time and space: May 2011

Monday, May 30, 2011

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Friday, May 27, 2011

WHEN: Yesterday, today...every day!
WHERE: Within a 46.5 billion light year radius...and expanding!

No, I am not uploading pictures daily now. As illustrated by my chronic tardiness with posting my picture of the week, I can't even maintain a 7-day cycle. However, there are people and organizations who CAN maintain new and exciting daily photo uploads, who have multiple skilled photographers, and who make money by providing these pictures. Therefore, I am making them do the dirty work and sprucing up my blog with their amazing photography. I have included some organization's "Picture of the Day" (POD) websites below and also provided a photo link to them on my Jesse's POW page.

The first one, though not really a bonafide POD website, is Bing.com. I have used Bing as the homepage for our computers for the past year and enjoyed their daily-updated background pictures from all over the world. A complete list of their previous daily backgrounds can be found here.

Bing.com
Bing.com provides a brilliant new background image on their homepage each day

The next POD website I've included is that of National Geographic. I was particularly impressed with a picture (see below) appearing this month, on May 17. Though it appears like it is a painting at first glance (and perhaps the second and third glances), it is in fact an actual picture taken of camel thorn trees in Namibia, Africa; with a large red dune in the background exposed to the early morning sun.

National Geographic
The picture that's NOT a painting

Next on the list is a website with pictures that are out of this world - literally! NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day" website includes daily pictures of celestial bodies across the known universe, back to June 1995. It also includes descriptions below each picture for the layperson, which 99.9% of us are when it comes to astronomy! With the latest technology, astronomers can now see 46.5 billion light years (that's 273 million trillion miles) away from Earth in any direction - what's known as the "visible universe". And if that is an unfathomable amount of miles to comprehend, the number for how many stars are estimated to exist within that same amount of space is even more (over 3,500 times more)! Many of these pictures put in to perspective (in a very illustrative and tangible way) just how small we (and the Earth) are and how big GOD is; to have created something so vast and yet still hold in the palm of His hand! He placed (spoke) the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000+ stars in to the sky and He knows them each by name! The pictures really give meaning to the song, "God of Wonders Beyond Our Galaxy"!

NASA
A glimpse in to the sky - like you've never seen before!

If you're looking for new PODs or POWs here, consistency and frequency will not be upheld to the same degree, unfortunately. I have just now got the past 3 weeks of POWs up (below). Now you can enjoy even better pictures, from three places, on a daily basis, with the websites mentioned above!

Jesse's POW (May 22, 2011)

WHEN: May 21, 2011
WHERE: St. Matthews Lutheran Church, Charleston, SC

See where this picture was taken, here!

Jesse's POW (May 15, 2011)

WHEN: May 14, 2011
WHERE: Tanger Outlet Mall, North Charleston, SC

See where this picture was taken, here!

Jesse's POW (May 8, 2011)

WHEN: May 7, 2011
WHERE: Our patio

See where this picture was taken, here!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Ava Page Turns 2!!

WHEN: April 17, 2011
WHERE: Chaska, Minnesota

Better late than never!

Three weeks ago our only niece, Ava, turned two and I have been meaning for some time to get a post done about it. We were there the day she was born and we were back in Iowa for her 1st birthday last April, but this year we had to settle by using Skype (which we were thankful for nonetheless). I am at a disadvantage to write a post about her birthday this year when we weren't there to celebrate with her. So, I had to employ a different approach. In fact, this post has little to do with her 2nd birthday or how and where she celebrated it. Instead, it is a look back on the first two years of her life and how she has grown up. It's my version of being celebratory and sentimental, in my own temporal, quirky way.

I have downloaded dozens of pictures of her (208 exactly) from the past two years from her mom Steph's blog, plus a few I've taken myself, and chose from those my favorites. My original plan was to choose around 25 for this post, but turns out there were too many I just couldn't exclude. So, I bumped up the count to 50 of my favorites, some of which I have edited but all of which I have posted below. I know most of my readers are quite familiar with Steph's blog, so the pictures may not be new but they may have been forgotten. Either way, I think they're pretty cute!

I have started from day one and progressed forward, illustrating how much she has changed in two years. For those in our family, however, we know exactly how little she has changed (at least in size). At her 2-year checkup at the pediatrician, she only weighed 5 pounds more than her 6-month old brother, putting her in the 5th percentile for weight. She's a feather-weight, and frankly, we like her that way!

As I clicked through the dozens of posts and hundreds of pictures Steph has posted about Ava over the past two years, I was surprised to notice marked stages of Ava's growth. I collected the pictures by working backwards through her blog, so I witnessed the changes myself in the reverse order in which I have presented them in this post. She grew out of her newborn stage in a few short weeks and quickly became a "baby". Then I noticed a change around July of last year, when Ava seemed to grow in to a toddler and no longer look like a baby. Perhaps those aren't the best names for the stages, but I think she did noticeably change in those time frames. I suppose Steph has her own personal opinion on the matter as well. I'll let you decide for yourself. I have included the dates the pictures appeared on Steph's blog. They may not be the day the picture was taken but are fairly close.

Without further ado, I present the sweet, sometimes naughty, frequently silly, sporadically messy, but always precious life of Ava Page, April 2009 - April 2011.

April 17, 2009

Just minutes old.

April 19, 2009

April 20, 2009

Arriving home fro the hospital

April 30, 2009

May 10, 2009

June 4, 2009

Ava's first professional photo shoot

June 23, 2009

It was hard to pick my "favorites" from the hundreds of options, but this has always been my first favorite picture of her and it remains in my "Top 5".