Fuji Finepix F31fd
F 2.8 - 1/110 seconds
ISO 1600

My friend and a LIVESTRONG bracelet after his workout, the second in my 2059 series.  I'm not positive, however, which crop I like better.  I think I'll go with the top one.

( + a closer crop )

Canon EOS 30D
F 9 - 1/320 seconds
ISO 200

We met up with some old friends from the Philippines who currently live in Latvia (fun, huh!) for the day today.  We went to Junibacken and the zoo, both of which have been on my photo-a-day before, so you mostly just get pics of the kids. The last time these two girls saw eachother, they were 8 and 4 months old (Audrey's older) - it was fun to see them hit it off and be friends.
( +7 )

Fuji Finepix F31fd
F 4.3 - 1/85 seconds
ISO 1600

We had a fun visit today - Kirsti, one of Laura's roommates from college, who happens to be Finnish, and who also happened to be in tow, came over for dinner.  We wanted to get a picture of her with Laura, but it slipped our minds in the chaos of trying to leave.  So, you get a picture of when we all (Kirsti is in the yellow shirt) hiked Mt. Timp on July 24, 2001 - which is also the fateful day that Laura told me I was cute, giving me the courage to ask her out on a date, which led to another date, which led to a wedding date!

All that aside, it was wonderful to see Kirsti again and renew old acquaintances and catch up and just have fun with people that we really like.  

Well, as you know, I've been away for almost two months.  Life is just busy and has been especially crazy sincere well since about the last time I updated my PAD feed and the new CEO started at work.  (Don't get me wrong, he's not a slave driver - he's great to work with, actually - there's just been a lot.)  At any rate, I've kept up with my PAD (now at 1068 days!) on my "real" site - www.thekochco.com/today - and just haven't had the time to transfer everything over to the feed.  And now, especially since I'm 2 months behind on that, I'm just not going to :).  So here's today's pic, you can check out the rest of them on my real site, and then we'll try to keep it going from here.  The operative word is try.



Canon EOS 30D
F 4 - 1/125 seconds
ISO 400

The last day of our trip.  We were shown around the city a little bit this morning, including a stop at the Umeå College of Design (I don't know what the top pic is, but it's something at the school) and the really big smile, which is the Umeå's logo for being the European Capital of Culture in 2014.  The portrait is my colleague who was on this trip with me.  It was fun.

( +3 )

Canon EOS 30D
F 3.5 - 1/100 seconds
ISO 400

One of my coworkers was in charge of a big event today that I helped him out with.  After all was said and done, we hung out in my office for a bit to decompress.

Canon EOS 30D
F 4 - 1/60 seconds
ISO 400

10 years ago, I was a missionary in a TINY congregation in Hudiksvall - maybe 13-ish at services on average...  If the Borgenfalk family with their 5 kids came!  Fast forward 10 years, the older of the Borgenfalk boys, Hans, just got home from his mission to Oslo.  So Laura and I took the kids and we drove out to where they're living now to go to Hans's homecoming party.  It was fun (the pic of Chester in the midst of a balloon war is my pic).  It's amazing how much time had passed, and yet the friendship and love was still there (at least I felt it!).  I was surprised I recognized all the kids - can you match them to their before pic at the bottom of the page?
( +2 )

Canon EOS 30D
F 4 - 1/125 seconds
ISO 1000

Our friends from Manila took a Scandinavian cruise with a final stop in Stockholm - so we got to hang out with them this evening.  It was so much fun!  We haven't seen them for 4 years, and they really are wonderful people we admire.  I was really happy we got to see them again.

Canon EOS 30D
F 2.8 - 1/125 seconds
ISO 1000

Our friend Hilary from Ukraine (far left) worked tech crew for the Young Ambassadors.  We were fortunate enough that we got to be her host family while she was here in Stockholm!  So, that means we've known her for a year, and have had her over to our house in Sweden and Ukraine, but never seen her in the States....  and she's from Colorado!

Canon EOS 30D
F 5 - 1/20 seconds
ISO 1250

BYU's Young Ambassadors are in town!  They did a shortened version of their show at work today.  It was a lot of fun. But Timothy didn't like it.  He screamed almost the entire time, so I missed a good portion of it.  :(

Canon EOS 30D
F 13 - 1/200 seconds
ISO 100

We watched our friend's little girl while they were in the hospital for the birth of their second!  Congrats to them!

Canon EOS 30D
F 3.2 - 1/80 seconds
ISO 800

I went to a baptism today.  Elder Lewis didn't want his picture taken :)

Canon EOS 30D
F 11 - 1/250 seconds
ISO 100
Alien Bees 800 Studio Lights x 2

Our bishop came over for a few minutes this evening.  I convinced him to let me take his picture :) We really like our bishop a lot. He's a good man who does a lot for our congregation.  I need to persuade more people that come over to visit my studio to alleviate the number of self-pics :)

Canon EOS 30D
F 2.8 - 1/5 seconds
ISO 400

My friend let me borrow his 50mm.  I was at his house the other day and snapped a pic of him (below) with it, and since then I've been itching to experiment with it.  So, you can expect quite a few pictures with it over the next week or so until I have to give it back.

( + 1st shot with the 50mm )

Canon EOS 30D
F 9 - 1/200 seconds
ISO 100

This is Alexander.  He's leaving for the Finland Helsinki Mission next week.  (Well, technically he's leaving for the MTC next week, so that he can learn Finnish so that he can go to the Finland Helsinki Mission in early April.)  At any rate, his folks wanted some missionary portraits, so I took some today.  

Canon EOS 30D
F 2.8 - 1/60 seconds
ISO 200

My little boy slept in his big kid bed for the first time tonight.  He finally started climbing out of his crib a couple of weeks ago, and we've given him the option to sleep in his bed or his crib, but he always said crib.  So today, we just took away the crib, thus not giving him an option any more.  We thought he might have a hard time with it, but nope.  He's been A-OK.  We also had story time at our house today.  The pic behind the cut is of one of the little boys that came.  Partly because I wanted to throw it up here for his mom.  Partly because I think his little Elvis curl rocks.
( +Dennis )

Canon EOS 30D
F 2.8 - 2 seconds
ISO 200

The tree in our back yard in the wee hours of morning, simply because I wanted to be cool like provophoto ..

Fuji Finepix F31fd
F 2.8 - 1/60
ISO 1600

This is an awful picture.  It's blurry, and auto-flash on my point and shoot was used.  However, the people in it are some of my favorite people in the world.  

Norma and Viktor Marin were a couple that immigrated to Sweden from Chile way back when.  I met them on my mission and visited them often.  They were working towards getting sealed in the temple which they were eventually able to do shortly after I left the mission.  I haven't seen them since 2002 when I did my internship here, and they are doing wonderfully.  Norma reminded me a lot of my mom, both personality-wise and physically (she has the same face-feel. Something about the eyes and the mouth...)  It was a pleasure to see them again.  Astrid (on the right) was a saint.  When I was in Uppsala (for 7 months, mind you), we didn't have a washing machine, so Astrid did our laundry every week, even ironing our shirts for us.  She's Norwegian, and in Norway they eat meat-cakes (v. Swedish meatballs), and she made the best meat-cakes I've ever eaten.  Of course, I've only ever eaten her meat-cakes, but that's beside the point.  Them things were yummy. 

( +1 technically superior, but ultimately way more boring pic taken on my way home. )

Canon EOS 30D
F 2.8 - 1/30 seconds
ISO 1600

I used our last Saturday in DC to take the kids to the Air and Space Museum.  We met up with Audrey's friend Max and his mom.  It was a lot of fun for the kids to get together again.  We also happened to run into the story hour at the museum.  After that museum, we took the kids to a special exhibit that they're having on Jim Hensen.  They had a lot of his muppets, including Bert and Ernie, Rolf, the Mahna Mahna puppets, a couple of fraggles, some of the Dark Crystal stuff, and a lot of his sketches.  It was really neat.  (How's that for a descriptive sentence?)  Unfortunately, no cameras allowed in the Hensen exhibit.  One of the pictures I took of the three kids reminded me of one I took of them in Kyiv last December.  I just thought it was interesting to compare...
( +8, gosh... )

Canon EOS 30D
F 4 - 1/60 seconds
ISO 200

We had dinner with some friends tonight.  It was a lot of fun.  The girls got to hang out and dress up in some princess dresses, which they loved.  I did a shoot with the one on the left when she was just a few months old, but I can't find it anywhere on my site, I may have never posted the pics.  I did post a shoot I did with the other family's boys a couple years ago.  It's been fun to see how they've grown up.  Kids just change SOOOOO much in two years, it's amazing.
( The 3 M. Boys )

Canon EOS 30D
F 4 - 1/60 seconds
ISO 200

This evening we were able to get together with some good good friends of ours from our days living in the Philippines. We haven't seen these friends for about two years, so it was lovely to get to spend some time with them and chat for awhile.  The kids have all grown up so much!  Two of them weren't even born when we left the Philippines for crying out loud!  I would actually suggest looking at the larger version behind the cut.  It looks better.  Chester got into the princess dress up stuff about when I had a chance to take some pictures (mostly it was eating and talking...  the food was SOOOO good I wasn't about to take a break to take pictures!), so I threw in an extra picture of him looking particularly stunning in his butterfly wings and heels.  He is going to resent me so much when he's older!  :)  (PS  I also think this is the first time I've been completely up-to-date in my posting for at least the last year it seems like.  You should be very proud of me!)
( Chester looking fabulous and larger... )