Dessert 2

Originally uploaded by shutterjunky

Here’s a shot of Lucy enjoying dessert after Christmas dinner. We had a fun holiday staying home in Alameda and making the short trek to Los Altos for Christmas Day.  Happy New Year everyone!

 P.S.  A lot of new photos from December are up on flickr, and you can see them on the photo page in the 2008 family snapshots set.

Sugar Plum Fairy Envy

Originally uploaded by shutterjunky

Lucy and Jay went to see Santa Claus at a West Alameda Business Association event on Webster a couple of weeks ago.  Lucy was actually much more interested in the Sugar Plum Fairy (from the Alameda Ballet production of the Nutcracker) than in Santa Claus.  In fairness to her, Santa can be a bit daunting if you don’t know what his role is!

Hope to have lots more pictures up over the holiday period since I have a few days off work! 

Happy holidays to everyone!

Sunset BBQ at PinecrestOriginally uploaded by shutterjunky

I’m finally catching up on pictures after a somewhat crazy month. We had our first Lair of the Golden Bear experience at Pinecrest at the end of August and we are sold. Truly a perfect vacation for families. The setting is beautiful, the activities are a blast, and the accommodations are generous and comfortable. Add to that the Go Bears spirit and awesome staff, and you have a vacation you would have to work very hard NOT to enjoy. We will be back every summer if possible. More pictures available on flickr. You can dig into the 2008 Travel Photos set to see them on the Photos page.

An administrative note for my (one or two ) regular readers:

The way my Photos page is set up, the Recent Photos link will show you the photos based on the date they were taken, not the date they were uploaded. So you’d need to click through and look back in history a bit to find the Lair pictures and other family pictures from the summer. Or you can go to the relevant sets. I like the chronological feature so I don’t want to change it, but if you want to easily see all the pictures I’ve uploaded most recently, my flickr photo stream is organized in that way … so you can click through to flickr to check it out.

Also, you may be wondering about the sets with seemingly random pictures of play structures and parks, usually featuring kids but not always Jay or Lucy. Those sets (like “Rockridge Scenes”) are all part of a “Neighborhoods” collection and are all done for Bay Area Parents magazine – East Bay Edition. One or two of the photos from each of those sets has been or will be published in the magazine. If you’re curious, let me know and I’ll send you a link to the magazines.

 On the pictures front, I have officially had some get published in a magazine!  Check out the East Bay edition of Bay Area Parents magazine.  My pictures were in the “Neighborhood” feature of the June and July issues.  I should be able to get a couple into that series for the next few issues too!

We’ve been busy this Spring between work, school and summer camps.  (Jay went to Dinosaur Detectives day camp at Lawrence Hall of Science, which he loved.)  We did, however, get to Yosemite in early June.  We stayed in Curry Village with our friends from Jay’s pre-school and their kids.  We had six kids and six adults, which was interesting, but a lot of fun.  Jay actually managed to hike almost to the top of the Mist Trail, but turned back near the top because of the driving wind and spray.  Next time, a poncho.

More to come!