Cardio Mike's 1st Boot Camp in Wichita

Monday was the first day of Cardio Mike's 1st Boot Camp in Wichita at the West Central Genesis location.
Boot Camp started with everyone getting signed in and issued official Boot Camp shirts and weighted vests.
Everyone receives two T-shirts, one green camo and the other brown camo. Participants are to suit up according to how they're instructed and if even one person is out of suit everyone will suffer the consequences.
The class was filled to capacity and everyone was eager to get started.First order of business was find out where everyone was at physically. Cardio Mike took half of group to the track to time them running the mile...
...some appeared to already do this regularly.

The other half were tested on how many sit ups and push ups they could accomplish in a set amount of time. Then the groups switched out till all had completed both.
They were then instructed to put on their vests and grab a chair on the way back into the room. They look like they think they're going to be attending a class...
NOT! The last thing these chairs are for is sitting. They're for running around...
...and leaning on, and swinging your leg over and a number of other uses.
Cardio Mike worked them hard for about a half hour...

...and they all seemed to still be in great spirits at the end, though some a little more ragged than others.
And that was the first day of the 5 week Boot Camp...

MORE TO COME!

City Fireworks

The small town where I live doesn't do 4th of July fireworks because usually a week later they hold their city celebration. This used to be the harvest festival, but I'm not really sure how tightly this is tied to the harvest in this day and age. Where they fire the fireworks from is diagonally across the county road from our house. If anything, we're too close. Much of the time the fireworks were going off directly over my head. The evening was cool if not a bit chilly, so I lit a fire in the fire pit and set up my camera to take pictures...

I took 84 pictures in all, these were some of the best. I hope you enjoyed looking at them.

Final Ballgame of the Season

This game was played on July 1st and I'm finally finding time to get it posted. The game was not a scheduled game to add to who won or lost during the season, more just for the fun of it. It was also an out of town game so I had a different angle on my shots. Below is the grandson in the outfield, the one in the black cap.
Grandson being a southpaw, his back was to me when he was up to bat. At our home diamond we were on the other side.
Here he is, back in the outfield with the score tied, 1 to 1, in the sixth inning. The score was the same on the third out at the bottom of the sixth but they called the came over. End of Season.
Here's his team members with all their medals. Each player got one.
There were several of us taking pictures and I joked with the grandson that his checks were going to hurt if he kept smiling like that which caused him to smile even bigger.
It was a great evening with wonderful weather for the last ballgame of the season.

Garden Weather

The weather here has been unbelievably mild and wet for July. Everything is growing like crazy, including my lawn. Today I plan on getting out to mow and trim, it's suppose to be getting hot today.
Our local big city newspaper had an article a couple days back where the reporter talked about her garden in a local community garden project. She lamented that fact that she wasn't a very good gardener and her plot had gone a bit wild with grass and weeds. There was another gardener there that blamed the muddy ground as the reason for not getting in to weed and she thought that sounded like a good excuse. That excuse doesn't work in my bed gardens, I place boards down and always have something solid to walk on...
...a plus to the boards is that I read that squash bugs sleep under them during the day and the best way to fight them is to check under the boards in the morning and kill them. Below is my lettuce and arugula. I have been getting one salad a day off these two rows for the last week.
Here's some natural cooperation. Below are my cucumbers climbing the pallets that I put up for them, the upper plant is giving the lower plant a "hand up", see next picture...

...Looks like they've 'tied the knot', LOL.
Below is a beautiful, big zucchini blossom and an aphid eating lady bug. Every time the kids find lady bugs in the yard I tell them to take them to the garden.
Behind the cucumbers, facing the alley is KP1's pumpkin plant that she proudly shows to anyone she can drag out there to look.
Anita, the trees still appear to be doing well. We'll see how they fare as the weather warms up. Maybe I'll have some nice ones for you by autumn.

HAPPY GARDENING EVERYONE!

4th of July 2008

What a week it has been! This is usually my busiest time of the year and this year was no exception. We had a wonderful day all around for the 4th of July. The weather was perfect! Family started arriving in the afternoon and we all gathered in my yard for a barbecue.
In the hustle to get everything going we forgot to get the potatoes on the fire, so they were a little late getting prepared.
After dinner everyone got busy with relaxing, visiting and shooting off fireworks.
The kids also got busy with having fun and keeping cool in the pool.
We had enough food to cover two long tables.
We also celebrated KP1's birthday, though it's really a few days off. This year, for reasons unknown, she decided she wanted a Hawaiian birthday. So her mom and aunt made her a Hawaii birthday cake.

While the birthday girl opened presents, the boys went back to doing what boys do best, blow things up.
My son had friends from his previous job come out and help us celebrate. They brought with them a couple of large containers of fireworks to add to our display. Everyone had a GRAND time.
Here is my first attempt at shooting fireworks with my new camera...
Bob and Bec, tell me what you think happened...
...these first three seem to be what I would say are "in focus"....

...but this next one appears blurred to me (click on them to see what I'm talking about).
...all the ones following are not as crisp as the first three.
I was right underneath ALL of them, really close. I hadn't moved for any of them and they were all being shot from the same location. I didn't intentionally change any settings.
Do you think that maybe I or someone else might have turned the focus ring on the lens? Would this have caused these to be out of focus like this?
Or do you suspect some other problem? They're still pretty, even if they're out of focus. I hope everyone had a VERY HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! as we did.