Winding down

The last 10 days have been fun, busy, full of laughs and sugar!  Becca, Austin, and Lily left yesterday to drive back to Utah.  They had a much quicker trip this time than the one coming out.  The day they drove here, Donner Pass received 5 feet of new snow and it was slow going.

Tonight we dropped Laura off at the airport to catch a red-eye back to New York.  David leaves Friday evening to return to the U of U.  It is always a little sad when Christmas is over, the tree comes down, the decorations get packed away, and the festivities have ended.  But I have to say that 2012 was a really good year and we are looking forward to new activities and goals for 2013.

I wasn't that great at taking pictures this Christmas-- I was busy cooking, baking, and entertaining and sort of forgot.  But here are a few pictures of the good times we had:

This is the traditional picture of Laura, Krissy, and Becca on Christmas Eve.  We always have to take this one and Krissy always has to be in the middle.

DIL Jess and her mother, Ladda, made delicious Thai appetizer wontons for us on Christmas Eve.

I got a new lens for Christmas and since we didn't have any little kids to take pictures of, I decided to test it out on Lily while she played in the backyard.  She was a cooperative subject.

Yesterday, while we were still in our good clothes, I made the adults take part in a little photo shoot:

 David

 Mark

 Laura

 I made Laura let me take MORE pictures of her today!  Soon I won't have anyone here to practice on!

Mahalo

Earlier this month we went to Kauai and enjoyed some lovely weather.  In fact, it was a little drier this time because they are having sort of a drought.  There weren't as many waterfalls, but it was still pretty. I had time to practice my photo skills.  The first thing I wanted to do is get some sunset photos.

And I almost missed this sunrise:

This time we stayed in Poipu at the Marriott Waiohai.  Usually we've been at the Marriott Beach Club in Lihue, so this was a change of scenery for us:

There was a sandbar that you could walk out on to look back at the resort and the surrounding beaches.  The tide from the two inlets came together on the sandbar.

We also got a chance to try out some different places to eat (which were good!)

You can't go to Kauai without noticing that there are chickens everywhere.... but they are pretty chickens, so it's okay.

My sister, Bonnie and her husband, Don came with us:

They didn't know that later in the week we'd almost kill them by making them kayak on that river down there!

We walked along the "lithified cliffs" and Mark decided to go out on this ledge.  It made me queasy but he wouldn't move until I took his picture.  Turns out that it is not as precarious as it looks.

If you look closely, you can see Mark near the edge of the cliff..... again!

I had plenty of opportunities to take pictures of the surf.  I love surf hitting rocks.  I have a ton of pictures of that, but I won't bore you with them all.

We also took a catamaran up to the NaPali Coast.  It wasn't as green this time, but still beautiful!

We went to Waimea Canyon and hiked a little ways down into it.  Okay, it was about a 4 mile hike... sorry Bonnie and Don.  We told them it was just a relaxing vacation.

One false step and he goes over the 800 ft drop.  Okay, there was another preliminary drop, but THEN it was 800 ft down.

On our kayak trip on the Wailua river, we also hiked into the jungle but the waterfall that was supposed to be there was dried up.  It was still pretty and had some interesting things to see.

 This is a vine, but looked more like tangled roots.

 The path was covered with roots

They said this was a flood tower.

Not all of the waterfalls were dried up.  This is the waterfall they used to show at the beginning of Fantasy Island.  You are probably too young to remember that TV show!

Lastly, Kauai (and I suspect most places with a tropical climate) has the most amazing trees.

Mahalo for reading this blog post!

Jackson photography workshop

For Christmas Mark gave me a gift certificate to attend a photography workshop of my choice.  It was something that I have wanted to do ever since my brother attended one and I saw the gorgeous pictures he came back with.  Photography has always been something I've been interested in, but at this time of my life I've had more time to actually learn how to do it and how to use my cool (fairly) new camera.

So, the day after Rebecca's wedding we drove to Jackson, Wyoming so that I could meet up with the workshop.

 I was told that these antlers are all collected at the wildlife preserve and are shed by the elk.  In other words, no animals were harmed in making these arches.  And there were several in town!

I was VERY nervous about it -- I was sure that I would be the dumbest, least experienced and oldest person attending the workshop and they would all laugh at me and point their fingers and say "hoot-hoot" (Simpson's reference here) at me.  I WAS the oldest person, but they did not laugh.  I was delighted to learn that instead of the usual 12 people in the seminar, there were only 4 of us with 2 instructors!  That made it really nice to get help and feedback as we were out shooting.

Ox Bow Bend

It was a 2-day seminar.  Both mornings we'd meet at 6:30 am and go out to catch the morning light on certain landscape.  Then we'd drive around the Teton National Park and surrounding areas looking for animals to photograph.  We saw pronghorns and moose.  I was disappointed that we only saw female moose, but the hunting season had begun, and our instructors said that the male moose and elk seem to know when to make themselves scarce.  We also saw bison in the distance, but couldn't get close enough to photograph them.

Ox Bow Bend

We would return to the hotel around 11:30 am for a break and then meet up again around 3:30 to go out and look for animals and get ready for some sunset shots.  I rented a 300mm lens from a store in Salt Lake City, and it was very heavy, but fun to get some closeup shots.  I learned a lot about my camera, my tripod, lighting, and shutter speed.

We also went to a spot on the Snake River where Ansel Adams took an iconic picture.  The trees have grown up a lot since then.

There were a few barns in the area that are favorite spots for photographers.  Sometimes you have to get there fairly early if you want to be able to set up your tripod in just the right spot as the sun rises.

Some of the wildlife:

 I swear she was posing in this shot.  There were about a dozen of us on the shore across the pond from her and every time she'd lift her head, you could hear the click-click-click of everyone's shutters firing away.  She stood quite still for a full 30 seconds, allowing everyone to get the shot and then went back to eating the grass that was under the water.

Some sunset pictures

Schwabacher's landing:

 And then after sunset, a sort of Rorschach-type picture with about a 20 second shutter speed.

It was a really fun experience and I'm glad I had the chance to go to the seminar.

Mark and I drove back down to Salt Lake City, taking the backroads past Bear Lake and Logan canyon.  The fall colors were a little past their prime.  

We stopped briefly in Paris (Idaho) for a quick photo of the Paris Tabernacle:

When we got to Logan, we headed north for a short visit to my parent's graves.  It is a really pretty spot.

We spent the weekend going to the BYU Homecoming game (boo!) and visiting with David (yea!) who is attending the U of U.