A lot of getting good indoor sport shots has to do with setting up the camera. I just shared my Digital SLR secrets in an article on eHow. How to Take Youth Basketball Photos | eHow.com.
I’ve been having a good time gathering the birds to my yard this winter. This week I added some homemade bird seed ornaments to my trees and the Oregon Juncos found them today! I was so happy that I could’ve watched them all day. But, that would be silly, so I took pictures instead.
Joe and Ben kicked off their league basketball season today despite the threat of freezing rain and snow…can we fire those meteorologists already?! Anyways, both boys gave a good show for their first games. Unfortunately, we came out on the losing side at the end. Oh well, we’ll get ’em next week 🙂
And, with a new sport season comes a new photo op. I’ll be taking the team photos as usual…I’ll have to say I’m getting pretty good at the allusive basketball photo. Take a look at what I got from Joe’s game…
The girls met for lunch at Pastini’s this week. I’d been there before when it first opened at Bridgeport, but didn’t have much of an impression good or bad. This time I was really impressed. It’s got a warm and friendly atmosphere and their lunch menu was excellent. Six bucks got me just the right amount of a delicious pasta, caesar salad and bread. I chose the Spaghetti Siciliano with capers, feta, sun-dried tomotoes, tomatoes, garlic, sherry and olives. It was truly excellent. And, it wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye on the $6 lunch menu. 
Sam’s second grade concert was so darned cute last night! It was the first concert at Edy Ridge and the kids really put on a good show. Of course, the best in the bunch was Sam. He was front and center, so it’s a good thing he knew the songs 🙂 Sam had special instrument part as well. Unfortunately, we could only listen to that part. The instruments were on the floor and we couldn’t see over the HUGE crowd of parents. Anyways, Sam did great and definitely earned his special dessert to celebrate. He picked strawberry cake with vanilla frosting. Yu-um.
Oh, I should give a shout-out to Dani Aldinger, the music director. She is just awesome with the kids. Sam was lucky enough to have her in kindergarten as well. 2 of the best school concert performances ever. The songs are peppy and the kids have fun.
I just added my yummy pizza meatballs recipe to eHow. I also added a tip to convert the recipe to an even easier Italian meatloaf that is a huge hit at my house with some garlic mashed potatoes on the side. I think I need to go to the grocery store 🙂
Facebook always seemed unnecessary to me. I’ve got a blog, email, etc. But, after about the hundred zillionith time that I’ve been asked or prompted to add my content to Facebook, I folded. I’m now a member and I’m loading up my content.
I have to admit, it is pretty fun to sit down and think, “now who haven’t I heard from in a long, long time?” So far, I’ve been able to find just about anybody I’ve chosen to look up. It’s definitely not replacing my blog or photo site or even my book club site. But, it’s interesting to play with.
So my friend requests are going out!
The Lit Ladies Book Club finally chose Maya Angelou, one of my favorite authors. Yay!
I just finished reading Letter to My Daughter. It took me one afternoon. It’s bite-size Maya Angelou. Not exactly the depth and length of her autobiographies. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first. It was so quick. I wanted more. Her life lessons are so well expressed. She has an ability to be truly present in life and essentially snapshot meaningful moments.
While, Letter to My Daughter may not have the full punch of Heart of a Woman or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I did love it. After I finished it I immediately went back and reread some of my favorite sections. I began folding down pages for future reference. Guess that means it’s a keeper!
Ben has played guitar for several years now. Since February though he has developed some awesome blues finger skills thanks to a lot of practice and his instructor, Myron LeRoy.
Joe has been taking drum lessons from Randy Sage in Newberg since February 2009. He’s getting sooo good.
