Week 35 - Luscious

Have you ever heard that phrase, 

"Cowboy butts drive me nuts!"

I got to see plenty of cowboy butts last weekend so I decided to focus on those for my Luscious theme! Maybe I'm stretching it a bit here but I sure had a good time ogling form the stands. These aren't Luke Bryan or Jason Aldean. I think they are better, REAL cowboy BUTTS! 

And some of them weren't too bad at all! 

Sorry, I don't have info to post on these shots; I'm posting in a hurry tonight. 

I will tell you these were shot in bright afternoon sun with an ISO of 800 I believe. The only editing I've done to these is cropping and adding a bit of sharpness. 

 Week 36 NO

Week 37 Old

Week 38 New

I've been thinking that I might do this project again next year and compare one year to the other. 

A Happy Marriage, well, 7 years of 9 anyway.

Last week DR and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary! And what do you know, that husband of mine gave me the very best present! A stainless steel coffee pot, one that will never break! I must say, it's probably the very best present I've ever received. (I'm just a little addicted to my coffee!) 

As we were congratulating one another on our 9 years together DR asked if I'd been happy in our marriage. 

"Not always." I answered truthfully. "I've been happy for 7 of the 9." 

He raised his eyebrows questioningly and I went on to explain. Our first year of marriage wasn't happy, but at the time I was too stupid and inexperienced to realize I was miserable. I was a newlywed, pregnant with twins who just happened to spend six months of that first year separated from my husband. Of course our marriage wasn't tip top! My husband was in Delaware while I was in Indiana pretty much on my own. We barely even knew one another before we were married and that first year didn't provide the opportunities to get to know one another the way newlyweds should. 

A couple of years after our boys were born we lived in southern Indiana and although we were living very near DR's hometown we were miserable with one another. His job was extremely stressful with a lot of personnel conflict and long, long working hours. I was an isolated stay at home mother of twin toddlers far from any of my friends and family. DR and I barely saw one another and when we did we were usually grumpy. 

Luckily we only lived in Southern Indiana for one year (the second unhappy year) before we moved to Illinois for another job position for DR. Illinois offered a pay cut and a demotion in the company. DR's job was less stress, but also less money. Money was pretty tight. We were at least three hours from any of our family. Our house was old and drafty and out in the middle of nowhere. Illinois battered us with snow, snow drifts, ice and wind. I was still a stay at home mom but I was able to venture out into the world a bit. Sounds stressful doesn't it? Yet, for the three years we lived there it was easily some of the happiest years of our married life. 

Later DR mentioned to me that he never understood why I stayed with him after those hard years, especially the first. I didn't have an answer for him other than..."Because that's what you do when you are married." 

I didn't marry DR with the belief that life was always going to be peachy. I realized that everyone has their good days and bad days, though I hadn't anticipated entire bad years. DR isn't the happiest person to be around, neither am I. But we love each other; happy or grumpy, good or bad. I believe that DR and I have to work together and help cover each other's weak spots to make our marriage work. 

I feel extremely blessed to have met DR and married him when I did. I am thankful everyday that DR is the father of my children because he's very good at it. I'm ecstatic that DR loves me despite my oddities and weirdness. We've had 7 really great years of marriage. Yes, two of those years were lousy but honestly, I'm glad we endured them. The bad years have made us stronger and resilient. I think every couple needs some "bad years" because it makes those good years grand! 

Can you relate? 

Annual Ranch Rodeo...and much better photos than last year!

You guys probably have been wonderin' if I've died or fallen off the edge of the Earth. Close...I was substitute teaching at the preschool last week. You probably wouldn't think working with a class full of 4 year olds would be so taxing that I couldn't even blog a bit this past week. You are right. I LOVE subbing at the preschool. Those little monkeys love to share....their germs. I came home this week with one of the worst head colds I can remember. I could barely remember my kids names much less be with it enough to blog. 

But, I'm back now and I have photos of share of the Annual Ranch Rodeo Finals held in Dodge City over Labor Day weekend. You can read about my introduction to Ranch Rodeos last year in this post. 

There wasn't too much different this year than last. The four events were; Branding, Sort and Load, Doctoring and Wild Cow Milking. But this year I had a whole year of photo experience under my belt and a zoom lens! I was so happy with how some of these photos came out....definitely better than last year! 

Mountain Man and his buddy Jake from Oklahoma came up to the rodeo this year, it sure was nice to see family! We even got to see Mountain Man's buddies compete this year. 

Young...

...and old. There were all types of cowboys out there working. 

Even a couple of women, and they sure weren't slouches! 

Branding

Aren't those pink shirts nice? This was one of my favorite teams to watch, they worked so well together. 

Halfway through the rodeo the kids were able to get out in the arena and have a little fun. First there was the pool noodle race. My boys in the stripes DOMINATED!!! 

Yahoo wasn't to be outdone and worked hard too! 

But the event that my boys had been waiting for was the boot scramble. Every Rodeo I've been to has held a boot scramble for the kids. First they take off their boots or shoes ( better have some bleach at home Mom...look at those socks!)

They dump the boots in the middle of the arena...

...and the kids race to find their boots, put them on, and race back to the starting line. Yip was aggravated that he was beat by a girl that was only wearing flip flops. He was quite adamant that she cheated because it was a "BOOT SCRAMBLE" not a "SANDAL SCRAMBLE". 

Wild Cow Milking. Aren't you happy you don't have to get your milk like this everyday? 

Yep, that's a LADY throwing down that steer! and boy, did she mean business. 

I sure wouldn't want to cross her! 

Ranch Rodeos are one of my favorite things about Kansas. There just aren't too many places to go experience anything like it. 

Photo Project, Weeks 33 and 34

I'm not behind really I'm not! I HAVE been shooting my 52 week themes I just haven't had the time to post on them! 

I take that back. I did skip one week's theme, Week 32 Intromit, because I just have not thought of or come across something that I think would fit. That might be the one week I come back to. 

Week 33 was Air and I focused on air while we were in Colorado. Both of these were taken at the top of Pike's Peak. 

1/2000 sec., f14, ISO 1600

1/400 sec., f9, ISO 100 (edited the brightness and cropped slightly)

I know my ISO's are way different. The top was taken from inside a train so I had my ISO high and didn't have time to readjust before taken the shot of the rocky hill. The second was outside on top of the mountain and it was SO bright that even at 1/400 sec. I felt it was too overexposed so I edited it a bit. 

Week 34 - Miniscule

This was one of those weeks that I wish I had a macro lens. But in this case I got in as close as I could to my subject and then cropped when I needed to. 

1/50 sec., f5.6, ISO 1600

1/30 sec., f7.1, ISO 1600

Then I cropped this one tightly

An Eggplant Leaf

1/20 sec., f7.1, ISO 1600

These were shot near sunset so I was losing light quickly. Not bad for a slow shutter speed and being hand held. I'm not sure how I feel about the graininess. I kind of like it, though I wasn't planning on it. Is that okay? 

Next Week - Luscious

Either I need to work on my food photography or I need to find a really sexy cowboy to shoot some shirtless photos of! Any volunteers? 

How to throw a Pirate Party!!

My boys are 8! Can you believe it? I sure can't 

They had been asking for a couple years to have a friend birthday party. This year I finally consented. With twins I wasn't sure how it was going to work. Would they agree on the party theme? Would they agree on guests? 

They didn't. Yip wanted pirates and Yap wanted soldiers. They agreed, without much argument, that this year Yip could choose and next year we'd do Yap's soldier party. I did lay down the law on the party guests though. I wasn't inviting every boy they knew. They each invited two guests; we'll start with six little boys. Heaven knows these two boys keep my house busy enough. 

The boys and I worked all summer getting things ready for the party. We spread all the work out through the summer.

Arrrggghhh!!!

The cupcakes!! 

Yum! Shark Bait!! I got to tell ya, that watermelon shark was so much fun to do! 

We had pin the peg leg/hook/eye patch/parrot on the pirate game drawn up. 

We had all the fixin's to make their own pirate hook. Then we made an aluminum foil ring and the boys played catch the ring on the hook. 

Thanks Mom and Sue for all the wine corks, they made the perfect rafts :) 

We had pirate beards all ready to go along with black sashes, cardboard swords and skull bandannas. 

Don't they look awesome?!

We raided DR's closet for the pirate shirts.

DR even joined in the fun! But....he looks a bit more like a biker than a pirate! 

Hmmm, a Purdue Pete Pirate!! LOL 

 I had hinted for the last couple months that we would have a surprise guest. Meet Dillen! Dillen is a high school senior and has done some babysitting for us. The kids absolutely LOVE him because he wrestles with them and of course lets them go to bed late! 

We were ready! Once all the guests arrived and were suited up in their pirate attire we headed off to the high seas....

...in the driveway! 

Our grocery store down the street saved us a couple of boxes the watermelon came in. So we painted them up like the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchmen, put the blue pool full of water in between and a plank over the top. Each ship was filled with cannonballs (wads of packing paper wrapped in masking tape).

Boy did they enjoy their "sea battle"! 

After the swords were completely soaking wet and the cardboard swords were flopping and falling apart we headed inside for cupcakes. 

Eight candles are a tight squeeze on a little cupcake. 

Eight!! Dang! 

Then off to play pin the pirate. We made sure everyone was thoroughly spun and dizzy :) 

Perfect peg leg positioning there Yip! 

He cheated by the way and was peaking under his blindfold! 

Then a pinata! I think the pinata was the most expensive thing I bought for the whole party. That thing just would. not. BUST!! We wacked it for heaven knows how long. Finally I took a utility knife and sliced it quite a few places and that helped. 

Yahoo wasn't left out! She was right in the middle of all the action.

Dillen is an awesome guy! He bought Yip a KNex set and Yap a Lego Pirate ship. Not only did he buy them each a very cool present he stuck around until bedtime and helped them each put together their model! Thanks a bunch Dillen, my boys really look up to you. 

All in all we had a great 8th birthday celebration! 

Happy Birthday!