Post Irony

A couple weekends ago we loaded up for a trip to Branson to see Mimi, Papa and Meemaw. Abby has for some reason took a liking to miniature golf so we took the unprecedented step of visiting two mini golf establishments in a single day. First up was a pirate-themed course complete with pirate ship. Abby and I jumped up on the ship’s afterdeck to take a turn at the wheel. I yelled “Avast!” a couple of times.

When we finished the round they gave me this cool hat and eye patch.

After dinner that evening we walked across the street to a mini golf course with a Land That Time Forgot kinda theme. A raging plastic triceratops caught Abby and me off guard. BTW it turns out the triceratops might not have been what we all think it was.

The place had a big fake volcano that belched flames about every 15 minutes. I wanted to get a photo of Abby and Gina with the spewing volcano in the background, but every time the thing went off Abby ran away from it and all the pictures came out like this one with Gina waving frantically for Abby to come back. Even after seeing it do its thing about 50 times, Abby still wasn’t convinced that lava wasn’t going to come down and engulf her.

I even worked in a waterfall shot.

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Over the Fourth of July weekend, Gina, Abby and I trekked up to Southeast Kansas to visit my parents and Grandma Dailey, whose 95th birthday was on July 9. Gina thoughtfully picked up a couple of gifts and cards before we left Little Rock.

Abby loves to participate in birthdays so she was happy to assist Grandma in opening the presents.

Then we sat down to a seriously down-home meal of ham, purple-hull peas, cheese grits and cornbread.

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Classic Fathers Day. Abby made me the traditional breakfast in bed and then we went out to pick wild red plums to make some Uncle Slappy’s Plum Delicious Red Plum Jelly. It was hot. By the time we were through Abby and I were pouring water over our heads to cool us off enough to walk back to the car.

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Wasn’t it just yesterday that Abby was sleeping in this thing as a baby crib? When we moved into the new place we converted her bed from the toddler configuration to the full-on regular bed configuration. She’s going to be sleeping in her own place before we know it. She picked out the hideous bed clothes ensemble, by the way.

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Abby and Gina riding the carousel at the Little Rock Zoo.

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It was pretty stormy in the state last weekend, so Abby, Gina and I took a trip on Sunday to check out Falling Water Falls in the Ozark National Forest between Ben Hur and Witts Springs. We also stopped by Six Finger Falls a few miles downstream. I wasn’t feeling very photographically inspired so I don’t have much to show. We had a good time, though. Abby caught a huge terrapin turtle and we saw a little snake, so she got her Bindi the Jungle Girl on a little bit.

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We stormed Branson a couple of weekends ago to spend time with Mimi and Pawpaw. Mimi got us another sweet suite at the resort where she works.

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Little Rock’s first snow of any significance in 7 years (according to the news) happened this week. Abby was so excited she got dressed in record time, and all by herself to boot. She never does that on a school day.

Her first snowman.

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After enduring weeks of a Christmas-fueled Abby, endless viewings of RTRNR and last-minute runs to Toys R Us, the big day finally arrived. It was the first Christmas when Abby was fully cognizant of the implications of the season. I got all my picture-taking junk set up the night before (I used the Strobist Christmas game plan) in anticipation of capturing the surprise and wonder on Abby’s face when she saw Santa’s bounty laid before her. But instead of letting her awaken to her own circadian rhythm, we woke her up, which resulted in her being groggy, confused and in a kinda cranky mood. She did show a little classic Christmas emotion when her jaw dropped upon seeing the half-eaten cookies and empty milk glass left from Santa’s late-night snack.

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Time for the annual family Christmas portrait. Merry Christmas to you and yourn.

Strobist info: Last year I used a single reflective umbrella and another flash for a hair light and I had weird shadow issues. This year I used the reflective umbrella on camera right with an SB-600 at 1/4 power and my ghetto foam-core softbox on camera left with an SB-26 also at 1/4. I wanted to keep the light ratio very close. Even though both flashes were on 1/4 power, the different modifiers put out different light levels. The softbox was a little brighter than the umbrella.

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