New Blogging Style for 2012

2011 was a real dud on the blogging home front for me.  It seemed like I was always too busy, or had so many pictures I wanted to share I didn’t know where to start.  I will enter 2012 with a fresh start.  More posts per week, with 2-4 pictures…give or take.  Two current pictures and two pictures from years past…anything I wanted to share and just never got around to it.  So, here we go:

Yoda, our dog, is now in recovery from knee surgery he had two and a half weeks ago.  These pictures are from the day we brought him home.  He was SO excited to see all of the family he could hardly contain himself.  It was hard to keep him from being too active and messing up his stiches.  He rolled around, stretched, licked everybody to death and had a look of elation on his face.  It was, and is, good to have the pooch back home.  He has been recovering well and I even took his stiches out myself.  It was really a piece of cake and worth it as the surgeon is all the way down in Puyallup!  Now it’s a long, several months, journey to healing as they cut his bone and now it all has to fuse back together.  The great news is that he’s using his leg once again and is back to his old playful self.

As I long for sunshine and nice weather, I can’t help but think about our trip to Hawaii last year.  I am definitely longing to go back in the future.  We took so many pictures it’s nearly impossible to post even a fraction of them.  As I was looking through the photos I found two that stood out to me.  More on a photography level than any personal note.  I didn’t even notice them before today.  I did a little bit of photo processing, but did not change thing about the pictures…as in taking things out, adding things, etc.  I wish I was better at knowing what would really make these photos POP.  I did my bestest (yes, I know that’s not a word!).  Here is some of the essence of Hawaii…

We stayed in a building of condo units, along the Ilikai Marina close to Waikiki, for the first few days on Oahu.  One morning We could see the waves forming and a lot of surfers paddling out to sea to ride the waves.  This picture was of a mother and daughter duo, who were both in great shape by the way, heading out to sea with their boards on board.

Mr. Turtle was found along the highway in the North Shore of the island.  There was quite a fuss with quite a few cars parked along the road.  We stopped to see what all the commotion was about.  This guy was protected by red tape and a guard (who looked more like a surfer dude).  It’s against the law to come into contact with the turtles.  I can’t remember how far a distance you had to keep from them, but there was a law about it.  This was one of three sea turtles I saw during the trip.  Two were seen while snorkling (what fun!) and this guy was just basking in the afternoon sun, pretty oblivious to the crowds taking photos.  On the same day we were driving the North Shore highway, we actually happened upon a guy who was stealing coral from the ocean.  Jeremy went up to him with the video camera rolling (not knowing what the guy was up to, it just looked interesting), and asked the guy what he was up to.  The guy was out of there and in his car within a few minutes flat with a look of panic on his face.

And, well, here is just a funny picture taken sometime in February 2011.  I may have even included it in a post last year.  It’s just so funny to me.  These kids are doing workouts from the TV.  And hamming it up a bit too.