A Macro Rental

I did it! After debating it for a few days after the photography club shoot, I decided to bite the bullet and rent a macro lens to test out. After I got it, I realized it wasn't the exact one I was thinking of, but it certainly would work to test the concept. It was a Tamron 90mm and I thought I was getting a Tokina 100mm. Sure, I could have just gotten the Nikon, but there is a pretty big price difference and macro isn't an everyday thing. It seems like a good one to try out a non-Nikon lens.

And even though it wasn't the right lens, I had a ton of fun with it. The week was over to fast and I had to give it back. Guess I have something to lust after for awhile!

So on to the photos. There isn't really a theme to this post except playing with the macro lens. It's obviously great at close up photos, but it is supposed to be a good portrait lens as well. You be the judge!

The strawberries taste amazing right now! They aren't Alaskan strawberries - those have been in short supply thanks to the rain, but any kind of produce that tastes amazing up here is a bit of a treat. Though with the macro lens, I noticed the seeds weren't so beautiful... That makes me really appreciate food stylists and their perfect strawberries! And strawberries are slightly hairy - who knew??

Macro is already opening up a whole new world! ; )

Wildflowers in the backyard. I read up quite a bit on macro *after* I got the lens and the challenges of taking extreme close up photos. Zooming in super close can give you a super small depth of field - you can see here that not much besides the front flower is in focus. This is possible to work around, but I didn't have my tripod out, so I was compromising on the shutter / f-stop. Practice makes perfect, right?

I know it's hard to tell on here how crisp these photos are because I downsize them for the internet. But they are pretty awesome! This is a crop of a photo of the flowers in our hanging baskets. And the stamen is super clear. Ok fine, I'll just go crop and zoom in again and see how it looks.

Keeping in mind this is maybe 1/20th the size of the full image... Look at that clarity! You can see pollen! And if I could remember my middle school science better, I might remember what the other parts are called. But they are there in great detail, whatever they are called!

Ok, I'm good. The photo of the peeling bark has calmed me down. Matt has been working hard on clearing out the dead trees and abundance of alders in the backyard. I've been running around taking photos - seems a fair distribution of labor, right?

I had another photo right here and I was typing the caption up: "I don't love this photo as much." Then I couldn't think of any reason to share a photo I didn't like that much. It was a tomato and lettuce from the farmers market that we made awesome BLT's out of. The sandwich was amazing - the photo? Not so much. So the photography skills aren't quite up to the cooking skills - I'm ok with that. 

This photo I love. I don't do black and white very often, but sometimes a photo just needs it. This was a perfect example of where the color took away from the dramatic feeling I get when I look at Henry's beautiful eye. And to top it off, I can even see my reflection in it!

Completely off topic - why do babies have such amazingly gorgeous eyelashes??

Too be fair, Thomas has some pretty long eyelashes too. And you can see some of the dings in his glasses... I'm surprised they have done as well as they have so far. He needs a new pair though - they look like they are starting to be too short for his face. It's not just clothes and shoes they outgrow quickly as this age, is it?

I struggle with Thomas and his glasses when I want to take photos. They recommended against anti-glare for kids. I can't remember exactly why - maybe it made them easier to scratch? But I do remember my protest for them was because of photo taking. Their brilliant advice? Take them off for photos! Thanks...

Sometimes I do. When we do the monthly photo shoots, I take them off. But day to day, he has them on and I'm not going to force him to have blurry vision to take a few photos. Plus he looks like something is missing now if they aren't there. So I mostly leave them on, but then in photos like this where there is glare. I think it's still a good photo, but it would be great without the glare... *sigh*

Natalie has officially gone gray. I know, it's not really news, but she is starting to look like a distinguished lady instead of the wild crazy girl she once was. 

Look at this guy and his super awesome head control. I'm thinking any day now he will be sitting up. Well it's probably more that I am hoping he will sit up soon. Life gets so much easier once they don't fall over quite so easily... And I will also say a 90mm lens is a little challenging to use in the front room - the magnification on it meant I had to be almost across the room to get more than just his head in the shot. But other than that I thought it did a great job on both close up shots and the portrait style photos. Yay for a multi-tasker!

And as promised to my sweet hubby who did all the hard work - a blueberry pie! Except we didn't have enough blueberries, so I added some leftover raspberries from Brittney's yard - so an Alaska Berry pie! I know there's no scale, so it looks huge. Nope! I finally got to use my 6" pie plate I bought forever ago and never had a reason to use. It was the cutest little berry pie ever! And pretty darn tasty if I do say so myself. :)

State Fair

Our daycare randomly decided (ok, maybe it was on the schedule - but who really looks that closely at those?) to close for an inservice day today. Recently Matt and I have discussed using our Fridays off to go do stuff we can't do with the kiddos in tow - like fishing. But this week was just not meant to be... So with a Friday off and two kids to entertain (ok, one - Henry doesn't really need much entertaining!), we decided to go to the State Fair and try to miss the crowds sure to be present on the first Saturday it was open.

Our plan was a winner, the crowds were pretty minimal. Though somehow I still had to wait in line 10 minutes for fried cheese curds. I know it's just slightly fancier cheese sticks, but they were so good last year! Totally worth the wait again!

Mmmm look at that fried, stringy goodness. I'm not sure Matt was as impressed as I was by them. His loss and more for me! Though Thomas did request his fair share. 

Then off to the animal barn. He loved the "birds". I did manage to get him to say chicken - he's in the stage where he will repeat almost anything you say if he's in the mood. I love the chicken on the left - what is going on with his feathers?? He looks like I feel most mornings!

We even braved the petting zoo. He wasn't too sure about the sheep running into everyone in a mad attempt to get every last morsel of food, but he seemed to like the calm, small goats. I thought he did a great job petting them gently and only had to keep him from going in their goat house (seen in the background) once!

This horse was super pretty. I don't think I've ever seen a blond & brown horse.

Maybe she's born with it... Maybe it's neigh-belline!

Ha - I saw that joke online somewhere, it seems like a perfect time to use it. Too cheesy? 

*sigh*

Back to the fair!

This was a new addition - it's to promote hand washing after the petting zoo and the person who came up with the super cool farm themed hand washing station has been renting them out all over the lower 48 for fairs and such. Of course, Alaska is a little far to take one for a rental, so we are the only place that owns one. I was so excited for Thomas to try out - turns out he wasn't so excited. I think it was the chickens blowing hot air that kinda make him nervous. That's understandable I guess...

Thomas trying to hula-hoop with me. He didn't quite get the concept, but he certainly tried real hard to have fun with it. I was very proud that I haven't lost all of my hula-hooping skills since grade skill. I managed to keep it up, but walking with it was definitely not happening. In my defense, I had a toddler rushing at me most of the time.

This little guy was all tuckered out after the excitement of seeing all the animals from a safe distance. Luckily the fancy stroller fully reclines for a nice napping area!

The other little speedster was super excited about riding the trucks! He was way too short to ride it alone, but they let the parents ride along with the little ones. He had his hands on the steering wheel the whole time, but according to Matt wasn't so great at turning it. We honestly weren't sure if he liked it, but when it was time to get out he got upset - so we'll take that as he liked it!

I know Alaska isn't as hot as Texas, but this still seems like a very *bad* idea...

This fried Elephant Ear on the other hand? A great idea! And Nutella sauce on top?? An amazing idea! I'm not sure which of the three of us made the biggest mess - my money is actually on Matt. He preferentially had the Nutella side. 

Happy baby! With his every present Biraffe...!

Apparently the band that started playing was "too loud!" for Thomas. I didn't think they were loud at all, so my guess was that he was all worn out at this point. We didn't consume much fair food or see many shows this year, but everyone had a good time - so I still call it a successful day.

On the exit from the fair though, Matt decides one more adventure is in order! He wants to drive up the road a little way and cut across Hatcher Pass. I think he was feeling left out from my adventure with my parents the other day. It was later than we intended to leave the fair, but why not? Plus I heard the blueberries were starting to ripen on the pass, so I was game!

Turns out we have no clue what blueberry plants look like! We drove and kept stopping to look, but nothing looked like the potted blueberry plants we bought earlier this year. We finally came upon a few other people that looked like they must be picking blueberries, so I sent Matt off to investigate while I hung out with the napping kids in the car. 

Success!!

It turns out the wild blueberry plants are less than a foot tall and we would have never seen them just looking from the car. The berries were pretty small and we really didn't have much to store them in. So Matt picked enough to almost fill an empty starbucks cup we had in the car and we called it good.

He's been asking if that is enough to make a pie... Maybe a teeny tiny one...!

Six (27.5) Months!

I feel like most months I can pull off a pretty successful mini-photo shoot for the kiddos. This was certainly not the case this month. I've read enough articles to know that if your toddler isn't in the mood, no amount of forcing will make it happen. I tried cajoling, to the mixed results you see below. I still think the photos turned out cute, but there isn't a classic "Awww look at those brothers happily sitting next to each other on their chair" pose:

This is the closest I got, actually. But then I decided Henry's safari pants clashed with the sticker color and took a short break to change him. I think Thomas took that to mean that I was done... 

Without his brother to support him, Henry had a bit of trouble staying upright. But falling over didn't seem to bother him, he actually found it quite humorous!

Thomas was more interested in his choo-choo and hiding from the camera. Henry was trying hard to keep tabs on his big brother, but Thomas is pretty darn fast when he wants to be!

This boy must be round bottomed, because he is topsy-turvy! And I love, love, love his eyes when they catch the light. I think he and Matt have identical eye color, so no surprise I already love it, huh? :)

I also love you can see his hair wispies. It's getting longer in the front and it makes me think he looks like a surfer dude, albeit not one with a whole lot of hair. 

If expressions could speak, this one would be asking why I still had the camera out and could we please just play with the choo-choo??

And a smile at last!!

I'm beginning to think that the moods of a toddler are a lot like the weather in Texas - if you don't like it, just wait a few minutes and it will change. Ha! :)

Food Fun

Compared to the last few weeks, this weekend was positively lazy and laid-back - not a bad thing, honestly! We had some friends over yesterday to celebrate National Bratwurst day - I have had Bratwurst in all three meals today thanks to my over-buying... (Biscuits and gravy with bratwurst meat is amazing, by the way!) But my only goal for today was that I wanted to make some baby food for Henry and store it up.

I made baby food for Thomas, but I never accumulated a stock pile, so it was interspersed with store bought tubs, then those amazing pouches when we were traveling. Those things are even better once the kiddo is old enough to hold it on their own! So when I saw that they made a contraption to do your own squeeze pouches I was intrigued. And when I found one on clearance at Target last winter, I bought it! Woo!

I tried to buy a mix of vegetables to roast for the baby food, but apparently I mostly bought orange and yellow vegetables. I guess I am a little biased against the green ones... Though I did have peas! And I refrained from adding any fruit to the vegetable pouches, though bananas did get their own pouches (technically, also yellow!).

This is the contraption! It works pretty darn well and Thomas was such a great helper. He mostly just grabbed the pouches and slid them into the rig, but that was exciting enough for him. The basics of the squeeze station are sliding the pouch into the rail, screwing on a cylinder to the top of the pouch, fill cylinder with puree, using the plunger to push it in the pouch and then capping it off. Obviously these aren't shelf stable like the commercial ones, but even having to store them in the freezer is better than nothing!

Just in case you were curious how he was able to reach the counter... He's been super obsessed with helping lately and will run to go get his step stool so he can be a part of the action. A warning for anyone who visits, he has a tendency to throw it down on toes - I warned Matt today and he got his foot out of the way just in time.

The peas were the second batch since the root vegetables were all still roasting. Thomas was pretty excited about the color and even though I told him they were peas, he insisted on referring to them as "green". Then he wanted one after I put them all in the freezer. He's not a fan of peas usually, so I told him he wouldn't like them. But after he kept yelling "green!" and trying to break in to the freezer, I relented. Turns out if he makes them, he likes them. Guess there is something to all those parenting websites after all:

Unfortunately, the fact that I bought this thing months ago meant that while I had intended to order more bags for it, I never remembered. Or more correctly, I *thought* I had. So once I filled up the 12 that came with it, I was awash in puree with nowhere to store it. Ordering new bags online was out of the question - by the time they came in, the purees would be past their prime. 

I looked online at all the available retailers in Anchorage and saw that they were in stock at Babies-r-Us! Whew! Except, they weren't really here. I found the empty shelf where they should have been and an employee to reassure me that no, they were really not there. Grrrr...

Then I had the brilliant thought! Since they lied on their website, maybe Target was accidentally lying as well and they were in stock over there! Haha - no... I did wander around aimlessly until I found something to use instead and while it's not exciting as the pouches, it is still pretty perfect:

I may have gone a little overboard with the food...

But since we are on the subject of food being out of control, I should mention that the raspberries are once again going crazy up here. Luckily my dear friend Brittney has way more than she can eat and offered to let us come steal some. Woo!

Look at those beautiful berries!

Last year, Thomas wasn't too sure about the raspberries at first, but this year he didn't hesitate to start popping them in his mouth. We did prefer to help him pick them off though, there were already some that had started to turn and I didn't think he'd get over putting a moldy one in his mouth... I wouldn't!

He soon decided that it was just easier to grab raspberries out of our container instead of waiting to get one. Brittney was trying to get him to say raspberry (instead of calling them strawberries), so she was using them as rewards for the correct word. He got the game on the first go around, but kept defaulting back. Why work for your straw/raspberry if you can just grab it?

Henry was there as well, though not partaking of the raspberry fun. He was chilling on blanket enjoying the beautiful Alaskan afternoon. I'm trying to decide if I should puree a few for him or just eat them all myself. That makes me sound like a bad mom, huh?

But look at this kid! I am going to have to fight for my fair share as it is! We were in the house for 30 seconds before he was trying to rip the lid off the raspberry container. Then he said "all done" and 2 minutes later was at them again. When I finally told him to grab his last one, he stuffed a handful in his mouth.

*sigh*

I can't say he doesn't have good taste, but now I have to share my free raspberries. Such a rough life! :)

Photography Club

I've mentioned the photography club at work previously on the blog, but haven't said much else about it. I hadn't made it to any of the actual shooting events (though I did take photos at the picnic on behalf on the club), so I was excited for the first lunchtime outing!

But it was raining...

The focus of the shoot was the basics of aperture, ISO and shutter speed, so those of us in attendance decided we could just do close ups of the flowers in the atrium.

I liked the orange ones because they were *so* vibrant! But after taking a few I noticed something weird... These flowers were fake! I felt so robbed! I suggested we could shoot some real flowers outside under the safety of the awning - it wasn't raining that hard...

Of course, I had my rain coat on thinking we were going out, so I couldn't resist getting close to the flowers anyhow. And I managed to find a bee having her lunch!

Ok, I know this is blurry... But the cute fuzzy bee turned on me! I was super close trying to focus on the bee and it flew right at me. The only reason I have even a blurry photo is probably because my finger twitched as I was running away.

Bees and I do *not* mix...

Back to shooting flowers after the bee was safely gone. As the other shooters crouched under the awning, I braved the misting rain to get some close-up photos of some of the bigger flowers. Anchorage may not have a long summer, but they plant vibrant flowers to make up for it - I love all the colors!

Of course, there is nothing wrong with some pastels and creams to offset all of the colors. And you can see here I am obviously shooting on the low end of my aperture - my background is all blurry. This was intentional, the side of the building isn't that exciting...

The point of the day was to vary up the aperture and I wasn't doing a good job of that. Crazy, considering I used to give Theresa a hard time for always shooting wide open. It wasn't like I didn't think of it, but in my head I didn't care if the background of the flowers was blurry. Of course, it didn't occur to me that a shallow depth of field doesn't just affect what is *behind* my focus point - thus the blurry purple flowers in the front.

Photo fail! While I normally would have just deleted the photo, I am leaving it as a reminder to pay attention to what your (my!) shooting parameters are!

Someone came up with the idea to try and catch a water drop falling off a leaf. This was as close as I got - they would drop as soon as I pulled the camera away from my eye. Argh!

I did notice that my 35 prime lens certainly has a limit on how close it can focus - and it's not as close as I thought it should be. Maybe I need to invest in a macro lens. Or maybe rent one to see if I like it first... Theresa has rented lenses before and she seemed to think it was a worthwhile venture.

One thing I didn't get to do was to try any puddle photography. I had read an article about it the other day and kept wanting to try it. Unfortunately that only works once it stops raining and the puddles are still. Instead I just have big fat clusters of rain water on the roof of a car...

But I thought those were pretty neat looking too - hey, you have to take what you can get when your city is in the middle of an abundance of rainy days. :)

Tunnels for Thomas!

I mentioned the other day that Thomas had become obsessed with tunnels due to my awesome tunnel building skills. But I didn't really explain why I believe they are so awesome. So here is the photographic proof of my awesomeness:

Check out that awesome couch cushion tunnel! The last one was actually better - it had a full 90 degree turn and incorporated his Elmo couch, but the front room gets a little hot in the afternoon and I thought more room might be nice. So a lazy turn it is!

Here's the little guy going through the tunnel. He's very insistent there be a door on the far end, so I try to leave enough gaps that it's not too dark in the tunnel. 

But even though he demands a door, he rarely makes it that far... I get convinced he'll go all the way and suddenly a toddler comes crashing out the side!

As if that destruction was not enough, he then gets to work pulling down the sides of the tunnel as well...

Until it looks like the tunnel was hit by a mighty earthquake! Then, he looks around and yells "uh-oh tunnel!!" like he has no idea what happened. Ha! But his mommy dutifully picks up the cushions and builds it up again. We do this build up / tear down cycle until momma runs out of energy - I don't think Thomas ever runs out of energy...!

Anchorage Museum

It is mom's last weekend here and she has been wanting to take Thomas to the museum all week. It didn't end up working out, so we decided to all go on Saturday instead - which meant I got to go (which made me super happy, I love museums!). 

Of course, it also meant Henry go to go as well - he didn't seem as excited as everyone else.

One of the armless statues outside the museum. Thomas saw it and immediately said "Moose!", he's getting good at his animal identification!

I didn't get to see most of the museum, we beelined straight for the back where the kids section was. First thing we found was one of the super awesome and complicated ball moving machines. I'm honestly not sure if Thomas or I was more excited. I love watching these things!

This one had a spinning table you could roll things across and see how it affected their path. Thomas just liked playing with the balls. I was a little concerned with the flat discs - they had a tendency to fly off the center and I was so worried one was going to smash some little fingers. "/

I can't remember what these things are called, but Thomas was fascinated by the ball hovering in the air stream. I think it was at this point it occurred to me that most of these things were big kid concepts...

And then I found the younger kid part! Whew! Playing with boats in water is much more toddler friendly than flying disks and crashing balls. Thomas was side-eyeing another kid in this photo, I swear he was having fun otherwise!

Especially when he found the plane! This boy loves planes almost as much as choo-choos - he cranes his neck up to the sky every time he hears one fly overhead (which is often up here!)

He's well on his way to being a pilot, he is pulling back on the yoke to take off. That's like 5% of the way there, right??

Meanwhile, Henry was off playing with an abacus. "Don't mind me, just going to do some complex math with these beads...."

And then Thomas found the trains! He was super excited! I was pretty excited, but these trains were not so impressive. No matter how slowly and carefully you pushed them, they would just fly right off the track.

Which led to the Great Tunnel Derailment of 2014... Whoops! You can see the guilty party's hand in the upper right corner. ; )

Henry moved on from the abacus to hanging out with his Nonni. She looks pretty happy with that change. :)

Thomas and I had much more luck with the blocks and balls. I wanted to make a path from the very top down, but he was very insistent on being the one to drop the balls in - who am I to argue with the toddler in the toddler section??

The bubble section was a pretty big hit as well! Look at him holding up the big bubble rings like a champ. He even managed to get a few bubbles to break free - which is impressive considering he's not got a huge lung capacity. 

This platform was the best! It had a moat of bubble juice that you would stand in the center and pulled a ring up to encircle the people on the platform. I honestly kinda sucked at getting it up very far, but Aunt Heather was awesome at it. Thomas thought it was super cool - he was all excited about blowing bubbles out the side...

Until he realized he could pop it! Then it was a bit of a struggle for Heather to get it up very high before he popped it - ha!

The last section was more of the big kid stuff, but he didn't seem to care. Sure this demonstration was trying to show how magma moved, but he just thought it looked neat. 

This one we had trouble to make work - it's a pressure sensitive pad that you were supposed to jump in the air and it would record your jump, then play it back in slow motion. I think we only got it to work for Thomas once, but he thought it was pretty darn cool! 

And last, but not least - a demonstration of how earthquakes can liquify geologic formations and cause very bad damage during earthquakes (like the 1964 one here!). It was basically a shake table that would "sink" two houses in tiny glass beads. He didn't seem to care about the science behind it, but he loved pushing the button that made it shake. Maybe a future geologist, but more likely an engineer... :)

Hobbies

The other day at work, a friend and I were discussing how there just aren't enough days in a week or hours in a day to do all the things we want. This is not news to anyone, I'm sure - where do the hours go?? But the interesting part was discussing our differing hobbies and how everyone is passionate about something, varied as these interests may be.

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that baking is one of my great passions. Obviously french toast doesn't count as baking, but I do love breakfast as much as I like baking. And apparently you aren't supposed to feed your family non-stop baked goods, so I have decided to love cooking as well as baking (if I must!)

And for those with amazing recall skills, you might just recognize that raspberry jam as the one mom and I made last year from Brittney's surplus of raspberries!

But back to the point of hobbies - what hobbies are enjoyed by the other people sharing this house?

Ah, Biraffee... Henry is still obsessed with his stuffed giraffe. As I am typing, he is trying to cram a giraffe foot in his mouth. Sure, he has other toys he likes, but Biraffee is by far his favorite!

And Thomas? Fittingly obsessed with Thomas! More like any train honestly, but these shoes - he loves! You can see they are starting to show some wear and they are honestly getting too small, but he would rather wear his "choo-choo" shoes than the ones that fit. So, like any reasonable parent, I went and bought him another pair of the same shoes in a bigger size. Thank goodness they still had the choo-choo shoes!

If the front of the shoes wear out as fast as the soles, does that mean he falls that often? Poor guy is apparently blessed with my coordination... "/

Matt's current hobby? His DR-650! It's been his hobby of choice for a while honestly - ever since his 3 week, off-road, cross-country adventure with Tom a few years back. But he's been working on it quite a bit lately and taking it on a few Alaskan road trips (I owe you guys a blog on his behalf, he got some pretty awesome photos on the last one!). His motorcycle didn't really fit into the theme of photos, but I figured the key was a good substitute!

Which brings me to my other hobby:

My camera! I have really gotten back into photography recently. Obviously mostly with the kiddos, but I just love playing with it. My grand-dad gave me his camera back when I was in high-school after I borrowed it for an art class project. He wasn't using it anymore and I loved that Canon! It's packed away in the house somewhere, I should really find it and take some photos of it.

But I distinctly remember years ago when digital cameras first got popular, I swore I would never leave my film camera behind...! Past me obviously never imagined how amazing these digital cameras would get.  Then Matt got me the Nikon for my 30th birthday and I really liked it. Then I joined the photography club at work and rekindled that long ago love for photography. Now with the internet there are so many websites that give you camera tips, photo ideas and photography projects you could spends years working through! I am already behind on the yearly photography books I do at the end of the year (2013, I am soooo sorry!), but what's another delay for a cool DIY project?

Which brings us to this! The photos in this post all look similar because I was playing with a DIY light-box. I managed to find the one moving box left in the house that was an appropriate size (though it really needed to be wider) and modify it to make a light-box for close up object photography. The whole thing took less than an hour to finish and I had a ton of fun playing with it. My upper and side lights (off for this photo) weren't quite the same shade of white, so it wasn't perfect - but I think the photos turned out great anyhow!

There is a slightly different version specifically for food photography, that might have to be my next project! I'll try not to get carried away, but the whole thing cost about $2 since I had the box already. Pretty hard to beat for what will probably be hours of fun! :) 

First Fishing Outing!

I somehow managed to skip posting about our fishing expedition! I mean, I am usually late on most of my posts, but I am very particular about doing things in order. So I missed this one and have decided to just post it late - we actually went fishing on the 31st of July for future recollection. :)

Matt went down to Bird Creek the previous week with some work friends and had a blast. After a last minute rush to buy waders on my lunch break, I was set to join in the fun after making dinner for mom and the kids. We made it before the tide came in, but it was still pretty crowded. We ended up being a tourist attraction for the people riding the train - I made sure to send a photo to my dad of the Chugach Explorer stopped to see us.  

Matt spent a good chunk of time replacing the lures I kept getting stuck on rocks. But he did think to pull out his phone and get a photo of me in action. Which is right when a fish hit my lure! What an awesomely timed opportunity!

And I managed to get her out of the water! It was a pink, so we didn't keep it. I was so proud of my first fish in Alaska - go me! Of course the next day I was reading up on ethical angling and you aren;t supposed to pull them out of the water or hold the by the gills if you aren't keeping them. I'm pleading ignorance - and she managed to wriggle free before I got the hook out of her mouth, so it couldn't have been too traumatic... right?

Matt caught a pink too, but I am not as good of a spouse and didn't manage to get a photo of it! I'm awful! I did manage to get a photo of him later after the tide came in and we have moved upstream to wade in and fish. 

I kept getting hits on the lure, but I just couldn't get them to stay on long enough to reel them in. But I finally got something on the line. I figured it was a twig because it was struggling on the reeling in. But no - I caught a rock! Haha - how on earth does someone catch a rock. Sam (Matt's coworker who was with us) decided that some people are obviously just made for a certain profession. Professional rock catcher, that's me! ;)

This was the spacing of the crowd. It actually was not as bad as I had feared. Most people were quite courteous with the fishing and if you did manage to catch someone else's line, someone would reel it in and free it. But they don't call it "Combat Fishing" for nothing - when we went the next night, I got hit in the arm with a lure after it fish on a taut line wriggled free.

Wear safety glasses people!

I only caught the one, but Sam managed to catch several pinks, a chum and a silver. He advised us against eating a pink, but thought the chum might be slightly better. It wasn't bad... but it was a pretty mild fish. The silver was less flavorful than the reds we have been eating, but it was still tasty!

Every time Matt has been fishing, the guides or friends have filleted the fish on the river. So we dutifully followed tradition and went about filleting the fish on the cleanest rock we could find. In the future, I think we will be doing some basic gutting at the river and do the detailed work at home. Especially after reading how bad it is to get the meat wet or get the slime from the outside of the fish on the meat - which is pretty hard to avoid when throwing everything in a bag to take home.

I was so excited about fishing trip #1 that I went out and bought a fishing vest so I could carry extra lures on me. I figured since I kept losing them, the least I could do was carry them. Probably because of that - I didn't lose a single one on Friday night!

Unfortunately, we didn't catch a single fish the second night... But it was such a beautiful night, that I don't think either one of us even cared. And for the record, I'm looking off to the distance in the photo because Matt kept making fun of my attempts at smiling. It was a long week - cut the sleep-deprived woman a break! ;)

Henry's First Meal

I feel a bit behind schedule on getting Henry to start on solid foods. The advice I got changed a little from Thomas - instead of waiting until 6 months (which I didn't quite make), ideally you should start solids between 4 & 6 months. And we are getting close to 6 months - yikes!

As you can see, he wasn't all that impressed with his first tasting. He's been so interested in what we eat, but wasn't too sure that what he was getting was the same as the tasty waffles we were eating...

Haha - he made the best series of facial expressions! "Oh I want it!" went to "What is this??" to "Ummm... no..."

But he managed to get a little bit to actually stay in his mouth and then tried to steal the spoon from me. I think he'll get the hang of this eating business pretty soon and we can move on to more exciting things than baby cereal.

You're going to love food Henry, I guarantee it!