parks, parties, and rubber duckies

No one special event led to the content of this entry, unless you consider Life itself to be a special event. I've also been making an effort to capture more candid shots of Life as it happens (and then embellishing it with a series of filters), rather than spending forever trying to get Ender to smile long enough for the camera to focus and take the picture.

The city remodeled the park near our house. It's not nearly as trashy as before, but now the kids have fight a lot harder in order to get time on all the fun new things they added.


Candid of Ender, who is obviously enjoying himself on the swing. And no, he didn't throw-up or start crying right after this was taken.


Candid of the little man about to brave the slide all by himself. Which is to say, scoot down the slide, since his bare legs prevented him from actually sliding down.


He just did this. Without any provocation or direction. One of a zillion reasons we love our son.


The #1 Hunk checking himself out in the playground mirror.


Candid shot of him climbing the steps.


This shot took as much effort to get as all the other pictures I took at the playground that day. And it's probably going to be framed and hung on our wall.


It looks like a candid action shot of him sliding, but it's actually a candid action shot of him scooting.


King Ender, Benevolent ruler of the Slide!


Ender went to a birthday party for his friends Kayla & Tymeir. He really did enjoy himself, although here he looks like a depressed tourist.


There were lots of fun things to do, but the most popular by far was the fishing pond.


Look Daddy, I caught a fish!


He's sad because his face-paint started to smudge.


The birthday kids got a giant inflatable molecule that the kids could play in. Ender thought it looked fun at first, but very quickly got freaked-out by the experience. Something about "already too small" and "don't want to be microscopic"... it was tough to tell through his toddler talk.


Mr. Muscles looking smug.


Enjoying multiple birthday cakes.


Little man loves his rubber duckie!

jamaican me crazy

For summer vacation this year we wanted to go somewhere exotic and new, so we decided to go to Jamaica!

Jamaica has lots of jungle and plants. It turns out not all of them are drugs... some of them are flowers like these.


Our favorite part of the trip was going to Ricks! Swimming, tasty food, and cliff jumping!


Poolside seating? Nope... pool seating.


We had the best table in the whole place! Right on the cliff, next to the pool, and mostly away from the riffraff.


Brian jumped off of the cliffs!


Ender was proud of his daddy for being brave enough to jump, and tough enough to survive. And he didn't seem to mind that his dad screamed like a girl on the way down.


Ender obviously loved playing on the beach.


But he didn't much care for swimming in the pool.


Ender must have learned this "Just keep on walking..." gesture from watching us deal with the zillions of local peddlers who wanted to sell us all kinds of junk every 20min or so.


Ender thought that playing by the green wall was way more fun than eating his dinner just about every night.


Searching for his juice cup.


I know it looks like there's a nuke going off just behind us, but it was just the sun setting over the ocean.


Jamaican sunset.


Family photo. And no I didn't boost the color on this one, Jamaica naturally has more chrominance than the United States.


Ender behaved himself very well on the plane.