Birthday and Basketball

Am I on a roll, or what? This makes something like two posts in a week. I've got to start thinking about dialing this back a little before I end up using up the whole internet!

This week we had Andrea's birthday and Claire had another basketball game-- hence the catchy title for this entry. Tomorrow I am going shooting (the gun kind) with Curt Baumgartner. I am planning on taking the camera, so I hope to include a few pics of that in the next post. I'm pretty stoked on the shooting. It's been a while since I've had a chance to do it-- what with the ongoing gun ban in our house. I think the last time was when I blew away my old cell phone with a .44 magnum. What a treat that was! I still have the remains of that piece of junk in a baggie somewhere.

One last thing... I am interested in finding out about how many people are actually looking at this blog. If you could do me a favor and leave a comment on this post (it can even be anonymous) I should have a better idea. Thanks for doing that-- unless you don't. In case you don't, be sure you don't feel guilty for too long. Maybe like 20 or 30 seconds, or something. I don't want to ruin your day over it or anything like that.



Here are Gigi and Poppy at Andrea's birthday party. They ended up staying late into the night playing Andrea's new "Ticket To Ride" board game. Poppy was so stoked for winning that he probably never slept that night!



Here is Phia doling out one of her generous hugs to Grandpa.



The three candles are for past present and future.



Everybody patiently waiting for cake and ice cream.



Jolie had a good time at the party.



This is a girl named Emily. She is on Claire's basketball team. It's kind of random, but I liked the shot. Using a long lens at short distances, it can be a challenge to keep the ball in frame during a shot. Hence, the inclusion of this one.



Claire had good game. We worked on using her pivot foot and avoiding double dribbles after the last game and she did a great job on both fronts for this game. Although her team lost, it was a fun game to watch. It was the first overtime game of the season and the crowd was really into it!

Catching up on Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc...

Holy cow! It has been a while now, hasn't it? I got some round about feedback that too much time had elapsed since my last post, so here we go. I have pictures of our Washington Thanksgiving trip, Gigi's birthday, Christmas, Claire's basketball, and a few others that I can't remember off the top of my head. Without further adieu, here goes...



This picture of April was actually from Christmas. Our Christmas bowling extravaganza!



Audrey made a lovely graham cracker house Christmas.



This was Christmas Eve. We all (except Andrea) got new PJ's.



We thought it would be cool to have an "Old fashioned" gloomy looking picture for Christmas breakfast. You can't tell by the looks on our faces, but the cinnamon rolls and omelets were actually pretty good!



For the sake of continuity, here's Christmas dinner. Man, we look miserable!



Here are Andrea and Phia celebrating Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa's house.



Did I mention earlier that Claire is playing basketball now?



It's true, she is...



Didn't believe me, did you?



Here's Jolie, patiently posing while I experiment with some strobe stuff.



Back to Thanksgiving in Washington again. There is very little rhyme or reason to the order of these photos. Courtney made up a lovely table, didn't she?



For every lovely table and delicious meal, there are a million crestfallen Bretts, laboring endlessly that others might eat and enjoy.



Courtney threw down a terrific free-range bird.



Phia enjoyed our trip to Liberty Bay.



So did Gigi.



Almost as much as the new Snuggie she got for her birthday!



You get some pretty cool looking effects when you zoom in on Christmas lights during a long exposure.



See what I mean?

Well that does it for a little catch-up of the last few months. I didn't make a resolution to post more often to the blog here, so there is a reasonable chance that I might actually do it. We'll see.