bonnie & jason

Alissa in studio

We did a few pictures on the blanket my mom crocheted for Alissa.  Plus Bonnie was dying to try some with her angel wings.  I’m not a huge fan, but combined with the pink in the blanket, at least you can’t mistake her for being anything but a girl!

 

Simon’s First Birthday

Alissa went to her second First Birthday party in as many weeks today.  It seems like everyone and their cousin has a little kid these days!  Anyway, Kristen and Jim had the party for Simon at the Bay Area Discovery Museum.  As you might expect, I took a bunch of pictures.  I really do like taking kid pictures.  Especially when they’re in their natural element.  It’s more fun to just capture them doing whatever they’re doing vs. having to try to pose them and get them to smile in a studio environment.  Anyway, thanks Jim and Kristen for inviting us!  Alissa had a great time meeting all the other babies there despite this serious look on her face:

 

What big cheeks you have!

Here are a few pictures from this week.

This is a funny one though.  The marks are my t-shirt folds from her sleeping on my chest.

And here we are watching March Madness.

Oops, I did it again

Eric and I did a two hour ride through El Corte de Madera Creek Open Space Preserve yesterday.  I haven’t been off that part of Skyline since selling of my motorcycle (gone before I got married) and S2000 (gone before Alissa was born).  It reminded me of how lucky we are to live in such a great part of the country with world class trails for hiking, biking, and lots of fun roads to get there.  (It also reminded me that my priorities have changed dramatically in just a couple years…. looking forward to that midlife crisis.)

It was a great ride with lots of challenging single track terrain both up hill and downhil.  Anyway, we managed to get our aging bodies through it but not without a casualty.

This is (was) my Canon S400.  As you can see, the screen doesn’t really work so well anymore.  What happened?  I was trying to get massive air over a two foot tree stump but landed on a big root and wiped out, landing on the camera which was in my backpack.  Ok, it wasn’t quite that dramatic… let’s just say that I fell onto the camera.

Oops.

Some of you may remember that I had bought the S400 to replace a S230 which I lost in the middle of Whistler mountain on a snowboarding trip.  As it turns out, someone called me six months later and I got it back… my email address was taped on top of the camera.  It still worked great but since I had already bought the S400,  I ended up selling it to Vin.  (Sucker… I still feel bad about that.  I don’t think he’ll want this one though.)

Anyway, I guess I need to get another camera now.  Eric loaned me his still pristine S400 (which he replaced with a SD800) for the time being.  So now I gotta go spend more money on another camera which I’ll probably break in a few years.  That’s ok… gotta keep up with the technology, right?

Abigail’s 1st Birthday Party

Deeann and Calvin, party planners extraordinaire, threw Abigail her first birthday party today at Yeah’s restaurant in Redwood City.  As one of the pseudo photographers (paid in egg rolls), I took a whole bunch of pictures which you can view here.  I won’t add too much commentary as I’m sure Deeann will have lots to say on her blog.

Girl Gone Wild (large files)

Here are a few random videos from the last couple weeks:

www.bonnieandjason.com/files/video/MVI_7193.AVI

www.bonnieandjason.com/files/video/MVI_7208.AVI

www.bonnieandjason.com/files/video/MVI_7210.AVI

Alissa is starting to really squirm and kick and flail like never before.  She’s also cooing and pretend talking to us… it’s pretty fun to watch.  I’m not looking forward to the day when she’s a demanding teenager, but it would be nice to know for sure if she’s hungry.  Or needs a diaper change.  The basic stuff.

Sorry I didn’t embed a fancy viewer… youtube takes forever to upload and downgrades the quality so I just linked to the original files instead.

Girl’s afternoon out

Last Wednesday, Alissa and I met up with Gladdie, Mia and Kaila for lunch at BJ’s in San Mateo.  It was our first big adventure out on our own without Jason (other than our trips to Stonestown and the grocery store).  It was great seeing how big Kaila has gotten since the last time I saw her when I was still pregnant.  It was also Mia’s first time meeting Alissa.  The mommies all had a great time visiting and the babies had a great time posing for pictures and looking out the window.  Alissa was very well behaved the entire time and she even let mommy make a stop at Target after lunch.  It was definitely nice to have the chance to get out of the house.

Another family blogger!

My brother joined the ranks of the blogosphere a while back and now, my cousins Anna and Christian with their twins Aidan and Chloe are reporting out their news at http://www.annaandchristian.blogspot.com/

Since they live in Manhattan, I don’t see them very often so it’s nice to hear about what’s going on in their lives.  Here’s a pic from last summer during our family vacation in the Finger Lakes.

Abigail is walking

Deeann, Calvin, and Abigail came up for dinner last night at Bonnie’s parents’ house.  Abigail is quite the mover these days.  She crawls super fast and has started walking now as well!  She’s still not super-confident on her feet, but put some Goldfish crackers in front of her and I’m sure she’ll come get them!

Smiles! Finally!

I finally got a couple good smiling pictures!  Apparently, Alissa doesn’t find my camera funny so I had to take these “blind.”  In other words, I had to point the camera at her without looking through the eye-piece.  Instead, I made some funny faces and pressed the shutter hoping the camera was pointed in the right direction.  I’ve actually used this technique before at some weddings where the kids were super shy and didn’t want their picture taken.  So I’d just hold the camera down at my hip and squeeze some shots off in hopes that one of them would be composed well.