October 4, 2008
Home Coming
Toni, Porter and Fallon visited their grandparents at their mountain home in North Carolina a few weeks ago. I stayed here in Washington in the meantime.
I have to say that I've never slept better...but on the other hand, it was awfully quiet and a bit lonely in the house. It did give me some time to relax and organize my thoughts a bit.
I did miss them terribly. We spoke on the phone a few times, and hearing their voices, sounding so remote, was bitter sweet. The day before they were to return I went to a local toy store, White Horse Toys, to buy them each something special. It's a great toy store because they have tons of unique, very thoughtful toys.
For Fallon I purchased a nice book on unicorns. It included three or four well-made unicorn figurines and detailed descriptions of all of the various kinds of unicorns in the world. It also contained detailed sections on how to spot signs of unicorns.
I bought Porter a book on pirates, one of his favorite subjects lately. It contained everything needed to become a pirate, as well as lots of information describing the things that a pirate typically encounters and uses in his day-to-day life.
I managed to get a few pictures of them during a unicorn hunting expedition in our back yard (no pictures of pirate Porter yet). These are the first shots I've taken with my new 24mm f1.2 wide angle lens. It's incredibly fast and takes beautiful photos.
They posed with the unicorn book during our hunt. Here, they found a spot in our backyard where a unicorn had created a nice bed in the thick grass, similar to the one on the page they're holding up. We also found some blackberries that had been nibbled on, obviously by a unicorn, in the tall patch of Himalayan blackberry between our yard and our neighbor's. The thought of actual unicorns in our own backyard was incredibly exciting for them.
We hunted for a while and they soon began pointing out lots of other unicorn signs - signs not mentioned in the book. It was great to see their imaginations at work.
On the way back down the hill in our backyard, we ran across this brilliant, orange bannana slug. The contrast between the orange and the damp green grass was amazing. (The photo came out pretty good considering that the lens I used was not a macro lens.)
It was great to have Toni and the kids back home, and once again be able to catch glimpses of the world through our kid's eyes.