The MacFarland’s

Bobcat Brady

By krmac | October 7, 2008

This evening during our pack meeting, Brady was awarded his very first badge, the Bobcat. There were several new boys, including Brady, who were honored tonight. The leaders dressed in Indian headdress’ and spoke to the earning of the bobcat badge being a foundation of the scouting experience. One of the leaders then applied blue and yellow facepaint to the boys’ faces to represent the colors of scouting. Here is an exerpt from the speech…

Boy’s you’ve accomplished the first step in Cub Scouting. In all things there is always a first….the first stone layed in a new building, the first step across a bridge. The first is sometimes the hardest, but thats because it lays the foundation or the strength for what follows. The Bobcat badge is your foundation. The trail of Scouting lies ahead of you, but don’t be afraid. You won’t have to do it alone. You’ll have lots of help from your Akela…Akela can be your parents, your den leader, even I your cubmaster will help you along the trail, helping you become successful.

As a symbol of your achievement and of becoming a member of this pack, I ask my assistant to give you the colors of Cub Scouting…blue on the right cheek, yellow on the left.

Your parents stand here with you as an example to show they are proud and that they are there to help you, just like they helped you earn the Bobcat badge. I am presenting your Bobcat badge to your parents who in turn will present you.

We are having so much fun with scouting and can’t wait to go camping in 2 weeks! Here are a few photos from tonight…

(click for larger image)

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TPWD Expo

By krmac | October 5, 2008

Saturday we treked out to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Expo in South Austin. It was a fun filled day with lots of walking and lots of stuff to see and do. The kids enjoyed participating in several activities including fishing from a large pool set up under a huge tent. They could choose from trout or catfish, we chose the catfish. Brady caught one but managed to free himself right when Scott pulled it up out of the water. Kacey caught one too and wasn’t too keen on standing around when the expo volunteer pulled the fish up. She took off, it was too funny! I tried to get her to stand next to it for a picture or at least touch it, and she wouldn’t. But the guy kneeled down and asked her if she would like to touch it and she went right over and had no reservations about it! Of course being the nature lover that I am, I had to touch it too! After the fishing we walked over to the saltwater exhibit and the “touch tanks”. We were able to touch a blue crab, hermit crabs, a live sponge and an anenome. Brady was really into it and was quite enthralled with the lady telling him all about what he was touching. I was totally in my element and loving every minute of it! We also caught the Birds Of Prey show “Last Chance Forever”. It was awesome and we learned a lot! A few of the hawks flew inches over our heads, I loved that our kids got to experience that. I have been to similar shows and the State Fair, but never was able to be this close and personal with the birds. All in all it was a hot, but very fun day! Here are the photos from our day…

Expo Photos

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Cub Scouts

By krmac | September 24, 2008

Brady is now officially a Cub Scout! We signed him up a few weeks ago and he is in a Den with his friends from school, which makes it so nice for everyone since a lot of us know each other already. He has been really excited about the meetings and activities. We are all signed off on his Bobcat trail, which is the first badge they have to earn no matter what level they join at. He will be presented the badge at the next Pack meeting at the school, which is next month. We are also simultaneosly working on the Wolf trail to earn his Wolf badge. We are especially excited about the Pack camping trip coming up. We will be heading out to Garner State Park in mid October to camp for the weekend. This will be our first time camping as a family and we can hardly wait! We have tried the team sports thing and it just didn’t work out, but the Scouts fit Brady to a tee, it’s right up his alley and ours! We love to be outside and we love to do things as a family, so this gives us some great family togetherness. It is going to be a really fun year seeing the boys grow as a Den and learn so much. Our Leader, Terry, has so much patience and is oh so good with the boys. You can tell he really loves being their leader!

Here are some photos I snapped before last night’s meeting. He was so excited about wearing the uniform that he put it on a full 3 hours before we had to go. I couldn’t convince him to take it off and wait. What a dedicated young man! (As always, don’t forget to click on the images to make them bigger!)

Here are some videos I took also last night, it might take a little bit to load depending on your connection.

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Makeover

By krmac | September 10, 2008

So, as you have probably noticed since you are on this site right now, things have changed around here! I have decided to start focusing on my creative photography and made the decision to turn my old blog into my website for that. To make it easier on you and me, I will now blog here, as well as post photos and/or the links to photo albums. The photos albums will remain over at phanfare.com, so don’t worry those won’t go anywhere. To access those directly, just go to themacfarlands.phanfare.com or just click on “Albums” over on the right hand side of this page. Also, we LOVE comments, so feel free to drop us a line (seriously, don’t make me beg for comments!) I hope you all like the new change!

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Kacey’s First Day in Pre-K

By krmac | September 3, 2008

**UPDATE**

She is loving school! She had no trouble on the first day and didn’t seem to miss me at all! I am so glad she is having so much fun and meeting lots of new friends. I love to hear about her day when she gets home, it melts me to hear about something new she accomplished that day. I have been enjoying my new found freedom too!

Well, today is Kacey’s first day of preschool and boy was she ready! We still had about 30 minutes before we had to leave and she was telling me “lets go!”. I walked her into her class, she hung her backpack on her hook and then we found her name on the table she was to sit at. The teacher had some worksheets sat out for the kids to work on and she settled right into it. I squated down to tell her goodbye and she turned in her chair and gave me the biggest hug and told me to enjoy my day! So cute! I was so worried that she might start to cry or be timid, but she wasn’t at the least bit worried about me leaving, in fact she quickly got distracted as I was walking out of the classroom. I know she is going to have fun and meet so many new friends. We love her teacher, Ms. Kristin (yes she’s a Kristin and the assistant is Christin!) I can’t wait to see her at 1 o’clock to hear all about her first day. It felt so weird to come home to a quiet house, but I am sure I will get used to it and I will get tons of stuff done in the 4 hours I will have every other day.

Here are a few pictures I snapped this morning…

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Photowalk: Update

By krmac | August 28, 2008

I forgot to mention in my post about the Photowalk I participated in on Saturday, that each city that hosted a walk had to choose a winner from their group. Each photowalk leader then submits the winning photo to the man himself, Scott Kelby, to judge and pick a grand prize winner.

Well guess who won for Austin? Yours truly!! That’s right….I got notified yesterday (my bday!) that one of my photos was chosen to represent the Austin Photowalk. I am up against some darn good photogs so we will see what happens. For right now though I feel so honored to have been chosen, it was completely unexpected!

I will be receiving Scott Kelby’s latest book, Lightroom 2 for digital photographers.

Here is the photo chosen by our leader…

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First Day of 2nd Grade

By krmac | August 26, 2008

Brady was very excited and anxious to get to school this morning, he was up and at ‘em bright and early. I packed him a yummy lunch then dropped him off at the crosswalk so he could walk in with his buddies that walk to school. He didn’t need me to walk him to his classroom this year, he’s a pro now (in his words) so I watched him walk off with his friends to begin another fun filled year. I can’t wait to hear about his day when I pick him up today. Click on the collage to see it full size.

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Photowalk

By krmac | August 24, 2008

Saturday morning I drove down to downtown Austin to participate in Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk. It was so much fun! I met lots of really nice photographers and it was neat to stroll along chatting and photographing. After the two hour walk up and down South Congress, we all met back up at Guero’s Taco Bar and everyone was reviewing photos with each other on their cameras.

The Photowalk, organized by photoshop guru, photographerand genious, Scott Kelby, was the first of its kind. About 8,000 people from around the WORLD signed up to participate in a local photowalk in their city. 160 cities organized walks with 50 people signed up for each one. I hope that this turns in to an annual event, it was a blast meeting new friends and bonding over photography.

Here are my photos from yesterday’s Photowalk…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/macfarlandphotography/

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Unexpected Fun!

By krmac | August 13, 2008

This evening the kids and I headed out after dinner to play at the park. The weather was quite nice and there was a cooler breeze, we so took advantage of it and spent some time outdoors. I originally set out to a park that the kids haven’t been to in a while, but on the way I remembered a brand new park that I cruised through one day looking for portrait spots. We pulled into the parking lot and from there, I didn’t even see that there was a huge play area chocked full of neat things for the kiddos! The kids and I headed down the path to investigate and when we came up on the play area, I thought the kids were going to pass out from excitement! I didn’t think we were going to find any play equipment, just jogging trails. We were pleasantly surprised to say the least. Of course I didn’t bring my camera and the kids were in play clothes and had no beach towels. But I said what the heck, go ahead and let them go nuts! There was a water area built to resemble a whale spraying water. The water feature would spray on one part, then make a blow hole noise and spray a huge fountain of water out of the ground. The kids laughed and laughed. There was also a rock climbing area where you could climb up on these huge boulders, Brady insisted they were real, they weren’t. My favorite part was the massive sand box complete with a shaded top (although the sun was setting and it wasn’t doing much good at the time) and lots of sand toys like pails, shovels and rakes. In three different area of the sand there were burried dinosaur bones that you could excavate with one of the many brushes laying around. I just still can’t believe that we came across this tonight, we are going back tomorrow to do some more exploring.

Here are our pictures from our impromptu park adventures. They were taken on my Blackberry, so excuse the quality!

http://albums.phanfare.com/2827103/2546336#imageID=42289526

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