The Blackburn Family

I was getting worried about my little backyard bunny because we weren’t seeing him much lately. Then last night while we worked in the yard I could hear Casey calling me from the side of the house. I went over to see what he needed and there was my little bunny. Turns out he found a little friend that lives in our neighbor’s front yard. I had seen the other bunny a few weeks ago and I knew she was living in their azaela bushes. Our little bunny was so cute. He was running back and forth from his house under our deck to their yard to see if she was out there looking for him. We even saw him drink some of the water we put out for him. When I was watering plants in the front yard we got a few pictures of them. They aren’t exactly best friends yet and you can he is still trying to get her permission to hang out in her space. We can tell which one is our bunny because he isn’t scared of us. He comes really close to us, but the neighbor bunny takes off running if we get too close.

Last weekend I took some one month pictures of Kaylee. For those of you that don’t know, Kaylee is Jill and Mike’s little girl who was born in May. Jill and I worked together until she left me when Kaylee arrived. She is also one of my best friends so I am over there with her and Kaylee all the time now!

Since I enjoy photography and have my fancy camera I told them I would take some professional type photos of Kaylee. I have never photographed an infant before, or really any human. I mostly shoot animals which are surprisingly easier. Before Kaylee’s photo shoot I did some research online to figure out how to get a good newborn shot. Kaylee was really cooperative during the shoot, at least in the beginning. By the end of the day she was getting a bit annoyed with the constant moving and outfit changes, but I managed to get some good pictures of her. They looked much better after I tweaked them in Photoshop Elements. Now, I am a bit of a perfectionist so when I look at the pictures I see all the things wrong with them and really didn’t thing they were that great. I posted them on Flickr and gave Jill a CD of the images. I got an email from her tonight telling me she uploaded the images to Walgreens to have them printed. Then she got a phone call from them saying they couldn’t print the pictures because they were “professional” photos. So I have to go to Walgreens and sign a release as the “professional” photographer so Jill can print them! How crazy is that! So what if Kaylee was my baby and I took those pictures of her? What would I do? How do they know Jill didn’t take them? I guess I have to take the images on a CD or memory card to help prove I am the photographer. So maybe this should be my new career……. You be the judge.

Check out the rest of them.

I wanted to post a couple cute pictures Casey got of our outdoor pets. They seem pretty comfortable in our yard.

Here is the bunny making himself comfy in the yard.

Here is one of our many squirrels taking a little nap. I have never seen a squirrel lounging like this!

We went camping with Allison and Jason over the weekend. After our trip last year we had planned to go again, but it took us a year to actually do it. This year we really do need to go in the fall too. Last year we went to Jordan Lake and camped on a Friday night, but this year we went to Falls Lake and camped Saturday night. We made it out to the lake around 2 and drove around for awhile trying to find a site with a view of the water. Most of the really good sites were taken, but we managed to find one with a little bit of a water view and easy walk to the water. Allison and I once again were in charge of the tents and the boys gathered fire wood. Casey and I have camped several times since last year so I was pretty sure I could get the tent up myself this time. I worked on our tent while Allison opened their tent (it had never been used). Well, here I am putting the tent up. As you can see I didn’t really do too well at first.

But as you can see I did manage to get it set up eventually…. It only took two tries.

Allison and Jason’s tent was another story. There are tons of pictures of us trying to put the tent up. Here are a few highlights.

Is this right?

It looked a bit strange, but it was right. I guess it was just new and needed to be stretched out a bit.

Here is our redneck fire

Eventually Allison and I convinced the boys we should go buy some firewood so we went up to the front gate and got a few bundles. We tried the hobo dinners again and made a few improvements this year. We didn’t cook them for hours, cooked them on the coals and ate a bit earlier so it was light out!! The dinners turned out really well. For those of you that forgot here is what last year’s dinner looked like:

Here was this year’s dinner. Big improvement.

Enjoying dinner

And of course we had to have our smores!! Check out the concentration it takes to make a smore.

Even though we went with two former scouts we weren’t exactly prepared, but never fear the boys were inventive and made us lots of “tools”.

The shovel

The chocolate melter for smores

However the highlight of the day was Jason taking a bath in the lake!! Don’t worry folks he has pants on.

I slept a bit better this time, but I woke up several times because I had to pee. So on our next trip I either need to cut off all liquids at 3pm or I need to bring a diaper! I think I would have slept really well if I didn’t have to pee so bad and I was not walking to the bathroom in the dark. In the morning it started to rain a bit on us. There was about a 10% chance of rain on Sunday and sure enough it poured on us! So we didn’t get to have our breakfast (we did get a few breakfast marshmallows) and left a bit earlier than we planned. I didn’t get a nice group shot this time. Maybe in the fall. It was of course beautiful the rest of the day, not a cloud in the sky!