Month: November 2009

All the photos in this post are from Leilani. She loves to take pictures and often asks to take pictures, especially when she sees us taking lots of them. Leilani starts to take more pictures of people now:

This was very useful at Great-Grandma’s party, it’s always easier for her to walk up to people, point a camera at them and get a smile. Here she did a great job on one of the group photos of Andy and his other cousins:

Andy eating cake:

Hunter eating in the old high chair:

Everyone really wanted to see if Joe would let her take his picture. He did, but this one was more artistic, it shows how the subject recedes from view, you can feel the distance–or something:

Grandma Rosemary:

A ghostly cat:

Feet pictures are back!!! I missed them.

And then lots of still life pictures, first some of Sharon’s decorations:

All the cards for Great-Grandma:

And some grittier compositions:

Should we call it a self-portrait :-)

Leilani’s preschool class took a field trip to a pumpkin patch in Half-Moon Bay last week:

A prehistoric deer in Styrassic Park. Leilani’s photos are recently cropped to “get out disturbing things” – I do the actual cropping, but she tells me how. For now we maintain a printable ratio, but she really tried to get the sign out and keep the legs…

Pumpkin with shadow. (uncropped)

Oma’s salt lamp (uncropped)

This one was included on Leilani’s special request, heavily cropped

Sabletoothcat at the Styrassic Park.

I didn’t want to include pictures of Inge but this one needs to go on, except for the smile it is actually pretty accurate, especially on the eyelashes and the necklace and the shoes…

Leilani wrote: “Aunt Inge with beautiful necklace” on the back

A drawing of my dad. The 2 strange things on the right are cigarette box and ashtray

She wrote: “Opa lies in the bed with wheels.”

The nicest part of our trip to Austria were Leilani’s riding lessions. Technically they were not riding lessons, the actual thing she is learning is equestrian vaulting. I put a link in there as is seems to be something completely unknown in the US.

Twice a week we visited Inka and Tante Alex, who very patiently helped Leilani to learn the basics.

I include a few bad photos here (and a LOT of good ones :-) mainly because I want to document what Leilani did, still in the hope of finding a way to continue her riding experience in sue-happy California before she is 6 years old…

That is called “Ritter Kunibert” – because of the old Austrian drinking song, that claims Ritter Kunibert’s long sword hindered his riding, so he sat on the horse backwards…

We actually saw one of the rare up rainbows while Leilani was riding. Of course it was Leilani who spotted it first…

It’s not about riding alone, hooves need to be cleaned…

…and coats brushed.

Catch the dice!

Inka is walking the wrong direction…

On a few ocasions Leilani was allowed to hold the reins herself.

Leilani loved to go trail riding out in the forest. Too bad my flash did not work.