So I got super gung-ho excited about the nursery this weekend. I feel that progress is almost inspiration for more progress. See things happen is a good thing.
You can see all the pics here
Today I “built” up 2 large african acacia trees and grass. Looks like animals are next.
Yes, i free handed the trees, and used a modified stippling technique for the leaves. It helped create a lot of depth and color.
I made some new and improved features to our photo gallery.
New features:
For her birthday, stephanie wanted to go mountain biking.
here she is.
this video does not do the hill justice. it is 5x steeper looking in real life, both going down and going up.
So tomorrow is Stephanie’s Birthday! I’m posting early, because I think she will be expecting it then. Being early I can still have some element of surprise shock value that I posted it.
Some photos from Saturdays family celebration.
Stephanie’s tiara
Good Mexican lasagna made my Stephanie’s mom.
And the birthday girl blowing out some super sparkling candles
“woah halloween is fun. candy is good!” was what we heard tonight from one cute kid while handing out candy.
This is the matt edition of the friday update. so it’s probably not as in depth as stephanie would be.
Adoption
same deal as the usual. no sibling referals this week. I think how it feels for us, and i feel bad for who ever is number 1 on the sibling list. they have been waiting a long time, and I hope they are matched with a sibling group soon!
Work outs
Stephanie has been doing lots of walking, and is still rocking on her push ups. Me, i kind of work on them. I have lost some motivation. not sure why, i do like the results so far. I’ve been back cycling on the road bike in wee hours of the dark mornings (with headlights!) a lot this week. I guess my road bike and i just need a relationship break. We are friends again.
The garden is coming along. Maybe next week some pics may be needed. Things are still alive, and sprouting a bit more.
Grass is coming in nicely for the winter rye
we carved some mean pumpkins with Steph’s parents & steph’s bro & wife. the results:
I made a few blog updates tonight as requested by my beautiful wife.
Today after we got home from running errands, i went to the car show to take some cool pictures.
Here are just a few of the awesome ones.
The Car Show photos on flickr
Some of my favorites
(click for larger view)
Only because so much of both our families are firefighters.
From Family guy. Awesome.
So I have never really gone on any big epic, multi day biking trips. Earlier this summer, a good friend invited me along with some other guys for a trip. I waffled back and forth about going for a while, but I decided it was a trip of a lifetime.
And it was an amazing trip.
So me, and 4 other guys headed off in a suburban and a 30′ camper. The Agenda: Biking in Moab Utah, and then over to the Durango Colorado area.
We left on Labor day, for a planned 9 – 10 hour drive to Moab. About an hour away from Moab, we had a minor engine issue. The tensioner pulley seized.
Here is the awesome parts of this break down. 1. we were on the top of a hill. 2. at the bottom of the 1 mile hill, a small town called Monticielo. 3. At the bottom of the hill, just inside town, an RV park, and a NAPA auto parts. Man were we lucky. we had to stay the night and wait for napa to open at 8am. The local sherif even escorted us to the napa. small towns rock.
9am, we are off to Moab.
we get in, set up camp, and we head to slick rock trail by 11am. Slick rock is a different kind of trail. in fact, its almost one solid rock, with a white dotted line indicating where the trail should be. 45 – 60 degree slopes are pretty normal. The tires grip the rock like you wouldn’t believe. It was pretty intense.
Unfortunetly, one of our riders strained a muscle in his back before we even got to the trail. so it was just four of us riding the 12 mile trail. It was toasty, and I was a bit dehydrated, but an awesome trail regardless.
Wednesday we tried to ride another trail, but it was more sand than any of us liked. 6 miles of super fine beach sand, we had enough, and it was time to head back, and break down. Off to durango. Our camp site was rough. 10 miles north of durnago, backing up to the Animas river.
Thursday was a killer ride. We drove up behind Purgatory Ski Resort, and rode Hermosa trail. This is a 20 mile trail, dropping from 11,000 feet, to 8,500. a great ride.
We ended up having to ride from the bottom of the trail, 9 miles on the road back uphill to camp. 30 miles on the saddle was tiring.
Friday we took it easy, rode our bikes around town. Durango is a way cool town. Lots of cyclists, great shops, bike shops, and good food & beer on every corner.
Saturday we drove up halfway to Silverton to ride the Colorado Trail. We headed west from Molas Pass. Starting our ride at 11,000 feet elevation was tough on my 1,200 feet lungs. The views on the other hand, were amazing.
Sundays trip home was uneventful, and we made it home in great time. I think the 7 days with the boys and bikes was great. But its always good to be home.
the rest of the photos can be seen here
http://flickr.com/photos/mattlikeshockey/sets/72157607114386302/show/
Here is our garden spider. No photoshop here. And I have $5 that he can eat rick’s spider.
So I have never really liked the way the old photo gallery worked. Being the web geek, and photo nerd that I am, I found a new way of making the photos work.
Check out the new gallery here: http://photos.mattandstephaniesblog.com/
or visit the photos page link up top.
Some new features:
• Thumbnails with Hover for a larger preview
• Auto play to cycle through all images
• Gallery preview Images
• Easy to jump back to the gallery by pressing the lower left icon.
Have fun. We’ll add more photos to it as we have them.
Wow are we having a massive storm. I mean the biggest lightning storm of the year.
I was daring enough to go out with the new camera
The new birthday lens was great. Thanks to all made that happen for me!
Here are some pics that I took
i thought this was funny.
So since Stephanie decided she was allowed to post my skittles comment. I decided I would return the favor by posting this.
Last night we were discussing that our imac didnt have software to scan. But the lap top did, and it used to be hooked up to the scanner at one point.
Stephanie refers to this existing connection as: “They are still friends“.
So that must be straight out of a tech manual right? Yep. An existing software found on a past computer allows said computer to remain friends with any past devices.
I still laugh about it.
