Memory lane

I've had such a great time reminiscing with the scanner today.

I found family history photos--

Isn't my mom sweet in her poodle skirt?

Holy guacamole...she looks like someone...

And what pretty wedding colors...someone else should use those...

I genuinely love this dress. My aunt is like spun sugar in it.

And I found lots of old photos of our friends...

This is my high school, Emmanuel Christian Academy. The girl on the left is Kisha, who has been one of my best friends since high school and is one of Arthur's godparents. She is amazing.

This is us and all of our friends at a Roger Waters show in Dallas around 2000 or so. Yep, I rock a fanny pack.

I also found some terrific pics from my bachelorette party--

--at least from the publishable parts of the evening.
I love these ladies so much.

I also found some wonderful forgotten images from our wedding--

Those colors! How pretty. They look familiar...

I made the flower arrangements, by the way.

...along with the floral wreath on my head. A girlfriend made my gown. Isn't it lovely? Sigh.

What a great time. I can't wait for our anniversary party in May!

We were dragging Hello Kitties all the way to Colorado.

I also found some more pics from our trip to Europe...

This was inside a castle. A castle, I say!

...and images of many other places I hope to see in my sweet, sweet dreams.

Good-night, friends. Be happy!

More Yummy Photos

I have a few more pretty pics from the OWL project.  Feel free to use them if you would like...just please say that I took them somewhere or something.  I won't sue you or anything...it's just bad karma.

Enjoy!

Birds by the sea, Gulf of Mexico.

Little boy learning what not to put in his mouth.

My first meeting with a chipmunk, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, on our honeymoon in 2001.  He was very, very small.

Germany, 2006.

Fluffy white clouds.

Two of the best people I'll ever know, Miles Davis and Maynard James Keenan, the canine versions.  Miles was eight years old when we lost him suddenly to cancer.  I used to lean against his 120-pound body like a pillow and paint his toenails purple.  He was the best dog ever (sorry Maynard!).

We believe Miles was mastiff-rott and Maynard is Corgi-beagle.  Any thoughts?

Flamingos, the old Discovery Island at Disney World, circa 1994.  Follow this link to find out more about this amazing place.  It was one of my favorites!

Gargoyle, castle in Bamberg.

Fire garden, Bonnaroo.

Owen Park, the goose king.

Lions, Tulsa Zoo.

Marina, Corpus Christi.

Church, Corpus Christi.

One of Tulsa's many penguins.

Rooftops, from Nurnberg Castle.

Beach, Corpus Christi.

My kitchen (needs a makeover).  Guess what I love?

Fun with Photos

While working on the Amazing, Super-Spectacular OWL, we recently ran into an Attribution Nightmare.  We soon found we were spending more time attributing photos we used than developing content for our tutorials...yikes! 
To solve this problem, B, who is heading up the project, looked to her own photo stash, and the rest of us soon followed suit. 

It didn't take long before I ran out of pics, however, as just about every photo I've taken in the last 2.5 years has been Arthur-centric.  I found myself one recent morning sprawled across the hardwood surrounded by literally hundreds of old photos in a strange postmodern mandala formation.  I took everything I thought I could use and tossed it into a lined apple basket and put our lab assistant to work scanning them.  They were badly cropped, taken with cheap cameras, etc., so I am now going through in my down time and using a photo editing program to spruce them up a bit.

The cool by-product of this time vampire is that I get to revisit places I've been and things I've done with new eyes.

Here are some of my favorites.

This is a church we visited in Nurnberg when we were over there in 2006 or so.

Niagara falls, taken when I was a teenager in the early 90s.

The inaugural Bonnaroo (from the VIP stage), 2002.

 A little church in South Texas where we attended a friend's wedding 10 or so years ago.

Keith and Melissia's wedding reception in 1997 or 98.

Justin contemplating the Oklahoma City Memorial.

Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World in Florida, 1994.

Corpus Christi.

Our life so far in numbers: a pictorial chronology of love and learning

Number of months apart that Justin and I were born at Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa.

I wish I had some scanned baby photos of young Justin. His eyes were as blue on blue as they are today and held a universe of curiosity; his hair was a mess of Tennessee sunset.

Justin was born to wonderful, talented parents and grew up with two of the loveliest brothers anyone will ever had. Each has their own unique style and interests and the three of them grew up to be some of the best catches around.

I grew up across town from him, back when the east side of Tulsa was much more rural. Although our paths never crossed, we both grew up with a passion for music, the arts, knowledge, and adventure.

Number of years ago that Justin and I became a couple. He was the best surprise of my life. We drank in the sky and sounds and earth and love. Every moment was youth and energy and growth. We became the people we are today incrementally, over a moment, an hour, a year, a decade. We didn't know then that we would essentially grow up together. We were so busy embracing the beautiful, drunken present that we never imagined the endless, breathless years to follow. The day he took me to the lake and we crawled out onto the rocks to inhale the stars and the water, the day he told first me he loved me, lives in my soul like a guardian angel.

The house number of our first home, the home we live in now, our perfect little hobbit hole.

The day in May 2001 when we wrapped ourselves up in this beautiful knot.

Number of years we spent together before Arthur came into our lives.

Arthur's birth weight.

Three, oh three, it's a magic number.

Number of years that Arthur's been with us.  We love this little monkey!