Christmas Events

Warning-Picture Explosion Ahead...

We had an eventful couple of days of Christmas here. I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking...

First was Christmas Eve. Jill and I have been talking about/trying to adopt a dog for over a year through a rescue society. We finally came to the realization that the rescue people cared more about dogs than anything and were simply going to refuse to give us a dog due to the kids (not because the kids may be hurt by the dog, but because the dog may be annoyed by the kids).

On a whim we went to check out a dog on Thursday and Jill was instantly in love. We wanted to surprise the kids on Christmas morning, but it was going to be a logistical nightmare with all of our travels, so we did it on Christmas Eve at the Wiemann's.

Emma coming outside to see the surprise.

Emma saying something about the dog (probably "She's so cute!)

Emma decided on the name Sophie for her.

After the excitement of the dog, we got to work opening presents at the Wiemann's. This was not an easy job as the tree was actually being supported by the number of presents.

Josh wearing Poppa's glasses.

Look at all those presents!

Emma's bow holder that Grammie made for her.

And that concludes Christmas Eve. Christmas morning we opened presents here in the morning. I left the camera in the bag for our present opening so I could spend time helping with the kids (and Sophie). After we were done, we headed to my parent's house for breakfast.

Josh loving his spinny shark light.

Dave, Iyla, and Lin watching the fun.

Josh marveling at the car Poppy just revealed to him.

Josh driving.

It was a whirlwind couple of days, but we had a lot of fun. I'm glad I took a couple of days off after the holiday to recover...I'm going to need them.

Family Pic 2010

Here is a sneak peek of our Christmas card photo for this year. I set this shot up in record time as the sun was dipping below the horizon. Josh didn't quite want to look at the camera, but it was close enough and he at least has somewhat of a smile on his face. Another successful self-timer shot in the bag...

Photo Shoot with Carlos

These are a few images from a photo shoot my friend Carlos did for us a couple of weeks ago. We met up at a park by our house with a really neat farm area. The weather was beautiful and the cloud cover gave us some great soft light. I still have tons of the images to go through, but there were some of our favorites so far.

Bath

Jill has wanted me to take pictures of Josh in his ducky towel for quite a while. One evening when I was home from work last week I broke out the camera and took some images of bath time. I put on a longer lens and hid behind the closet door to try and keep things as regular as possible for the kids. I am usually not home on work nights for this ritual, so Jill did her usual running of the show. The kids love their time in the water and throw a fit when it's time to get out. Emma was in the water with Josh, but managed to stay hidden from the camera most of the time. These were a few of my favorite images.

Santa

Here's an image from Monday morning. We all went to Bass to get our yearly Santa picture. We got right in and although the kids were a little tentative when approaching him, they hopped right on Santa's lap and posed well. Emma refused to talk to Santa, but she was a good sport. I've been taking quite a few pictures over the last couple of weeks, so stay tuned. More to come soon.

Decorating

Anyone who knows Jill is well aware of the fact that she loves to decorate for the holidays. It was made perfectly clear to me that I would be putting lights up outside on Thanksgiving day and I'm honestly pretty surprised that we made it all the way to today to set up the trees.

Emma was very excited to help put ornaments on the tree this year. Since this morning was very cold and dreary, we made the most of our time by busting out the decorations and getting to work. These are a few images from the action.

Thanksgiving

Here's the Hildwine/Poetter family picture from Thanksgiving 2010. I'm getting pretty good at self-timer family portraits...

Hollywood

Yesterday was Emma's Thanksgiving program for her preschool. She was very excited to perform for her mom and dad. The program was at a clubhouse in a neighborhood by us. Jill and I were expecting a little larger room than it actually was, and it was packed. Of course knowing that I was going to take pictures I brought the whole camera bag with me. I was hoping for enough light to pull it off without a flash, but that hope was quickly dashed. The sheer number of people kept me pretty much to one side, so I slapped on my longest lens and got to work.

It was entertaining watching the differences between the AM preschool (Emma's class-the younger kids) and the PM class (4 and mostly 5 year olds). They were much more sure of themselves. Emma did great and held her own with the older kids. She knew her moves and the words well.

The first frame was made before the program started. All of the other kids were running around being kids and Emma was doing just as her teacher told her-sitting in her spot waiting for the show to begin. I don't know whether to be amused or infuriated that she will listen so well to others and blow anything her parents say off with an eye roll.

Reloading

I'm in the midst of a rather large project lately. About a year ago I decided to teach myself how to load my own ammo. This was something I had absolutely zero experience in and no point of reference. After a ton of reading and a little messing up here and there, I think I have gotten pretty good at it. One thing I didn't count on when I began was exactly how time consuming this would become.

Over the last year I got in the bad habit of having brass in various stages of preparation without labeling them all. This created a bit of confusion when I wanted to load some rounds up as to which brass was actually ready to be used. This was rather embarrassingly illustrated to me last week when I was attempting to seat bullets in unsized cases (as the fell right to the bottom of the case). This started Brass Fest 2010.

The goal of my latest project was to get all of my brass in a ready-t0-load state so that there was no question as to what is what. This sounds like an easy task until you look at how much work is involved in getting to this point as well as the fact that I am doing all of this with the incredibly spartan setup of a Lee Hand Press (yeah, look it up-you can't get any more basic). So now I will illustrate for you the highly OCD steps involved in taking a fired piece of brass to the ready-to-load state. Many of these are redundant, but I have gotten in the habit of throwing brass in the tumbler to polish when I'm working on other stuff even though it is unnecessary and just makes sparkly(er) brass, so I will still include them in:

1. Decap brass to remove spent primer
2. Soak brass overnight in Lemishine and dish soap
3. Rinse brass
4. Dry brass
5. Tumble to clean/polish
6. Resize in press
7. Rinse in hot water to remove case lube
8. Soak in Lemishine (mostly because other stuff was tumbling at the time)
9. Rinse Brass
10. Dry Brass
11. Tumble
12. Trim case necks for rifle or chamfer/deburr pistol cases
13. Chamfer/deburr rifle cases or bell case mouth on pistol cases
14. Tumble again if you're feeling extra anal or just want to piss your wife off with the sound of the tumbler running yet again.

So there you have what I've been occupied with for the last week and a half. I'm happy to report I only have one caliber left to take from step 12 on and then I will be done for now. I'm unhappy to report that I have probably 500 pieces of brass in that caliber to deal with. My hands hurt just thinking about it.

I am almost to the point where I can declare my project over...until I go shooting and the whole cycle starts over.

Costumes

This year Josh dressed up as a candy corn and Emma was the candy corn princess. Josh didn't have too much time in his costume since he was in bed early on Sunday. Emma enjoyed trick or treating with her good friend Gracey from next door. We made a quick loop around the block and then Emma sat outside with me handing out candy. She's such a social butterfly-I think she enjoyed handing out the candy more than getting it.

Carving the Pumpkin

This was the first year that Emma was in charge of the design for the pumpkin carving. She was insistent on having a "smiley" jack-o-lantern. She seemed to think that most people's weren't smiling and that was her design goal. Jill and Emma took care of carving the pumpkin while Josh supervised and I took pictures (I can't stand pumpkin "guts"). Emma did a great job with her design, but I think it ended up looking a little more spooky than she intended. Oh well, it fit the holiday well.

Josh Pictures

I took quite a few pictures this weekend of all our Halloween festivities. I was going to toss these into the mix with the Halloween pictures, but they seemed a little out of place. So Josh gets his own post with a few choice pictures from the weekend.

Checking In

Once again, life has managed to get in the way of blogging. October has flown by-it seems nearly impossible that next weekend is Halloween. I think the week that Emma and Jill were gone contributed quite a bit to the pace of the month.

Sadly, the camera hasn't been out too much lately. I assure you that it will be in the next week to capture all of the fun of Halloween with the kids. I did use my phone's camera quite a bit while Emma and Jill were away so that I could send updates to them on what Josh and I were doing. Here are a few of those so that we don't have a completely image-free blog entry.

Josh and I went to a car show that a friend was DJing on Saturday. Here's Josh in front of one of the cool cars. It had a LS6 Corvette engine in it.

Josh auditioning (a little late) for "Lord of the Rings"

He loved having the whole tub to himself...

We spent a lot of time hanging out with my family and Iyla (or as Josh calls her "Boo-Boo")

My delicious skillet potatoes with bacon I made one night once Josh was in bed. It went great with the steak cooking on the grill next to it.

So there's a few pictures to keep things interesting. More to come this week once the holiday festivities begin...

4th Birthday

Here are a few more images from Emma's birthday party on Sunday. She was convinced that since her party was that day, she actually turned four that day. She doesn't equate a birthday with being a certain date, they are determined by when the party is.

It is hard to believe that my baby girl is four already. Today was a rainy and stormy day and it reminded me a bit of the day she was born. The storms weren't as powerful that day, but the weather was very similar. I can recall holding her in the hospital and looking out the window to see the rain falling.

Emma is growing up so quickly, but in a wonderful way. Over the last year she has matured so much and become such a little person. It's exciting to see her grow up every day. Happy fourth birthday Emma, we love you!