Tag Archives: pool

Did She Like It? It Was A Toss Up!

by Adel Posted on July 9, 2012
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Boy did we have a fun weekend in wine country! We’re still unwinding and settling in. And I’m working on the photos I took. But we’re definitely back. And I just had to share this one shot of Jack-Jack!

Haha! What do you think? Is that a face of pure joy? Or sheer terror? Let me know ;)

I’ll work on the rest of our shots and share them soon!

In the meantime, if you follow me on Instagram, well you’ll get a peek into our weekend away! :) My handle on Instagram is sfcitymom.

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Thanksgiving Recap

by Adel Posted on November 28, 2011

Hello Monday-after-a-super-long-and-tiring-weekend! We barely traveled anywhere over the Thanksgiving but I’m still exhausted from all our fun activities. We packed those 5 days we had off full to the brim.

I took a ton of shots over the last 5 days. I’m starting to realize that I’m way too trigger-happy with my photography. I’m always afraid I’ll miss my shot so I tend to snap 3 or 4 of the same pose instead of just taking the time to get it right and take ONE shot. It makes my post-processing time extremely tedious as I have to sort through and delete a bunch of duplicates. Yes, this is one of the things I need to put on the top of my list to work on.

Anyway, since I’m so exhausted from editing I’ll just share my favorite moments over the last 5 days here. The full albums are on my Flickr feed.

Just before Thanksgiving, the God-siblings came to visit. It was a short one but I’m so happy we got to spend some time with them. The little ones are 2 weeks apart and totally look alike don’t they?

The older kids may not look as alike but had similar senses of humor…

We didn’t have time for much but we did get them out to the neighborhood playground for some sand, swinging and sliding
 

The other highlight of our holidays was getting to spend Thanksgiving dinner with our fabulous friends at their winery in Healdsburg again.

The food was fabulous
 

And everything was set up just gorgeous for the festivities

The kids as always loved the bright open spaces with lots of room to explore

 

It was a fun evening for our family with good food and fabulous company


The adults got their pool on post-turkey dinner

And my little boy even found a few friends who kept him well entertained for most of the evening

We spent one night there and it was 364 nights too little. Thank you as always to our gracious hosts, the B Family

I’ll try and post our shots from our run in their vineyard and labyrinth tomorrow or Wednesday. Have a fabulous Cyber Monday ;)

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Embracing Noise

by Adel Posted on July 22, 2011

Nope not my loud kids. Although if not hearing how loud they are sometimes because I’m so used to it counts as embracing noise than yes.

I’ve been playing around with the camera on pool nights as you know. I’ve been mostly frustrated at how the low-light conditions make most of my shots grainy since I have to bump my ISO up to compensate for the poor bar lighting. I’ve thought of bringing a tripod to reduce shake (which doesn’t help the noise) due to slower shutter speed but put that idea on the backburner when I got laughed at by my loving supportive Grizz! I guess it’s funny enough I lug around the big old DSLR and my cue into a dive bar in the Mission. I’d really be attracting some attention if I added a tripod to that mix.

A comment my lovely and talented photographer friend @tecgirl made about noise removal when I went to her for software recommendations got me thinking that maybe I should try and incorporate the noise as part of the story I try and tell via my photos.

So instead of over-processing the shots to try and remove the noise, here is my first attempt at embracing it.

I used the fabulous B boys as my test subjects :)

Well them and the bike they rode in on

J1 pondering over his choices

 J2 and Grizz trying to figure out the score

We ended up 2-3 for the evening but still very much in the race for a final playoff spot with 2 weeks left in our season.

I’d love to hear any critiques on these as they are definitely outside my comfort zone in terms of what I’m used to shooting – 2 small children running around in lots of natural light! :)

On a photography-related note, I’ve finally put my Project 365 up. It is on a separate blog that you can link to from here or the page link above. It’s only a little over 2 weeks old but I’m happy I started it as it helps me look back on our day-to-day lives in a simple way.

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A Winning Night

by Adel Posted on July 14, 2011

…for everyone but me. But I’m a team player so I’ll celebrate :)

I love how the sun goes down much later. It gives the illusion that it’s much earlier than it really is

Since we were there a little before game time, I took the opportunity to play around with the natural light flowing through our home bar. My husband was my unwilling model… or victim.

Our mascot/pocket marker for the night was the Hazmat Guy. My son decided to take a break from the Star Wars minifigs for the week I guess

Our team has been having a pretty dismal season so far, but we had a winning night going 4-1 for the night

Mine being the only loss (sigh)

I REALLY need to step up my game

I’m super happy our ace brought his other half to cheer me up though. There was lots of discussion over this scarf from what I remember.

It turned out to be a much more fun night with K there! :)

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Pool With The B Team

by Adel Posted on June 7, 2011

We played against the “other” Finnegan’s team this past week. I finally learned what BTMA meant. We’ll just call them the “other” team.

We have had a bad run the past couple of weeks going 1-4 each week. I’m thinking I need talk to my 5yo about upping his game with his pocket marker selection. This week we had the Clone Bomber with us.

We might have gone 0-5 for the night had our ace not unexpectedly shown up (3 days after his wedding), played our final match and kept us from being swept. Or maybe it was his lucky charm new wife :)

It was nice to have the newlyweds with us on pool night so soon after their wedding.

Grizz and I had definitely had better pool nights. He pretty much lost his voice by the end of the night from the sore throat he caught from me.

And me? Well I’m not sure what my excuse is. That’s why I blame my 5yo! ;)

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Switching It Up This Week

by Adel Posted on May 22, 2011

And sat out on pool night.

We played the Finnegan’s team this past week at Finnegan’s. I managed to sit out and enjoy the evening without the stress of playing a match.

The Finnegan’s team is one of my favorite teams to play against. We always have a great time. It was nice to sit back, sip my cocktails and talk crap without having to back it up since I wasn’t playing :)

This week the lovely Clara joined our team! Yay! She was a HUGE hit with both our team and the opponent’s! (Down boys!)

By the look on my face I’m pretty sure something didn’t go our way on the table. Man I have horrible facial expressions!

I’m so psyched to have a girlfriend on our team. It’s going to be a fun season with Ms K as our secret weapon!

Welcome to the team Clara!!

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Scratching On The 8 With A Clone Commander

by Adel Posted on May 14, 2011

We played this week at the very divey Dovre Club in the Mission.

I brought the wide-angle lens this time to fool around with. It’s not quite as nice a lens as my 35mm but it gives me a whole lot more shot options. At 17mm I can take more discreet shots while someone is shooting. And Grizz and I can take self-portraits like these of course.

It is now official. My son selects a mini-fig for my marker when I play. This week it’s a Clone Commander. He wasn’t as lucky as his predecessors though.

I won 2 games and lost 2 by scratching on the 8 and therefore the match against my opponent (the APA is a handicapped league and I was playing someone one skill level lower than me so I needed to win more games to win the matchup). No matter, I still have a winning record with my son’s mini-figs.

This was would have been my match winning shot had it JUST GONE IN. As luck would have it, it sat in front of the pocket. My opponent snookered me on the next shot so my cue ball was hidden. I banked the cue off the rail and made the 8 but the darn cue ball followed it in. Ugh. Still annoys me to think about it.

The funny thing about it all is I was most unhappy that I would have to tell my little boy that I lost even with his Clone Commander. Luckily he took it better than his mama. “But you brought back my Clone right mama?” was his response.

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Lucky Gungan!

by Adel Posted on April 1, 2011

This week as I was readying for our pool league night, I was thinking about how rare it was that I actually played anymore. My game was definitely a little rusty.  So before I left the house, I had my 5yo pick out one of his minifigures so I could use it as my 8ball pocket marker. I told him to pick me a special one as I needed lots of luck.

Here’s what he selected for me

A Gungan Warrior.

I beat my opponent 3-0.

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