Family Photo Rejects

Squint, Squint

Thanksgiving is past and it is time to send out the annual Holiday card with the family photo on it.  This is a stressful process.  Getting a decent family photo is just one step in the process.  You also have to get the cards printed, addressed, written, and mailed off before Christmas.  I will freely admit that most of the latter is up to Zoya.  My job is getting a decent family photo.

And for some reason this year I totally failed.  We had numerous opportunities in gorgeous places, but something is wrong with every photo.  In the end Zoya had to create a 'composite' Christmas card - one of those cards with multiple family activity pictures.

Seeking out this year's family photo got me thinking back to simpler days.  Back to the days when I printed out the card myself on heavy paper from the home printer.  I'd put 2 pictures side by side so that I could get 2 cards per sheet.  I always left half the page blank and measured it so that it would fold into a card correctly.  I remember the hard part was printing the 'Merry Christmas' or 'Happy Holidays' on the inside.  You had to put the paper thru the printer a second time for this with the proper orientation. Almost inevitably the 'Happy Holidays' would be printed on top of the photos (put in tray upside down) or upside down to the fold (wrong direction in tray).

In those days it was simpler to find a photo.  Pre Zoya I was only mailing cards to my guy friends, maybe 15 tops, and only cared about showing them what I was up to - I also always wanted to make it funny and to shock a bit.  So the cards tended to portray dead things.  I remember I titled the card that went with the bottom photo something like 'Santa's going to have a hard time finding someone to pull his sled - Merry Christmas'.

Post Zoya there was a change to the more traditional card photo.  Also Zoya wanted the cards to be more inclusive; so instead of 'Merry Christmas' we went to 'Happy Holidays'.  Zoya also took over the mailing and writing aspects. Still with only 2 of us and a dog, taking the happy family photo was not all that difficult - although since it was the pre digital era we did have to send the pictures off to get them developed and then scan them to print.

With kids things got much more difficult.  More people and animals in the photo made it harder to catch everyone looking good and with their eyes open.  I think this is the reason we stopped trying to include the dogs in the photo.  One year we took the photo with a tripod and in the best picture my eyes were closed.  I fixed it by taking my head with eyes open from one of the other pictures and then stitching it over the eyes closed image (see bottom photo).  I remember that getting the background to align was the most difficult part of the process.

Happy Holidays!

Patrick

No we don't own a plane

Boring, grainy and washed out - same card as last year anyway

Pre Zoya Christmas Card - for real

Post Zoya Christmas Card - our first one together

2008 family photo - we went out in the new snow to capture the 'White Christmas' feeling

Thanksgiving with the cousins

Patrick, Gretchen and Bart

The whole point of our trip out East was to attend the family Thanksgiving dinner.  The last big family Thanksgiving that we attended was back in 2007(click here for old blog post about event) - eight years ago!  So it was clearly time to hang out with some of the extended cousins and uncles.  And it was a big event - I counted 32 people in photos.  Uncle George had the event catered and the food was really good.  I can't imagine cooking and doing dishes for over 30 people!

For me it was interesting how the uncles and cousins had not really changed all that much since I last saw them.  But the nieces and nephews had all grown up and totally changed!  Patrick

Grandma Coco and namesake Coco the dog

Uncle Bart shucks oysters

Nora and Aunt Polly

My Thanksgiving dinner!

Thanksgiving

Another table of cousins and uncles

Anisha, Nora, Madeline, and Bo

Zoya and George

Grandma Coco, Polly and Patrick

Crazy eights with Nora, Anisha, and Maggy

Sherborn Walks

Ticks not withstanding, we loved our walks while out East on vacation.  In Alaska with our evergreen forests we just don't have the tree trunks glowing in the sunshine as they stick up through a blanket of leaves.  

For Nora and Stuey everything was new and different.  In the picture above Stuey is picking up an acorn that fell from an oak tree, 'Daddy, what's this?' he asked.  Nora and I picked some watercress growing in a spring.  I grew up out East so I take the decidious forest for granted, but for Nora and Stuey we might as well have been in Costa Rica.  Patrick

Powder in the sunshine

Generally, here on Kodiak, snow does not tend to last as powder very long.  It get windy and turns to drifts or gets a wind crust, or, more typically it rains.  But our recent powder has not just stuck around it has gotten drier and more powder like.  The cold conditions with no wind has sucked the moisture out of the snow.  So the skiing has just gotten better!

No wind and sunshine made for a glorious day of skiing!

Patrick

A Visit to Aunt Sally's Farm

Nora, Stuey, and Bully Boy the Bull

One of Nora and Stuey's favorite visits while we were on vacation was to their cousin's farm.  We picked old apples from a tree and fed them to their pigs and cows.  Bully the Bull was particularly friendly and let Nora and Stuey pet him.  He is a HUGE bull.

While looking at all the cows I could not help but compare their body size to the elk I hunt.  We've always compared walking up to a dead elk as like looking down on a 'horse' or a 'cow' and then wondering how we were going to deal with it.  But we've never seen anything like Bully the Bull.  I bet he weighs 2500 pounds.  A Bully the Bull hindquarter would have been beyond any of our packing out capabilities.

The kids also liked collecting eggs from the henhouse.  Some of the chickens were sitting on the eggs and it was a little scary to stick your hand under a clucking, pecking chicken.  Stuey found a huge egg that we brought back with us to Alaska.  I bet it will have 2 yolks inside.  Stuey wants me to poach it but  I doubt it will fit into our egg poaching cups.  Patrick

Nora, Roxanne, Augusta, and Stuey

Nora and Bully Boy

Bully Boy has a BIG head

Nora and Cousins contemplate the cows

The pigs

Collecting eggs

Weighing and grading eggs for the market

Early Season Ski with Lisa and Gregg

I thought yesterday was pretty good, but today was GREAT.  After I skied yesterday another foot or so of snow accumulated high on the mountain.  In one snowstorm we went from bare ground to deep snow with a base.  Usually you need a couple of snowstorms to build up the base for this kind of skiing.  There is around 2 feet of snow up high and it started out wet so the base is pretty solid with powder on top.  Ullr the Snow God seems to be smiling.

I met Lisa and Gregg at the parking lot and we did a bunch of runs together.  What a treat - I don't usually get to ski with other people and I normally do just one run.  Wow!  And keep smiling Ullr - pretty please.  Patrick

Riding the River with Stuey

One morning on our recent vacation Nora woke up with a tick bite.  Huge brouhaha and with Deer Tick Fever fears Zoya took her off to the doctor (maybe she'll post about it - needless to say but our family fears ticks more than bears).  Anyway, it was a glorious morning and Stuey and I had ourselves to entertain.  So we took George's canoe down to the river and went exploring.

Floating the river we saw all sorts of ducks, geese, and even turtles burrowed into the mud on the bottom of the river.  There are no leaves on the trees so we could see into the forest on either side of the river.  Stuey was fascinated by the large granite boulders left behind by the glaciers.  There was one 'almost as big as a tree' that we later got to investigate on foot during a walk.

I'd never seen turtles getting ready to hibernate.  Once I had spotted one we noticed that they were everywhere on the bottom. Stuey even noticed a group of 3 all clustered together.  We did not see any on the surface or on the banks so I assume they were getting ready to burrow into the mud.  It made me wonder how they hold their breath all winter long?  Patrick

This is the rock that Stuey saw from the river and later got to climb

Underwater photo of Painted turtles getting ready to hibernate

Back in Alaska with SNOW

Yesterday we got back from the East Coast and it was raining HARD and 42 degrees.  Ughhhhhh.  Worse yet , my ski buddies told me there was no snow at all up high after a week of rain while I was away - double ughhhhh.

So this morning when I woke up to more hard rain and 40 degree temperatures I did not hold out much hope of any snow on the mountain.  Still I went up anyways because that's what I do.  Better some exercise hiking in the rain than none at all.

After work I drove out of town with the wipers flapping away, and it looked really ugly.  But then I got to the golf course and I noticed 'cats paws' of sleet on the windscreen.  By the time I got to the parking lot at the pass it was snowing.  Best of all, once I got above about 1600 feet there was over a foot of new snow.  The weather Gods had totally redeemed themselves.

And this was at mid day.  It continued to rain in town for the rest of the day and the temperatures actually dropped into the low 30's.  Keeping my fingers crossed, we should have another 6-8 inches of new snow by tomorrow.

 I am totally amazed that the snow waited until I returned from vacation to cover the mountain.  Usually it snows when I am away and warms up when I return.  I must have done something to please the Weather God.  I am grateful for the snow.  Patrick