Photography – Page 82 – M. Sullivan Photography

June 27, 2012June 27, 2012 M. Sullivan Photography Family, Photos, Weather

Piercing, Boating And Flooding

It’s been a wild couple of weeks. We celebrated Sophia’s birthday nearly two weeks ago, spent a weekend at Mike’s parents’ lake cabin and experienced flooding in our city and neighboring towns.

I will begin with the birthday girl who has been begging to have her ears pierced for the past two years. We finally gave in and took her to mall to on her birthday to have it done. It rained the entire day so it was actually nice to be indoors. We also did a little shopping while we were there which Sebastian benefited from. He loves his new Nike shoes. 🙂

Here’s the birthday girl after the first ear was done, but before the second one was finished. You can tell by her face that it hurt, but she was brave and didn’t cry.

Here she is after arriving home from having her ears pierced.

We spent Father’s Day weekend at the Sullivan cabin boating, enjoying the warm weather and the lake.

We have had our share of precipitation this year. We had a big snowstorm in March and many, many inches of rain this spring. We welcomed summer with over 10 inches of rain in a 24 hour period on Tuesday-Wednesday last week. Our house came through it okay, just a little water in our garage and laundry room and a small area of damp carpet in the family room. Others we know have had extensive damage with several feet in their basements and also friends in Superior with 3 feet of water on their main floor and over $100,000 in damage. Some roads have considerable damage, others are perfectly fine.

Here’s how it all started.

We ventured out in the afternoon after the water had receded a bit on Wednesday. Here’s a look at our neighborhood.

Below is the road that Sophia’s friend lives on. She was at Sophia’s birthday party just two weeks ago. Now they can’t drive out of their driveway. Photo from MPR website.

We didn’t have any damage at either of our workplaces and feel very fortunate to have come through the flooding with no damage at our home as well. We know many others that have a long road of clean up and rebuilding. Please keep them in your thoughts.

June 12, 2012June 12, 2012 M. Sullivan Photography Family, Photos

A STRIKE-ing Success

Sophia celebrated her 8th birthday early with a “friends” party on Sunday. The party was held at a local bowling alley. They bowled, ate pizza & cupcakes and played in the game room.

Her friends autographed a retired bowling pin for her to take home.

They played cosmic bowling with the music up high and the lights down low. Not great for pictures, but lots of fun.

The bowling scores were not that of league material, but no one cared including the birthday girl who had a 59.

Earlier in the day we baked bowling pin shaped sugar cookies. We frosted them with white chocolate and added red licorice to finish them off. We also made a few bowling balls frosted with semi-sweet chocolate and added Life Savers for finger holes.

They posed for one more goofy photo after Sophia finished opening her gifts.

The kids had a great time. Mike and I enjoyed watching the fun. The best part of the day was packing up and leaving the mess behind. Well, maybe not the best part, but you could say it was the “icing on the cake”.

May 25, 2012 M. Sullivan Photography Animals, Cooking, Family, Garden, Photos, Weather

So Totally Random

I found a few photos that I took during the past couple of weeks. They don’t individually create the need to produce a post on our blog. Together, they barely culminate the need, but I figured, “What the heck, it’s Friday”.

Here’s a picture I took early one morning just before work. I grabbed my company’s Canon point-and-shoot to get a photo of a pair of geese walking along the boardwalk next to the William A. Irvin in Canal Park. Unfortunately, the geese didn’t make the cut as I liked this photo better.

A month ago my brother was at our house inspecting our garden and trees in the backyard, offering some tips and advice. We heard a number of different birds singing. He said, “Did you hear that? That was a cardinal”. First off, I’m not sure why he knows what a cardinal sounds like and secondly, we don’t have nesting cardinals in Duluth. Well, at least I didn’t think we did…until Sebastian and I saw this guy last week.

I have to admit, it was pretty cool to see him in the sea of green grass on my lawn. We have spotted him four times now and we also saw his lady friend. We are fairly certain he and the Mrs. have a little family somewhere in our trees (or our neighbor’s). I would love to see the kids, but so far we haven’t located the nest.

Guess who was back in the garden? Seriously?

Too bad we spoiled his fun by planting the garden and putting up a fence around it last Saturday. I’m hopeful that he’s too lazy to dig underneath. There are plenty of other delicious things growing in the yard and in my flower bed to go through all that work.

I baked bread last Sunday. Not like my Mom’s awesome bread that you want to slather with butter and homemade jam, but a more European loaf that is good with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and fresh cracked pepper. I made it to pair up with homemade broccoli cheese soup. Too bad my timing was off and the bread came out of the oven an hour after we finished eating the soup.

I am looking forward to the long Memorial weekend. I’m not so much looking forward to all of the rain in the forecast. We already received 4 1/2 inches this week. Baseball was canceled…twice. Our backyard is like a big soggy sponge. Keep your fingers crossed that the weatherman is wrong like he often is. 🙂