Backlogging continued Christmas edition

Merry Christmas on the second to last day of Jan.! Over here at the Linke household we work on being timely with our posts. However, since we fell hopelessly behind, but had some great occasions to write about still, we figured we might as well keep backlogging posts. :-) Here are some pics from our Christmas with Mom, and Dad, Sam, Dave, Scott, Grandma, Steve and Char.





Nothing like a great Christmas feast right?







This years goods...







Scott's reaction to learning that above picture represented his share of the pile...









OK, i totally made that up. This was really his new headshot for the ladies... Thoughtful, yet fun.





Sam getting very emotional about being around family and friends.... and of course the close proximity of onions...







Hayden getting into the swing of things by unwrapping his first Christmas present. He caught on too quickly....







This is Hayden spying on grandpa (still sounds weird to say that). Hayden is secretly thinking,"do you want help eating the wrapping paper?"





My beautiful wife stealing a Spanish olive from me while I am cheesing for the camera! Thanks Maite and Esteve for the fantastic Catalan Olives. They were even better than Spanish ones. :-)

Dave just before a brain meltdown....

We all had to later admit what a fantastic puzzle the Rubik's cube truly is. Frankly i would rather take it apart in order to match the colored sides.

Last but not least we have had this gag gift in our family for almost 20 years. Every couple of years the famed "electric potato peeler" is regifted usually to a newly married couple, or as it was first gifted, a really old married couple. The potato peeler was initially given to my grandmother where she proceeded to test it out by flinging potato skins all over the entire kitchen. She promptly threw the peeler in the trash, and it has been regifted ever since. Jenn, has truly entered the inner circle of trust by becoming the 2007 recipient of the infamous peeler...

More backloggin to come....

Nothing to say here, i think you know who my team is...

Backlogging

Ok.... After I had vowed to be a better blogger, I dropped the ball a bit. But in order to make up for lsot time, I am backlogging some of our adventures so we don't miss anything. This post goes back to early December when we had the pleasure of visiting our frineds Matt and Sol with Mark and Erin and others.... I know we had posted about this before but we wanted to make sure to put up this fun slideshow that better captures the whole week. So here it is.... Slideshow

A little Hayden update

With all these crazy adventures in the last couple of weeks one might ask, how is Hayden doing? He is doing great and growing like a weed! Jenn's mom was gracious enough to watch over him the week we were in Mexico. So this post is devoted soley to our little man. Here are some recent pics...

1977 What a year!

I need to go backwards for the next couple of posts to cover a couple of fun adventures that we had been on before our big adventure to Mexico. The first one that comes to mind is Natalie Ritchie's 30th birthday. My best friend Steve is married to Natalie who was born in 1977. So what a more fitting way to have a 30th birthday by dressing up like it was 1977. This night was fantastic, and I must mention I had a chance to experience the nicest home audio set up I have ever listened to! Oh what a night...

Hola from Playa del Carmen!

We have just a couple of minutes but wanted to say a quick hello and share some photos. The first one is of Mister Whiskers dancing with my wife, and as you can see they are "en fuego!" Then we were witness to a beautiful fire dance, that was amazing. We will be posting many more pictures when we return, but this last one was in Coba. Shortly after this photo was taken we climbed to the top. It was a great experience. After that, we cooled off at Grand Cenote. I will post more pictures on this later, but it too was a very cool experience. Now we are off to see Matt and Sol get married! This has been an incredible week and I can't wait to share more amazing experiences on this blog as soon as we get back!

Great to see friends

We were so excited to see some very dear friends this weekend. We have all been friends since our days working at The Hudson in NYC. Tracy, Hunter, and Megan visited us from NJ this weekend. It was great to see them as the last time was over two years ago! We were all part of the opening staff at the Hudson Cafeteria way back in October 2000. This is also where I met Jenn my wife. We have had a great time catching up on old stories and checking out the local sites. When showing people around town, this almost always means a trip to "Pueblos." Pueblos, is our favorite Mexican restaurant in Dahlonega, and it is located right near the historical square. After a fantastic dinner it was time to read Hunter a bedtime story and finish the evening with a glass of wine and share fun memories of our lives in the big apple.

Here are few pics from the weekend so far....

TGIF

Well, okay it's actually Saturday evening, but I wanted to use that title because this Saturday Jenn and I and Hayden took my grandmother out to dinner at TGI Fridays. I can't remember the last time we have had a chance to take grandma out on the town. She thought Friday's was the perfect spot to have a great dinner, and she was right. It is always nice getting a chance to hang out with family, and this was the first time she got to see Hayden outside of my parents house. Thanks grandma for a great evening, look forward to doing it again soon.

Hayden's first Halloween...

I wonder how much scarier Halloween is when you are 10 weeks old. I don't think Hayden recognized his mommy once her wig was on. But Hayden was brave nonetheless and ventured downtown to our friends fantastic Halloween party. We never get to see Mark, Erin, Andrew, or Rachel as much as we like, and we never get to see them at the same time! What a great party! Thanks Mark and Erin for being such great hosts!

We are the Champions...

After a great workshop in Asheville with Corey and crew, I hurried back to Atlanta to try and make our final Upper AA AHL hockey game. I was able to get on the ice after the first shift and we won! It was a great season with a great group of guys are here are a couple pics.

Hi Daddy!

So while Adam is up in NC Hayden and I are enjoying a few days with Nana! Nana is my mom - she lives in DC. As usual when she visits we get started on more projects than we could ever finish! This visit we are getting started on prepping the house to sell! Know anyone that needs a great lake house? We have decided that moving a little closer to the city would make life, work and social activities a little easier! We love this house and hopefully will do a 360 later in life and find another one like it - when we work a little less and have time to really enjoy it. So mom, Hayden and I have been replacing light fixtures, sprucing up and remodeling a bathroom.....ok well mom and I are. Hayden just hangs out being adorable... but hey...do what you do best right!
Here is dad's newest pic of Hayden James! Back to work!

Jenn

Rockstar's spotted in Asheville

One of the great things working for Pictage is that I get an opportunity to meet with tons of photographers like myself. This is a great perk. This week I am in Asheville, NC visiting my friend Corey McNabb while he conducts a 4 (plus) day workshop. Besides, getting to see some friends I haven't seen for a while, hi Amber, I had a chance to meet some new faces as well. Tom Flint is out of upstate New York. That's right Sam and David, if you guys have any friends that need an excellent wedding photographer in your area, he is worth checking out! I also got a chance to hang out with Ty Miller who is from my neck of the woods. He is another wonderful photographer and you can click on any of their names to check out their sites. I don't want to give anything away from the day except to say it was fun to go and capture some fun images in the afternoon thanks to our super willing and able models, Jon (of Jon Leidel photography) and Anna. Here are a couple of pics along with some fun ones at dinner...

Last but not least, I wanted to say thank you to Larry Crandall of White Glove First Edition Books for the great dinner.

I think that about covers it for today.

Blue

My favorite color is blue. Every once in a while I photograph an image that has a blue that I really like. Here are two of them. I have been talking to my dad a bunch about how to get the perfect blue sky shot for his vacation to Europe. Time of day, f stop, ISO setting etc. These are some of the better ones that I have captured.

The last day of the Impala SS

It's true. I sold my 1996 Impala SS with under 100k miles on Saturday. It was a sad day. My father had an Impala when he was younger and I proudly carried on that Linke tradition by owning one in college up until now. I had that car for over 11 years. That is a long relationship any way you look at it. I will always have tons of fun memories about that car and it's occupants. I would love to bring up a couple of those fond memories with some of my pals like Anders, Heller, and Hoblit, but I am not sure what the statue of limitations is in Minnesota so I will refrain. This is a picture as I am waiting in the parking lot for the new owner to arrive and take new ownership.

I've been a bad blogger

A few months ago, Jenn and I were getting pretty good at keeping up with our blog. After August 22nd, things have gotten more tricky as far as finding time to blog. I know that is no excuse so I am trying to make a come back starting today. For now on, I will make an effort to post at least once a week if not more. This post is a bit scattered. The first image I want to share with everyone is what our bay looks like when the water level is down 14 feet.

The black line I have drawn in is the normal water level in a non drought year. This image was taken a couple of weeks ago when the water was down 12 feet. Doesn't matter now, as you can see, the dock is on the mud.

I wish I could say that having a newborn around the house is the only reason we have been bad about blogging, but the fact is, work has picked up as well. I have photographed a wedding for the past 6 weekends in a row, and Jenn has been juggling Hayden and getting back to work.

Finally, to prove I really have been photographing a lot of weddings lately, here is one of my favorites from this summer. Click Here.

Talk to you soon,