Playing with my flash

I have been wanting to get some photos of Ian and Leah around the property, but we have been rained out lately. One night the rain was apocalyptic - and once that storm passed, it felt like it just continued to rain somewhere between steady and hard for the rest of the week.

So when the sun came out this morning, it was a great relief.

We have had only a few clouds every now and then - it has been a pretty glorious day, all in all.

Have a great day!

Marc

Family visit

Nancy has been here for a couple of weeks, helping out with Catherine as she recovers from her knee surgery. Christina came up last weekend to visit for the week.

Before church this morning, I thought I'd grab an extended family photo. Everyone wanted a photo of just the three generations of Berenguer/Barnes/Skinner ladies...so here you go.

Have a great week!

Marc

Back to School!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

The kids are headed back to school this week, so I figured I'd dress them up in their Hogwarts best, with each kid wearing their house colors (from vacation bible school).

I think the kids had fun with this photoshoot - though this could be Ian's last half-kiddy-fun photo, he's looking like quite the young man.

Have a great Labor Day everyone!

Marc

SCUBA part 3

I thought it'd be fun for Ian's birthday if we drove down to Key West to get in a dive there. I had originally planned on Dry Tortugas National Park, but waited too long to schedule to the ferry trip. So SCUBA dive it was. Nancy was kind enough to tag along on the ride with us, which made for a nice dinner once we were done.

Here is a nice photo of a bunch of fish - I thin they were blue tangs.

For whatever reason, Ian loved to hang out upside down in the water!

We got in two dives, maybe ten minutes apart from each other, but the second dive was much nicer - mostly because the terrain was much larger and easier to navigate on this dive.

We saw a big barracuda who came out of hiding to check us out, and a fairly large grouper, though the dive master said there is a giant grouper on that part of the reef (which we didn't see).

As a last parting random photo, I thought this brain coral was pretty cool.

Cheers,

Marc

SCUBA part 2

One of the dives we did was a night dive. Here we are in the water right as the sun was setting. I think that made things much easier, since our eyes had plenty of time to adjust to the darkness. We saw a couple of baby squids who shot ink at us as they tried to disappear.

We did about 2 dives every day, each dive on a different reef. We would follow that up with a snorkel at another site before heading back in to base camp. We dove on the Benwood wreck, which ended up being our deepest dive at 45-47 feet.

We got to see some really cool reefs and a ton of fish.

We even did a fish count for Project AWARE - after seeing a bunch of a certain species of fish on other reefs, Ian and I only saw a couple on this other dive.

All in all, we had a great week. The diving around Key Largo was amazing!

Cheers,

Marc

Catching up

So I didn't get the other SCUBA photos up yet, I might get around to that in the next couple of weeks. Catherine had her surgery, so I've been a bit busier around the house, especially considering the recent move, than I had planned. C'est la vie.

I've been wanting to get my camera out and get some photos of Ian and Leah, and I finally did that today.

Leah bough a masquerade mask when she was in Miami, so I took a photo of her with her mask.

Ian was kind enough to break away from a phone chat with his buddies to let me get his picture taken.

Hope all is well,

Marc

SCUBA part 1

Ian and I just got back from our Boy Scout Sea Base SCUBA adventure. I think it is fair to say that we had a blast!

I will post more photos and maybe a video or two in the next couple of days, but I thought I'd get these out pretty quick.

This first photo is from after our first dive, we did a bit of snorkeling. It is tough to see, but Ian is diving down to get a closer look at a couple of big barracudas - probably 3 feet long or so. We saw some bigger ones on other dives, but there were probably 8 bruisers cruising around at this site.

This one is from our second or third dive. Ian is right behind out dive master.

And here is Ian checking up on me.

Hope all is well,

Marc