Photo of the day November 15, the moon

As inspired by Karen Carter's post on 2peas, with a little guidance from my dh, I got this shot of the moon. Without his help, I got a bright white dot! But thanks to a quick lesson on spot metering, I've now got a moon. Thanks, Clint.

Photo of the day November 14, big train!

I took a lot of photos today. It was harder than I thought. I wanted to capture the scale of "Peggy" a 1909 locomotive formerly owned by Stimpson Timber and now a part of the Forestry Museum here in Portland. When I zoomed in on Connor, the 67 ton train disappeared, and when I zoomed out to get the train, Connor became a small red dot. Here was the best I could do without stepping into traffic to pull back farther.

Photo of the day November 12, mid-jump

Mid-jump into a pile of leaves raked by Daddy just moments beforehand.

Photo of the day November 11 - reading material

I know the shadows on the wall behind him are horrible, but my scrapbooking buddies will appreciate Connor's reading material.... :-)

Photo of the day November 10

I only took one photo today, and it was this. Connor stacked a Lego in each portion of the tray and said, "I made some chocolate chip pancakes for you, Mommy! Would you like one?"

Photo of the day November 9

I loved this photo of Connor just being Connor, playing with gravel in our back yard.

Photo of the day November 8: above and below

I have two photos of the day today. I was playing with the idea of shooting from above and from below the subject. I took this photo of my son while scrunched on the floor of his treehouse to get a shot from below his eye level. A few cheese crumbs on his face since we'd just finished a picnic up there, but still a decent photo for me. I took the photo of the raindrops on the monkey bars from inside the treehouse looking down; my more typical shots are from the ground looking up. It was a fun, albeit cold, play time outside for both of us.

Photo of the day November 7: Daddy Ride

Another spontaneous luck shot. I was carrying my camera around the corner of the study, into the kitchen, to take a photo of Clint and Connor playing. I expected to see them huddled on the carpet playing with Rescue Heroes or his police motorcycle, but as soon as I rounded the corner from the study, they rounded the corner from the family room. Clint was on his hands and knees and Connor was on his shoulders, riding him like a horse. Then they played "touch the ceiling" and "sack of potatoes." Yet another photo that has absolutely no technical merit but is a great photo for its content.

Photo of the day November 6, Grandpa's house

My dad grew up in Portland, Oregon, where we now live. We still need to track down the address and directions to the house where he lived as an infant, but he remembers exactly where his childhood home was. It wasn't this bright blue color 60+ years ago, it was grey, and it definitely didn't have a Direct TV dish hanging off the side of the house! We walked the neighborhood, circled the house around the back alley, and then went to see his elementary school, Ockley Greene school, and Peninsula Park where he used to play. Both were within reasonable walking distance, thus blowing the old "When I was a little boy, we used to have to walk to school two miles barefoot in the snow and uphill both ways" story out of the water. We've lived in Portland for 13 years and this was the first time we'd seen his house.

Photo of the day November 5: Grandpa Korf

Connor has been lucky these last few weeks with visits from Gigi and Great Grandpa Olsen, Papa Olsen, and now Grandpa Korf. With every visit, Grandpa has a habit of bringing a bag or two of my childhood belongings and dropping them off. This trip we got books, and tonight, Grandpa read Connor one of the books he read to me as a little girl - Mulberry Street.

Photo of the day November 4: Favorite Things

Connor gathered all of his favorite things to the sofa, so I had to get this photo of him with all of his comfort objects. 1) #1 all-time favorite object = blue blankie, made for him by Gigi. He carries it around reverently in a little round pile, then sets it gently on whatever sofa/bed/carpet he wants to snuggle. 2) His close second favorite object is his right thumb. 3) A fleecy sweatshirt. Connor is in a phase where he prefers soft fleece pajamas to any other clothing. He says, "I want to put on my fur and be a kitty," and likes to be pet while he's wearing his fur. So when he's not wearing his jammies, he's wearing the softest clothing possible, including this "don't lose me red" sweatshirt. 4) Puppy. Connor has to have something soft to snuggle. He's a little fickle on which stuffed animal he loves the most, but Puppy is definitely in the top 5 consistently. 5) A Matchbox car. The purple racecar with yellow flames was his favorite, but since it disappeared at daycare the green van has risen to favorite status.

Photo of the day November 3: The Cave

I've only been a SAHM for a little more than two weeks, and I love it! All I can say is that I wish I had done it much sooner, like right after Connor was born. Alas, it took me 3 years of Connor's life and a year and a half after my mother's death to figure out that Mom was right. It's better at home. There will be some hellish days, I know, but for the moment the glow of my retirement hasn't worn off.

Connor likes to help me around the house. Maybe I should rephrase that. He likes to shadow me most of the times, which means that when I do chores, he plays nearby or "helps." In order to get a little laundry folded, I created a "cave" out of blankets and pillows and Connor had a great time playing hide and seek in it while I got a little cleaning done. I was lucky to get this shot, because he's not always fond of having his photo taken.

November 2 photo of the day: Pumpkins

This was the photo I took at a few minutes before midnight, when I was just heading up for bed and realized I hadn't taken my photo of the day. Nothing amazing here, LOL, but it is a representative shot of our table decorations in our kitchen. Phew! At least I didn't blow the challenge on my second day! We bought a share in a weekly "harvest basket" through Clint's work. A local farm delivered fresh produce to his work once weekly through October. I know the directions that came with the miscellaneous squashes told me which ones were edible and which ones not, but we've mislaid the directions so now we have a colorful kitchen table. :-)

My first photos of the day.

November 1 Photo of the day: Little Einstein.

Connor is a Little Einstein fanatic. Today, he put his green chair in the center of an old round ball track from his toddlerhood and declared it his rocket, just like the rocket ship from the show. The ball track plays music, so with bubble-wand in hand as a baton, Connor merrily conducted music from his rocket, declaring "I'm Leo." I liked this photo because it's typical Connor, really true-to-life. I'll get better with my technical camera skills over time (actually, I've vastly improved just over the last year), but what I'm really working on is capturing the essence of our lives, not just taking pretty pictures.

I'm still learning this whole blog thing - the photo isn't cropped like this in real life, there's more at the bottom of the pic.

OMG, I've got a blog

My name is Nancy and I vowed never, never, never to write a blog. But here I am, just for fun, trying the photo of the day challenge from "the pub" at twopeas, so I figured I'd set up a blog for posting photos. Who knows? Maybe I'll become an addict! I did, after all, tell my husband some twelve or thirteen years ago that I'd never, never, never have an email account or use the internet.....

Enjoy!