Some Sumo Fun!

I've been hearing so many good things about the new Japanese Restaurant and thought it would be so much fun to go there for Mike's birthday. So I let the kids know what time to meet us and they surprised him. He didn't seem too thrilled with the restaurant of choice but was surprised that the kids came.

They start us off with soup and salad after they take our orders. Once the orders are placed, the chef shows up to start the show. He started by singing and tossing his utensils around. Then gets everyone clapping.









Then it's time for sockey while the food is cooking. He would squirt it right in your mouth. While he was doing it to the girls, he would say "sockey make you sexy". Everyone got a kick out of that.








Even the birthday boy downed some sockey.


This was so cool. He stacked all the onions on top of each other. Then lit it and the flames came flying out of the onion just like a volcano. After the fire died down, it still had a lot of steam forcing up through it too.


He even started tossing broccoli for everyone to catch in their mouth. Shauna made a nice catch here!






Schyler wouldn't try to catch any of the broccoli. Everyone was trying to convince her. The cook even started singing...."come on you can do it, do it right"...it was so funny! You can see that Kayla is giving her the "why not?" look here.


Some of the delicious food that was served. The rice was amazing and the steak was awesome.




and here's our whole gang except our sweet baby Peyton

Snowboarding can be fishy ;)

Schyler is in ski club at school and goes every Friday after school. When we're home, she likes to snowboard. It takes 1/2 hour of preparation time...getting all her gear on, me getting dressed, getting my camera out and deciding on lenses and then getting the dog on her leash...then we're off. We walk up the hill and I usually let Piper lose so she can sniff every square foot of field space there is.

After a few runs (the snow really wasn't that great), I wanted to take some close shots. This is what I hear, "why can't I just have fun snowboarding without the camera in my face"? Me: "why can't I have fun too while I stand out here freezing watching you snowboard"? Dead silence. Must be she figured that has to be a fair trade off.









I brought my fisheye along. I haven't really felt the love for that lens yet but I really like how these turned out.






I wanted to play with this one and see what I could do. I sponged, dodged, and burned this one a lot.



I recently bought some of Nichole Van's vintage actions & textures. I tried one out. This is the hand painted vintage with a texture. Not sure if I like the blue but it kind of made me think of the movie Call of the Wild LOL!

Remembering

This is the second year without Grandpa Lee for Christmas. We have made a point to visit a few times a year and plant flowers, roses, etc. During Christmas though we like to bring a little something. This year it was a mini-Christmas tree. I thought it was such a cute idea. We trotted out there in freezing cold weather. It was the quickest display of tree decorating ever. Our fingers were froze trying to put everything on it and for me to take the pics. We love it and love doing it though. Wouldn't have it any other way!

Just a puppy {Alderick}

Yes, he really is still a puppy. I believe he's 10 months old. This is my girlfriend's dog. . .well her son's dog but you know how teens are, they're never around and the moms take care of the animals. I know my friend is attached to this one anyways.

I haven't seen Teresa in a while so I went up to visit and have a few cocktails out on the deck. The pup had been hit by a car about 2 months ago and had surgery on his back leg. Because he has to stay mobile, he's stuck in a cage and can only get out to stretch and relieve himself. So getting a decent picture of him was tough because he has so much energy pent up. He only had 2 more days before he was released from his medical restrictions.

I would love to go back and get some decent shots of him out in the fields, etc. But he must be walked first to tire him out a little LOL

Bronx Zoo {girls day out}

Schyler and I took a bus trip down to the Bronx Zoo for the day on Saturday. It was a fun girls day. The zoo was really big and a few times we ended up going in a circle but we managed to get through all of it. That day was very busy and it was hard to get in a decent spot to take a picture. We had a fun time and were pretty tired when we got home.
This gorilla sat right up against the glass eating and kept shaking her head like she didn't want everyone sitting there watching her. Another gorilla that was sitting up against the glass was just watching everyone. A little boy standing right in front of it stuck out his tongue and the gorilla did it back to him. Everyone started to laugh and told him to do it again just to see if the gorilla knew what it was doing. Didn't you know the gorilla stuck it's tongue right out again LOL!

Jack Russell Trials {FUN STUFF }

Warning, large share of not so great photos and long post ;)

We headed down to Connecticut for a fun weekend with Piper. We attended the Yankee Trials. It was great to see so many people with their JRT's. What is so amazing about this breed is there isn't one dog that looks alike. There are smooth, broken and rough coats. They also have many different distinct markings in brown and black and they are all different sizes.

We watched quite a few of the races and strolled around looking at all the dogs. A few people talked us into entering Piper in the Lure Coarsing for fun. She's never done anything like this before and our entry was called "just for fun". We decided to sit back and let her watch some of the pros chase the bags around. There is a large pulley system around the race track that has a bunch of plastic bags attached to it. The dogs instinctively chase the bags.

After watching the second dog run, Piper was going crazy she wanted after it LOL! She was called almost last. She got 2 tries. Her first run was extremely fast but when the bags went around the corner one ripped off and she chased that and it basically stopped the run.

Here's her second run. Mike was preparing to let her go on call.

I was disappointed in my photos. I was so excited watching her that I never really checked my settings and I really had a hard time focusing on these speed demons! I use my 70-300 all the time for Pop Warner and I never had a problem. These dogs are like lightning and I could barely get focus on any of them. You can see behind her the dirt coming up in the air!

That was her second time, even after being tired from the first run. We figured she ran 250-300 yards in 18.70 seconds! She pretty much smoked the pros, except one he got 17 something. The judges told us we need to put Piper in a class!


Not a great pic but you can see how sprawled she is and she's right on top of the bag.
Daddy giving some love.
Here are some of the pros running the hurdles. Yes, they need to be muzzled because when they come through the shoot they attack the fake fox and each other because they are so excited.


More love.
Taking some agility jumps with Schyler here.