Junebugz

Last Thursday was picture day at Busy Bee Academy (Juno's preschool). He sat so well for the photographer (which was a huge surprise to me. He hasent sat on something in a strange environment since I traumatized him with the Snow White ride at Disneyland a year ago).

We made a point to watch the girl before him take her pictures so he could see that all was good and there would be no scariness. Except for the creepy bearded photographer who said 'that's gooood huunney' one too many times.

Once we got home I just couldn't let him go without snapping a few photos of him myself. Here are a few of the pictures I took (with a little more personality than the school shots) of my little Junebug.

Beach Day

In an attempt to squeeze as much outdoor play into the last remaining weekends of summer, we headed to the coast. Florence is about 45 minutes west from where we live and it's such a beautiful beach. I thought it would be weird living further from a beach than we were used to in la, but with all the traffic on the 101 it turns out to be the same amount of time.

The Oregon Coast is awesome. The whole coast line is owned by the state or rather 'The People'. So that means, no private beaches for you to trespass on and no crazy parking lots charging $15 per car. Just mile after mile of empty beach. About an hour north of Florence is a town called Newport. That is where the Oregon Aquarium is located. We have been gathering up the stamina to drive all the way up there. Maybe in the winter, it'll give us something to do while Eugene is covered in a blanket of cloudy rain.

This past Sunday on our trip to the beach, we decided to bring Bella, our new Cocker Spaniel. She just seems like a dog that would love running in the sand and frolicking in the water. While she loved the sand, the water was entirely too cold for her. She took one dip and that was good enough for her.

I'm still getting used to the internal light meter on my camera. Haven't quite figured out how to meter off of something darker so it doesn't automatically take the reading from the lightest thing and darken the whole photo. This is why some pictures appear to be darker than others. Giving the illusion that it's later in the day. All of the pictures were taken between 2 and 5 (brightest part of the day).

Juno found a walking stick and poked around at all the jelly fish looking blobs in the sand. He had to point out every shell to us. "Shell right HEEEERE!!!!"



Ryan and the bug decided to race a wave. As you can see, the wave won.


This is me trying to practice some portraits. This huge log was perfect for sitting and framing.

My wonderful boys.

Bella the black blob.


This is an example of a light meter taking a reading from the brightness of the water and sky. It made this image look as if it were 7 or 8pm. I like it though. It makes me feel cold. haha


I'm sure that this was probably our last trip to the coast for the summer. The weather is starting to change into fall and the beach will just be too cold for the remainder of the year.

Labor Day Weekend

This weekend we were lucky enough to be invited back up to Eric's parent cabin at Wauna Lake for the holiday weekend. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. The forecast was rain Friday through Monday. The clouds behaved themselves for the most part. We were able to go out on the boat to the other lakes and look for turtles.



Shelby and Ryan eagerly awaiting some grilled salmon and veggies.


I love this picture mainly because of Juno's facial expression. Hahaha. We went on some hikes and looked for bugs. And bears of course.

This place is so awesome. I feel so privileged to live near so much beauty.

Watchin' movies and eatin' pasta waiting for the rain to come..


And it did...

We're goin' to the fair y'aaaawllll

Come One, Come All and see the white trash come out of the wood work! I knew they had to be somewhere.

Ryan, Jb, and I took a drive down to the Lane County Fair one Sunday. It was a relief from other fairs we'd been to where you have to wait an hour under the summer sun just to get your tickets to get in. Here, there was no line to get tickets and we were the 4th people in line to get in. We went in the mid afternoon. I guess everyone was waiting for the evening when things really got wild! (yikes)

I wish I had snapped a shot of the dude giving rides in his monster truck in a fenced off portion of the parking lot. There were two families strapped into the seats in the bed of the truck. Two toddlers gripping on to each of their mothers screaming for dear life. The Mothers were holding onto their kids with a I can't believe I paid $20 for this look in their eyes and the Dads rode with a little smile creeping out of the side of their mouth as if they were finally getting to fulfill some monster truck fantasy from when they were kids (which wasn't that long ago from the looks of them). The truck did figure eights for about five minutes and Ryan and I joked about how we wished it would have been figure eights for an hour.

After we walked through the gates, the fair was pretty much any other fair.



Food booths, Rides, Carnies, Animal tents, oh and your run of the mill Are You Going To Heaven booth.




Junebug got a Snow Cone. We also got some Cotton Candy but he didn't want anything to do with it. I think his taste buds are still governed by texture. Oh well, more for me!

This ride was the only one he agreed to go on and as you can see he had a fantastic time.



Ryan won him a frog.

We lasted for a couple hours then called it quits and headed home. Thankfully Juno is still too young to want to win every prize from every booth and ride every ride until he pukes.

It was a fun day and I'm happy to say I've had my share of Fairs for the next couple years!

I'm on a boat

Or how Ryan would be singing it, "I'm on a boat, and I'm not too happy about it". heehee. I don't know when Ryan's fear of all things water came about, (and to his defense, it is pretty scary for your first boat experience in years to be on a speed boat) but I am happy he swallowed his fear and sat at the bow of the boat.




We were heading into a uturn at about 50mph at this point. hahaha. So insane.


Good job Ryan!

Cougar Lake

There was a running joke this weekend that some one during the night would come across a cougar running through the forest. Smearing red lipstick on the trees on her hunt for 20 somethings. heeheehee..

When we pulled up to the campsite my jaw hit the ground. I have never seen a more beautiful forest. The only thing I have to compare it to is the Redwood Forest and even then I'd call it a tie.

The grounds were littered with fallen trees, ferns, and moss. The sun peeked though the tall century old trees shooting rays of sunlight to the ground below. It was absolutely beautiful.


Found a Banana Slug. This picture doesn't do justice to how gross it is! I should have put a quarter down or something to show the size. It was about 5 inches long. Imagine that thing getting in your tent and crawling across your face in the middle of the night. hahahha..(sorry, had to do it). YUK!


The camping trip was organized by Amy (on the left). It was a present for her husband Andy (next to Amy). Then we have Jeremy and Elizabeth (and little Kismet the poodle), and of course you all know Ryan and Juno, and the latest addition to our family, Bella the cocker spaniel.



Here's another one of Bella. The best camping puppy ever! We let her off leash and she stayed under my feet the whole time. We brought penny too but she was busy workin' on a bone to care about the forest. Such a princess. haha.

We put together our tent. Ryan then trekked off into the woods to look for firewood with the others.


Once the tent was up, Bella claimed her home and guarded the front door. She was gonna have to protect us from all those cougars....and their 23 year old boyriends...heehee.. sorry, last time.


Juno was being pretty good at this point because we were all always on the move. We'd walk some trails that were surrounding the campsite or go play near the stream. The crazyness didn't start till after the sun went down and Juno still wanted to run around in the dark. He finally went to sleep around 9:30p and at that point mine and Ryan's nerves were shot. 'Can't wait to go camping again without a two year old' was the quote of the night.


But when you see this face bein' all sweet to you, it just makes it all worth it.

After the bug was asleep we were able to relax and hang by the fire. We were roasting marshmallows and making s'mores AND the greatest creation of all things having to do with campfires... The Hobo Eclair. Amy can explain it better than I can. She has a fantastic blog called Playing House. Check it out!
I can't wait to go camping again and with others and share the knowledge of the best camping treat since the s'more.

I love that Eric broke out some Tenacious D as the first song of the night. Way to jump in the deep end first my friend!

Also took some shots of the night sky. This is a 75 second shutter. If I had a shutter release remote, I would have been able to capture some star sweeps. Next time for sure!


It was a good weekend of camping. Ryan and I haven't been camping since the 2001 or 2002 trip to Lake Elsinore with Tom, Heather, Marcus, Ed and David. It was nice to be out in the wilderness again.

Photography Class Project #2 and #3

I have combined two of my last projects in this entry because I am eager to post about new things. Project #2 is called Lines, Shapes, Patterns, Forms, & Designs. I am sure from the title you can guess that we have to look for Lines, Shapes, Forms... and so on, in our pictures.

This first one is a wood pile at a friends cabin. I love the lighting in this one. It really shows the true brown color of the wood. I like lines and shapes of the space between the wood and the shapes the wood creates. blah blah blah....


This next one is a picture of a fern I found while on a camping trip with some friends. (Note: Never Ever Ever take your two year old on a camping trip, unless you love stressing out to the point of crying all the way home and then passing out for 4 or 5 hours due to shear exhaustion. If you are down with all that, go right ahead.)
I love this photo because of the color. The green just lit up the whole class room when we critiqued it in class. I love all the spines of each fern branch and the water you can see on the leaves.


Those are the two I am showcasing from that project.

This next one is me paying homage to the late great Edward Weston and his famous Pepper, 1930 photo. He is probably one of my favorite photographers. His Farm Security Administration work was one of the most profound and ground breaking introductions into real life that there has ever been. So here's to you Mr.Weston! Thank you for being so damn inspiring!

This one I shall call "Tomato, 2009".


My next project was the dreaded Portraits portion of this Photography class. I somehow managed to get Ryan to agree to a photo shoot. The lighting is late afternoon/early evening and the backdrop is a mural of some graffiti in the middle of town. I chose this one to show all you lovely people because I love the color of the background versus the dark black and gray's of Ryan's clothing. I just think it looks interesting. I also like the composition of the photo being shot from below. I would have liked to see him doing something other than checking his phone but I couldn't think of any direction to give him. At least he is natural in this one. I need to work on my direction. It's hard to tell people how to act or look and still expect them to look natural. I think he pulled it off in this one though. I like it. I love taking pictures of Ryan.



That's it folks. I hope I got a good grade in the class. Thinking about taking a Lighting for Photography class in the fall. This class was so much fun and I met some cool people. And some not so cool people! But that's a story for a real conversation and not a blog.

Stay tuned for pictures from the camping trip we took. The place was absolutely beautiful! Definitely going back, WITHOUT THE TWO YEAR OLD!