My friend Julie took these photos with my camera during a moms’ night out at her house. We had a fabulous time — knitting, watching a period piece, eating, and gecko tracking. Each of us brought something to share and Julie hosted — since her husband and kids were out of town. It was blissful!

Tabbouleh, hummus, a greek salad, pita bread, watermelon, cantaloupe, and cherries. It was all good. Late in the evening, after it was good and dark, we checked out the front entryway and found our friends the geckos. In these two photos you can see the difference in colors between the one we found on the white paint and the one we found on the brick wall.

We slept in. We ate leftovers (tasty ones). We napped after lunch. We took a late afternoon walk and stopped in a neighbor’s yard to play. What a relaxing day! During the family playtime in the yard, I sat on a swing and snapped photographs while Richard pushed the boys on the air pogo and kicked a soccer ball around.

The light was fading and I was getting some movement, but I liked these two anyway. In the second one, especially, the movement gives the photograph an abstract look. Almost as if it were photoshopped. Is that a word?

I also finished a knitting project that caused me a few problems in the making. I will remember this as the hat that taught me ribbing. I naively thought I knew how to knit one, purl one, but clearly I didn’t. All I managed was knots. My friend who knits reminded me that I could find how-to videos on YouTube. I learned that you have to move the working yarn to the front to purl and to the back to knit. Makes a world of difference. On the second try, I started off knitting too loosely and I cast on too many stitches. It looked like I was making a sweater for a small dog. Since it was a gift for my mom, I began to refer to it as the hat only a mother could love.

In the end, however, I think I managed to make a nice hat. I love the yarn my mom picked out and I think the ribbing works — however, I have to admit that it is the reverse of what she asked me to do. On the third try, after about an inch of working in a purl one, knit three pattern, I put the whole thing down. When I picked it back up, I managed to reverse my work somehow. If the hat is flipped inside out, you get the pattern I was going for. Who knew knitting could be such an adventure?

Here’s Douglas, the only one I didn’t get in the yard in mid-play. Richard took this in our driveway before we left. I’m glad we took the time to take these photographs today, the first day of the year. It gives us a good start. We are still in the middle of compiling our annual calendar for 2009. It has been a traditional Christmas gift we’ve given for the last dozen or so years. This year’s is late and we ran into a snag this week as we finally got around to uploading photographs to the online service we’ve used for years. Finally, finally, after trying many different ways to upload and even signing up with a new photograph processing service, Richard figured out the problem. It had to do with settings on our firewall. Though I understand why computer security is necessary, it is often the thing that stops me from doing what I want/need to do.