Living the Dream: Some Christmas shots

Well our week in Iowa screamed by in a fantastic blur of time with friends and family. We rolled into Solon on Friday evening and partied/climbed with Joe and fam, during which I jammed the crap out of my ring finger. A week+ later it is still swollen and sore. Saturday found us scarfing down finger food in Washington with the Asbury/Patrick/Reid crew, which was the start of our 2 day "Thanksmas" celebration. On Sunday we moved the party down to Mount Pleasant and collectively devoured 6 feet of Subway sandwiches. Monday we crashed a potluck at our old lab and then partied/climbed/rolled sushi into the wee hours back in Solon with the Tuesday Night Bouldering crew. Tuesday we cruised down to Burlington, hooked up with Mikes family and destroyed some Mexican food. Wednesday we helped Mike finish up some last minute Christmas shopping and then made our way over to Molly's parents house. Thursday was a flurry of wrapping paper, Amana ham, and way too many frosted cookies. Friday we met several old friends down at Mr Motos for breakfast and coffee. After a quick visit to El Taco Casa we landed back at Mikes house to watch the boys play Rock Star. Then Saturday we did the long drive home. Whew!!

As usual I did a horrible job of documenting the trip with photos. We did get a great new lens for our camera so I did manage to snap a few shots on Thursday. For all you camera geeks out there, these were shot with a fixed 50mm lens with an aperture of 1.8. This is a great lens for shooting people because it has such a shallow depth of field which really makes your subject pop from the background. Also, the wide aperture allows for shooting inside without a flash. Here are a few shots.