Mommyfest Blog Party!

Hi everyone, I'm Angela, and welcome to mommy bytes! No, I don't bite (usually), but I do push bytes around for a living as a software engineer. I'm a mom of two crazy, I mean wonderful kids, Adam 7, and Dova 4. They keep my husband Doug and me very busy and provide much blog fodder.

Here's a short video of our daughter Dova, which was taken by her brother unbeknownst to us. You can see in the seconds of calm near the end, that she is a sweet, quiet girl. It is her brother who makes her act crazy.


And to prove that our son Adam is indeed completely crazy, here he is videoing himself while we were in the other room.


Yes, he has his own camera which has managed to withstand lots of abuse. My favorite hobby these days is photography, and you can see lots pictures here on the blog as well as over 10,000 pictures on Flickr.

Check out the prize that I am donating for Mommyfest, a $20 Amazon gift certificate for the 5 Things About This Mom Meme. And please sign Mr. Linky so I can visit you as well.

Happy Mother's Day!

A colleague asked me if I had plans for Mother's Day. I said, "Hockey game and a soccer game." This family doesn't stop for Mother's Day! When do I get to relax and go to fancy brunches? But the kids did take some time to make the sweetest cards and gifts. Here's Adam's card:



Apparently, the best thing about me is that I have a son who only thinks I play video games with him. Never mind soccer, frisbee, photography or reading nearly 1000 pages of Harry Potter (we are approaching the end of Year 3). Or constantly making him separate meals for his finicky tastes and planning the multitude of sports and activities (thanks Doug for doing most of the chauffeuring, except for early Sunday morning hockey games). But I do love his drawing of me wearing a shirt in my favorite color. And I do love playing video games with him.

Here is Dova's gift she made in school and her card, with a little help from Dad.



She loves to draw and is getting really good making rainbows (she somehow knows Roy G Biv already!?!). Thanks kids, I love you!

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!

High 5 for Mommyfest

Don't forget to join the blog party at Mommyfest next week. I'll have my party post up first thing on Monday. In the mean time, here's a photo of five hockey players for the High 5 Photo Contest, with a pound of See's Chocolate up for grabs. Adam is in the foreground wearing navy blue. I kept getting three or four players and finally got this shot of five players.

Photo Hunters - My choice

At the end of a rainy day on Sunday, the sun came out just in time for the golden hour. I tried my hand at panning to capture motion shots, as Adam has no trouble being in motion. This photo was taken with my old kit lens with shutter priority at: Exposure 1/60, Aperture f/14, Focal Length 45 mm, ISO Speed 400. Just ordered a new IS lens, so we'll see if I can improve on this.

So Dova doesn't feel left out, here she is enjoying a much slower ride on her bicycle.



And here is a video with the both of them. Adam cut way too close to her. The last time she ended up in tears, he claimed that she ran into him. At least we have proof of his antics.

Biking in China

Here I am in Suzhou, China in 1988. And I wore white sneakers, white pants and a white jacket, can you say total foreigner? My mother's cousin to my right hosted us in his beautiful city and lent me his family's best bicycle. We felt bad about taking rickshaws everywhere so we offered to bike with them. Our relatives were all used to biking everywhere as none of them owned a car, but they were concerned whether we'd be able to handle biking in China. Hey, I've biked in the streets of Boston, MA and Oakland, CA, how bad can it be? But still they only took us on the shortest of bike rides in their picturesque city. Here is a typical street scene.

A few weeks later we went up to Beijing, and we offered to bike again. Now biking in Beijing is a totally different story. It is more like this sign (I can't translate, but just look at the biker):

Beijing has real city streets with thousands of bicycles, cars, trucks and buses vying for the same roads. We biked to the Summer Palace, and I thought we were not going to make it there. It was extremely hot, dusty and the exhaust fumes were choking us. You don't know dusty unless you've been to China. Perhaps the wild west was dusty like this, but the US is dust-free nowadays compared to China. And the ride was a lot further than we thought. I did take my camera along and got this shot of the Marble Boat.

Photoshop has sure breathed new life into these old faded photos whose negatives were x-rayed a half dozen times before being developed.

Save the WGBH Morning Stories Podcast

Sadly, in the last WBGH Morning Stories podcast, Tony Kahn announced that WGBH will no longer produce this podcast after August 2008.  This is definitely one of my all time favorite podcasts and I've mentioned it here no less than 7 times, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, whew!  Morning Stories have meant so much to me as well as hundreds of thousands of other listeners (I'm guessing) around the globe.

I have been a long time supporter of WGBH (sustaining member at that)  as long as I've lived in the greater Boston area and they have been great.  I just wish I were high enough on the donor pole for my voice to make a difference.  But I do have this blog and I ask anyone who wants to save the Morning Stories podcast to write a comment here.  I'll print out this post with all the comments and mail it to them. 

And here is a link to support the podcast.  Perhaps if they can raise enough money to produce the show, WGBH will kindly keep their studio time.

Contribute with a credit card

Wordless Wednesday - Chloe

We interrupt the stream of kid and cat photos to bring you cousin Chloe, a beautiful Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

Vote for me!

It's time to vote for the Top School Fundraiser's "My Favorite Teacher" blog contest. Check out the posts and vote here. Of course, I'd appreciate a vote for my entry. Here are a few more juicy details that I failed to mention in that post (shameless pandering for votes).

I totally had crushes on these teachers. In my letter to my math teacher, I professed this to him, although I'm sure he knew already. I knew it was totally inappropriate and immature to do this, but heck, you're only young once. I thought I had a copy of this letter somewhere, and I was all ready to let it all hang out on the blog, but I couldn't find it, whew! And in a strange twist of fate, I ended up having a student who had a crush on me when I was a TA (teacher's assistant) at UC Berkeley. He would hang out during office hours and try to ask me out. For the final exam, he brought up a dozen roses for me in front of the class. Oh man, I guess what goes around comes around.


As for Harbison, I was total fan stalker. I would go to premieres of his works for years. The last time I saw him was at a premiere at Jordan Hall in the New England Conservatory in 1993. I approached him afterwards to congratulate him and he said that he remembered me. I can't believe he just premiered his fifth symphony commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I've only heard his first symphony back in 1985 at the Tanglewood Music Center. I guess I had finally got over the crush. Did I mention that he is a Pulitzer Prize winner? I sure know how to pick a top notch stalking victim.

So don't forget to vote! Thanks!