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On June 19th, Liz and I took the family to the 4th Annual Texas Reds Steak and Grape Festival in Downtown Bryan.  We’ve gone every year so far and it seems to be getting better every time.  This year, there was covered seating around the wine tasting booths.  Nice improvement.  My mom and niece came up from New Braunfels to enjoy the weekend with us.

We usually take the kids early (around 10 AM) and spend time in the Kids Zone.  There were some new rides and some favorites from the previous years.  Celeste went to the petting zoo and Sarah took a ride on the kiddie train.  Stevie just kinda hung out.

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Spent Thanksgiving day in New Braunfels with my Mom and brothers.  Liz and I hadn’t been down to New Braunfels since last Christmas.  Place is growing and changing.  All my landmarks have moved or been covered up by other buildings.  I may need to start using a map to get around.  Joey has moved back in with Mom for a little bit to save money while he works on his EMT test.  Matt and Mary are really getting into their dog breeding and showing.  It was good to get back in touch with them.  The girls spent the whole time playing with Stevie.  She’ll officially be a teenager soon.  We drove back home in time to catch the A&M-t.u. game.  What a game, what a potential for an upset.  It would have been nice to have won, but at least the Aggies showed up to play.

Stopped in to see Uncle Muncle and wish him and Judy a Happy Thanksgiving and then went out to Tabor.  We had second Thanksgiving with Liz’s mom and her brother.  Bob even saddled one of the horses so the kids could ride.

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Posted below are pictures from the Halloween Party at the Ullman’s house a couple Saturday’s ago.  We started with the children’s party and then packed them all off to bed or Nana’s house and started the adult party.  Some really cool costumes and some really great food.

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Last Friday, Liz and I took the kids out to eat at Joe’s off SH 21 in Wixon Valley.  Good place to grab a burger and fries.  Burgers only come in one size and it’s that good,manly burger that leaves your fingers slick from the grease.  I highly recommend you stop by if you happen to be in the area.

Anyway, we left there was a spectacular sunset happening.  There had been rain earlier in the day and the clouds were clearing out.  The colors were just spectacular.  When we got home, I quickly got out my camera a tripod and started taking pictures.  I don’t have the best view from the driveway of course.  No mountain landscapes or beaches to compliment the light.  I did want to capture that light though.

This was the first image I shot and I should have been paying more attention.  It was a 10 second exposure at IS0 100.

Since the clouds were clearing, I went back out later that evening to take some pictures of the stars.  Now, I do live in town, so there is a lot of background lighting.  I really need to head out Tabor or Normangee and set myself up in a field.  I had the camera tethered to Liz’s laptop and I was using Canon’s supplied software to operate the camera.  It was pretty cool really.  I could change all the camera settings and trip the shutter via the laptop.  The software includes and intervalometer so I could set a specific exposure time on the bulb setting.  A little bulky compared to having a wired remote, but it worked quite well.  The sync cable supplied with the 40D is quite long.

I tried variations with low ISO and long exposures and high ISO and short exposures.  The noise generated at 800 ISO is very noticeable but there are other ways to subtract that.  The quality at 100 ISO is very good, even at longer exposures.  Unfortunately, longer exposure mean star trails.

The rest of the worthwhile images are up in the Random Images tab.

Liz’s Mom threw a back-to-school BBQ out at her place in Tabor.  It was a combination party for everyone (college, elementary, pre-k, middle school).  We even had an inflatable jump pad (i.e. auto-nanny) for the kids.  Photos are up in the Random Images tab.

Since it was all about school, for some reason the topic of school mascots was brought up.  I graduated from New Braunfels High School (in New Braunfels, Texas) and our mascot was a Unicorn.  Now, apparently, outside of the bubble around New Braunfels, this isn’t as mighty a mascot as I had been led to believe throughout my high school career.  In fact, most people laugh uncontrollably when I tell them.  I now give you exhibit A.  All I can say is, “Unicorn Pride is justified!”.