Even More Pictures of the Girls

Here are some pictures from our pre-Easter photo shoot, this time taken by their Daddy:

Self-Portraits By the Girls

While I had my camera stuff set up to take the self-portrait I posted a couple of days ago, I let the girls do some pictures of themselves, too. (They were wearing their Easter dresses at the time.) Here are ten of the fifty or so pictures they took that afternoon.

(The quality of some of these pictures isn't great because I set my camera's ISO value pretty high so I could set the flash to low output; doing so reduces the quality of the pictures. That's why some of them are pretty grainy, and have a line running through them.)

Self Portrait, Late March 2013

Cheer Up, Sleepy Jean

This week is Anna's Spring Break. Today we picked up the girls from school, and, on our way to Stone Mountain for the afternoon, we stopped at Moe's for lunch.

As we sat there eating our burritos and tacos, "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees came on, and I suddenly found it incredibly sad that Davy Jones is no longer with us, and sadder still that I am no longer a ten year old boy just home from school and settling down in front of the television to watch the afternoon reruns of "The Monkees" on Channel 17.

Cheer up, sleepy Jean, indeed.

Helloooooo, ball!

The girls' preschool had a Father's Day event called "Tee Time with Dad." The fathers were all invited to come have a snack and a round of makeshift miniature golf with their kids.

I was showing Elyse how to play golf. I took a golfer's stance in front of the little white plastic ball, holding the tiny plastic putter in my best approximation of a Jack Nicklaus grip, and told her, "First, address the ball: Helloooooo, ball!"

Elyse thought this was hilarious (for reasons that probably don't have anything to do with why it was funny fifty years earlier when Ed Norton said it). For the next few minutes, every time she approached the ball she would say, "Helloooooo, ball!" in her sweet little three-year-old's voice, and laugh and give the ball a good whack.

These are the things that make life really wonderful, you know?

Happy Birthday, Mister Rogers

When I was a little boy, Mister Rogers encouraged me to be creative and curious and patient and kind. That encouragement was a wonderful gift to give a sensitive little boy. But of course, it wasn't for me alone; it was a gift he gave to many millions of people over the thirty-five year run of his PBS TV show.

Those of us who watched him every day when we were four or five or six are unquestionably better off for his influence; for his absence, the world is unquestionably poorer.

Had he lived, he would have turned eighty-five years old today. I'll be wearing a red sweater in his honor.

Breakfast

I spent more time taking pictures of it than eating it.

Various Objects on Gold Metallic Poster Board

I bought a piece of gold metallic poster board at Hobby Lobby to use as a background for tabletop/still-life photography, so of course I had to find some stuff to test it out with.

I believe it was more than fifteen years ago that my friend Margarette Rogers (Pearl) gave me this beautiful Colibri Winnie-the-Pooh pen, my favorite pen in the world.

In 1996 at my housewarming party for my first house, the one in Lawrenceville, Shannon Etherton gave me a set of Winnie-the-Pooh wine glasses:

Finally, Crayola markers, without any Winnie-the-Pooh reference whatsoever:

Reminders of the Corporate Life

More than 15 years ago, when I still worked in the corporate world, I was given this business card holder/clock as an "Attaboy!" for some work I did on a project:

Now that I've been out of the corporate world for almost a decade, and haven't worked full time in that long, too, these little reminders of my former life mean a lot more to me than I thought they would. Much to my own surprise, I find I miss my working life more than I expected.

When the girls are both in school I plan to go back to work doing something at least somewhat like what I used to do; I find myself looking forward to that. (However, I wouldn't trade my time as a stay-at-home dad for anything. It has been the most wonderful, the most sacred--and yes, the most frustrating and challenging--experience I can imagine.)

Jessica's Glasses

On Friday Jessica got her new glasses!

She picked the frames herself. She tried on several pair, but these were by far the ones she liked best.

Unlike her parents, Jessica is farsighted, rather than nearsighted, so even at her young age, glasses are necessary to help her as she reads books and papers that are right in front of her. (Farsighted means most able to focus on objects that are far away and trouble focusing on things that are close. Nearsighted is the opposite. I know, it's hard to remember which is which.)

Monticello, GA

I went on a little drive today to take some pictures, and ended up in Monticello, about fifty miles from where I live. I found some wonderful colors and shapes and textures to capture.

The Carrot or the Stick

I bought this little figure four or five years ago at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. I don't know whether I have a grudging respect for the crafty frog wizard for finding a humane way to press the turtle into service as his personal taxi--using, as he does, the carrot and not the stick--or despise him for taking advantage of the poor dim-witted creature. Either way, I do feel sorry for the turtle who, being made out of clay, will never reach the carrot he so clearly wants.

Apple II Memories

I got my first computer around 1979, an Apple II that hooked up to a TV set via an RF converter, and whose character set didn't include lower case letters. In the early 1980s I spent thousands of hours playing adventure and fantasy games; my favorite of all time was Wizardry, in which my brother Jeff, my cousin Scott, and I spent hours and hours building up our party of adventurers--Imok, Srizaxa, Sribob, and the rest.

*Sigh* It's been thirty years now, but tonight I recaptured a little of that long-gone magic when I downloaded an Apple II emulator for my Windows-based PC, and spent the better part of the last two hours playing--not Wizardry; that's too involved, and it wouldn't feel right without Jeff and Scott--but Montezuma's Revenge, another favorite from that era.

Girls on their Birthdays

Last Monday (the MLK holiday) we went to Granny and Pa's house to celebrate the three birthdays we have in January (Anna on the 15th, Elyse on the 19th, and Jessica on the 24th). Anna and the girls made a mermaid cake:

Dressing Up

The girls like to dress up, and sometimes when they do they ask me to take pictures of them. Of course, I'm happy to oblige. Here are a dozen pictures from dress-up times in the past few weeks.

P.S. Today is Jessica's birthday. Happy birthday, Jessica! We went to Granny and Pa's house to celebrate all the girls' birthdays on Monday; I'll be posting pictures from that soon.