My Life

Not much has been going on over the last week except the normal life stuff... loads of school work for all of us, Walt went deer hunting for the first time Sunday but didn't get to shoot anything, I hung out with my girlfriends on Saturday to celebrate my friend Wendy's birthday, we're finally getting some weather changes and it doesn't always feel like summer. Um, yeah that's about it.

I could bore you with the functions of logarithms that I've relearned in my math class or how accrual accounting works but I won't. So just for fun here is a little picture I put together at the beginning of the summer, maybe in May, to show a couple of the Niki's that run around in my life. Here is an oldie from June. Carley found some lipstick and decided to get pretty.
This is my oldest little sister who is a fairly new visitor to my blog!! She's getting married in November and Carley will be the best flower girl ever. =) Currently ALL three of my little sisters are engaged, can you believe it? My poor mom with three of four daughters engaged. I guess when when it rains, there's a rainbow. Congratulations to all my little sisters.

Little Stud, Dirt Bike Boy

Josh got his first dirt bike last week thanks to Walt working a side job and combing craigslist.com for a deal.

Walt, his friend, Ken and Josh took the little Honda XR70 up into the foothills and found an open area with a few hills for Josh to get his first lesson. From what I hear, Josh picked it up fairly quickly although he never got out of first gear. (Guess that will be lesson two.) Josh had a terrific time, he came home pumped and smiling. Walt kept talking all evening about how proud he was and how good Josh did. I'm really glad that the two of them will be able to have this experience to share as father and son.

The Lump

Poor Carley girl has a big lump on the back of her earlobe for the second time. First time was last December, 3 1/2 months after getting her ears pierced. I thought it was an infection, took the earring out and after a few days without it going down I took her to the doctor. Ultimately they sliced the lump opened and pulled out lots of blood clots. (I know, gross. Stop reading and skip to the bottom of the post if you must.) We kept her earring out and over time the lump and cut as well as the earring hole healed up fine.

Carley kept one earring in until June when she got her other ear pierced again. Well, here we are at 3 1/2 months after the piercing and sure enough, the lump is back in the exact same place. This time instead of messing with it we got her into the doctor again. Her doctor isn't really sure what it is, maybe irritated keloid scarring or a cyst. She doesn't believe it's directly cause by the piercing since it's way off to the side of the hole. Carley is now on a 10-day course of antibiotics just in case and her earring is out for the time being to give her ear a break. Poor girl. Hopefully her ear will heal up fine and she'll be able to have her earring in again, she really likes her earrings.

Okay, gross bodily stuff over with.

I pulled out my 50mm lens again. With a little help from Walt's dad, I think I've quickly gotten better at focusing it. I got the kids to pose for me in the backyard a little while I got some shots. Thought I'd share.

And I even tried the manual focus on myself with the camera on the tripod. It was tricky but worked out well enough.

Study Time

Homework is very prevelant in this house. All four of us are in school. Both kids are school 5 days a week, Walt goes two nights a week after he gets off work and I am taking a full 13 unit load this semester. There is never a break from homework in this house.

Carley, who still loves having homework, was trying to figure out some words in the dictionary.

Wii are Dorks!

We love our Wii. Our friends love our Wii. So we invite our friends to come play Wii . We only have two friends so it's never too crowded. Okay, really we have more than two friends but only two friends that are as dorky as us. Wendy and Chris have come over a couple times now to have dinner and play Wii. It's so much fun. I know, it sounds really lame but we really have a good time. The only problem is the kids want to play. Sheesh. Don't they get to play with their friends enough that they don't need to borrow mine?


So with bowling... everyone ends in a somewhat Statue of Liberty pose. It's kind of funny.


My brother Barry let us borrow his Guitar Hero III for a couple weeks. It's seriously lame but so much fun and very addicting.


Rock on Wii!

New Stuff

Both the kids got new stuff today....

Carley received her flower girl dress in the mail today. I'm panicked about it getting dirty or hairy (dumb dogs) but I had her try it on and got a couple quick snaps of her in it. She's beautiful. The dress is beautiful. The big day is Novemeber 1st at Aunt Shelly's wedding in Seattle.

Josh got new motorcycle gear for the new (really it's used) Honda XR70 that Walt picked up off of craigslist.com earlier in the week. Walt has really been wanting to teach Josh how to ride a motorcycle so they can go out and ride trails together. After making some extra money from a side job, Walt had enough cash and found a bike at a great deal.

Today they went to the cycle store and picked up riding gear. "Uncle" Kenny bought Josh the helmet and shirt. Josh bought the rest of the gear with his own money. We still need to pick him up some boots (see the socks?) and probably next weekend Walt, Josh and maybe "Uncle" Ken will go out riding together for the first time.

Poor Man's Macro

So I learned a trick the other day to make lame macro lens. You hold one lens backwards up against the lens on the camera and viola, poor man's macro. I had fun playing around with it though. Here are a few shots I got.

From

From Thiel Family Happenings

From Thiel Family Happenings

From the back of a One Dollar bill.

From Thiel Family Happenings

From Thiel Family Happenings

They're not the greatest macro but for no money out of pocket it's not bad. Macro lenses cost hundreds of dollars and I will get one some day but for now there are more important things... like Wii games. Okay, just kidding about the Wii games. I really mean things like school books and food. =)

Happy September

It's the first day of September and there is no school or work due to Labor Day which means lots of procrastination especially when it comes to my homework. I've been playing around with my camera and my 50mm lens which doesn't have auto focus. My tired eyes trying to focus in the little view finder doesn't work well often. It's really too bad because I love that 50mm lens. It takes good, crisp pictures if the focus is right. It also has a maximum aperature of 1.8 for those of you who know camera talk. For those that don't, it means that the background can get really blurry or that I can take better natural light pictures when there isn't much light. The thing is with my f-stop at 1.8 or even 2.5 I have a very hard time focusing because the focus area is very small. I wish I could use the lens to the extent I want but that means eventually getting a more expensive camera that is auto-focus compatible with that lens. Until then I have to keep practicing.

These are a few pictures I took with my 50mm lens yesterday. Just for fun. Go ahead, click the picture. See it big! And see that I got the eyes (or eye) in focus. That's what I was trying to do. It doesn't happen quickly but it happened. Yay.



This picture is not of my children, it's a picture of the zombie shells of my children. Thanks to Grandpa we have a new Wii and we all have been having a great time playing it, especially the kids. Uncle Barry was at our house a couple times this weekend and he brought some Wii games with him. In the picture the kids are playing Mario Kart with the Wii steering wheels. I really don't know how I'm going to stay on top of the housework or my homework with so much Wii fun.