Skiing At Sunrise

Last Saturday Marisa and I took Livi and Kiera skiing. The snow was perfect - Fresh Dry Powder. The weather was perfect too. Here is the video. Hope you enjoy.

The Circus Comes To Show Low

A couple of months ago the Circus came to town and I took the kids. The Kids loved it! It was pretty good for a traveling circus in Show Low. They had Flying Trapeze Artists, a Tight Rope Walker, a Bear that could walk on top of a barrel, they even had a round, Steal Cage that 3 motor cycle drivers road around in, all at the same time. It was pretty impressive. Here are some of the pictures. I had to shoot with the available light. It was pretty dark so I boosted the ISO to 1600, opened the aperture as wide as possible (f2.8), and slowed the shutter down as far as I could without losing complete focus.

A Snow Day For The Kids!

As promised here is the video of the snow. It was a fun day for the kids. This was actually the 2nd or 3rd snow of the year but this one brought enough snow to play in, so we'll call it the 1st.

Things of interest in the video. Check out the cool snow suits on Kiera and Dillon. They were donated to us by a Friend that moved to Sedona. Dillon with his favorite toy ever! (Thanks Uncle Kevin and family). Ashlyn with her snot covered lips. (Don't get me wrong she is still cute). And the fight that broke out due to some snow in the face! All and All a pretty fun day. Hope you enjoy.

Long Lost Cousin Stacie

While I was taking a break from my blog, Stacie (Smith) Downs left me a comment. Here is her very cool blog. And here is her adorable family. Great photos huh? And Stacie I agree with you, it is very cool to be able to keep in touch with the family through blogs.






Hey look at me this is 3 days in a row that I have updated my blog. I know what you are thinking... something must be wrong with me.... But, no I am fine. By the way we got some decent snow last night (3 to 4 inches) and the kids had a snow day. Marisa shot a video of the kids playing in the snow. I will try to post it next time. Marisa is on the other computer and won't let me on, and my lap top doesn't have the software for transferring the video.

Suns vs Spurs in San Antonio

Once a Year the Phx. Suns take their radio affiliates on a trip with the team. This year Marisa and I got to go to San Antonio. Our seats were 7 rows from the floor. Not perfect for taking pictures but, I did manage to get a few good shots. Let me know what you think. I guess I can only upload 5 at a time. So I will do some more in my next post.

Thanksgiving In Pima

OK, So it has been a while. A lot has happened since I last posted. I have a lot to talk about. Last night Jen and Mike watched our kids in Phx. so we could go to the Suns game. Thank you sooo much!!!!! And yes the Suns won. They always win when we go. They should invite us more often, huh?. Well instead of dumping an incredible amount of information tonight I want to try something new. I will attempt to upload a video from our new camera (bought on Black Friday at Wal-Mart for 249$). We were in Pima for Thanksgiving along with the rest of the family and it was a blast. 6 different families, 14 Grandchildren and Flynt and Ambers dog crammed into Mom and Dad's (what once seemed big, but now feels quite small) house. Here's the family picture.

Dillon's favorite thing in the whole world is to talk about, play with, and ask his Grandparents to buy him a tractor. Well Grandpa let him do the next best thing, drive his tractor. Here's the video.

How Do Little Boys Get So Dirty?

Here is a Picture of Dillon hard at play at Oma and Opa's house. If you have ever wondered how little boys get so dirty, this is how. Oh, and he was kind enough to share the dirt with his little sister Ashlyn. He would take turns dumping dirt over his head and then hers. If you are wondering what Dillon would like for Christmas? A pile of dirt and some sticks would do it!

Disneyland Day 2

Wow time has been flying by. As usual every time I take time off I pay for it in the following weeks, trying to catch up with everything I missed while I was gone. It is amazing how things can pile up. Well enough of that. I promised a story here and I will deliver! First - while we were at Disneyland we thought it would be fun to get pictures of as many of the characters as possible so the kids can see them. So the first picture is for Ashlyn Her Favorite movie is Winnie The Pooh.
Next we have a picture of the menus at the Blue Bayou. A restaurant that is known for it's ambiance. Here is a picture of Marisa and me at the restaurant. This was shot while we were enjoying the Atmosphere of the restaurant... before we got our food and the bill... you can tell because we are still smiling. The food is way overpriced and not very tasty. That is pretty much true about all the dining at Disneyland. It would make the place so much more magical if you could get a decent meal at an affordable price.

And finally here is a shot from inside the Haunted House. It is themed from the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas", a movie that is getting a lot of screen time at our house lately.

I shot all of my Disneyland picture's on my Kodak Point and Shoot. It was fun to try and manipulate it's limited functionality. I spent a lot of time shooting in the manual settings pushing it to it's limits but with some fun results. I will try and post some of the night shots that worked. If you have a point and shoot spend some time getting to know it's manual settings. You may be surprised at just how flexible your camera really is.

Disneyland and Califronia Adventure Trip

Just some pictures of our trip to Disneyland. The first one is Kevin, Candy, Oryan, and Marisa in front of one of the favorite rides at Califorinia Adventure - The Tower of Terror. The rest of the shots, with exception to the one of Marisa standing in front of the largest Candy Corn in the world, are shots are from the Parade. Don't miss the video at the bottom. Those guys were my favorite part of the parade. There were all shot with my Kodak Point and Shoot. I am really missing the Nikon D200. I should have brought it.

Spider On Our Porch

This is one of many spiders cohabiting with us. One of the fun facts we found out about living here in the mountains is that it is home to a ton of different spiders and unless you exterminate every month you will find them in and around your house. This is one of the nicer spiders (it stays on the front porch). Some of the spiders sneak into our house and cause interruptions to the quietness that should exist in our house. No the spiders don't make noise but, Marisa does and the noise she makes can wake the dead. Her scream when she sees a spider makes me think the world is coming to an end. You would think by now I'd be used to it, but I'm not, and to make matters worse she is training our girls to do the same thing. Anyway here are some pics I took tonight using my friends macro. The first 2 images I used a couple of sb800 one camera right and the other left. The bottom image was shot with just one sb800.

The Fall Festival Parade

My employees gave out Free Pizzas from Little Caesars Pizza. We advertised a couple of weeks before the parade that we would be giving out a large pizza to everyone that shows us their Majik. People brought signs, Majik t-shirts and even painted their faces. This is a picture of Tom driving our new Rhino and pulling the Little Caesar's Mascott. The little boy is the son of one of our Clients.





Ashlyn learns how to get candy at a parade. First you have to Clap and wave!













And then you have to hurry and fight your older brother before he grabs it all. Dillon is really fast when it comes to picking up candy. If we could only get him to work that fast picking up his room!















Livi was in the parade with her girl scout group. She had a lot of fun.















She stops to pose with her friend Skyler.

Blue Bird

When I pulled up to the park to take Livi and Dillon to their soccer practice tonight I saw this bird sitting in this little tree next to the parking lot. What kind of bird is it? I don't think it's Blue Jay. But what do I know? Anyone know what it is?

The House!

Well, we have been negotiating back and forth for the past 2 weeks. We made an offer of 139K + $3000 of our closing cost + we asked them to put in an AC unit. They originally indicated verbally that they would take 139K and cover our closing cost up to $3000. We probably shouldn't have asked for AC, but we thought what do we have to lose? They are now trying to raise the price of the house to compensate for any thing over $1000. For example their first counter offer was 144,900 + they would cover $3000 of the Closing Cost + they would give us a $4000 credit for AC. So they would give us $1100 and let us finance the rest via the higher price of the house. And that is basically where we are today. We have abandoned the idea of the AC unit, we don't want to finance it for the next 15 years. So what that really means is that we are with in $2000 of the deal.

So why haven't we just conceded the 2K? Well, we are conflicted because we felt like they should be more flexible in coming down in price. The original price when we started looking at the house was $139,900. They had, however dropped the price from $159900 about a month before we started looking at it. While this may be an awesome deal right now. The market always slows during the winter months up here. And the biggest employer in Taylor has announced that they are laying off 100 employees next month. A fact that should increase the number of homes on the market this winter given that there are very few jobs in Taylor to begin with.

In addition to that something has happened to our excitement during the negotiation process. Some of our hesitation is based on the distance from Show Low and Pinetop, and St Johns. The things we love to do are spend time with Family, Snow Ski, and go to the movies. We would be about 20 minutes further away from Flynt and Amber. When Marisa's Parents come to visit, they stay at their time share in Pinetop, approx. 50 minutes away. We would be an extra 45 minutes away from the slopes, and 35 minutes away from the closest movie theater.

I think, in the back of our minds we want the seller to pay for all these hesitations, something they obviously are not willing to do.

One of the reasons they are so stuck on this price is that the home is owned by 3 individuals, most likely an investment property. Split the profits 3 ways and it makes it tough to keep everyone happy.

Are we just being dumb? or what? We would love to hear what you think.

My Cousin Julie Is Amazing

This one, I wish I could take credit for, but I can't. It was taken by my Cousin Julie. Julie was unaware of her artistic talents until she was in college. She was one of those diamonds in the rough. An undiscovered. She writes a great blog you can see it here.

Close Ups

A friend loaned me a Sigma 105mm f.28 macro lens today. I couldn't wait to get home and use it. I started shooting right at sunset. Here are the shots I was able to get. Enjoy. P.S. Kiera wanted me to be sure and tell you that she found the Horny Toad.

Grandpa at Roosevelt

I stole this shot from Jen's Blog. Of all the pictures I got at the lake I didn't get any of my Mom and Dad. I know, shame on me. But thanks to Jen I now have this one. does anyone else have any cool pictures of our lake trip? Please send them to me?

Jen has some other cool pictures of our summer activities including some of our time together during the Forth of July. Check out the great shot of Marisa and Amber catching air on the tube at Roosevelt.

Crane Feeding In Pond

I got lucky today. On our way home from our morning session of soccer we saw this crane feeding in a pond next to the road. This is an over flow pond next to Rainbow Lake. I pulled the car over, got out, grabbed my camera and started shooting. I got off a couple of frames and this duck came swimming into the frame. Cool shot huh? I went with Shutter Priority 800. Let the camera pick the fstop. I believe it was f4.5. I focused on the crane so the duck is a little out of focus but still a pretty cool picture if you ask me. Thanks again for all of your comments on the house. We will be making an offer on Monday! Wish us luck.

Our New House?

We have been looking for a house for 10 years! Yes, I know what you're thinking, 10 years is a long time. During that time we have lived in 2 bedroom apartments. They have all been nice apartments but, very small. The one we are in now is the biggest we have been in, but do to an expanding population, it feels like the smallest. The above house is a 4-bedroom 2-Bath house in Taylor on .5 acres. It has new carpet and floors and all new appliances. They were asking $169,00 and just dropped the price to $139,900 (the lowest price by 20k for a 4 bedroom in Taylor) We have been negotiating for the last 2 weeks. They have verbally agreed to drop the price another $4000. I think we are going to make a written offer. We are going to go look at it again with Flynt and Amber tomorrow. Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Cousin Carolyn

You'll never guess who visited my Blog today. Yep it was Carolyn. What tipped you off? The Title? or was it the picture? Any way she has a blog and you can get to it by clicking it in "My Favorite Blogs" to the right. Or just click here: Light Family, or click her picture. I have to admit when I first thought about doing a Blog I was not real keen on the idea, but this has been a lot of fun especially when long lost cousins leave me a note. See her comment below the Las Vegas Post.

Las Vegas

I keep thinking I am going to get a chance to shoot some new photos and do another post but, I haven't had a chance yet. So, given the fact that my goal was to post once every 2 days and it has been over a week since my last post I thought I would post a shot I took last year when I attended management training in Las Vegas. This is a picture of the Strip. I don't remember the camera settings exactly... something like f22 33 sec. exposure. I used the side of a bridge to hold my camera still during the shot.

Let The Games Begin!

It's the boys turn on the lake. A 6AM wake up to try and get some good water pays off. And the name of the game was Bigger, Higher, Better. Flynt Starts the day off demonstrating some new skills, learned on the muddy waters of Lyman (look out Ty! Flynt is out to take your title of "best wake boarder in the family" away). Check out Flynt's new 180. No wake necessary! Pretty Cool huh?

Mike was next. He was looking for some big air but seemed to have white man's disease. He did have some pretty crazy wipe outs though.

I of course pulled off a perfect 360! OK, maybe I was still asleep when I did it. But, I did get some pretty good air for the heaviest man on the lake.

And then there was Shawn. A man who fought through the adversity of a knee injury to compete with the big boys. Here he is going for style points. The outcome was very stylish!
Here is a close up of what happens when you go too big, too fast, and neglect to consider the effects of gravity. Just kidding!!! he is really just doing a back flip off the boat.

The Main Attraction!

Well there is no question to what everyone loved the most on the Roosevelt trip. It was the Tube! some rides where mild for the little kids. Here is a picture of our kids getting a ride with their cousin sam and Aunt Coco. Kiera is trying to make it more exciting by dipping her feet in the water to see if she can get drug off.



Next is a picture of Shawn and Melanie with their kids. Again nothing too rough but we did manage to sink them a few times and send them over enough bumps to force Brigham into retirement. Howerver, It was quickly apparent that the real fun of the tube begain when it got airborne.

This is a picture of Marisa and the kids enjoying the effects of a little air. Kiera's hair looks so cool. It looks like she has dreads. ha! ha!

For even more excitement you have to see what Mike and Shawn did on their tube ride. Now that's fun! Be sure to check out my previous post with a vid of Mike and Shawn.