mi familia

My sister Emily posted a few photos over on the family blog this week that have me really mad.
It looks like maybe they had the audacity to get together without even calling me.
Tasha, elizabeth and christopher heading to Logan for the car show
the crowd waiting for the car parade to pass by
my cousin jessica's little girl emma with elizabeth
my grandma and her friend jackie. my grandma is the hot number holding the camera. if you tried to guess her age there is no way you would be right.
jessica's twins alex and ben
the cousins
my cute as heck grandpa in his mustang hat. he won judges favorite for original owner with his car
emma and chuck
Utah. Maybe I miss it just a little.

Dog Town

Alright, I spent so many years whining about hating my job that now that I like it, I'm trying to spend equal time gushing about it.

Yesterday our design director decided she needed some imagery for an upcoming trade show pretty much RIGHT NOW. So the Marketing Director for another brand here just called the photographer we always use and pulled together a shoot in about 10 hours. So this morning I get to the shoot and I'm asking a little bit about the photographer when Ed says, "Did you ever see Dogtown and Z Boys? Wynn is good friends with Tony Alva and most of the photos in that film were his."

Skate photography at the time Wynn Miller had begun shooting Tony Alva generally consisted of nothing more than a fish-eye lens and a basic in-camera flash. The shots of skaters, at that time, were all of the same generic concepts; the basic close-up shots of a skater's feet and board could be found anywhere and everywhere. Miller took skate photography and skate advertising to new heights, documenting Alva in a more personal, behind-the-scenes manner and simultaneously elevating skate photography to an art form. His candid photographs of Alva at home, and just being himself enabled audiences to view Alva in his element; Miller displayed pro-skater Tony Alva, and everyday Tony Alva. He often photographed Alva head-on, focusing on Alva as a person, and not simply the pro-skateboarder he was known to be. When it came to advertising, Miller's creative edge and Alva’s charisma combined to create an almost "new-wave" shift in skateboard promotion from the corporate injection of basic product information to more conceptually stylized images. Miller used a variety of strobes, filters, gels, and an overall vibrant palette of color, to create a more artistic view of skateboarding.

Sometimes I look around and wonder, "is this really my life?"

I heart Boston

This weekend was the first 10K of my work event season. It happened to be in Boston and you know I happened to know a few people there so....I planned to play with them on my free evenings. I got in Thursday night and headed over to Harvard Square to catch up with everyone at B Good. They make hamburgers and fries that are supposed to be pretty healthy. I don't know if I believe that but they also happen to by yummy so I don't actually care. As you can see, I didn't get the memo that said everyone should wear either green or red.

Corey really loves the fries at B Good

and Whitney loooooves the burgers

So one thing that wasn't in Boston when I lived there before was my good friend Mike Kelly. He moved out a few months ago to be closer to Kim. I love it when different worlds collide for really, really good reasons. Aren't they cute?

Cameron kept telling me that my camera wasn't fast enough to catch him. His punishment is that he gets a blurry photo on the world wide internet for all to see.

The next day I had a bunch of errands to run for the race so Mike came to keep me company. For lunch we went to Darwin's, my favorite sandwich shop on planet earth. I was momentarily sad to find out they no longer have the fish cookies that I love so much. Until I saw that now they have smiling frogs. Even better.

Mmmmmmm. Frog legs.

While we were eating we ran into these familiar faces. Whenever I see missionaries, it makes me wonder what Logan is doing at that moment. Probably laughing.
That night Corey and Amber and Melanie threw a Spiderman themed going away party for our dear Lane who is moving to Texas next week. I don't really know what Boston will do when this one leaves-virtually every birthday and going away party for the last two years has been her brainchild.

We had all kinds of Spider fun-including a pinata.

Matt and Lane are such good friends that they are actually starting to look like each other

Cam is practicing his My Space photo face.

There was quite a bit of kissing at this party


And some lovely Amber

Matt suggested we play the "Animal Game" and I'm sure I probably rolled my eyes thinking it was some lame BYU game. But it turned out to involve a lot of yelling and practically kicking people in the face in the rush to win so...I take back the eye-roll.
So then we played the Name Game which is pretty much my favorite game ever. Here's Kim picking the next clue. As an aside, if I could steal just one physical feature from anyone on earth, I would take Kim's unbelievably fantastic hair.

Lane and Whitney just relaxing on the couch
It was Linda's VERY LAST DAY at her dreaded job and I think the weight of the last few years finally coming off her just did her in.
Let me tell you what is happening in the picture. I don't know what Kevin is doing to Amy, I'm not sure what Lane was doing and I don't think Amber approves. Got it?
Whit and I tried to take a self-portrait. Matt has fast hands.

Saturday night we went to see The Pirates of the Carribean. It was alright but since I think I fell asleep halfway through, this is the only photo of it.

My race was the next day and it was a screaming success. I'll post more about it later. For now, I'm glad to be back in good old HB, writing emails from the backyard hammock, but I'm sorta wishing all of these guys were here too.

Freedom!

The Fourth of July kind of snuck up on me. I have had guests quite a bit recently, and have so much work travel coming up that I really didn't plan anything. And frankly, I live in a place that is actually a vacation spot so...I decided to take advantage of what Huntington Beach had to offer. My friend Tom was just back from Rio and so he came over in the morning to go to the parade. I didn't take a single photo but the highlights were a skateboarding dog and a monk playing the electric guitar. If those don't sound like highlights to you, you won't really like the rest of this entry either. We came home, watched some World Cup soccer and then got Greek takeout. Nothing celebrates American Independence like the choice to spend the day thinking about Europe right? At that point we were ready to see what HB was up to. So I made Tom ride the tandem, I took the red Schwinn and we headed downtown.

We headed off towards the beach and came upon some neighbors who had set up a slip and slide ramp into a baby pool in their front yard. This guy was giving the play by play
of this

I am not exaggerating when I say that EVERYONE in HB yesterday was on a bike. It felt just summers in elementary school when a bicycle meant freedom to roam the neighborhood looking for adventures. Bikes were everywhere and cars just had to get over it.



sometimes bikes even got pulled over

We got to main street and it was blocked off to make room for all manner of fun

like this 50's soul band

I was completely enchanted with this couple. This was a fairly sturdy woman but she was moving like she knew was the sexiest thing on the beach. It was so awesome to see so much confidence and to feel how much fun they were having. I couldn't take my eyes off them.


There were so many people you almost can't see the ocean back there. Except that you can because it's huge and beautiful and the perfect background to the party
Don't worry though, the police were there to make sure we all played safelySo we rode to the edge of Huntington Beach and I said, "gee, we are so close to Newport that now I feel like a frozen banana." And Tom shrugged and said, "uh, we could probably ride there." So off we went across the bridge to Newport Beach

As it turns out, HB appears to be the family fun center while Newport has a slightly more "girls gone wild" feel.


And I thought I saw Andy Kane there

The people watching was pretty awesome but I was also all about peeking into the houses
this happens to be my new dream home. The entire front wall of the house opens right out onto the beach. THE ENTIRE FRONT OF THE HOUSE. Seriously, my heart skipped a beat. Imagine the summers you could have here.
We figured that since we were already in Newport, Balboa Island wasn't much further so we kept going

The ferry was had a long line. A long line that went in front of Cold Stone. So we parked the bikes and gave in to temptation and impatience.

I wasn't great about putting on sunscreen yesterday-my skin is the same color as my hair now.

And then we really did ride off into the sunset.

The big red dog

A girl whose last name is Clifford has to be careful when she chooses hair color don't you think?