Jalen’s Birthday Party

Over the weekend I did a lot of goofing off and played a lot of video games, and on Sunday we went to Jalen’s birthday party. Jalen was turning three, and he had several other 2-3 year-old boys over, and they all played in the yard and blew bubbles and pretended to beat each other with shovels.

After we had cake, Jalen opened his presents, and was appropriately thrilled with the toy power drill that Annie got him, and spent the next half hour or so driving oversized plastic screws into cans of play-doh.

The highlight of the party though was when I finally managed to pry little Phina away from her mother’s loving arms for a little while. …Okay, I admit that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Phina had just woken up from a nap in her swing, and was in a squirmy playful mood, and didn’t even mind that Someone-Who-Is-Not-Mommy was holding her.

As you can see, I took my camera and got to try it out in a variety of lighting situations. I’m particularly pleased with the photos of Phina taken over Taya’s shoulder. The window is just to the left of the frame in those photos, and there was enough light that my camera didn’t need the flash, so I got great color.

Also, the photo makes it look like Phina is smiling and laughing at me. What’s actually going on is she’s looking directly at the camera, which I was holding off to the side, with the LCD screen rotated to face me. I’m not sure what was so wonderful about the camera that made her smile and laugh like that… I mean, sure, I make the same face when I look at it but that’s just because it’s so shiny such a nice camera.

Followup for Ryan and others who are “not in the know” - Jalen and Phina are the children of Annie’s friend (and acupuncturist) Taya and her husband, Mark. Now, in case that isn’t complicated enough, Taya’s brother is Aubrey, who is engaged to Annie’s cousin Jesse. And as if that weren’t enough, most of the people at the party were friends of Taya and Mark’s, so I was introduced as “Taya’s brother’s cousin’s husband, Scott.”