Elyse's Christmas Program

Tonight was the Christmas program at Elyse's preschool. Elyse did a fine job singing and dancing for all of us in the audience. She's a natural performer!

Breakfast With Santa

This morning was the annual Breakfast With Santa at Elyse's preschool. Here are some pictures from the event:

The View from Stone Mountain

Today we went to Stone Mountain. I was struck, despite its being less than a month before it's officially winter, by how many fall colors were still in evidence, and also by how clear the view was from atop the mountain. Here are eight pictures I took from the Skyride car on the way up and from the top of the mountain.

Stone Mountain Self Portraits

This morning while the girls were in school, I went to Stone Mountain to make some self portraits. Here are two of my favorites, the first converted to a pseudo-watercolor in Photoshop, the second one not:

Camping at Camp Meriwether

This weekend, Mommy and Jessica went on a Girl Scouts camping trip to Camp Meriwether in Luthersville, Georgia, about a two-hour drive from home. They took our tent and inflatable mattress, since there were no cabins available this year. (They also went last year, when there were cabins available.)

Here are some pictures from their weekend:

Scoping Out the Pumpkins

This afternoon we drove almost 70 miles to Burt's Farm in Dawsonville to pick out some pumpkins. If we'd know that approximately a million other people had the same idea, we might have stayed home (although how could we not have expected that, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, less than two weeks before Halloween?), but I'm glad we went just the same.

I think the people lined up in the back of this picture are waiting to go on the hayride:

Jessica ended up picking another pumpkin, but she wanted me to take her picture with this one:

After we left Burt's, we went to Amicalola Falls State Park and visited the lodge; Elyse had a good time riding the elevators:

Later, when we went for a walk on the trail down to the waterfall, Elyse had a walking problem and insisted on being carried some of the way:

Callaway Gardens

Today we drove two hours southwest to Pine Mountain, Georgia, to go to Callaway Gardens. Elyse has been every interested in butterflies lately, and she was very excited about visiting the Day Butterfly Center, and there are lots of other good things to see there too.

Here's Elyse, dreaming about butterflies before we went into the butterfly environment:

The girls, watching the butterfly video:

Elyse, waiting for a butterfly to land on her:

A macro shot of butterflies eating an apple:

(Gross, I know.)

A macro shot of Elyse:

Mommy and Jessica:

A barred owl (or was it a barn owl?) during the Birds of Prey show:

A red-shouldered hawk in the Birds of Prey show:

Relaxing outside the Discovery Center:

Inside the Horticultural Center:

Callaway Gardens is a great place to visit, and only about 110 miles away from us--closer than Rock City! We'll be going back again soon.

Sharon, Christmas 2008

The last few days I've been organizing and archiving the thousands of pictures I have spread across several hard drives and flash drives. Among the many files, I found this picture, from December 27, 2008, of my cousin Sharon, who left us five months ago today.

Finding this picture made me feel at once very happy and terribly sad.

Stone Mountain Lasershow

Tonight we went to the Lasershow at Stone Mountain (or, to be exact, the "Lasershow Spectacular in Mountainvision"), which Jessica and Mommy had never seen.

If she has her way, Jessica will never see it again. It was very loud and there were lots of people, and the fireworks really freaked her out. After about ten minutes she and I walked back to the parking lot, she with her hands over her ears the whole way, and sat in the car until it was over. She kept asking, "Are there going to be more fireworks? Tell me before there's more fireworks."

But at least we had a good time before the show:

Family Reunion

Yesterday, shortly after Jessica's Girl Scouts meeting, we drove down to Covington to my mother's cousin's house to attend the Perry-East-Taylor family reunion.

There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 people there, representing (as best I can tell) about four generations of various parts of my family. It was really good to be there with them all, even if I didn't get to talk to everyone. Some of them I haven't seen in three or four decades; some of them I'd never even met (and in some cases still haven't).

Here are some pictures of the goings-on at the reunion: