Home for Thanksgiving

We usually have a quiet Thanksgiving around here.  In recent years our kids have been busy working, living far away and the result is a quiet dinner with whoever can make it.

This year was different!  With our new little addition to the family, our new grandson Jamie, everyone wanted to come home.  The house was full and the visit was just the best ever!  There is talk of making Thanksgiving a time for everyone to come home EVERY year! Wow!  That would be the best!  Here are the highlights:

My granddaughters were so excited to meet Buster.  He was happy too!!

It's easy to see that it was all about the baby.

Uncle Jesse burned the cookies.  We all think he takes after his Dad in this.

Pookie was in heaven!

My granddaughters are growing up so fast!

 

My oldest son, Dance (read his blog here), did almost all of the cooking!  

Best Thanksgiving ever!!

Last chance for fall colors in the mountains

Come take a drive with us!  The fall season is slipping away and we decided to take one last trek up the mountains to see the fall colors and take pictures.  The last time we drove up there, the lighting wasn't the best.  On this day, it was overcast.  Perfect for pictures.  

Our first stop was for this rock formation on the side of the highway.  Hubby took this picture.  I got out and felt that biting wind and ran straight back to the warmth of the car!

We drove on and this was our next stop.  It wasn't windy at all, and not so cold.  Hubby took this picture of me taking a picture.  

One of the main reasons I was so eager to take yet another drive "up country", was to practice my own photography.  Here are a few of my favorites from the day:

This cool, weathered tree was right beside the highway.  

We pulled in to see this bright yellow grove of Aspens.  We tromped around taking tons of pictures.  

When I saw this creek, I thought it was beautiful.

Hubby and I started to think there was something familiar here.  It didn't take us long to figure out that we were on the opposite side of our favorite "waterfall hike".  I don't know why, but this was an exciting discovery.

Right on the other side of Oyster Creek, I can see the familiar hiking trail that I have walked down many many times.

Hubby was off in his own photographer world, so I just looked around to see what interesting things I could take pictures of.  I like the tangled feeling of these aspens.

This is a picture that I took of hubby, taking pictures.  He loved it so much, he wanted to put it on his photography blog.

When I look at this picture, I realize that I have a lot to learn about photoshop. Hubby did his photo editing magic to it and WOW, it looks so much better than it did when I edited it.  You can see his photography at www.farrellphotography.net

I took this picture of a log that had interesting cuts in it.  Did someone have a little trouble cutting this tree down?  Hubby says it's his favorite picture of mine from the day.  He says that the one yellow leaf on top was the thing that did it for him. I would like to say that I placed it there, but no.  It was just as it is.

This is not a great picture, but I wanted to show you this cool tree with blue berries on it.  

I just love the way that the berries make the tree look blue.

They look good enough to eat, but I wouldn't dare risk it!

Another cool tree nearby.  I'm showing it to you because I had walk through bushes to take this picture!

Up the road a little further was a favorite spot of hubby's that he wanted to check out. West Fork Carson River.  It was beautiful.  By this time it was getting pretty cold.  We saw some snow dust on the highway.  Too windy for his purposes.  We started to head down the hill.

You can not drive past this cabin without taking a picture.  It's probably one of the most photographed cabins anywhere.  So, we stopped.  It was FREEZING.  Literally.  It started to snow.  The first snow of the season!  Brrrrr.  
As we drove down the mountain, the sunset was amazing.  By the time we stopped, it was too late.  Those wonderful sunsets are so fleeting.  Here are a few photos I took through the windshield.

Did you enjoy your tour of the mountains in the fall?  I heard it really snowed up there that night and the next day.  Next up, snow pictures?

Learning photography

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am taking up photography.  This comes as a big surprise to me.  My hubby is a fantastic photographer.  I have always been so very happy with my little TOTALLY AUTOMATIC camera.  But, I am practical for the most part, and I can see that it would fill a need in our photography business to have a second photographer.  So, here I go.  

Hubby got me a camera and tried to show me a few things.  I said "tried".  It's like he was speaking a completely different language.  Argh.  My son, who is also a fantastic photographer, gave me some very helpful advice.  He explained that "Dad" just knows too much about photography.  Hubby is old enough to have learned photography in the days of film and darkrooms.  My son suggested that I just set it to auto and take a bunch of pictures.  

The truth is that the camera intimidates me.  I think that just by holding it, I will be expected to know what I am doing.  It's huge.  And, it has so many buttons and dials.  Just too much.  

I decided that a beginner's class is what I needed.  I found one through the camera store and signed up.  I was really looking forward to it.  

The day before the class, hubby and I went up the mountains and I took these pictures.  I used auto settings except for a few times when hubby changed them.  I had no idea what he changed.  I would learn all of that the next day.  Right?

It was a beautiful day up country and I had a lot of fun taking pictures.

I'm always in hubby's pictures.  Now, he can be in some!

I love this old tree.  It's huge!  

The aspens turn yellow and orange.  We are hoping to go one more time before it's over.

It was so pretty.  Perfect weather.

This trip was not planned.  We were dropping of a rocker at my daughter's house and hubby just wanted to so up the road "a ways" and see if the tree's had changed.  We just kept going farther and farther.

And, the next thing we knew....we were in Lake Tahoe!  Hubby snapped this with my iphone.  He gets as flustered with my Iphone as I do with the camera.

We got there just in time to watch a beautiful sunset.

The next day, when I got to the class, I was the last to show up and the only seat available was right in the center front (intimidating!).  There were about twelve people.  About half had Cannon (like mine) and the other half, Nikon.  We spent the next three hours learning all the technical jargon that is photography.  In the very beginning the teacher told us that his goal was to get us all off the auto settings. Oh darn. 

The teachers were extremely patient and helpful.  They had a very simple booklet to follow and I took diligent notes.  

When I left, instead of feeling confident and knowledgeable, I felt overwhelmed and confused.  How was I going to remember all that stuff?  

Hubby asked me about the class.  I told him the truth.  I wasn't sure if I learned anything or not. (mostly NOT)  The next day, I asked him a question about my camera settings.  He started talking and turning dials as usual.  Only, this time, I knew what he was saying.  He has been saying these things all along.  F stop, shutter speed and so on.  And, now I knew what those words meant!  Hallelujah!  I guess I did learn something after all.