Kid Post

It was hot here today, like 31 degrees, so I took the kids down to the beach to cool off after supper. Of course I dragged the camera along and took some photos. There wasn't much going on down at Rotary Beach, so I just got pictures of them to add to the collection. Here are a bunch of them, in addition to some from the past week or so:

• Ezra's life is already over-documented, but it continues: all grown up, a project (repeated dozens of times tonight), all dressed for the ball, exploring at The Windmill, very unhappy (the tear on the cheek gives it away), running, smiling, and collecting dandelions.
  
  
  
• Ella is such a great buddy for Ezra at a time when he's not the best buddy. She mellows him out by reading to him. She's stoked on gymnastics these days...will have to send a camera along next week.
  
• Ivy will be eight in a month. Some days she seems like 15, other times more like about five. We were very proud of her Fiddlekidz performance at the Children's Festival last weekend -- she was so focused.

Six

Hey, this blog turned six years old on the weekend and I forgot. It's a little bitter, accusing me of taking other areas of my life more seriously. I celebrated the five-year milestone last year with a retrospective, and another shorter one the year before. But inspiration didn't hit this year (yet).

Cotopaxi or Bust

Old friend Darryl Loewen is going to Ecuador to climb 19,347' Mt. Cotopaxi in a couple of weeks. It sounds like a epic trip with a goal to generate awareness for prostate cancer. If this is something that interests you, you can e-mail Darryl for info or sponsor him online. Go D.Low!

The Kiss

This is what I love about the process of photography -- it forces me to slow down and see things I'd otherwise miss. I wanted to take a picture of this tiny grape hyacinth, the only one that bloomed in our east flowerbed this year, and found this dramatic scene. A Flickr friend ID'd the spider, which revealed this story:

"The Goldenrod Crab Spider spends much of its time patiently waiting, front legs extended inside or concealed just beneath a flower. When a suitable prey insect lands, the spider swiftly grabs it and pierces it with small fangs right at the neck. Paralyzing venom keeps the insect immobile but with the heart pumping. The unwilling insect is forced to pump its lifeblood straight into the spider."

PhotoElla

It didn't take long to get a couple of photos of Ella too. She joined me for some photogeekery one afternoon this weekend while Ezra slept and Tannis and Ivy laid low with the flu. I'll have to get some of the photos she took too -- she had theme going with super macro shots of tree rings and patterns in the surfaces of stumps. Such a good sport, too, tromping around farmyards and cactus slopes with her freak-o dad as he took another hundred pictures of orchards. At least we went out for ice cream, and she claimed the outing had been great fun.

Oldest and Youngest

Ella will have to get her own photo post one of these days, but the last bunch of pics had more of the other two. These two seem to have been getting along better lately -- I don't think Ivy quite knew how to relate to him before he started talking. She's like me, finding that these new developments make Ezra a much more compelling companion. Anyway, we had a very nice evening at Peach Orchard Beach -- Andrew and his girls met us down there with bikes. A few photos:

• Ezra was enthralled with the water park, which has been turned on for weeks despite the below-normal temps. He dared me to scold him for banging a rock against one of the metal tubes, tried kicking the water repeatedly, blew dandelion seeds, and relished the opportunity to get wet.
  
  
• When the girls got to the pier at Rotary beach, they were "the trolls under the bridge" -- here's the Ivy Troll. I also got a cute shot of her that might be cuter if she wasn't displaying her shoe prominently, and if I had got her to wipe her nose...or maybe not, who knows?

Owlet

We spotted this wonderful young owl up in the clay cliffs above one of the creeks that runs through Lowertown. Mama Great-Horned wasn't too impressed with my desire to photograph them both, but obliged anyway. The walk was part of our Mother's Day celebration, which also included a visit from my dear mom. She helped us in the garden and hung out while Dad cruised down to the border to pick up some parts.

The weekend started off perfectly with a double date -- we got a sitter at our house for the first time ever, and joined Myron and Tracey (also sans kids) at the excellent Victoria Road Bistro. We hang out with them a fair bit, but never without kids...a real treat to connect like normal people and realize that we're still real friends.

Told Off

Me: Ezra, would you like a piece of bread?
Ezra: Jam it!
Me: So you'd like some jam on your bread?
Ezra: Yeah.

Performers

Just peeked out the window to watch Ivy playing the fiddle in the backyard while her friend Jessica performed a wonderful Irish dance. The combination was pretty fantastic.

Bloomin'

A creature of habit, yes -- I was back on the bike on Saturday morning, pointing the camera at every orchard and beautiful blooming blossom within five miles. The weather was stellar this weekend, mostly calm and warm. On Sunday we hung out with my folks, had a brunch date at the Cellar Door, and worked on getting the yard ship-shape -- cleaned out all the flower beds and added compost, planted a few of the things we bought at the ornamental gardens, and watered everything properly for the first time.

Old Music

I noticed that I can sort my active (tons more on backup that I don't listen to much) music collection by year and saw some interesting trends:

Music recorded before 2000 = 11 hours
Music recorded after 2000 = 98 hours

That's a serious skew toward newer music. I have almost nothing from before 1980; a few soundtrack songs from really old horror films. Even the '80s, which represented my musical coming of age, barely total 100 minutes. 10 hours from the '90s, which seems low considering that those were my university years. That leaves nearly ten times that much from this decade, which isn't even done yet.

While I find it vaguely embarrassing to have apparently forsaken most of musical history, I think I know why -- I started living (well, working anyway) online in 1999. That's when my real collecting began, and of course most of the stuff posted and downloaded since then has been newer music. But still...