As is our tradition with most major holidays, we go over to Curt and Maryann’s for celebration and wonderful food. With Curt being a rehabilitated chef, you can always count on having more food than you need and great friends.
I got a few more photos from the evening that I have uploaded to my flickr page in the Christmas 2009 set.
Of course we always stay too late whenever we visit Curt & Maryann, but with it being Christmas the girls were up and ready to go at 5:43am. (I was so hoping to make it until 6.)
This year the girls went straight for their stockings and seemed pretty pleased, but the big fun came from the gifts under the tree.
This year I took a chance and gave Jennifer something she has said she wanted, but never asked for as a gift. Although many of the women I worked with advised me against it, I got Jennifer a very fancy, stainless steel, long lasting, nose hair trimmer.
Naturally I dressed it up in a fancy jewelry box and gave it to her at the very end. Only fitting for such an important gift. But I think it was a good choice, because she did excuse herself to go try it right away.
The frenzy ended within an hour and about 15 minutes after saying it was the best Christmas ever, both girls amazed me by saying they were bored. Bored at 7am on Christmas morning?!?! I just don’t get it.
Fortunately, they realized that was just silly and they started playing with some of their new toys.
(Sorry for the poor quality of the camera phone, it was what I had.)
Not too much later, Jennifer’s parents arrived and round two of gift giving commenced.
Needless to say, our house was covered with gifts and wrapping paper.
After all the gifts we opened, Jen and I made a nice dinner (although 90 minutes later than we planned) and we enjoyed the day.
I have more photos from the day posted on my Flickr page under the Christmas 2009 set. I did not get any amazing photos, but thanks to David Hobby (a.k.a. Strobist) I duplicated the lighting set up I had last year and was able to move all around the living room without worrying if the light would look good.
Now to dive into some of my gifts and see how I can make even better photos in 2010.
Popularity: 61% [?]
The boy scouts of Jackson Park School, held their annual chili cook off and I was there with my camera. Mostly I was playing with the Pentax 16-50mm f/2.8 lens that I rented and wanted to see how it worked in the low light. It did a good job, but trying to add a little fill light with just the camera’s built in flash caused a nasty round shadow at the bottom of the image. Typical for a large lens with lens hood on.
