Category Archives: P365

Project 365

There HAD To Be A Kangaroo: More Aussie P365

Now you know I couldn’t possibly post all of my Aussie photos without at least one picture of a Kangaroo. Once again we found ourselves at a small farm near my parent’s house where we could feed the rabbits and guinea pigs, collect a few still-warm eggs from the chickens and throw some bread at a couple of emus.

Sadly the kangaroo population has dropped somewhat since our first visit and this little guy was the only one who came to see us when we shook the can of food. Well, him and a few extremely-aggressive deer. I was afraid to pull put the camera without a fence to protect me, although we were able to get behind the fence and pet the animals.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, we had a great time and definitely had our fix of animals. A few of the Australian variety…

and some of your general, run-of-the-mill farm animals…

It was a fun day for my city kids, even if Samuel was a little traumatized by the experience of being surrounded by animals that towered above him, one of which stole a can of food right out of his hand.

Thankfully he’s young enough that he’ll recover and I’m sure we’ll visit the farm again on our next trip to Australia. It’s become something of a tradition, although admittedly a very smelly and dirty one. Yes, I’m a city girl too.

Easter A Few Weeks Late: Mosaic Monday

Thomas was relieved to hear that the Easter Bunny would find us all the way across the other side of the world in Australia. Until he thought about it a little and  worried that E.B. might not make it to The States in time to deliver eggs to his friends. Of course the Easter Bunny has the same magical powers as Santa Claus, so when he understood this he was comforted enough that he could relax and enjoy the feeling that comes with the promise of chocolate.

On Easter morning, the boys woke up to dusty bunny footprints peppered around the kitchen and living room. The Easter bunny was kind enough to leave a chocolate wombat for each of the boys in a basket, but they were expected to work for the rest of the booty by searching for eggs around the house.

After a quick chocolate breakfast, It was Mummy and Auntie Emma’s turn to hide some eggs in the backyard. Thomas showed his competitive side by running around and grabbing as many as possible while Samuel had to be encouraged. I’m not sure he was fully aware of what lay inside the shiny foil wrappers.

It was so wonderful that my children were able to experience an Aussie Easter, complete with sunny skies (although I remember rainy camping trips at Easter in my childhood – must be the drought), chocolate Aussie animals (instead of bunnies) and, most of all, their Grandparents, Aunt and Uncle.

Side Note: I am aware that Easter was over and done about a month ago. It’s just taking me that long to get caught up on the photos I took during our vacation. And don’t get me started on my mother’s pleas to see the pictures I took of my brother’s wedding. They’re coming soon, I promise. It’s just that with work and pre-school and daycare and Kei’s school and everything that goes in to making sure my children are fed and clothed and in a (reasonably) clean house, I haven’t had time to sit and edit photos. Or even take many, for that matter. Yes, my P365 project has skipped a few days but I figure that, with the thousands of pics I took in Australia, I am more than making up for it.

Backyard Adventures & Bigfoot? Another P365

When you tell people in Oregon that you are about the head to Australia for a few weeks, their first reaction is usually one of envy. Not just for the fact that you are heading across the other side of the world, but also because they immediately assume that you will be enjoying sunny skies during your stay. However, I am from Melbourne and, while our summers are generally sunny and hot, March/April can be a little hit or miss.

Thankfully, despite a recent breaking of the drought, the sun gods were smiling on us during most of our stay and we were able to enjoy a lot of time in the great Aussie outdoors. The kids fully embraced the 1/2 acre of grass and dirt (LOTS of dirt) at their disposal.

The colour coordination of their outfits is purely accidental. In fact I’m not even sure if I dressed them that morning.

This next one is my favourite, even though Thomas should really be in focus. Maybe that’s why I love it so much – you have to search a little for the fun part.

As soon as I saw this next photo, it reminded me of another famous picture.

It’s uncanny.

Smiles

Today’s entry for the I ♥ Faces challenge is all about smiles, so of course I went back through my photos of Australia looking for the perfect smile. The sad thing is that my children are already beyond the age of smiling when I need them to. Oh, they smile on command but it involves the word “cheese”, although I swear I never taught them how to do that. I think it’s innate, like frowning when they’re unhappy or desperately needing to talk to me suddenly every time I pick up the phone for an important call.

Oh, back to the actual smile. I caught this one of my little (now 30 year old!) brother while holding our cousin’s baby. I think this photo is so sweet and I know he is probably going to groan and wonder why on earth I posted it for all to see. It’s because you’re just too cute, Jono, and this photo cancels out every single smirk you’ve flashed me when I’ve tried to take your photo in the past. 🙂

Aussie Colour: A Monday Mosaic

I usually like to include at least four photos in my mosaic posts, but my access to the computer has been limited this weekend while Kei finishes up a project for school. It’s true, though, that sometimes the best results are forced on us and I really love how this one turned out.

We were so lucky with the Autumn weather that we experienced in Australia during our visit with temperatures in the high 20s (about 80 degrees farenheit) every day and beautiful blue skies. Couple that with a broken drought that had turned the previously brown grass to a deep green, and we found ourselves enjoying Australia at its finest.

It wasn’t necessary for me to bump up the saturation on these photos – the sky and the grass truly were that colour.

Scenes from Across The Pond: Project 365

Now that my travel rant is over (read about it here, here and here), I am excited to be back to posting my P365 photos. The photos that I’ll be posting over the next few weeks have been painstakingly culled from the 1000 or so that I managed to take during our vacation in Australia. I’m sure I’ll be posting more than one for some days, so I’m think that maybe I should rename this little project “Project-the-sky’s-the-limit”. My end of year photo album is going to be the size of an encyclopedia.

First up is a photo you may have seen in one of my rant posts. Kei discovered early on in our trip that Samuel is fascinated with watching movies on the video camera. We’re lucky if he watches more than 15 minutes of Blues Clues at at a time but apparently video of himself doing… well… nothing, is absolutely fascinating. Thankfully we discovered this early in our trip and it saved our sanity more than once by the end.

Another one from our marathon trek to Aus. If you’re going to get stuck in an Airport then San Francisco is one of the better places to spend your time. Just the thought of possibly being stuck for 11 hours at LAX makes me break out in hives.

Of course we did finally make it to Australia on Saturday morning and, after shipping my kids off to spend a couple of days alone with their grandparents, Kei and I joined the Buck’s and Hen’s festivities – known as Bachelor and Bachelorette parties in my adopted home. After a five-minute emergency shoe purchase (mine were all in a bag that United airlines had sent to Brisbane), I was able to spend the evening with a wonderful group of ladies – moving from bar to restaurant to bar to 80’s dance club, until my feet and sleep-deprived body refused to cooperate and I was forced to head back to my brother’s place at around midnight.

I had such a great night with my new sister-in-law, Emma (the one in the middle), and her friends. The fact that I was without children and therefore able to sleep in the next morning was an added bonus.

On Sunday we did nothing. Oh, we tried to watch a movie on TV in the afternoon but we all fell asleep so that plan was abandoned. We did manage to drag ourselves out of bed to head out for dinner at a tasty Indian restaurant on Sydney road and I am glad we did. One of the things I miss since moving to Portland is really good Indian food.

I also miss trams. I am aware that we have similar contraptions here in Portland, and they’re great, but they’re just not the same as the original.

Monday saw us heading up to my parents house which is about a 3 hour drive north of Melbourne. 3 hours by car but about 4.5 hours by train and bus. I was actually able to read 5 chapters of a book in one sitting! Of course I missed my children but I have learned to appreciate these rare moments of peace (and alone time) when I can get them and I heard that they had a fabulous time with their grandparents. This is Southern Cross station (although I still call it Spencer Street station through force of habit).

Home Again..

We returned home about 7:30 last night after a marathon flight from Australia. Thankfully the return trip was a lot less eventful that our trip over (more on that soon). We’ve now had a chance to catch up on some sleep but I think we’re all going to suffer jetlag for a few days. Thomas finally went to sleep at around 12:30am after declaring many times that “NOTHING was working” to get him to sleep last night. (Turns out that singing “Hey Jude” helps. Must be the repetition of na na naaa nanana.) He woke the rest of us up at 11:30am. I’m a little nervous about bedtime tonight but hoping that the long sleep was more catching up than time adjustment.

You can judge by the lack of blog posts that internet access during our visit was not ideal – in fact I was completely offline for the last four days (gasp! horror!). Actually it was a nice break, but I am now ready to catch up on the more than 1000 blogs in my reader, many facebook messages and, of course, start posting on here again.

Now I just need to find a little time to download pics of our trip, including the very important photos from my brother Ben’s wedding. Needless to say it was beautiful and I basically cried from the moment I saw my new sister-in-law walk out in her dress to the very late ride home in the taxi to the hotel. What can I say? Weddings make me emotional (as does Oprah. I blame the new hormones I grew when I gave birth to my children).

Side note: I caught up on Lost last night before going to bed at around 2am so comments on key plot points are now allowed.

I’ll be back with more photos soon but in the meantime I’ll share some P365 pics that I took before our trip.

A few days before our trip I went on a mummy-son date with Thomas to see an original production of “Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus” performed by the Northwest Children’s Theater. We caught a free early read-through of the play a couple of months ago so we were eager to see the fully-costumed version. It was a LOT of fun and I hope they are able to take the show on the road. Of course photos were not allowed in the theatre so I had to make do with a pic of the beautiful building. The theatre itself is over 120 years old and is just stunning.

Thomas wanted to take a little time for some drawing on the steps outside the theatre before we left. Part of the play required us to learn how to draw the pigeon and Thomas wanted to practice while it was still fresh in his mind.

We all went out for dinner on the Sunday night (starting our vacation early) and I broke out the wide angle lens. I rarely use this lens mainly because I am too lazy to change from the 50mm. Turns out that I miss the wonderfully distorted portraits that I can get with the wide angle. Must remind myself to switch lenses more often.

I’m also apparently to lazy to wipe Samuel’s mouth.

One of the last nights before our trip is well summed up with this photo – frantic and fast.  I’m not sure if there will ever be a time when I find myself prepared for an overseas trip days in advance of our departure. I was doing laundry to the last moment, dropping something off at the office (and leaving two of our passports there – LONG, traumatic story that was part of our eventful trip over) and shoving things into bags almost as we walked out the door. I’m dreaming of the day when the kids can do their own packing or, at the very least, keep themselves entertained while I do it for them.

So tomorrow we get back to reality – school, daycare and work. I’ll be back to post more after the jetlag lifts and I am able to emerge from a monsterous pile of laundry.

Catching Up: P365

It’s been a crazy busy week (funny, seems I say the same thing every week). The good news is that I have been maintaining my photo-a-day habit and have a few more to share.

The first one is from a dinner-date with my two boys while Kei was at school. It started off in the way the photo seems to suggest – all calm and peaceful. It ended with two boys running around a restaurant while I managed to inhale my dinner and then make a promise to myself that I would think twice before taking the boys out alone for dinner again.

I used a funky preset on this next photo (taken at work). I try to limit my use of presets that drastically change colours, because it is so easy to get carried away with them, but I really like the colour green that was brought out in this one and I am a huge fan of anything that will make ventian blinds look more interesting.

Driving home from a quick trip to Seattle for work – 3 hours up and four hours back thanks to terrible Seattle/Tacoma traffic. I think I took this photo about 3 hours into the return trip while I frantically searched the radio airwaves for anything that was not country or christian music. (apologies to fans of either genre – just not my thing). Isn’t it a human right that you be able to access NPR from anywhere in the country? Well, it should be.

Samuel and I had the rare opportunity to spend some time alone together. He baked me a cake out of plastic easter eggs and then made me sing “Happy Birthday” over and over again while I pretended to blow out the candles.

Dinner at the Japanese Izakaya again. I think that officially makes it twice in two weeks. The food was fabulous but the kids were difficult. I fear our days of eating out together as a family may have to take hiatis until the boys are… well… eighteen… I remember feeling this way with Thomas at around the same age that Samuel is now and, while it took us a little while, we did eventually work up the courage to venture out of the house to eat again.

Back with more soon. I have some more catching up to do.

Living: P365

This P365 post is really a glimpse at our life over the past week. Well, I suppose that is the purpose behind the project, but I find that some of my photos provide more of a documentary of life than others. There are definitely days when I struggle to find something to photograph – when I can’t imagine taking one more photo of my kids at bathtime – but this week seemed more natural. Maybe it was the craziness of our schedule or the fact that we have an extra hour of daylight. Whatever the reason, I know I’ll enjoy looking back on these images knowing exactly what our lives were like in the second week of March, 2010.

The first photo is something I have been wanting to capture for many weeks – ever since the very last season of Lost began and I invited a couple of girlfriends over to enjoy the experience with me. What began as a small gathering for the premiere has become a weekly ritual that I am going to miss when it is all over in just a couple of months. Yes, I love the show and I thoroughly enjoy discussing all of its intricacies with people who are similarly obsessed, but I think the unexpected side-effect of our get-togethers is the ability to enjoy each others company without the distraction of children or…well…life. We find ourselves chatting for hours after the show ends. Lost is really bringing people together (ok, that was a little corny).

I captured this photo at breakfast a few days ago. I just love the way Samuel is in awe of whatever it is that Thomas is doing. It’s a fair representation of their relationship right now – one of hero worship (although not devoid of arguments).

After-bath hair – one of the many small thrills in our ordinary lives.

The Ishidas had a good week last week so we took an opportunity to celebrate with dinner at a local restaurant called Miho Izakaya. Fabulous Japanese “pub” food. I know we’ll be visiting again.

Fun coincidence: Miho is my sister-in-law’s Japanese name so we should be able to remember the name fairly easily.

Saturday brought a much-anticipated girl’s weekend. My friend’s mother kindly offered up her house while she is out of town so we took the opportunity to drive 45 minutes out of Portland, but it may as well have been 6 hours. I felt like I had a true break. There are more photos of the weekend to come, but for the purpose of P365 I share a glimpse below.

I started writing this on Tuesday, but since it’s now Wednesday I suppose it’s appropriate to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s day. I appreciate it for the simple fact that it takes one more step out of the daily getting dressed decision-making process. Green shirts all round.