You Capture - Food

Thursday, November 27

How appropriate that this week's challenge is food. However we aren't having our Turkey dinner until my sister come over on Saturday. So tonight we had turkey chili and cornbread.

I'm also not much of a cook although I plan to do a little baking. I tried to get some cool photos in the produce section, but they didn't turn out so good. Mostly I've been cleaning house this week, so I offer more photos of my kids' art. First we have a Fruity Cheerios rainbow.

Here's a cornucopia made with foil covered by plastic wrap and colored with permanent markers.
Click hear to see some real food photos.

Kid writing translated

Tuesday, November 24

Both of the girls got good reports from their teachers today. I think they have definitely inherited the love for school gene from us. Here is a recent sample of Sydney's writing. Usually when she is home she asks for help on spelling. At school they are encouraged to do it on their own and use "kid writing" which is phonetic spelling. You can tell, she did this on her own.

A quote from Sydney (age 5): "I love the ABC's! It's probably good to love the ABC's because if you want to know your sounds, so have to know the ABC's."

You Capture - Sunsets

Thursday, November 19


Well, there has pretty much been constant cloud cover since Beth mentioned sunrise/sunsets as our challenge for the week. I don't see the sunrise and I checked every night - no sunsets in my corner of Oregon this week. I got these clouds about two weeks ago. Can a leaf count as a sunset? It's got the same colors.

Yesterday I found a sunset in a pile of art from my kids, so I added a dragon and some nature and viola...
This is a shot from a couple of months ago that I got on my way home from Target and never posted as part of the self portrait challenge.
Click here to see if anyone else captured a sunrise/sunset.

Remembering November

Wednesday, November 18

These photos are not for my usual photo challenge, but one from Scott Thomas at Views Infinitum. Although November is technically still fall, it always reminds me that winter is near. The leaves are mostly on the ground experiencing the first frost of the season.
It's also the month we start searching for our hats, scarves and gloves.
A year ago today, we embarked on our first cruise and it was awesome! So for now, I will always remember November as my first cruise - on the Mediterranean. The sun setting as we left a very chilly Venice.

An almost deserted walk in sunny, but windy Santorini.
Maybe this reminiscing will inspire me to upload the rest of the cruise photos.

Resisting winter.

Friday, November 13

It's hailing and cold outside now. I was even motivated to go to the gym I was feeling so cold. I tried the Aquamed massage table - warm and dry - ahhh. Let's look at a few shots from warmer and dryer days of October. My maple tree before it shed it's leaves.

Kyla was on the cross-country team for about 2 weeks due to a late start and a short season. I didn't do very good with the action shots, but here is a nice afternoon sun flare.

Hope you all stay warm and dry this weekend.

You Capture - Real Life

Thursday, November 12

The challenge this week was Real Life. My real life is definitely a challenge and I rarely post photos of it here because it's way too messy. My life revolves around these two girls. (And my husband of course, but he appreciates not having his picture taken). Not a great photo, but it shows a lot. The big one mostly quiet, likes to read and play on the computer and little one, very active and a little crazy!
I was going to show more of my dining room table, we can barely eat dinner on it - too many homework papers and art projects. We really need a separate table for that stuff. Here is the turkey Sydney decorated for Kinder.

Then there is the dishes, recycling and laundry that buries my house. I'm do OK with folding, but not so good with putting away!

Now that both girls are in school 6 hours a day I should be so caught up. What's going on? I have no one to blame my inefficiency on and that's bad! My "new job" was taking up a lot of time, but that's getting better. Here are the books from the SMART reading program at the elementary school.

Here is a better photo of the girls with their Nammy. She is 88 today. Happy Birthday Grandma!

For more Real Life photos click here!

Lambie scores and so does Sydney

Tuesday, November 10

Sydney had her last soccer game on Sunday and everyone is pretty happy about it. Kyla only has one more to go - too bad it's kind of far away at 9am on Saturday. Ugh. The practices have pretty much been over since we set the clocks back. I'm definitely a fair weather fan. The kids never seem to mind the rain, and I'm OK as long as it's not too cold out.

Sydney turned out to be quite the go getter on the field, but she still says she doesn't like the games. For several she wouldn't play unless she took Lambie with her. Fine by us, not like you need your hands for soccer.

Go Lambie!
Lambie scores!

Are those tiny sweatbands she is wearing? What a pose!

Actually Lambie got to rest for the last two games. I didn't take my camera since it was threatening to rain. Not a lot of kids showed up, so the coach enlarged the field, put two goals at each end and tossed in two balls. The kids had a great time and Sydney thinks she set a world record by scoring 15 goals!

Not just a European vacation!

Monday, November 9

We have some good news here and I'm a whole week late in posting it. Bad me. My hubby, the professor (aka Dr. C) received the news that his paper, "The Use of the Hue Parameter of the HSV Color Space as a Quantitative Analytical Parameter for Bitonal Optical Sensors" (whew, that's a long title) is going to be published in the journal, Analytical Chemistry. So, congratulations to Dr. C and his Spanish collaborators! When telling people that you are doing chemistry research in Spain for a semester, sometimes you get the response of - uh huh, suuuure. Well, this just proves that it was not just a European vacation. Speaking of Spain, let's see a couple photos of Granada.

When's the next sabbatical?

You Capture - Spooky & more

Thursday, November 5

I apologize to my regular readers that there will be some repeat photos here, but I just couldn't leave them out.
There is a street in our neighborhood that really get into Halloween. It was perfect to have a bright full moon hanging just above all of the spooky houses.

This looks pretty spooky to me - I shot this through a "bug eye" lens she brought home from Mad Science class.

Not so spooky - Dorothy's ruby slippers.

Here are the Halloween pics.

Just in case you're wondering. I'm Glenda and that is my real wedding dress from 13 years ago. Yes, I could zip it up, but I couldn't really breathe. Luckily that long blond hair covered up the back of my dress which I had to modify to be more comfy.

Click here to see what everyone else posted this week - Photographer's Choice.

We're off to see the Wizard!

Monday, November 2

No time to write, but we had a great Halloween with perfect weather! Kevin got home just in time for a bowl of soup and trick-or-treating.

Just for the record, Kyla was dressed up as a regular witch, NOT the Wicked Witch of the West, but we had to try a scene. Dorothy did not like it!

What's better that trick-or-treating with one Dorothy? How about two!