The nephew visits

My nephew (Scott's sister's son Gilbert) came to visit for a couple of days over spring break, so we decided to use some passes we had saved up and took the boys whale watching.

Click the thumbnails to embiggen!

The weather was great; we didn't end up seeing any whales, but we did see a pod of like, 500 (no exaggerating, there were that many!) dolphins. We also saw jellies, pelicans (my favorites) and sea lions. It was awesome, though Gilbert got a little bored by the end. He's 10, so I guess that's what I have to look forward to in the future on family outings! I think the boys still had a great time.

Newport:


"Arsty fartsy" pics by me:






Contemplating the vastness of the ocean, or, trying not to get seasick:


Dolphins!


I took the boys to the beach that evening for a little body boarding and tide pooling.





The next day, we took them to Mitsuwa for lunch. It's this amazing Japanese grocery store that has a killer food court and specialty shops in it. It's definitely one of our favorite places, and actually a big part of why we went to Japan, since they have a cheap ass travel agency inside too.

Gilbert had never had Japanese food before, so we ordered the boys Aiden's favorite, udon, which earned rave reviews from them. One of these days I need to head there with the express purpose for writing it up on my food blog.

Here're the kidlets practicing their proper slurping:




I've got more blogging to do today, including Easter and some on my other blog, but right now I have to take Aiden to the pool and enjoy the sunshine!

Blaurgh!!!

I went to change my layout, and with it lost the code for creating the "read more" link. It's pissing me off and I need to step away, so this will be fixed later. Grumbletupidgrumble...

Aiden is the smartest child in the world!

I think so anyway. He recently got an award in school for great reading and math skills. Atta boy!

With the principal:


There is no more, ignore the click. You can, however, click the pics to make them bigger (still proud of that).

Spring days

These are just some pictures I have from a recent trip to the park. Nothing exciting, just taking advantage of the nice weather! More pics under the jump, and click to make larger (I finally figured out how to do that...I'm dumb).

"Photography"

I love taking pictures. I hate referring to myself as a photographer or what I do as photography though. It's a personal hang up; I did the same when I played music regularly, never called myself a musician. I guess I feel like anything I do artistically isn't worth a title like that.

Armchair psychology aside, I love taking pictures! Lately I got the opportunity to sell some of my pictures at a local cafe. I'm working on printing some and getting them matted, and then they'll be hanging in the restaurant.

So for now, I thought I would share some of the pictures I've taken recently. These are all just ones I've taken locally as examples for the owner of the restaurant. I'll add non-local ones soon. Click below for my pics.



My stuff!

Here are a few, click to embiggen:

Christmastime!

I'm going to be lazy and mostly post pics for the last few months worth of things I need to put up here. It's the American way!

My mom and dad came for Christmas, and in general we had a nice, low key time. Kind of sparse on the presents (since we were still hurting from Japan) but we had a great holiday anyway!

Here Aiden in bed on Christmas night; he's sleeping with all his stuffies like I used to as a kid:

Back into the swing of things

I need to update here so I don't just let this die like so many other things I've started. On my days off this week, I'll upload new pics of Christmas and Aiden's birthday. Those are about the only two exciting things that have happened; mostly we've just been working and getting Aiden through the school year.
I also plan on finally updating my food blog with all the great (and, erm, not so great) things we ate in Japan.