Nina's Exhilarating Life

I got back from our fun filled vacation late on Saturday. We had a lot more fun than we thought we were. We did three days at Disneyland, half a day at Universal Studios, Legoland, Seaworld, the beach in San Diego, Air/Space Museum in San Diego, and the MidWay aircraft carrier (ok I skipped that one…). Completely packed full of stuff. Pascal did wonderful and really hung with us through all the travel.

Before our trip, the boys hung around the house and played a lot of xbox. We also did gingerbread houses with Lily and her mama Jenny! The pictures are here : http://www.jennygg.com/2009/12/i-see-candy-gingerbread-houses-nina-toms.html

Anyway, here are a few of my favorite pictures of our trip:

Disneyland:

Legoland:

The Beach:

Well, Tom brought up the pig flu from his travels around teh US and Canada. Yes, Canada. He can get back in the country which means he got to see his kids. I heard it was a fun trip which included hockey, haircuts, family guy jokes and swine flu vaccines for the boys. I am hoping my swine flu vaccine has taken effect but it’s close. I had it on a Thursday and he got home on Tuesday swearing he had the pig flu. This is teh second time I have ignored him and his fevers. I never hear the end of it… anyway.

I was a nice wife today and made him Sprinkles dark chocolate cupcakes with mint chocolate frosting. There has been a lot of baking going on around here. Pumpkin chocolate muffins which were realllly good. I can’t say I am a pumpkin fan but I really liked these. I have made brownies and cookies also. Given Toms flu, we are going to stay out of the general public and have thanksgiving with just us. I have quite the menu planned… 14 pound turkey, rolls, green beans, cornbread if I am nice, mashed potatoes… well the usual. I am going to buy some pies from Seattle Pie Company for dessert. It should be good.

We are going to have the kids for Christmas. We have planned a surprise trip to Disneyland which I can’t wait for. We are going to spend 4 days at Disneyland and then a couple days in San Diego. I hope the weather is lovely….

I finally bought a new computer since my Macbook pro is getting old. I went for the 27″ imac quad core. It’ll be on Wednesday. Yay for four day weekends and new computers…

We get keys on Monday! We have had several problem along the way like appraisal was less than sale price and the lender had the wrong loan amount that made it all the way to escrow. But hopefully everything is behind us. We are closing about a week and half late but better late than never I guess.

We are planning on moving as soon as there is an opening with the moving company. We are beyond excited. I think about two weeks ago I realized that I can’t stand living in this small space with a cat and a husband. I want my own desk and room to sprawl out. I want my own bathroom! The cat wants better hiding places from Tom.

The kids will be here for Christmas so we have to get their room ready. I will also need to buy a new TV for the living room (at least 55 inch LCD of some sort). Tom wants furniture for the roof top deck. The whole place needs blinds! Oh and Tom wants to get a cat condo!

The fridge got installed last week and it looks fantastic. I am in love with it. I love the drawers on the bottom so hopefully nothing will get lost in it. The washer/dryer will get installed in a week.

In the funny but not so funny step kids file… Tommy apparently told his baseball coach to fuck off for not letting him play. He’s learning early.

Well, we have been married for a whole week and we haven’t killed each other yet. Anyway, the day after the wedding we took the kids up to Hurricane Ridge because Tom wanted to show them some mountains.

A very nervous Tom (I think the kids hands hurt after this little hike up!):

Check out Jenny GG ’s blog for our wedding pictures:

http://www.jennygg.com/2009/07/i-see-weddings-nina-tom-on-the-south-lake-union-trolley.html

So, we bought a (town)house. I don’t suggest buying a house when getting married. It has been insane trying to keep up with all the paperwork. I think we are finally caught up thanks to a few days off and well… getting married.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the inside. It’s a townhouse with three units and ours is in the middle. It’s located in Magnolia.

The kids *loved* the house. They ran around yelling for about 30 minutes straight. I think they took their fathers ‘office’ for their room too.

So…. cross your fingers the rest of the process goes smoothly. Appraisal is tomorrow!

Well, I am all married and it went fantastic! Did you see us on KOMO TV or King TV?

More pictures to come….

In two weeks, I’ll be an old married hag instead of a old single hag like right now. I am excited!

In other news…. I did the swimming part of a triathlon today. It was fun! They are doing it again in September if anyone is interested. They also have a kids triathlon which is super cute.

John Curley was there too… does it get ANY better than John Curley? I think not… I wish I would have gotten a better picture but I didn’t want to bother him!

I am pretty sure that I am completely converted over to RAW + Manual only. This weekend, I reallllllly wanted to be lazy and use an automatic mode on my camera but it ended up frustrating me more than anything. I think my pictures are much better when I have completely control of the light. I just need to get faster so I can capture the action shoots a little better. I did pre-plan the lighting yesterday which did help. Even if I was off a little, I can do post processing editing pretty easy… yay RAW.

I do need to work on getting things better in focus. As an example, click for a larger version:

I would rather his face be in focus instead the window rail. If I take AF off, I can’t see clear enough to see if it’s in focus. I can zoom in on the image on the LCD screen but not that close.

Any suggestions? I know I can change the focus point but not fast enough to capture the moment.

I also wish I knew more about lightroom and photoshop. I did purchase a couple books and think that’ll help. I just need to find time to go through them more. Well, it might help if I find a reason to use the tools more.

We headed out to Northwest Trek early this morning so that we could catch the first tram of the morning. Apparently, that is the best time of the day because its food time! We had an amazing view of the animals. Tom was sure it was going to suck but he said he even enjoyed it. Here are a few shots, full set here:

This is seriously the cutest owl ever.

The guy I am marrying in 19 days.

Losing his winter coat:

This stubborn animal refused to move so we had to go around him a wee bit.