift off the tree making it look like it's snowing in the neighborhood.  It's the only "winter wonderland" we get to have in our mild Bay Area climate.

Day 196: Wheeeeee!

With Jeremy being gone at Comic-Con, Owen and I have been walking Sydney by ourselves on our normal route, the bike path near our house.  Unfortunately that path leads right to the park with the playground Owen loves, and with Sydney in tow, the playground hasn't been an option.  Telling a 2-year-old that we're going to walk past the park and not play on the playground...well, you can imagine the response I got.  But I did promise him that we would go to a park later on, and so we did.

We went to a different park with new, fun things to play on.  Owen was pumped!  He has no fear when it comes to the play structures.  He walked right past the "age 2-5" play area and dove in to the big-kid stuff, moving through it all at warp speed.  I am impressed at how quickly he can climb to the top, and he tackled the big twisty slide like a pro.

Day 195: Click!

I guess I'm rubbing off on Owen, because now he holds this up (it's part of his sand & water table) and says, "Click! I'm taking your picture, Mommy!"

Day 194: Sculpture

How many times have I driven past the Dublin Civic Center? And I have never even noticed this sculpture before.

Day 193: Curiosity

I got these sunflowers for a still life lesson for my summer school class. Sunflowers are my favorite, so when I needed flowers for my lesson it was a no-brainer. But I had never actually seen real-life sunflowers that looked like this; they reminded me of the ones in Van Gogh's painting. When I was taking photos of them, Owen all of a sudden became very interested, so I did a lot of clicking while he played with them.

Day 192: Finger Paint

That's fingerpaint.  And a Wolverine band-aid.  And Chip.  This picture just sums up the many loves of Owen pretty well.  We were at Sprouts, headed home for dinner, and Owen was being very patient while waiting in the long checkout line.

Day 191: Purple

This was taken out in the lovely garden area behind my classroom. As part of a lesson on Monet and Impressionism, I thought it would be fitting for my class to go sketch outside. Who would've thought that it would be freezing cold out there (it's July after all. Well, July in the Bay Area, so...)

P.S. Teaching art to kids--not a bad way to make a few extra bucks this summer.

Day 190: Jolly Holiday

You wouldn't believe how amazing this was unless you were actually there...

This was a Mary Poppins themed birthday party for 4-year-old Lola, and that's her on the carousel dressed up as Mary Poppins. (Her brother was dressed as Bert.) The theme was carried out immaculately and in every imaginable way, with kite-making, sidewalk chalk drawing, carousel rides, little penguins on all the picnic tables, even an appearance by a real-life Mary Poppins (word on the street is that she used to be a real Disneyland Mary Poppins). You might say that the attention to detail was practically perfect in every way.

I've been taking a Photoshop class, and this was obviously Photoshopped, but I thought the vintage look complemented the occasion.

Day 189: Secret Garden

I titled this "Secret Garden" because that's what it reminds me of, although in reality Owen was just looking into the pool area.  Whenever we take a walk past the pool, he has to inspect what's going on.  Usually it's nothing.  Today there were actually people in there.  How long before a 2-year-old spying on you goes from cute to creepy?

Day 188: Yum

I've been waiting all week to make this pasta salad, and it was delish.  Since I was photographing food, I should have taken some time to arrange everything in a pleasing way, but I just wanted to eat it, so I just dumped it all on the plate and that was that.

Day 187: Look at Me, Look at Me!

It's the obligatory I-have-an-iPhone-and-I-must-take-a-picture-of-myself-in-the-mirror shot.  Well, I got an iPhone.  I resisted for years because I didn't think it was necessary to have one and also people with iPhones are so annoying.  But I can play games on it, and take pictures with it, and put a pretty case on it...

So this is my first iPhone photo to make it on the blog.

Day 186: Sparklers

This was our quiet little 4th of July celebration. We've got a dog who gets really anxious about the noise of firecrackers, so that keeps us at home most years. After a yummy BBQ dinner and Yogurtland dessert (side note: I found out that they now have dairy-free sorbet which Owen can have-- best thing that happened all day!) we burned through several boxes of sparklers, much to Owen's delight. Then on the very last fizzle of the very last sparkler, a little spark sizzled through Owen's pjs and burned his leg in a little spot. (Great parenting, I know.) After that Owen kept saying, "I don't like fireworks!", but I hope he blocks out that memory next year.

Day 185: Fireworks

There is one of these stands on practically every corner downtown.  After living for so long in cities where fireworks are illegal, it's still weird to see these.

Day 184: Family Dinner

Well, it's been a few days since I posted this picture, and apparently I'm in the dog house because everyone in this photo thinks they look awful. Now, I also took a posed "Say cheese" picture, and it didn't turn out very well. I liked how this captured the scene better, and it was a little Norman Rockwell-esque (especially Owen in the foreground looking back at me).  

Day 183: Light Painting

I learned this light painting technique in the manual photography class I took a few months ago.  The pictures I took back then didn't make it onto the blog, so here is another go at it-- some red and blue light painting in honor of the 4th of July.

(P.S. It's actually Owen's light sabers.) 

Day 182: Drums

We had dinner with Dustin and Linda ("Lindalola"), but all Owen wanted to do was go play upstairs in Steve's music room.  Owen loves music and we're all convinced he's going to be a musician someday (and I'm crossing my fingers that it won't be drums, despite the fact that he's always liked beats).  Steve would have been ecstatic to see Owen so interested in all of his music stuff and I think he would have jammed right along with him.