Birthday media

First, a digital scrapbook I did with Smilebox:

You can view all the photos on Flickr.

We punk’d Justin with relighting candles. I know it’s an old trick, but really, it’s funny every time.

To get an idea of how the evening progressed, I set up a time lapse camera using my laptop. Here’s the result:

I’m really diggin’ the time lapse thing, but now wish I would have left it on all night instead of turning it off when I went to bed. It would have captured the boys playing poker and noshing til 4am.

Happy birthday Justin!

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Aloha!

Aloha friends and family! Guess where we’re going? Yes – that’s right – we’re going to Hawaii! Terry won the 5-night trip at his conference last week and we are so excited about it!

When I was there in December (for work) I visited Maui (Wailea and Ka’anapali), Oahu (Waikiki), Kauai (Poipu) and The Big Island (Kona). I distinctly remember standing on the beach in Wailea and thinking “I’ll have to try and figure out a way to come here with my husband someday – he would love it more than anything.” I guess this is my chance to share the experience with him! We’ve decided to stay on Maui (he had a choice of several islands) but I’m also hoping we can extend for a few days and visit the Big Island too. We’re not sure when we’re going yet either – probably after Justin’s football season ends. I hope we can find someone to watch the kids for us while we’re gone. Ugh all these details!

Overshadowed by this exciting news – earlier in the day (the day Terry won the trip) Terry got to experience ATVing for the first time, and he went parasailing too. It was quite a big day in Terryworld.

He’s home safe and sound now – returned last night. He’s taking the day off today to recoup but he’s also gearing up for football to start soon and has some work to do on that. He’s going to be the Offensive Coordinator for Justin’s team this year. It’s almost like a part-time job for him, but he loves it and it’s a great way for him and Justin to bond.

I’ve been going to Zumba classes at the local rec center. I really love it – it’s aerobics but with a Latin twist (music and moves). Really good exercise too. Our rec center is really nice – it has an indoor running track, a large gym with a perpetual basketball game, a multi-station rock climbing wall, raquetball courts and all the machines of a regular “paid membership” gym. The indoor track is key in this 112-degree heat.

This will be one of the hottest weekends of the summer and our pool is broken! The repair guy can’t make it out until Monday so we’ll be mooching off the neighbors all weekend. Hopefully they won’t mind too much.

Hope you’re all keeping cool and enjoying the summertime! Mahalo! Mele aloha!

First shot

I’ve recently developed an interest in time lapse photography and figured out how to do it using my webcam. Not sure yet how to use my digital camera for this, but working on it. Here’ s my first attempt – nothing tremendously exciting, but still kind of cool I think.

I’ve seen some pretty cool time lapse vids online and will hopefully get some better examples of my own soon. I’m thinking of maybe doing this for a BUNCO night, Justin’s birthday party, cooking Thanksgiving dinner, opening presents on Christmas, etc. Here are some cool ones that I found online from others – Cloud formations are the most fascinating to me, but I will be hard pressed to find much of that in my Arizona skies!