4th of July at Mikie's on the lake

Thanks for Mike, Becky and the crew for throwing a fantastic party on the 4th. Honestly, that was a better fireworks display than I've seen in any town-sponsored fireworks show. Great time! Thank you.

To everyone we saw there, it was a pleasure to catch up with all of you. Between tonight and last night at Ken and Maeyee's, this has been a perfect weekend.

The images from the fireworks are here, but I seem to have had technical difficulties with my shots from that daylight hours. Due to a failed CF card, those shots may be lost. I will see if I can recover them. Anyway, enjoy the fireworks.

What's going on?

The silence is temporary... I'm creating books right now so I've got nothing new to post at the moment.

Book number 1 is ordered. It is Grandpa Mike's 70th Birthday, and I created and ordered it through Apple's iPhoto Application in iLife '08. I pre-ordered iLife '09 today as well and it should arrive on February 6th. iPhoto '09 features face detection and automatic tagging of known faces. I'm pretty excited about that feature. iMovie '09 (also part of iLife '09) features incredible "jitter" stabilization that removes hand shake from video. Again, I'm quite excited about this as well. First impressions on creating and buying books from Apple through iPhoto? Easy but expensive. I'm really looking forward to seeing the quality.

Book number 2 is in process. It is a "best of" our kids photo book (2006-2008) and I am creating it through a recommended photo service named blurb. The kind community over at FredMiranda.com recommended it to me. It is 115 pages so far, but the customization level is nice and the pricing looks much better than Apple iPhoto. Curious to see who delivers the better quality.

Book number three will follow, and it will be by another repeatedly recommended service named MyPublisher.com. More on that later.

After my little burst of hardcopy publishing is over, it's on to Cindy Lou & Rob's wedding. I'm excited to start working on these pictures. Beautiful couple, beautiful setting, beautiful light. Should be interesting.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2009 everyone! I used the day off today to complete pictures from Mike's 70th Birthday Party in Los Angeles from October. It was a great time indeed... well done Ellie, and we were happy to celebrate your day, Mike.

Holiday slump

Sorry the updates have been so few and far between. Holidays...

I'm working on all of the late-October California pictures right now. Some are posted, more will follow this week.

Scan day

Today I'm scanning in pictures and uploading. Many thanks to cousin Barbara and cousin Patty for some of these pictures.

I posted our daughter's first school pictures into her gallery today. The 3 images can be found here. Isn't she just the cutest little girl you've ever seen? Daddy's wrapped.

I also am very pleased to have been asked to scan everyone's friend Mikie's "Fireman Collection." See if you can find out what picture doesn't belong with the others.

As I mentioned above, the images that my cousins contributed can be found here (Barbara / Patty, I have the originals and will return them to you... thanks again). I love antique photos!

Back home!

It feels good to be back home.

We spent the last week having an absolute blast in beautiful southern California. We spent 2 days at Lego Land, 4 days at Disneyland, and a couple of days in Los Angeles to catch up with family, share a ton of laughs and good times, and to celebrate a special birthday for Mike.

Our kids absolutely adored their west coast cousins and we did too. It's going to be a while before the pictures are ready to post, but I will let you all know when they are.

Happy Birthday, Gampa!

Mike, we had a fantastic time sharing in your Birthday celebration. Great crowd, great party, and a great reason to celebrate. I wish you many, many more very Happy Birthdays.