Well hello there...

We recently had the pleasure of spending a week with David, Ruth's biological Dad who lives in Ottawa. Ottawa is on the other side of Canada, so needless to say we don't get to see him very often at all. The last time we had a chance to visit was at our wedding.

It was great of Dad to take a whole week off from his job and come experience Seattle in true Lepp fashion. And oh did we experience the city! Seattle is a great place to live and play and we wanted to show Dad as much of it as possible.

Alright now...where to begin...



...Ah Yes! Coffee!

Dad adjusted to our caffeine habits rather quickly. Pretty soon he was the one suggesting, "how about we grab a latte first!"

Okay. Now that we got that out of the way, first things first. Pike Place Market.



Good times. Beautiful flowers. Next up was Seattle Center. And we did the space needle in a whole new way for me and Ruth. We didn't just go up to the observation deck...



...Dad took us out for dinner! It was a stunning way to eat, and a highly recommended way to see the city.






The floor of the restaurant rotates as you eat, giving you a full 360 degree view. Very cool. And the food was excellent.

In Redmond we decided to visit the Velodrome!



The Velodrome is a race track for cyclists. We were there during training and it was pretty neat to watch. I had never seen a velodrome before.



Zoom!

A trip to Seattle is never complete without a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo! This time I was armed with a 300mm lens. Much more fun!





I never get tired of the zoo. We got to witness grizzly bear feeding time which was pretty cool. It is me and Ruth's opinion, that a trip to Seattle is now longer complete without a walk-on ferry trip to Bainbridge island. Thanks to the Millers for tipping us onto this great little summer evening experience.



We had some halibut and frys at Ivor's, walked onto a ferry at pier 52 and then walked across downtown Bainbridge for...what else?




That's right.

Dad happened to visit on the week of the Fourth of July! Good timing! Our great friends Bill and Addie invited us out onto their parents boat to see the fireworks from Lake Union. That was a first for us all. What a great night!



Well, that's all for now. We actually saw many more things while Dad was here but didn't photograph them all. It was a busy week of site seeing and visiting and eating great food. Thanks for the visit Dad! It was great to see you. Come back soon!

Wedding bells

Well, no actual bells yet. Wedding showers perhaps? Joanne hosted a wedding shower for Amy at our house this weekend. For Ruth it meant a chance to make a bunch of fun party food and hang out with the girls.





And this is about where me and my new friend Christian, decided that we needed to leave the house. Christian is Heather's boyfriend. He and I held our breath so as not to inhale all the estrogen, and we headed for the Taphouse in Bellevue. We sampled beers, ate some good food and then went to watch a movie where people dodge bullets in slow motion and do acrobats with sports cars.

So needles to say that most of these moments were captured by Ruth.








Uh...yeeaah. Too much pink. Too much clucking and squealing. I can hear it just looking at the photos. I made sure all those skirts went home before I returned to scavenge the fridge for leftovers.






There's the one skirt I wanted to stick around! What a doll!

Congratulations to Amy and Abraham! I'll be shooting the wedding so that'll be a blog post of it's own. One more month for those two.




Yum!

The shovel and the level

This isn't really my thing...



I don't take on projects like this. Ruth will attest to it. In fact I believe the day I began digging, Ruth was downright scared. It's a pretty small scale project. It's just not like me and I know that. It's not what I'm good at, and I know that too. But it's a good lesson in trying something new and stepping out of my comfort zone...you know my office.



I'm building a retaining wall in our backyard. Originally there were a few old rotting rail way ties holding back the dirt. I ripped those out and dug a trench. It's a pretty straight forward process. I've been working with Josh ( http://themillerhood.blogspot.com/ ) at his house with several walls over the years, so I felt like I knew how to do it.

I didn't.



But Josh rescued me and put me on the path to success. I didn't dig deep enough or wide enough. I was also apparently being a little too picky on the leveling of the bottom row. The bottom row is everything, if you don't get those right, you're hosed.




Progress is slow as I have more projects then I can keep up with. If I'm not working on my illustration freelancing, I'm trying to get my photo freelancing of the ground. If I'm not doing either of those, I have no excuse to not be in the backyard shoveling gravel and stacking bricks. It's labor! It's real, actual labor. For goodness sakes I'm getting blisters and a sore back!




I've learned something; working in the yard makes me feel like I really deserve ice cream.

Also, I bought a new lens recently so I'm testing it out here on the wall and on these flowers. It's a sigma 17-70mm with macro focusing. Tell me if it measures up.



Also tell me how awesome my wall is.
It makes me feel like a manly man.

Ah, who am I kidding I just posted a picture of pretty flowers.

Memorial Day Weekend

The week before memorial day weekend is a big week of events in our house. May 21st is my birthday, and the 24th is our anniversary. So we booked off a couple days and went home to Salmon Arm to celebrate those two events with our families. The drive to Salmon Arm takes us through Hope, BC, which is one of my favorite places to drive through. The views never disappoint me. Now in the spring the mountainsides are striped with waterfalls.




So this is me as a fresh faced 28 year old on my birthday. I look a little sour actually. I wonder of the years are catching up to me. Heck nah! I'm still in my twenties, life is good! I'm still within the age bracket of people who win Nobel prizes and stuff like that. Not that I'm aiming for a Nobel. I'm older then Spielberg was when he made Jaws. That bothers me sometimes. But I'm younger then Da Vinci was when he painted the last supper, so there's still hope I can influence the art world in some way.



Had to photograph the clematis blossom's just opening in time for us leaving home for the weekend.



So we arrived home to Salmon Arm where my Dad gave me this for my birthday...



If it looks familiar, it's because we've blogged it before. It's Salmon arm from above. Dad took me on a great plane ride as a birthday present. It was fun since my Dad and I are both into photography. I borrowed his lens and we aimed at shooting a few key locations around town, including some of the flooding around the salmon river.

Unfortunately, all the bending backwards to shoot out the window, combined with looking through the viewfinder as I zoomed in and out, combined with the bumpy weather, caused our flight to last only half an hour before I begged Dad to land. blech! sick! What a wimp I am!



After we left town, Dad took a few of the photos we took to the local paper who bought them and printed them on the front page the next week! Pretty funny. My first photograph in print! Can't take much of the credit though. It was Dad's lens, Dad's access to the plane, and Dad's idea.

For our anniversary (five years now!) we stayed at the Prestige Inn on the water in town. Ruth's Dad, Eric won a free night at the prestige and gave it to us as a gift. Thanks Dad! It was great!

This is the Prestige and the wharf from the sky...



And our view from the room...



And my 300mm's view from the room...



I'm pretty sure she' sitting on some eggs there.

Here are some evening pictures from our walk down the wharf.



I've also been playing with Eric's 580ex speedlite for the last week or so. Here's a picture of a bride-to-be as I prepare to shoot her wedding with equipment that I need to learn how to use.



A professional trials, mountain biker rode through town while we were there, and stopped for a show downtown. He did some crazy things on a mountain bike.




I practiced shooting more humming birds...





We visited with family lots, ate some delicious meals, and headed home. Not much else to report.

I feel like I haven't been taking as many photos lately. One of these days I need to blog a random day in our week like I used to, instead of trips and vacation. Costa Rica must have thrown me off.

Until then, here's some closing roller skating photos from an evening with our community group a few weeks ago.