Hilton Head 2013

 1) YOLO boarder in the morning   2) Gator  #nozoomlens!  3) House chimney in Beaufort, SC  4) Spanish moss everywhere  5) Live Oak  6) Broad Creek

 1) Citizens Cemetery, Beaufort, SC  2) On Broad Creek  3) Dolphin tail  4) Haig Point Lighthouse, Daufuskie Island  5) Stoney-Baynard Ruins on Sea Pines  6) Friends laughing

Yeah, jumping pictures are ubiquitious.  But they're ubiquitous because they're a stinkin' lot of fun.  Having a bad day?  Set the timer on your camera, step back and get those feet off the ground.  

We never managed to get all 120 toes off the sand at once, but we laughed until we cried.

This was the fourth year our group of friends had a post-Christmas getaway, my third time to go.  We explore, we shop, we play cards, we teach each other yoga, we tell embarrassing stories, and we recharge.  Thanks friends!

Caught

They said they were turning out all the lights in the basement so that they could have a light saber battle.  Instead they smuggled the iPad down there and took liberties with their ration of electronic time by starting a LEGO movie.

I did what any good parent would do and tried not to disturb them so I could capture them in their natural state of nefariousness.

Winter Storm Iago

Seriously.  Yesterday's snowstorm actually garnered a name from The Weather Channel.  Who knew?

I decided to take a series of pictures to document the accumulation.  And in the spirit and tradition of me making things painfully complicated, I shot from like 6 different perspectives.  Part way through, I couldn't even remember all of them, much less the right angle and how far too zoom in so they would match.  Wah, wah.  On with the pictures!

See?  One portrait and two landscapes.  So amateur.  How can even you stand to be here?  (wink)

You can see in that first pic that the snow was several inches deep in some places.  Owen didn't have as much fun as he could have had because I didn't have any gloves for him.  I've looked several times for some this year but never made it a priority.  Soon as I hang up here I'm off to buy some online.  Snow days are too precious in these parts to waste one worrying about angry red frozen fingers.

I included that last pic so you could see what a weird kind of snow it was.  It took 5 to 6 hours for it to blanket everything and about 45 minutes for it to flash melt and flood the gutters.  Huge wet glops of snow were coming down out of the trees; I caught the splash of one of them in that same photo.  I ended up putting my camera safely away inside the mailbox because I was being pelted by snow bombs from above.  Owen was soaked, freezing, and (okay I'll say it) pissed by the time I got him home.  But nothing a warm bath couldn't cure!

FYI:  I just got home from signing Owen up for half-day private school kindergarten.  We waffled about it and I lost a lot of sleep in December worrying about the right place for him, but I'm happy to have the decision made and be moving forward.  He'll go on to first grade at public school in the 2014-15 school year.

And sending special love out to Coach who's having some major neck problems.  Praying that your insurance will be accommodating, your doctors wise and your pain medicine really, really good!

A Flower for DD

Dear DD,

I told Owen it was your birthday.  He asked me your favorite color.  I told him yellow.  He went and made this for you.

If we could, we'd make you a million of these or more.  We love you that much.  Have a wonderful birthday!!!

Supermassive

That's a drawing of Owen and me in the rain near a ramp by a building outside a cave above planet Earth and to the right of a black hole.  

Owen saves his hardest questions for me when we're in the car, and lately he's stuck on black holes: what causes them, what they look like, where to find one.  All the physics I could muster from that one astronomy class I took in college wasn't cutting it with him, so we had fun today watching a few Discovery and Science Channel videos.  This one had the best visuals, and Owen seemed fascinated even though I know it had to be mostly over his head.  

What didn't escape him is that black holes eat stuff.  Which means I then found myself assuring him that it wasn't like we were going to take a wrong left turn on the way to the grocery store and end up down a black hole.  And that conversation led us to this cool site when I got stumped trying to convey the enormousness of the universe.  Their way of showing it is much more effective than me lowering my voice 4 octaves and saying REALLY REALLY REALLY BIG, don't you think?

Owen did too.

Look how cute he is.

Okay, one quick side story and I'm out of here.

Once we finished talking about black holes, Owen wanted to draw one.  His first attempt isn't the one you see at the top of the post.  He started out using regular letter-sized paper before declaring himself creatively challenged by its small size.  So I went on a hunt for our roll of butcher paper.

I looked in his playroom behind the door where it once was.

Then I checked the basement.

Then I looked in my craft closet.

Then I opened the small cupboard at the foot of the stairs.  But before I got a good look inside, one of the vintage bottles I was storing in there rolled out and shattered on the tile floor.

So I cussed at myself, quit looking for the butcher paper and went to the guest closet to get the vacuum cleaner.

And guess what was sitting right there beside the vacuum cleaner?