For Shannon

Shannon keeps bugging me to update my blog. It isn't that I don't want to, it is just that other things keep crowding it out. Things like spending the weekend in Big Bear to support Shannon's effort to run a marathon. In the picture she is a little over halfway done, and Alethia is offering to help her out by surrendering Chad's phone. That demonstrates Alethia's great love for Shannon, since she refused to give the phone up to any of the rest of us. Anyway, I'm still planning to reinhabit this space some day, but for now, this one's for you, Shannon.

Slow to Post

I have fallen way behind on updates here, and now that I am behind it is hard to catch up. I do have some photos to share from our summer activities, but until I get those up, here is a shot I captured last night of perhaps the cutest little girl on the planet.

Sneak Peak at Nick and Jennifer's Wedding

I shot another wedding on Sunday. This one was for Torrey's good friend Jennifer and her now husband Nick Swedlund. The wedding was at the Lindley-Scott house in Azusa, which added to my pleasure as the photographer. It will be a little while before I can sort through all my shots and put together a more complete set, but here are just a few shots for starters.

Updates Needed

I have a number of updates I intend to post here eventually when I have the time. We were in Michigan for much of June, Alethia recently turned 1, and I was the second shooter at my cousin Joe's wedding. I have another wedding coming up this weekend, so I will be very busy with photo editing along with everything else going on in our lives. Hopefully I will get some more up here before too long anyway. Until then, we went up to Newhall to visit Brett and Steph on the 4th. It was Savannah's 4th birthday, so Brett grilled his famous ribs. They were sure good, and even though the birthday girl didn't want to get her hands messy, she still got to enjoy them.

Stay-at-home Mom

Apparently it is even more unusual to be a stay-at-home mom in Southern California than I had thought. Today Torrey was out with Alethia and someone asked how often she babysits her!

A Few Photos

This post is just for the purpose of sharing a few of my favorite pictures taken over the past month or so. The shot above is a poor-man's-macro shot of a lily, lit using my homemade flash cable. Good times on a budget.

This hummingbird nest is just outside our kitchen window.


We visited the LA zoo a few weeks ago and my favorite photo from the trip was a flower. Go figure.


Another flower; this one at the entrance of our apartment complex.


This heron has been hanging around the pond in our apartment complex for a few days.


Last but not least, here is our little adventurer trying out a headlamp.

Easter Camping in Death Valley

I get Good Friday off, so we took advantage of the long weekend to get away for a camping trip to Death Valley. Neither of us had ever been before, and we had a blast. Alethia loved it. For some reason she especially loved filling her mouth with gravel, sand or clay, whichever happened to be handy. That first photo is from our campground at Texas Spring, but the picture makes it look much nicer than it actually is. The campground is quite bare for the most part, with nothing more than large stones separating the gravel covered sites that are the majority of the campground. We did have a lot of fun though, especially getting out and hiking around various parts of the park.

On Friday we hiked around the sanddunes near Stovepipe Wells.


Alethia thought the sand was great.


And like I said, her favorite part was filling her mouth with sand.


My favorite was climbing the dunes (and taking pictures). We made for the peak of the highest dune, a trip that is supposedly 4 miles round trip. It would have been quite a trek on a hot day, but the weather was gorgeous for us, and the hike really could not have been more pleasant.




Torrey didn't sleep as well as I did Friday night, so when Alethia woke up on Saturday morning and refused to go back to sleep, I got to take her out for a morning walk while Torrey got a bit more sleep.


We walked out from our campsite and ended up climbing to the top of this (from the back of course)


It was a beautiful morning to be out before the sun.


Alethia fell asleep on the walk, so I let her nap for a bit while I took pictures of the few flowers I could find.






Later on Saturday we went to the Harmony Borax works and to the ghost town of Rhyolite.


While we sat in the car eating lunch, Alethia practiced her climbing skills.


Sunday morning we found a nice hilltop and had our own little Easter sunrise service. The sunrise was glorious, and our time of worship was fantastic.


After breakfast we packed up and headed home, making a stop at Golden Canyon for a quick hike and at Badwater, the lowest point in the United States.