Loving the Louvre

There were so many pictures to choose from with my son's shots of the Louvre, but here's a small sampling for your viewing pleasure. Find enclosed a picture of the Mona Lisa - it's surprisingly small. He said there was so much ceiling art, but I'll only offer up a few choice pieces. His favorite part was the room with all the historic weaponry and Roman armor, but that will probably require another post. After tomorrow, I'll take a break from posting a bunch of pics and get back to more important matters. Like writing!

Cruising Through Paris

I promise I'll get back to posting proper articles and stories again very soon. Here's a few pics of the Arc de Triomphe looking down Champs Elysees, the Paris bridges and a few sites they saw on their Seine River cruise while in France. Can you guess which one is known as the Napoleon Bridge? Ah Paris!

The City of Lights

Well now that we’ve enjoyed some pictures of England, I figure it’s time to see the sights of Paris, the City of Lights. Once again, my son showed what a natural talent he has for photography. Someone even mentioned that the one of Sacre Coeur and one of the Eiffel Tower pics look like postcards. Nope, all were from my son’s camera (as my bank account groans from processing all 638 pics).

Pomp and Ceremony - English Style

Normally I don't post on Sundays, but since there's still sooooo many pictures to go, I wanted to post one more time on their England leg of the journey. The pictures here are at Buckingham Palace during the changing of the guard. I didn't realize the pomp and ceremony for this event. They block off traffic and have a big parade every day as part of this ceremonial ritual. I wonder if any of the guys from the trip tried to make the guards smile.

Carousing London's Cathedrals

My son took some pictures of incredible chapels and cathedrals in England, with their fabulous architecture and stunning details. The picture at the top is of Westminster Abbey, but I'm not sure about the others. However, the interior shots at the bottom were inside Wesley's Chapel, home of their first performance during Sunday morning services. It's funny though because the most humble of exteriors houses some of the most beautiful of interior details and an enormous pipe organ. My son fell in love with the pipe organs of Europe.

There's more of those to show, but we'll wait for later posts. Gotta stay in order, you know.

An Eye On London

Still writing like crazy, so I'm going to share some pics of London in today's post. The goofy pic and the panorama of London were taken while he was aboard the London Eye, an enormous ferris wheel type ride which takes thirty minutes to complete one revolution. Enjoy!

Pictures of Windsor England

Today I'm full in the throes of writing, so I'll just post a few pictures of my son's visit to Windsor in England. The queen was in residence at the time the group was there (see the flag flying). More pictures will come in time.

Stellar Performance

Well we returned late last night from our annual Fourth of July blow up the sky event with the family.

As usual, it was a smash. You know, it is amazing how much one can buy on a limited budget. I focused on all the bargain nightworks instead of grabbing some of the bigger stuff. All in all, it was still pretty, though much shorter than our usual display.

See you can get the most bang for your buck.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Anyway, Mom contributed a good deal to the stash this year to help make the event the stellar performance it was. However, our numbers were much fewer this year.

Sometimes I hate it that the kids are all getting older. My nieces and nephews are gradually drifting away one by one. The oldest is living in Colorado and quite busy. One is away at school out-of-state. One lives out of town and has a girlfriend, so he decided to spend this year with her family. One is busy working in Arkansas.

Basically that left two kids - four if you count me and my sister. This resulted in the smaller stash, which resulted in the shorter time frame.

I guess that's probably a good thing, considering the Fourth was on a Saturday this year and we had to get up early for church in the morning.

But it was so neat. God joined in on the fireworks display and showed up all of us. Just to the south was a big storm system that moved slowly from the west to the east. All evening we had clear skies over us but a gorgeous lightning display just above the treetops. It was like God was saying, "Let's just see what I can do." So neat!

I guess you can say that the entire evening offered a stellar performance. Happy Birthday, United States of America!

Photo Phun

Well we've had an interesting past twenty-four hours.

Spent the better part of yesterday and most of the night trying to download all of my son's Europe pics for a one-hour print job at our local Wal-mart. When we went to bed last night it was at around 54%.

So this morning we got up to find that they'd all downloaded spendidly, and I could actually place the order. Finally!

That took another hour to do.

Once the order was complete, instead of being ready in one hour they'll be ready at 5:00 tonight.

We were planning to leave at 4:00 today. So much for them apples.

Of course, I'm not really surprised. Is it even humanly or technologically feasible to print over six hundred pictures in the course of an hour?

I didn't think so either.

Needless to say, I'm just glad to know they'll still be done today so we can hit the road and go blow up the sky.

It IS that time of year again, don't you know.