Weekend in Midway

We spent a weekend at my parent's home in Midway last week. Lots of good times although the weather turned bad Saturday afternoon. Friday evening we had a short bike ride around the neighborhood. Sorry no photos. Saturday morning we went on a family hike in the Wasatch State Park. Here are some of the happy hikers.

Here is Benjamin taking a break in a secret spot along the way.

We stopped for snacks in this nice little field.

After our hike we drove up to the top of memorial hill. Looks like we've got some fine soilders in the making.

Family Olympics

Helen organized a family olympics while her family was visiting from the U.K.
This is my new favorite photo of Mary.

Benjamin was intense on the bouncy ball.

Hannah intense at soccer (a.k.a. football).

That's actually my cowboy hat -- I was just letting her borrow it.

Helen dominated on the pogo stick.

More Baseball

Hannah and Daniel playing baseball at their sports camp.

Sports Camp

Here are some clicks from Hannah and Daniel's sports camp earlier this summer.

Ready for Spring

Hello, yes I still do exist, just not so much in the blogsphere any more. Kids are ready for spring as am I, so we went outside today to test the weather. A few good ones of my darling, Hannah, although truth be told she spent most of her time out side tormenting her brothers.

She's quite fond of those pink boots. Never seen them with the pink pants before.

Benjamin trying out the skateboard again. All paded up and ready to go.

I think I heard that most skaters actually do wear argyle socks.

And then there's Daniel. Matthew not very photogenic today, so I'll have to post some of him later.

I'm not going to lie, having kids is pretty great. Can't think of a time when people have actually jumped up cheering when I came into the room, but I get that every night when I come home from work and that's some good business.

Adam's Canyon

We had a fun Saturday afternoon in Adam's Canyon. The fall colors were fantastic.

Helen and Mary taking a rest.

I just liked the light on these leaves in a shady spot on the trail.

Looking up. It was a perfect fall day.

Good little hikers.

Flying v. Invisible

Here are my top ten reasons for thinking that it would be way cooler to be able to fly than to be invisible (feel free to rebut with any counter arguments if you disagree).

1. You could get places way faster.

2. People would always be saying, "Hey, there's that awesome kid that can fly." If you were invisible all people would say is, "Where'd old what's-his-name go? He always seems to just disappear."

3. If you were always invisible you'd probably stop wearing clothes -- I mean what would be the point if no one can see you anyway, right? But then what if your invisibility powers ran out.

4. If you were invisible and you had to escape, you might be able to make it, unless they threw sand on you or paint or something. Then they'd total be able to tell where you were. If you could fly, you could just take off and be gone -- paint or no paint.

5. If you could fly, NASA would probably be really interested in you and you could get a free tour of the space shuttle or something awesome like that. If you were invisible, men in white space suits would probably attach enormous tubes to your house, capture you, run a bunch of tests, and then force you to inspect nuclear facilities in Iran or spend years learning Russian just so you could eaves drop on Vladimir Putin.

6. If you could fly, you could get above all the pollution and breath some fresh air. If you were invisible, you could probably see all the disgusting pollution going into your own lungs.

7. If you could fly, you could pretend you had a magic carpet. You could pretend the same thing if you were invisible, but the carpet wouldn't actually fly and no one would be able to see you on it anyway, so that wouldn't be nearly as cool.

8. If you could fly, you could pretend like you could just jump really high. Then you could win lots of Olympic medals and probably play in the NBA. If you were invisible, you probably wouldn't have those option unless you happened to be a naturally gifted athlete and could turn off you invisible powers -- I mean really, who's going to pay not to watch somebody play basketball.

9. If you could fly, you would never have to pay for a plane ticket again. If you were invisible, you could sneak onto planes, I guess, but if the plane was full, you'd have to cram yourself into an overhead compartment, stand in the aisle the entire flight, or wait for someone to fall asleep and then sit on their lap.

10. If you could fly, you could wear an awesome costume with a cape and a special symbol. If you were invisible, you could make a costume, but that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?

(By the way, these photos turned out super grainy because I cranked the ISO all the way up to 1,600. That was the only way I could get a fast enough shutter speed to capture the movement in the bad light. This may have been one case where it would have been okay to break down and actually use my flash, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.)

Saturday Afternoon

I don't intend for this photoblog just to be photos of my family, but I just don't have time right now to track moose through the mountains all afternoon. So, another post of my cute kids. Hannah insisted on wearing these orange goggles in the bath and all afternoon. I like this one of Helen and Hannah. The ceiling made a nice clean background.

Here is another one of Hannah being silly with the goggles.

The afternoon sun was making interesting shadows on the bed where Mary was resting. I thought about using some fill light to get the shadows off Mary's face, but didn't want to lose the shadows on the sheets.

The Kids

My wife took our two oldest kids to a birthday party last Saturday. I stayed home with the younger three. I figured that since I would be chasing them around the house anyway, I might as well be chasing them with a camera. I was focusing on composing photos from the back to the front, in other words, making sure that I got good plain backgrounds. Of course, no one wanted to hold still and act cute in front of the black table cloth I draped over the fridge, but I did get luck on a few photos. Here are the keepers:

This one is by far my favorite. I shot it from across the kitchen with my big lens. The background was just lucky.

I like the background on this one of Daniel also. Too bad he had chocolate chip cookie crumbs all over his face.

This is the only good one I got in front of the hanging table cloth. Not an amazing photo, but since I went to all the trouble of hanging the table cloth -- an exercise that involved tucking inside the fridge, magnets, and chairs -- I thought I was entitled to post at least one.

This last photo was taken just as I was wrapping up for the day. I saw these nuts spilled on the table and it reminded me of a photo my good friend Aimee Roth Smith took of some Cheerios. I was still using the long lens, but switched over to macro.