Jeffie was able to get Friday off from work, I was able to find cheapish hotel tickets, and the Puppy dog had all of his shots up to date. It was the perfect storm coming together.

It’s Friday morning, 7 am. Jeffie’s Uncle Greg was in Mobile, AL prepping, and would be wearing his arm out in 12 hours for Mardi Gras. We intended to see that.

(warning… Don’t read anymore if you don’t have high speed. More pictures than any post prior….)

So… Kids up, get dressed, and kindly be civilized about getting into your car seats! Jack, out of the Kennel, into the van! Throw the last bits of packing around the camera and computer gear already loaded into the van, and we are on the way! Oh yeah, sorry Jack, but your trip is considerably shorter than ours. 7:30am, Jack was introduced to the several young ladies that would be his escort for the weekend at the Franklin Kennels.

It’s about 6.5 hours to Mobile from Franklin. We didn’t make it in that. About Cullman, AL, we realized that the dresses for Mommy and Mary were still in the Kitchen. Outside of Montgomery, we did the Lunch stop as well as a bit of shopping to replace the articles that we weren’t going back for. But we did make it down in plenty of time.

I managed to get reservations at the Holiday Inn on Government street. It’s DIRECTLY on the parade route. The parades start on it’s back property, loop past the front of the hotel about half way through the route, and then runs along the side of the property at the end. It’s hard to find a better stop. Additionally, we were on the tenth floor, almost directly looking down on Government street.

Evidence A:

Our aunt Janie was planning on using room to get changed after the Parade, so that she could attend the Ball. We’ll have to do that one year, but this time was a bit rushed, and kids would need attending to. She brought a bag of Mardi Gras beads and treats from Uncle Greg for the Kids – Just in case. I can’t describe how much we appreciated it. It set the mood of the Kids absolutely perfectly, and really energized them for the Parade to come.

William was so excited he was going to crawl straight through the window. Some more of the Family started to appear, including the second newest arrival – Colin. (The newest arrival – Sean, was the second reason we made this trip. His Baptism was on Saturday – That will probably be the next post.)

Everyone was gearing up. It was a great temp outside, but down on the street, the wind knocked that temp right out of the park, so jackets and bundling were the order for the night.

Christian ready to grab anything coming his way!

Mary Vic… Not sure what’s really going on yet, but having a blast none the less.

Jim and the newest member… bundled and ready to go. Kid was undoubtably the warmest person on the street!

Great Grandma, Mary and Jeff – Great grandma was quite displeased that she didn’t know we were coming… telling everyone she did not like that she was ‘always the last one to know’. We responded simply by stating that it was hard for it to be a surprise when you knew what was going on. I don’t think she appreciated that.

No one knows what’s going on…. But we’re waiting and ready for what ever it might be! It’s out first Mardi Gras, first Parade, everything. I marched in a New Orleans Mardi Gras Parade, but had never been on the other side of the barriers, so it was a great night of firsts for our entire family.

We had a bit of an issue during the parade – Mary did her best to get the treats in the only way she knew how. Holding the bag open for them to put the stuff in. Needless to say, that simply didn’t work. There were tears, there was crying. Then, around the 3rd float, some stuff came back her way, Daddy was able to scoop up two roses for her, and the mood improved significantly.

Shortly afterwards, Mommy and Mary worked as a team to get (Mommy gesturing frantically and catching) the prize of the night! One BIG stuffed Dora the Explorer doll. The Conde who threw that doll made my daughters night and our trip was a fantastic success. See below.

We had a few more issues… One VERY large bag of beads (as in the original shipping bag… probably about 5-10 lbs) was hurled at us… And by us, I mean William and Great Grandma. Thankfully, I was able to snag it right before impact, but man that was scary. Brian took a few beads directly in the face, and Aunt Susan has a black eye from a bag of hershey kisses. I had things bouncing off my head, but I’m guessing some were aiming directly at the camera.  You have to be on your toes, and even that isn’t enough sometimes.

Now, there were a large number of great floats, and this post is long enough as it is. I’ll put up a gallery, or another post just about some of that. But, I would be remiss without this:

Uncle Greg’s Pirate Float! It was the last float of the parade, and frankly, that just made it the highlight of parade in our opinion!

Here’s the man himself. The Stuffed animal in front of him was especially for Christian, and it was delivered in style.

Success!

Unfortunately, the Rose for his wife was NOT delivered quite as well…. But we have proof that it was intended to be!

Collecting the aftermath. Uncle Robert grabbed William and they had a great time (William especially) collecting Doubloons that we had scooped to the area, but couldn’t grab until the barriers were removed. MV and Mommy grabbed half a billion Moon pies.

Mary and her loot! Her getting the Dora was absolutely awesome, even though William has attached onto it very much at this point.

I’ll post more, even if they are just captioned photos… We’ll see how well that goes. I took over 2000 pictures and it’s taking quite a time to work through them. There is the story of the after parade Photo shoot – Aunt Janie had the audacity to tell me that she wasn’t Photogenic. Oh, I have soo much proof otherwise. Plus we have the Baptism, and the parades Saturday Night. I sense a series of posts!

We’ve been twice in the last week, which is surprising to me. But then again, it’s a large playground to them… It’s not like they are going to actually spoil the fun learning anything.

Part of the attraction of the Science museum for me was obviously trying to get the kids interested in Science. That actually wasn’t very difficult. William isn’t showing preferences.. It’s all good. Mary is 5, so therefore EVERYTHING must be answered. If we can get the scientific method involved there, we’ll be ahead of the game.

So, we went for the Winter wonderland exhibit… Which, frankly, was an artificial snow machine (soap suds). Joy. And a Planetarium movie on Ice Worlds.

Color me unimpressed.

MV and W, however, were thrilled. 2 hours later, as we were leaving that afternoon (New Years Eve), it was decided that we would come back.

That turned out to be Saturday. Quicker than anticipated.

At this point, Daddy is reeling from a Camera body that he’s been waiting months for…. and it doesn’t focus. At all. The motors don’t click, nada. Disappointing is not really the word. So we’re taking the old one (which, truth be told, is still a good body. It’s just not … ), because the only place I could get stock on this was from a shop out of New York that I’ve done business with before. So there wasn’t going to be any resolution to this problem this weekend.

I’ve decided to limit myself even more, using a single 50mm prime lens.

Good news, it’s cheap.

Better news, it’s fast, which helps since there isn’t any LIGHT in this place.

Best news, it’s sharp, light, and makes a camera package that I can weave around the center without worry.

The Center of the Adventure Science Museum is a multi-story tower filled with various activities. It’s actually one of my biggest gripes, because it simply hasn’t changed since we first went there several years ago. A refresh would not hurt it one bit.

The kids didn’t care, so long as they could climb to the top!

The other area that seems to be static in time is the Body Quest exhibit. For William, the slide out of the lower intestine, complete with bodily noises was the best ever…

Unless you count the Ambulance.

Mary, who apparently maintains that a flower in the hair is perfectly sanitary in an OR, was intent on surgery. With Ketchup as the main tool, obviously. Apply directly to the retina.

Scattered around the center are various activities, including the ever popular coin eating spiral of death! Every aquarium, museum, and shopping center was one of these, and we have to hit it each time. The Adventure Science center was no different.

Or was it?

Yes, they plugged the hole at the bottom, so you could repeat the coin rolls over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. With Sister’s help, William was quite enthusiastic to do exactly that.

The newest exhibits were relating to the Sudekum Planetarium. The Kids really enjoyed this. 2 liter air pressure Bottle rockets, planet displays, stars, and weightlessness displays were all fun.

If they would only let Mary do them.

She’s big enough! Look!

No, NOT at the feet! Maybe in the summer.

And to close it out…. Jack stayed at home. Doing this.

(taken with the new body, manually focused, but in the dark! 2 stops better than the best the old could do! The replacement should be here this week.)

ANYWAYS…. And then Jeffie comes driving up. 10ish. That’s not right.

Is everything ok?

Well, not really……

And in she comes with an 11 pound ball of fur and teeth. And Droopy eartips. She’s been given an 8 week old male German Shepard dog.

We had an incredible dog, that was with us practically our entire relationship. Jeffie came into my house AROUND THIS TIME of the year 15 some odd years ago, carrying Kosh. And we loved her dearly. She was the absolutely best friend and dog we could have ever asked for. She was the maid of honor at our wedding. (don’t ask me… Maybe Jeff will actually explain with a post. She hasn’t posted in a while. ) and she became super protector for both of the kids. But time and a spinal disease finally caused her to have to leave us, and it’s been a very different year without her. Some of the reduction in ‘hassle’ and certainly DOG HAIR (Kosh could shed more hair in an hour than some dogs do in a life) has been nice. But it’s also been much lonelier without that constant greeting at the door when we came home.

This GUY! is not Kosh. Oh, he reminds. (And you can actually see a picture of MV and Kosh IN his pictures) And oh boy, he’s cute and playful.

And 8 weeks old. Which is most definitely not house broken.

By a LONG shot.

Make that a light year WIDE long shot.

And my, those little puppy teeth are sharp. And Active. Cat 5 cables don’t stand a chance. Power cords should at least prove entertaining.

And HE’s definitely a boy, and he’s got a dominating personality. He did NOT like the Vet doing the physical. There was some snapping at hands during that. Ms. Kosh was as gentle as possible with the kids, and frankly, unless they or Jeff was in danger, would hurt anything more than a Fly. Flies were actually fair game to her. Rabbits too, but she never came close to actually getting those.

Puppy here… Oh, not at all like what we were used to. I can see the 3 year old Human boy grabbing the puppy, and fur and kid skin mixing with blood and flying. And I can definitely see the hugs and kisses immediately afterwards, from both sides. Too Protective?

I took him back this afternoon, after getting his shots and physical, leash, collar and food, before the Kids could see him. I’ve got to think about this, We have to talk about this as a family. I’m not saying ‘No’, but I want to be so sure before I say ‘Yes’, and introduce him to Mary and William. It’s a long commitment, and I want the best for both us, and him. I asked for a few days to discuss and think.

(And until we make up our minds he’s not touching the d0gz.net domain. Kids might see.)

I am so incredibly conflicted.

William isn’t potty trained yet. This guy doesn’t even know when he’s even peeing at this point. It would be a ton of work, and disruption. And Hair.

But then again, I have ALWAYS said that Mary was going to have a BIG Male German Shepard Dog, that was HERs. Not mine, not Jeff’s. Mary’s. So that when she’s Ten and playing outside, anyone that looks at her funny would have a curious feeling of being separated from their trachea. His name would be Guard.

I’m asking for advice. ANYONE. Do we take the puppy?

Do we wait for a little more age on the children? (William being my major concern. Mary is big enough and grown enough to begin to understand. She obviously wouldn’t take care completely of him, but I don’t worry about her jamming her fingers in his Eyes and having the ensuing battle of teeth.)

I don’t think he’s a bad dog. I think he could EASILY be the protector for both of them. He’s 11 pounds at 8 weeks, and looks to me like he’s going quite a long ways to grow. He’ll very obviously be a great dog. But I do so worry about that dominate personality and the different dog that He would be from Kosh. Both kids remember Kosh, and they played well with her. She put up with a LOT from them, and the worse she ever gave back was a licking (which ALWAYS actually did the trick in making them stop. She was a smart dog). I don’t see him being as laid back as her, and I worry about the initial learning curve from the children.

In a lot of ways, this is just for me to get some of my feelings and doubts out there. But I’ll still ask. Any suggestions?

Turns out… the backlog apparently works differently.

So… A week before Thanksgiving, the scheduler for the area calls Jeff. There has been a cancellation. Can Greg do December?

Emails are sent to me asking this question. Immediately after reading first email, I notice second email, with answer ‘Yes.’

Oh boy.

(There is only SLIGHT liberty taken there…)

So, It’s pull out ALL the archives, load them up, sort them through, remove the duplicates, rebuild the index, throw all that out, because you should have removed the Duplicates BEFORE adding them to Aperture, and Aperture doesn’t like it when 30,000 pictures disappear at a time.

NOW, you can start actually figuring out which 20-25 pictures are actually going to make the cut. I didn’t pull much of anything from before 2003, so Five years. That worked out to be around 150,000 pictures in the archive library (not counting the years 2007-2008).

2007-2008 were easy. I had already been using Aperture to handle all of my Digital asset management, so it was a relatively simple task to pull photos that were already marked well, and choose there.

But, I wanted to get some the earlier stuff as well. Neither Jeff nor I wanted to put recent pictures of the Kids on display. Jeff does work in the Public, and DOES have to tell people NO. Having the kids up there readily identifiable and letting some upset person pull the comparison wasn’t going to happen. Having said that, some of the early pictures of Mary don’t give you a good indication on how she is now, so those became fair game.

It’s not kosher to sell directly from the Library… So we now have a new Domain and face for some of my stuff. GAN Photo is now up and running, with a separate gallery and blog system. Given that it went up a few days before the pictures did, I’m sure that it is going to change and evolve. Some parts of it I like, some… eh. It’s hopefully going to get more updates than this site has over the next month.

Of course, on top simply getting the photo’s selected, I had to re-edit most of them, as the software available today is SO much more powerful and precise than what I was using 5 years ago. I was pretty happy seeing some of the older images pop back into existence and breath. My old D60 Camera did a VERY fine job, given it’s limitations.

Printing was actually the easiest part, aside from the fact that I was producing about 50 feet of 17″ paper to display. My Epson 4000 did eat some roll paper and drink heavily from the ink well. Combining with the Thanksgiving timing, that meant that I was making multiple trips to the local (Nashville Local, not Franklin Local) Pro Photo shop.

Two of the prints are Panoramas. Those, as well as three of my more recent favorites, went on Gatorboard to keep the cost down, and sizes up. The rest were framed and matted in Arab, AL right before (and after) Thanksgiving. My Dad made an incredible find on Ebay of 22×28″ frames, and we spent some significant time cutting the mats and getting everything just right. I thank both Dad and Mom heavily for their help.

The pictures came out wonderfully. I’ve got the exhibit area COVERED with frames, colors and images, and I’m really proud and happy to see it. I regret the Gatorboarded pictures, because we did SO well with the framing, and they just don’t look nearly as good. And Those were the ones that I personally liked the most.

That said, If I had not done them that way, I wouldn’t have had the space or the weight capacity. It does all work out.

I’ll post more at GAN Photo. I’d like to be able to detail some more of the methodology and stories behind each shot that is going up there. I’m going to be busy.

In summary, before edit 1 there were nearly 6,000 frames.

With the initial cut, I deleted the frames that weren’t QUITE there. This included strobes that didn’t fire, focus points being wrong, or not seeing anything worthwhile at all.

That left me with over 4,000 frames.

You wondered why nothing was posted. Choosing from that selection isn’t easy. Tagging that many isn’t easy. And then, once you’ve done that, and you think you have your selections, you actually can start to WORK on them.

Historically, I’ve put these up chronologically. This year, we’ll try grouping them by subject.

Sunrise: As I’ve said earlier, it’s a miracle that these even were taken.

Sunset: What’s stranger, in most cases, I have frames from BOTH sunrise and sunset.

McGuires: Chronicled here, some of these you’ve already seen.

Fudpuckers: Fishing for Alligators. Need I say more?

Crabs: Mary still declares this to be one of her favorite activities. I think the idea of pulling a live crab from the ocean, and putting it in a bucket is her idea of heaven. The child IS weird.

Bird Feeding: The idea is to feed to Gulls so they come closer. THEN, you chase them down. One of these days they are going to get one, and then it’s going to get REAL interesting.

Beach: Yeah, we were at the beach. If it’s not in one of the above catagories, chances are, it’s here.

Everything else: Ok, there were some that didn’t fit. The experiment with the REALLY CHEAP and BAD underwater camera. William telling Papa exactly HOW he needed to make the ice cream. These went into the root folder.

Ok, That particular rhyme isn’t completely appropriate, as we are still in our thirties. But we are getting closer and closer to that particular marker (not that it really makes ANY difference in this day).

It’s been a multi-part birthday. Part one was Sunday night, as we had a rare visit from a babysitter, and went to dinner! As is the custom, Flemings received the honors. Flemings has the distinction of having never screwed up when we’ve been there. Even when something wrong has happened, they have always made it right, and some. That’s my definition of not screwing up. Not everything is going to be perfect, but if you recognize that, react, and make it right, you go a long way. They seem to be one of the best in terms of:

1. Not making mistakes. They prepare very well.
2. QUICKLY correcting any mistakes that are made.
3. Making sure the correction is excessively appropriate.

But enough about them, It’s all about her!

She did actually let me have a bit of the cake, although you wouldn’t know it from the look on her face. Copious amounts of this:

Turning into this:

Helped the situation completely. I probably wouldn’t have gotten any chocolate had there not been ample quantities (and varieties) of wine circulating.

We had a great time.

Today, however, is the actual event, and it’s yet to be determined. We’re off to a good start, however. Breakfast was dealt with by me, in Bill Cosby manner. Yes, we had birthday cake for breakfast. It’s full of nutrients! Flour! Eggs! Chocolate! Sugar! Why wouldn’t you want it for Breakfast?

I figured that it was best to get the sugar in them early, so they could run it off, rather than feeding it to them at 8pm.

The everlight candles were a big hit, although ALL but one of them failed to relight. The one that did was a grand source of entertainment to the kids.

Kids get to stay out of school today. Jeffie is taking her Birthday off from work (but only by virtue of having worked on Saturday, covering shifts). We haven’t fully figured out the gameplan for the day, but I’m sure it will include lots of running of children!

Happy Birthday, Jeffie. We love you.

Not this time.

We had a blast of a time, and there was a significant amount of wear placed on the shutter of my camera. 50+ Gig of photo’s. That’s a pretty significant hurting on the laptop’s hard drive. Not to mention it’s going to take a significant amount of time to sort through those pictures, tag them, and process.

So, I’m going to try something different. I’m going to upload one picture at a time. Some will have commentary, some stand alone without further comment from me. I’m going to try for one a day. They will undoubtably be out of order, as I’ll do things as I see them. Eventually, the server load is going to happen, as I’ll still end up loading the Gallery, but that will probably wait a bit.

So, without further ado…

This is from the end of the trip… You are used to seeing the pictures of the kids, but for the first picture, I’m putting up a new Profile picture for the wife. We were getting ready for family pictures. Jeff had a new camisole. So, while the kids were asleep, we tried to take a few shots to see how it was going to work. A few shots turned into pretty much a complete photo shoot, with Aperture in Tether mode, and lighting setup to balance out the shadows.

Things started to look better and better, so we kept going.

I think it went to Jeff’s head. She insisted on being called:

Superstar