Week 49

Getting so close to the finish line!!!

#337: Senior Session: I had my first practice senior session this day, and actually had my second later that same day. It was super fun and I think we got some great shots!!

#338: Kyle & Harpo: typical monday evening relaxing on the couch

#339: Jolene & Will: I met my friend Jolene for lunch, she is still on maternity leave with her little gorgeous man!!! Oh he is so cute my heart melts :-)

#340: Airport Loops: Wow what a day at the airport. 6:00am Kyle and I took our friend's car to drop it off for them to get later that day. I drove the jeep and Kyle drove their car. Kyle took a wrong turn so I had to make about 4 laps around the airport loop until he was able to drop off the car and I could pick him up. Then later that night about 8:30pm my brother flew in from California and I was again driving loops waiting for him to get his bag which ended up being lost and didn't get to pick it up anyway. I think I did about 10 loops that day, lol.

#341: Josh & Kyle in Uptown: While my brother was in town we went out to eat in uptown at my favorite place: Chino Latinos.

#342: Retractable Screen: We got NEW DOORS installed this day, 3 exterior doors and 2 screen doors. Oh I'm so excited!! It adds so much light to our house and hopefully will save some $$ on our heating bill this winter.

#343: Josh's Special Mexican Drink: My brother Josh spent the past 7 months in Mexico so it was only natural for him to want to share his experiences with us. One morning he fixed us huevos a la mexicana and another afternoon he made us these beer, tomato juice, other random spices drink called a michelada.

Happy Summer!

New Doors! (#3)

Well you saw him installing door number 3 in my early post, but here it is again:

Here are the old photos of our front door... which was hideously flaky and sunburnt:

And the NEW beautiful door!!

Like I said we got the same storm door on the front as well. It's amazing how much light the new storm door lets in (as well as the little window on the inside door). I kept looking over while standing in the kitchen cuz it seemed like the front door was just wide open. Harpo can now see people walking by from the living room and rushes to the front of the house to bark at them, lol. He looks so cute standing in the door from outside!

Here's the house view

Before:

After:

Next up, power wash the siding to get ride of the chalk around the old shutters :-)

Happy Summer!

New Doors!!!! (1&2)

We're getting new exterior doors installed (as I type this) the first two are finished and the installer is working on the last one - the front door.

But I figured while I'm waiting I could blog about the back door and the side door :-) It makes a WORLD of difference having new doors, they open so smoothly. And they *should* NOT be leaking air come winter time! SWEET no more shoving blankets at the base of the doors. And hopefully save some on our gas bill this winter!!

He first installed the back door. I took all our hardware off because I wanted to keep it. For what I dunno. Well our knob on the garage door broke, so I'm going to replace that with one of the old ones, and who knows maybe it'll be good to have some hardware for the future. You know those science projects that you might need to put a knob on a race cart... I dunno. It's a problem I have, I know this - I keep too much junk! LOL. But good to hear when he asked me if there was anything else on the doors I wanted to keep I said "what else is there?" he said "Oh you'd be surprised what people want to keep...?" Who knows. And besides is the hardware of the first house we've every owned... that's gotta be special for something, right?

Okay onto pictures, I know you're dying to see them :-P

Here is a run down of the old doors (the back two anyway - I'll leave the front door for it's very own post):

Back Door:

Side Door:

Isn't this craptastic?!

So the install began...

YUCK!

We had to buy a piece of wood, which they used here to replace the old rotted out part.

And... drum roll please.....

TADA!

And the side door:

He is now working on the front door:

We also got two storm doors, they are both the same. One for the front door and one for the back door. They have the retractable screens:

And the screen will pull down half way. Harpo is going to LOVE being able to see out the front door (and back) but in the front he'll bark at everyone even more than he does through the window, snicker snicker

I'll post the front door as soon as he finishes :-)

Happy Summer!

Summer BBQ

Last saturday night we had a BBQ with our newly married group from church. We all went out to our leaders house and played yard games, watched his son's BMW roll down the hill into a tree, have a great grilled out meal, watched a tornado form, and played games by candlelight during a power outage. It was a pretty exciting evening!!!

It had stormed earlier that day, but luckily it had passed in time for us to arrive at the BBQ and get some yard games in.

You can see Frodo their dog in the picture. He enjoyed playing the games with us. He became part of the game during Bocci ball... moving some balls closer and some farther away. And boy does he love fetch!!! He could play fetch for DAYS!


After games we got dinner ready. I had made an aisan cabbage salad with our CSA cabbage. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with that head of cabbage but this salad actually turned out really good!


Then as we were putting away dinner it began to sprinkle. And the clouds started moving in FAST!


You can see in this next photo that the clouds began to twist in the middle


These were all taken short moments apart, this was the last picture I took before going inside and everyone heading downstairs


About two minutes after everyone making it downstairs the electricity went out. We then played games by candlelight - just like the olden days :-P


Even after all that I got to capture a pretty amazing sunset!

The calm after the storm:

Happy Summer!

Week 48

Well I didn't get this up as soon as I had wanted to, but at least I'm not too far behind :-)


#330: Bonsai Tree: I talked about going to the zoo here. They finally had the bonsai exhibit open at the Como Zoo when we went. It was pretty cool seeing such little 'big' trees. This one is 55 years old. There was one there that was 100 years old!

#331: Harpo Teeth: I needed a picture this day and we were getting ready to brush Harpo's teeth so I'd thought I'd get a capture of that lovely memory :-P I should really brush his teeth more than I do, but it's a pain in the butt. I know, brushing them now will save me hundreds of dollars of cleaning costs later in life - I'm trying, I'm trying.

#332: Blue Sky: Driving home from work, I captured the beautiful sky with my camera phone.

#333: Kyle: This is a boring week for photos sorry... Kyle's watching Family Guy here.

#334: CSA Carrot: CSA box #3 had a few crazy looking carrots in it!

#335: In the Sun Harpo: Harpo loves laying in the sun, luckily I was able to snap a picture before he realized I was getting near him... he usually moves before I can capture it.

#336: Calm After the Storm Sunset: This was the beautiful sunset the night after the big storm, I blogged about our BBQ here.

Happy Summer!

Zoo Visit - July 11

Two Sunday's ago Kyle and made it over to the Como Zoo after a few family photo shoots I had. Luckily the rain stayed away for both shoots and the zoo visit!


I had rented a super kick a$s lens for one of my shoots and wanted to take complete advantage of it before I had to return it the next day and thought... what would be good to shoot with it? Well the animals at the zoo! I mentioned a while ago we went to the Minnesota Zoo, the Como zoo is different (and better) in that is is FREE! and has penguins, polar bears, and puffins!!! Some of my favorites :-)

Before we even made it to the zoo (and after our numerous detours due to road construction and well the second 2 detours were just getting lost) We finally made our way closer to Como Park... we saw this:


Thinking it was a gopher and so excited to see a Minnesota Gopher (lol)... but then this morning when Kyle and I were looking online we realized it wasn't a gopher... it's a ground hog. But still fun to see out in the wild as we were driving by.


We made it to the zoo and were excited to see the bonsai tree exhibit was finally open! We had been to this zoo & conservatory many times before, with friends and family... and this exhibit was always closed. Some of the trees were over 100 years old! It was crazy how small they are but that they look like 'big' miniature trees. Pretty cool. This one was 55 years old.


I was able to get some better pictures with this rental lens because it had a max aperture of 2.8... which makes it great for getting pictures indoors!! I just wish the glass cages were a little cleaner. Here's a penguin:


We couldn't find the Lion, but we did get to see the Tiger laying out. It was pretty humid. As you could see in the first city picture, it looked like it was about to storm any minute. By the time we made it to the cat cages they were announcing that the zoo was closing in 30 minutes, so of course the rest of kind of a shuffle toward the exit... but still enjoying the animals.


The giraffes were already put away for the night, but the ostriches were still hanging out... and sitting really funny. Crazy how their legs work. You can see the other ostrich in the background frolicking away from the zebra and putting on a show for the viewers, heehee.


I remember seeing this bird last time too, not sure what his name is, but he's a pretty thing.


It was slowly sprinkling as we made our way into the primate building. I call this one "The Thinker".


This guy was funny with just how many legs he could get on the branch at one time, lol.


These guys were so cute!!!


We made it to the exit with a few minutes to spare so we wondered into the butterfly house. In all the times we had been to Como Zoo we never went to the butterfly house, it was actually really fun!! I have the name of this one on a brochure at home... I'll have to add it later.


Happy Summer!