The Heavens Declare the Glory of God ...

The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands...

The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the LORD are true; they are righteous altogether.

Psalm 9: 1,7-9

Very early in the morning ... Death was swallowed up in Victory!

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning,
the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were wondering about this,
suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.
In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground,
but the men said to them,
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here; he has risen!"

Death is swallowed up in victory!

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you,
which you received and on which you have taken your stand.
By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.
Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures...

And He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves,
but for Him Who died and rose again on their behalf.

Luke 24:1-6
1 Corinthians 16:54
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
2 Corinthians 5:14-15

The Sweet Town of Kapaa

The first part of our vacation on Kauai was all about the pool ...



and sunrise on the beach ...





and easy meanderings to the shopping center for McCafe hot chocolate for the dudes and Coffee Bean Latte for me.

Sometimes ...

those self-timer shots to get your family picture for your Christmas cards don't work out quite right. And instead of looking like this:



end up looking like this:



especially when your "tripod" looks like this:



:-)

Book List: Kauai

To my way of thinking, it wouldn't be a relaxing island vacation without some dedicated reading time.



Middle Dude brought: the last book in the 39 Clues series, and The Blue Fairy Book and The Green Fairy Book (both by Andrew Lang)



Littlest Dude brought an assortment of Magic Tree House books.



The Teen needed to bring along some school books (Classical Writing Herodotus & Caesar's The Gallic War) for his online classes. But he also brought along Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.



Big Dude's selections included Hunger Games (also by Suzanne Collins) and The Willoughbys (by Lois Lowry).



And there's my stack. By the way, I HIGHLY recommend both authors' books that precede Laughing without an Accent and Half Broke Horses (Funny in Farsi & The Glass Castle).

Orange Week at I Heart Faces

Even before we left, Littlest Dude was highly excited about the opportunity to find a real coconut. Found it, he did. And he was well pleased. [photo credit: Big Dude & his new p&s]

It Might Take Me Awhile ...

... a long while, to stop missing this view.



I'll blog more Kauai beauty (and actually edit some pictures) after I relearn how to export a Lightroom catalog from my laptop and import it onto my desktop. If Big Dude would only take me on lots more vacations (smirk), maybe I could remember the process better. ;-)

Voted Absentee.

Because we've been terribly busy the last few days.













Hey, Teen, give us your best "this is sooo lame" expression!:











And because, goshdarnit, I live in CA, and I'm always ALWAYS voting on the losing side ... it can get a little depressing. It helps a little being in my "happy place." [grin]

note: because I'm feeling Island-relaxed, and because my laptop is no good for editing, all these pictures are SOOC - a mixture of my big girl camera and the new toy camera. :-)

Third Day: Yellowstone!!

Some of our “firsts”:  our arrival, the park’s official warning, the first superduper clear riverwater view, our first not-so-close-up wildlife view, first geothermal activity sighting, first encounter with the freaky-amazing nature-colors, my first pairing of sunflare + geothermal steam ;-), and our first close-up encounter with wildlife.

Note: F/11 on all of these but the last two (because I was running out of light, and because I didn't necessarily need great depth of field for those).

More Bryce ... and a landscape photography tip

Seemingly the top of the world ...














Tiny, but important, tip: each of the national parks we visited was filled with grand, sweeping vistas, and thus, to get as much detail in focus as possible, I shut down my aperture to f/11. F/11. Yummy for landscapes. :-)

Rocks must be thrown.

It's a simple fact of life with boys ...