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Random Summer Pics

Here are a few random vacation pictures from the trip so far…

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A few more Danbury Pictures

On December 31 I went out in the early AM before the sky started to change and tried to capture a few interesting shots of the house.  It was below zero with a respectable breeze which was not conducive to having dextrous fingers to fiddle with camera knobs.  That combined with the difficulty of focusing and shooting in very low light kept most from turning out but there are a few worth sharing.  For reference these were taken when the sky was almost entirely dark – they seem like dawn is well along only due to the long exposure.  The only lights in the house were the patio light in the back, the fireplace inside and the Christmas lights strung on the deck.

The ones below are a combination of long exposures, high dynamic range and extreme photoshopping.

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The Second Expedition to Hidden Lake

Alert readers will remember that two years ago a failed expedition was mounted to Hidden Lake.   There are no roads or paths to Hidden Lake and its existence was only noted by looking at a Google Earth view of the area around Danbury.   Two years ago with over 2 feet of snow on the ground we set out to find it but ended up turning back short of our goal when grahm cracker provisions ran low.

This year we resolved to try again.   On Jan 1, 2013 Ben, Kai and Nora set out to find the elusive lake and met with success!   The pictures below document the amazing journey.

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2012 Christmas Day

Kai and Nora were up by 6am and Ellen, Art and Karen didn’t arrive until 7am.  That gave them an hour to sort and stack the presents in different ways.    Nora was surprised by most gifts but Kai was pretty sure most thinks were Legos or books.   As he put it “what else would they be?”

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2012 Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve started early when our Elf of the Shelf named Danbury visited and left a series of clues that Kai and Nora had to follow to find their presents.    The clues alternated between pictographs (for Nora) and sentences (for Kai) so they could both participate.   That craft elf even had them running a few hundred feet up the road to the garage with the temps hovering close to zero.    Kai got a small star wars lego and Nora a Hello Kitty hat that she has yet to take off.

Later Ellen and Art as well as Aunt Karen joined us for a wonderful evening of conversation and the traditional Christmas Fondue.   The cheese didn’t curdle and there were no burns in the hot oil so – success!    Santa’s progress was tracked through the night via NORAD.

At bed time Nora was out like a light but Kai struggled between being unable to sleep due to anticipation combined with a fervent desire to will himself to sleep lest Santa give our house a pass due to restless kids.

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Christmas Decorating

In typical holiday fashion we did both gingerbread houses and cookie decorating.

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Snow Day

This set is from the “snow event” last week.   A couple of days after we arrived a system came through and dropped 7 to 8″ of snow.  A perfect amount.  Not too much that everything shut down but enough for beautiful scenery.   Kai and Nora had fun with snowballs and snow angels and we even started a snow fort off the front deck.   We originally used a snow shovel to move the snow but quickly switched to a 4-wheeler with a snow plow on the front to mound up the snow.   We had a great little fort for a while but since then temps soaring into the 30’s and a patch of rain have turned it into a dirty mound of snow strangely out of place.

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The New Boat

The day after we arrived we scheduled delivery of our new Pontoon.  The nice folks from Hayward Marine showed up right on time (though so did the thunderstorms).   We got the run down on the boat operations in heavy rains though they cleared enough later for a nice ride.   We’ve been out daily since.