Our Final Day in England

We have spent the past two days in Warwick England. There is a famous castle that has been turned into an amusement park and a very lovely Episcopal church in this town. Strolling the streets was also very nice. I am going to post a few miscellaneous pictures over the past week. I will try to get some of Warwick Castle up in a future post. I didn't take very many pictures today because once again, it rained on us all day!

Tonight we had to say goodbye to Daisy. Monday she returns to China for the remainder of the summer. We will miss her very much.

Next stop.............PARIS!!!!




More pictures from Sudeley Castle above. I wanted to take many more, but between the rain and my family, I had to be satisfied with what I captured. It was beautiful.


Our cottage in the Cotswolds had two indoor swimming pools, a stone children's playhouse, a full playground and a trampoline. The trampoline was an especially big hit with the girls. I will post more pictures of this place later.



This is Broadway Tower. The views from the top are amazing. It is touted as the world's smallest castle. Later I will post more pictures. It was well worth the visit.


Above is St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Warwick England. It is fabulous!


This is St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

And finally, we have a few more pictures of London, including one from the top of the tour bus. It looks a little cartoony because I took multiple exposures while we were moving.

Daisy Graduates from the University of Manchester

The whole reason we selected England as our summer vacation destination is because we wanted to attend Daisy's graduation from college. Daisy was an exchange student from Beijing China and she came to live with us while we were waiting for a referral for Chloe, five years ago. It was a remarkable experience, at least on our end, and Daisy will always be our first daughter.

Today (July 7, 2009) Daisy graduated with honors with a degree in accounting from the University of Manchester. Next year she plans on attending graduate school, but the location is still uncertain for now.

Chloe and Pearl have proven to be excellent travelers. We are staying at a cottage in the Cotswolds, but the train ride to Manchester was 2.5 hours there and another 2.5 hours back. At the end of this post, I placed a picture from the train ride as we are almost back to the cottage. Pearl is sacked out in the seat in the lower left corner of the photo. The girls brought their Rainbow Rolls so that they could color on the train. If you want one for your little one, you can purchase it here. They are definitely sanity savers.

Sudeley Castle

We have had some full vacation days in England this past week. After two days in London, we traveled to a cottage in the Cotswolds in the small village of Bredon. The very next morning we left for Daisy's college graduation in Manchester. I have a lot of unprocessed pictures from that event that I will try to get to tomorrow.

Today we were hoping for a full day of sightseeing, however, the weather was not cooperating with us. We did fit in a trip to Sudeley Castle and even though it periodically poured rain on us, I still managed to take a few pictures. The girls had so much fun pretending they were royalty. I couldn't keep Chloe from constantly posing, so I took the opportunity to sneak a few extra pictures. For more pictures, click on the Flickr grid in the sidebar to go to our photostream.

Our Second Day in London

This day was full of touring from morning until night. I spent a long time preparing for this trip. I even purchased two new lenses and a mini-tripod for my camera. One of the lenses was very expensive. Much to my dismay, I had inadvertently packed my old lens instead of my new lens............arggggggg! Fortunately, the other new lens I packed was awesome! I used it everywhere. It is a super wide angle and in a city like London, that is definitely what I needed to capture the sights. Every time I aimed it at a monument or building, I got a big smile on my face when I realized I didn't have to step back to fit everything in the frame. The only drawback is the lack of close-ups of the family, but we can do those later. I have a lot more pictures to post, but for now, I have a private swimming appointment with the family in the Cotswolds! We'll share more about that later.





Doesn't Daisy look great?

We're in London

I don't have enough time to give much detail other to say that we arrived here in London safe and sound. We are having lots of fun. Here is a picture for evidence. It hasn't been cleaned up, just straight out of the camera. I'll try and post some nicer ones later.

We were amazed to see how beautiful and mature our Daisy is looking. She looks like a woman and not the girl who lived with us in high school.

We're Outta Here!

Every year on the third of July we have a big gathering at our house. We have somewhere between 50-75 friends, co-workers, and their families camped out in our yard (which spans a whole city block-widthwise) to watch our local fireworks celebration. We do this on the third because the professional fireworks companies are booked in bigger cities on the 4th.

This year there will be one difference.......we won't be home. We have left friends in charge and hope to find our house still standing when we return. Our flight leaves in less than 24 hours.

We are going to England and then Paris......12 days away from home! You see, we had to go. Our first China daughter (an exchange student from Beijing) is graduating from college in Manchester, UK. Certainly we couldn't miss that. The last time we saw our Daisy was when we went to China to adopt Pearl almost 3 years ago. Daisy was the perfect big sister and translator as Pearl adjusted to family life with us. We are all so excited to see her again! Stay tuned for lots of pictures of all the girls. The only person we are missing is Chris (our exchange daughter last year), who is busy attending college at the University of Washington. Maybe someday, we will get all the girls together at one time.

Foreman in a Tomato Field

I haven't been posting that many pictures of the girls lately. That should be changing since we are going on vacation next week and I am taking my camera. I purchased a couple of new lenses and some fun software so that I could make the best of my time on vacation. Consequently, I was out in the fields looking for a subject to shoot.

I remembered a tomato field I shot a few weeks ago and figured that the fruit might be red by now, so I stopped by again to practice at sunset and was lucky enough to stumble upon this tractor parked in the field. To my astonishment, a passerby stopped to see what I was doing. As it turned out, he was the foreman of the field and had worked for this company for over 20 years. He said that the tomatoes would be going to the Del Monte canning facility next week. I asked if I could take his picture and he obliged me, although he engaged me in a lengthy conversation about matters I cannot recall. Afterward, he offered me a watermelon to take home to my family and I gratefully accepted.

This is my second HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo attempt. It is three separate exposures merged into one picture. It could have used at least two more exposures, but I couldn't figure that out in time. You can click on the image for a larger view. Just pick "all sizes" from the top menu.

Update:

I purchased my first DSLR in February this year. It is a Canon 50D and I have several lenses. My new fave is my 24-105mmL by Canon, although I am expecting a Sigma 10-20mm to arrive in the mail tomorrow for my upcoming vacation. I use Photoshop CS4 (where I am really a beginner) and Lightroom 2. This past week I purchased some really fun software products including "Topaz Adjust-bundle" and "Photomatix". These provide HDR and simulated HDR effects. In order to produce an HDR image, you need to take multiple exposures (auto exposure bracketing feature on my camera) and then use a tone-mapping software to merge them. I am having so much fun playing around with this new hobby, but I better get some more sewing patterns designed to help pay for it all!

Father's Day

Here is a picture from today. This is on our way out the door to Grandpa's house. I hope everyone reading this had a great Father's Day and had the chance to build fond memories with your family.

A Couple More Pictures from Oceanside

After a day at the poolside, we went out to dinner with our vacationing friends from Portland. We walked to the harbor in Oceanside and dined at a nice little fish place by the water. I took these pictures during and after dinner.



I was lucky this second shot turned out at all since I was handholding the camera in the almost dark. Can you spot the seal?

Finally Some Pictures from Last Weekend

Fun with water cannons

Joy with all the gear

Skipping to Dinner

A rare willingness to pose

Pure Joy

Friday in Oceanside

We packed up the car and headed south for a long weekend to visit with our friends from Portland. It is so nice now that the girls are old enough to have fun without continual intervention on Mom and Dad's part. We arrived in Oceanside on Friday morning ready to spend much of the day by the pool. As in previous visits, Pearl, Chloe and Joy instantly hit it off and began playing as only the "under 6" crowd can do. Even though their tastes are vastly different, they have one mutual interest, fun.

I am still sorting through my pictures from the weekend and just got around to editing a couple last night. Unfortunately, these first two shots don't include Pearl and Joy, but just wait, there are many more to come. These shots were taken after lunch, when Pearl and Joy decided that they had had enough of swimming and were ready to move on to other activities. Chloe begged me to let her keep swimming and it was just too hard for me to resist. She had the pools (both the large one and the kiddie one) entirely to herself and it was fun to just watch her splashing in her own little world. I think she was even playing "Hide and Seek" with an imaginary friend.

"Sepia Tone" for I ♥ Faces

This week's challenge over at I ♥ faces is "sepia-toned". I shot this photo of Chloe tonight in our driveway. She is clutching our reluctant yet patient cat, Marty. That's what he gets for trying to hone in on all our photo shoots.

Stay tuned for images from our fantastic playdate this past weekend in Oceanside. To see other submissions in this category, click here .

The Park at River Walk

Last weekend we decided to head to the park to enjoy the nice June weather. I told the girls that if they posed for a few pictures, then they could play all they wanted on the playground. I was so distracted by how beautiful the day and surroundings were, that I forgot to try some more creative poses and angles. So, here I have regressed to my older style of taking pictures, just point and shoot. Next time, I'll have to work on that.