Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ukey and Kenzie's birthday is just a couple of weeks after Ellie and Gee's birthday so it is more like a birthday month! We picked up Lukey and Kenzie from their dad's house (he lives very near us while Liza lives an hour away so we saved her a couple of hours of traveling) and we spent the afternoon with them before we headed to Sarducci's for their usual birthday dinner.  There were no presents this year other than this nice meal since they will be joining us on our upcoming cross-country Amtrak journey.  We had to talk about clothes, packing and measure them for clothes so it was good we had some time to spend with them before heading to Sarducci's.   This annual birthday dinner at Sarducci's is always nice though!   We picked up Pop on the way to the restaurant... I always forget just how dark this restaurant is until I attempt to shoot some photos...  I believe this is the darkest restaurant we have ever visited!  I'm still learning about t...

I 've fallen way behind in blog entries once again!  I've been focused more on my health, daily physical therapy and resting in preparation of a hectic spring and summer.  We have a big cross-country rail journey coming up and I need to be as strong and as rested as possible.  Of course, I also have health struggles most days too so I always seem to be trying to recover.   About a month ago, we had a little celebration at our house for Ellie's seventh birthday.  She shares a birthday with Gee so it was also a little bit of a celebration for Gee as well.  This was mostly Ellie's day though... Ellie has a couple of Disney trips early this year so this year's gifts were geared toward travel and Disney... Gee made some brownies for Ellie's birthday rather than a cake since there were only a few of us present... Ellie is always fun and always smiling so we had a good time celebrating her birthday with her!

A s I mentioned in my previous blog entry, we spent the day out for Sheila's birthday.  Most of the day was really nice while some of the day was pretty disgusting as will be described later in this blog entry.   The drive up to Burlington was nice...  the sky was clear and it wasn't snowing for a change!  The mountaintops clearly have snow but the snow at our lower elevation was mostly gone over the past few days and wouldn't return until the following day.   Sheila had gone for a massage in mid-morning in Waterbury so we were heading up to Burlington a little later than we normally would have started out.  She enjoyed her massage so that is good.  By the time we arrived in the Burlington area, it was a bit later in the lunchtime hours so we were pretty hungry.  We had decided to have lunch at a new Mexican restaurant in Willison called "Casa Grande" since we had never been there before and we do like Mexican food.  I think we visi...

Y esterday was Sheila's birthday.  She had already opened one gift a few days before her birthday (a good pair of ear buds) but she had another one to open on her birthday.   I had purchased a new ring for her...  the main stone is aquamarine (her birthstone) and it is surrounded by white sapphires... Shooting photos of jewelry isn't something I do all that often.  I had forgotten how surprisingly difficult it is to get a sharp photo due to all the specular highlights reflecting off the jewelry.  To compound this primary difficulty, you need a lot of light coming from many directions which makes even more specular highlight reflections.   Another problem I had with this particular photo is that a ring is quite small.  Since it is small, you need to try to get as close as possible which then results in a very shallow depth of field putting most of the ring out of focus.  I resolved that problem but the specular highlight issue is still a ...

W e had a really nice birthday barbeque celebration in the backyard this past weekend.  Although it was a bit smoky from the Canadian wildfires, the weather was actually quite nice for a change! The company was good.  The food was good.  The drinks were cold.  There were plenty of games to play.  The rain stopped just long enough for us to set up the yard on Friday, have a great time together on Saturday and then clean up before it started raining again.   Looking at these photos, it seems to me that everyone had a good time! As always, the kids congregated on the sailboat most of the day.  At one point, four of the grandchildren were on the sailboat at the same time (photo above).  I have no idea how they all fit in that rather small cockpit!  In hindsight, when I saw that the four of them were on the sailboat together, I should have had Liza place 10 day old Sophia into Lukey or Kenzie's arms too so I could get a photo of all the gran...