Abby’s letter to Santa. She heard me say that my all-time favorite Christmas gift was my Evel Knievel action figure and stunt cycle and a week later put it on her Santa list. She didn’t seem terribly interested in mailing anything to the North Pole and petered out on the list making. Later she came back and added the ink stamps and the pizza grease stain.
Gina went out of town earlier this week for a four-day business trip. Right after she left Abby had one of her great ideas: “Let’s make gingerbread men as a surprise for Mom when she comes home.” I have no idea where she came up with this. We’ve never made gingerbread men at our house and we’ve never bought any that I can remember. But because I’m a great dad I told her it was a great idea. She said, “OK let’s go.” I told her we’d better wait until the day before Mom came home so the cookies would be fresh. Everyday thereafter when I’d pick her up from school she’d ask if we were going to make gingerbread men. She’d then sulk for an hour or so when I said “three more days, two more days,” etc. I found a recipe on the Internets and went and bought all the ingredients and when the day came Abby and I went to a local kitchen store and bought big, medium and small gingerbread man cookie cutters.
I hauled out my trusty twin SB-600s and two shoot-through umbrellas to capture what promised to be a magical father-daughter evening. Also I figured the gingerbread men would make good subjects to shoot with the beater macro lens I recently bought on eBay.
Abby’s school held a massively politically incorrect Indian pow-wow in honor of Thanksgiving. They sang a song about smoking peace pipes and then they said a Christian prayer. Abby was real cute in her head dress and vest, though.
For the second week in a row, and the third time in a month, we took Ol’ Leaky out for some camping action. It rained. Ol’ Leaky, as you might expect, leaked. It wasn’t too bad though. The rain was quite heavy but it didn’t last long. We stayed dry and warm and caught the leaks with a towel and a bucket.
We went to Lake Ouachita State Park on the eastern end of Lake Ouachita, Arkansas’ largest lake. I’d never been to the lake before, so we got to see a new-to-us area. The campground itself was excellent, complete with electric, water and sewer, though we didn’t use the sewer.
Gramps and Abby carved two tiny pumpkins for the front porch.
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I love the fair. I love the little county fairs and the huge state fair. The fair offers people watching opportunities you won’t get anywhere else.
We took Abby to the State Fair in 2008 and she didn’t much like it. Everything scared her and she didn’t like the food. We were prepared for a similar experience this time. But just when you think you’ve got her figured out, she goes and does something new. She actually liked the fair. She rode the ferris wheel, the kiddie roller coaster and a bungee-jumping-trampoline-kinda deal – twice. I was pretty floored that she agreed to do any of those things. She also scarfed down a giant corn dog.
I’ve struggled with shooting good pictures at fairs even though they are full of bright lights and colorful stuff and great weirdo people. This time I was so enthralled with Abby having such a good time, I didn’t try very hard on the photo deal.
Abby started prekindergarten today. Miss Selma’s doesn’t allow parents to get out of their cars, so I couldn’t get any first-day action shots. I had to settle for a session in the ghetto studio after I picked her up. (That mark on her arm is the remnants of a temporary pirate tattoo she got in Branson 10 days ago.) She was pretty shook up by having to change buildings and teachers and the fact that many of her classmates for the last 1.5 years were defecting for public pre-K. She didn’t go to sleep until about 12:30 a.m. the night before. But most of the kids in her class were also in her 2- and 3-year-old classes so she felt good about the whole thing. “I’m not anxious about pre-K anymore,” she said when I picked her up.
Strobist: SB-600 in shoot-through umbrella directly above and another SB-600 in a shoot-through umbrella propped up on the floor at her feet. SB-26 hair light in homemade snoot at camera left behind subject. I was going for the clam shell effect.
Abby went in for 4-year check-up and service on Wednesday. She’s 42 inches tall and 37 pounds. Right where she should be. Blood pressure is good and reflexes work properly. The doctor wasn’t worried about her nosebleeds and gray tooth that resulted from crashing into a wall head-first about a month ago.
