time flies

While this blog might lead you to believe that nothing has happened with us this year, nothing could be farther from the truth.  We have been busy; but, well, now we can't go back and revisit things that we did this year.  But since today is a truly auspicious day, there's seems to be no better time to start things off....

 First day of school!!

Everything went really well, Seal Pup 2.0 "learned math," and while Seal Pup 1.0 had fun, "there could have been more learning."  Everyone is pretty pleased with this whole back to school thing, really.

we're going back, back, back to school

Guess who's in first grade now!

Yep, that guy!

The first week of school is done.  "First grade is going to be great!" Pup, the Elder has decided that he "would like to work on improving reading and writing skills this year, you know, since the maths and science skills are all good right now."  Yeah.  Pup, the Younger, he's still in Pre-K, he did start a new class though, and he's pretty excited about it.  They have been doing a camping unit.  He is all about campfires, tents and smores right now.  Pretty funny, considering he has never actually been camping.

kite day 2012

Seal Pup 2.0 celebrated the annual Kite Day yesterday with the Seal Parentals.  It was a good time.

back in the saddle, again

I am taking a few classes at RISD again this semester, Color Theory and Photographic Lighting II.  Both classes have been rewarding; but, the lighting class allows me to have a nice take-away, namely studio portraits.

Here are a few of my favorites:

 As always, more to view in flickr.

You might notice that SP 1.0 is not pictured, he had baseball practice (it's his "thing").

big (little) man on campus

So today was Most Esteemed Son #1's first day of kindergarten.

It seemed kind of weird just popping him on the school bus (which was a really big deal, actually), and watching it roll away. We started counting down the days at 59 days to go.

Irene added a week, but that's okay, especially considering that "kindergarten is so great and [he] loves it!"

I will do a summer wrap up later, but I figured the grandparents would want to see photos of this momentous occasion. Pictures in flickr.

go fly a kite

I say I am going to post regularly and then there are technical difficulties (the photo archives was down, PROBLEM!). And let's face it, me putting up a post without pictures is as likely as me giving up carbs...not going to happen. So now that the problem has been fixed, I need to do some digital photoprocessing before sharing some recent adventures. While I do that, here is one of the happiest images of the pup I have taken recently. The pup's school had a kite day and it was a lot of fun.

There are a few more kite day shots in flickr, of course.

summers are sizzling in virginia and the capitol

So last week we wandered to Virginia. The Mama Seal had a class to attend at a school on the UVA campus; and, Papa Seal and the Pup went too. It was fun and all, but Virginia is really hot this time of the year.

On our way down to Charlottesville, we made a few quick stops. Papa Seal was able to sit down and chat with his mom briefly in Northern VA (oh, serendipitous travels).

The pup had fun playing with his cousin and aunt,

there were crayons.

There were also popsicles.

There were also new and exciting toys,

the likes of which we have never seen.

Clearly, someone had fun.

We also made a pit stop in the Portmouth area, just because.

You have to brainwash indoctrinate them early.

You will have a liking for sea and its lore young man, you will! It's in your genes!

After getting to the UVA campus. I spent all of my time in class in this building:

Kelly and the Anders had other enviable adventures on the UVA campus.
But most of them involved Anders trying to take part in the fun of the ball games of older boys.

Not yet little guy!

And food is always important...and dessert, especially so.

And because wandering was involved, I had to wander to a shop dealing in my own version of candy:

Great fun was had.

And then there was the site of supreme money suckage.

It's very dangerous to learn about chromolithography and chromolithographic prints one morning and seeing really gorgeous examples that afternoon. Especially when said examples are for sale.

On the way back north we stopped off in Washington DC so the Pup could say "hi" to our good friends George and Laura, we guessed they were too busy to.

While we got a chance to see a good friend while in the DC area, we had to cut the looking and wandering about a bit short. It was miserably hot. We will have to go back when the weather is more tolerable for seals.

As always, more pictures over in the flickr site.