Pixel Darkroom Photography

Today, for the first time in my life I woke up and had breakfast in my own house. I own the home entirely and there are no (more) payments for it. It’s been a dream come true and like many of you out there waiting for this moment, I can only encourage you and say it’s worth the wait. It’s a very exciting moment. The whole family woke up and got in, and even though it was a bit crammed, it was a good feeling. Actually, the kids loved it more than my wife and I since they fit inside it better, but I’m not complaining either. Unfortunately we cannot all move in since it is indeed a very small place to live. I took this image in the evening so you can see the house a bit better from the inside. The house was actually the box of a freezer and it being big enough to take up the entire living room space, I thought I’d carve out a door and some windows for the kids. Then I made the drapes and then a roof (with styrofoam) and voilà. It serves more like a vacation home or a temporary dwelling of our kids because they are not “home” all the time and I think that’s going to be the reason it goes back on the market. On the recycling market, that is.

From the looks of it, the Red got the longest road, probably the most points and, with 1 or 2 points in development cards, more than likely won the game. I’m sorry I got to post this so late, but the game took a long time and then we played another one which took us into the first hours of the second day. This is the first time I play Settlers of Catan in Canada. It’s a very fun game and if you like board games, trading and negotiating, making plans and robbing people, then you should try it.

This is Piano Time Before Bedtime. It doesn’t happen very often although it should. One of my fondest memories of my childhood was when my Dad would play piano for us. We played so much one time, that he forgot entirely that he put water on the stove to boil and make tee. He put the leaves in the boiling water and left them there until we realized later that we had completely forgot about his tee. Once the funny smell came from the kitchen, from his tee, we all ran into the kitchen to find the kettle all dried up with flickering ashes inside. We remember to this day that Dad made “tee with sparks”.

When he played piano for us he would improvise most of the time, and I could not understand for the life of me how he did it. He would just say, “just put your hand on the piano and let it walk, then adjust the left hand to fit with the right hand”. Now I’m doing it for my kids, except for the tee sparks. It’s amazing to see life from two perspectives. It happens to me so often that I see life from my perspective as a kid, through memories, and my perspective as an adult through my ongoing experience as a father. I can only hope and believe this happens to most people. I pray not to make the same mistakes my parents made, and in the same time I pray and hope that my children will not make the same mistakes that I make with them. When I think of life like this, I only realize more and more that humans fall short and fail many times and it is only God’s grace that helps us get up from our misery and from the consequences of our mistakes and try to keep walking.