The Adventures of Dave & Amy: Back to posting again & Happy New Year!

Family at our house Christmas Day

It's New Year's day and it appears it's been about a year and a half since my last post. A lot has happened since then. Annabelle graduated high school and is now attending Ferris State University studying Criminal Justice, Max is now in his second year of high school and currently in the process of finishing up his Eagle Scout Project, Amy is back to coaching skating, and frankly I've had trouble coming back to land life but am back at my old job and now day dreaming about what our next big trip might be. I think they call it summit syndrome where one gets to the peak of one mountain and then starts looking for the next one vs being able to simply enjoy where they are at. We still have the boat. Unfortunately we did not use it much this summer with all of the graduation activities, camps, and other kids related activities going on. Unfortunately a few months after our trip ended we lost our dog Penelope. The original plan was to hold off on getting another family pet for a few years but after about a month the other 3 members of the family were desperate for another pet and we got a tiny English Mastiff puppy we named Snoop which is now just a year old and 130lbs. Males of this breed average between 160-220lbs so will be interesting to see where he ends up. He is a slow and steady grower, most months he gained about 10lb but is not down to only 5lbs the last couple months. It will be interesting to see how he does getting in and out of the dingy as he gets bigger? I'm not really sure what will be in store for us this year. We have talked about taking the boat somewhere but Max already has two summer camps scheduled and then there is Fair Week. I'm hoping we can use the three weeks between fair ending and school starting to go somewhere on the boat. We might only get to Mackinac Island but at least it would be a small adventure.

In the mean time I decided I needed a new hobby and bought myself a fancy new camera with a couple of prime lenses. So I hope to start learning to use it with a goal to use this site as a place to post a few of my favorite photos each week. My real goal is to make myself get out and start taking pictures again while having a place to be able to scroll back to see how my skills and hopefully style develops this year. Hopefully I stick with it :)