Holy cow, I just realized this may be the first week in who knows how long that I don’t have a picture of either Lucas or Willie or both! Well, you can see a wee bitty Lucas in this storyboard of our quick and eventually stormy first visit to Petrie Island last week. We had just arrived and had a little picnic lunch and the boys were splashing their feet (we hadn’t brought bathing suits or towels as the beach was not our original destination) when we noticed the threatening clouds coalesce into rain way up the Ottawa River toward Kanata. We watched the rain get closer and closer, and had just decided we had better move back to the car a little faster than anticipated when this wicked wind kicked up a sandstorm, just in front of the pouring rain. We made it in the barest nick of time!
I’ve planted daisies and pink coneflowers in the front garden and sunflowers all over the place, and the damn things just refuse to grow. Who can’t grow sunflowers?! Apparently, me. But there’s a patch of daisies in the back garden that are flourishing and delightfully photogenic.
I’ve been working on honing my off-camera flash skills in anticipation of two flash workshops (well, one lecture and one workshop) that I’ll be attending later this summer. I’ve made lots of test shots, but these ones were the first ones that were interesting enough to share. I put the flash down on the ground amidst the daisies and pointed it straight up at them, then set my camera on manual with a shutter speed fast enough to kill the mid-day light, so the camera would only register what the flash was lighting. I liked it better in B&W, as it gives a more dramatic glow to the daisies, I think.
We got our first CSA share from Roots and Shoots farm this week. Fresh, photogenic and yummy too!
It was a crazy-busy last week of school! First, there was the talent show.
Then, I helped supervise the fourth grade class picnic. I was talking to Tristan’s teacher when she said, “Oh, the baby goats are here!” I thought it was a colloquialism, but no, a parent had arrived with their family pet goat’s two newborn kids. They were only two days old, fresh enough that they still had their umbilical cords attached! I tell ya, stuff like this doesn’t happen in city schools!
And then it was the last day of school. If you look closely, you can see Simon is fighting back tears here – at least I didn’t have both of them bawling this year. Does anyone else’s kids cry instead of dance the last day of school? I suppose I should be happy they love school so much, and with report cards that have B- as the lowest grade between them, it shows.
Just for fun, here’s last year’s version. Huge difference!
And this is the last year there will only be two in the traditional first/last day of school pictures – Lucas starts JK in September!!!
My oldest always cries on the last day of school too. He knows that he does better with routine, and really misses his friends over the summer. I was the same way as a child.
I can’t grow sunflowers or coneflowers, either. A great disappointment. Great pictures – love the daisies. I didn’t realize the b&w one was daylight – so cool.