That's My Girl!

Anyone who really knows me knows how important music is in my life. So I was really pleased when I found out my daughter shares my like for music! We enjoy listening to music together.

She really enjoys the earphones. When she sees them, she tries to grab them so she can hear the music.

I know she likes the music, but I also think she is fascinated with the 'now you hear it, now you don't' aspect of earphones when you take them on and off.

Often when she hears music, she will swing her hand like she is keeping the beat. We also enjoy dancing to sleep or just sitting and listening to relaxing music to help us get to sleep.

Hanging out on the sunny day at the beach this year. Unfortunately the day these pictures were taken, she was kind of miserable with her first cold, but she seemed to soak in all the new sensory information she experienced that day anyway.

Well, I'm off to go listen to some music with my daughter!

Polarizing Effect

I remember playing with polarizing filters in Science class in High School. I thought is was cool how they darkened the sky or removed reflections depending on which way you turned the filter (to allow only certain light waves to pass through).

Since then, whenever I played around with photography, I always wished I had a polarizing filter.

Well, my wish came true this Christmas, and now that the snow, ice, rain, wind and cloudy skies finally took a break, I had the opportunity to experiment a little bit with it.

This is "without" the polarizing filter (actually the filter was on the camera, just not turned to only allow the rich colors to come through).

This is with the polarizing filter. It really brings out the dark blue sky.

Without. Notice how yellow the tree needles are--probably from all of the random light rays reflecting off of them.

The polarizing filter made the colors more rich by filtering out the random reflected light waves.

Although our camera has Auto adjustment features, I like to use the manual settings to help me learn how to control the picture. I learned that the polarizing filter darkens the subject so you have to adjust the speed or aperture to compensate. Our camera has a built-in light meter to help indicate when adjustments need to be made.

This demonstrates how the polarizing filter can reduce reflections. Notice the solid colors of the creek. Without the polarizing filter, the water would have a whitish haze, particularly over the top right corner of the photo, as it reflects the sky.

A polarizing filter is a nice little tool to make colors rich and reduce unwanted reflections.

Short Time, Long Line of Events

A lot has happened since I wrote last.


Christmas. Christmas Eve-day we went over the river(s) and through the woods in our 190 horse open sleigh to Grandma and Grandpas' house. Actually it might as well have been an open sleigh because about 15 minutes into the trip, our Astro Van lost heat and defrost. So we traveled over the the snow-covered coast range wiping the fog off of the windshield every two minutes.


We enjoyed Christmas Eve with my wife's family. We opened a present and my niece started a brand new Christmas Eve tradition: wrapping paper-ball fight!


After a nice evening of food, presents, laughs, and fun, we slid through the several inches of ice and snow to spend Christmas day with my father (a few miles away). That yielded more fun watching the kids get excited about the presents when they woke up in the morning--then making them suffer through breakfast before we opened them.


The wintry weather in our neck of the state mellowed a little bit the following week.


We enjoyed time together as a family on New Year's Eve. Our tradition is to have a bunch of finger foods for dinner and watch movies 'till the New Year. We watched Horton Hears A Who, a few episodes of Teen Titans and a few episodes of Hannah Montana until we turned on the computer for the countdown to 2009. The boys actually stayed up this year without falling asleep before midnight...but it wasn't hard to get them to sleep after that.


The day after New Year's day the family and I took a business drive to Gresham, OR. Once again we hopped in our cold, defrost-less Astro Van and slipped down the road -- literally. After a rainy New Year's Day, the wet roads froze overnight resulting in a miles of prime skating ground. Even in our all-wheel-drive van the trip over the coast range took two hours instead of two. We fish-tailed a few times and stopped to help a couple that slid off the road and landed upside down in a 20 foot ditch. Fortunately, as we stopped, they were crawling up the embankment unharmed--although they were freezing from the freezing cold water at the bottom of the ditch. Fortunately the rest of the trip was uneventful.


This past week the weather continued its attack. However, instead of snow and ice, it delivered several days of warm wind and non-stop heavy rain. The combination of sudden snow melt, constant rain and high tide caused massive flooding throughout Western Washington and Oregon. Fortunately, my neighborhood was fairly safe from major river flooding. Moss Lake was extra large this year and Moss Bog in the backyard came back extra strong. Washington State got the brunt of the flood storms this year.


Friday, a friend of mine was involved in a pretty major accident. In a 45mph section of town, another car crossed the yellow line and smashed into the right front corner of his little pick-up causing the truck to roll. He ended up upside down. After I found out the accident involved him, I walked the short distance from my office to see if he was still there. He was already at the hospital but I saw the truck. The wheel was ripped off, the air bags deployed, the front corner was smashed almost inside out. Looking at the wreck, you would never guess he was released from the hospital after two-hours with nothing other than a pulled shoulder muscle. The Lord was watching out for him and his family.


So far this week looks like it will be less eventfully...at least I'm praying for it to be so.