About 3 months ago Denise ordered some Tutus from another photographer here in Houston.  These were special because they were very soft, fluffy and beautiful.  Well we got our order in today and the first thing we did after school and work was run out to the park and photograph Whitney and her buddy Molly in the dresses.  They were a lot of fun and the girls loved the skirts.

Molly and Whitney have been together since they were three months old.  They are a day apart in age and a little too similar in personality.  After this year these two girls will no longer be in school together but we are happy to say they live close by. 

We are thinking of doing a special promotion or ad for these skirts before school starts.  It will be a big hit in the spring too. 

Posted by danny at 03:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today Denise and I had the honor of being the first to photograph Mr. Matthew Alexander Zepeda.  We headed down to The Women's Hospital and gathered in Stephanie's little room for a family photo shoot. 

Mom, Dad and big sister are doing well.  Mr. Matthew is a big boy with a beautiful round head.  He is absolutely perfect.  I don't think I have ever seen a baby not more than a day old with such a perfect little round head. 

Posted by danny at 03:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some of you know that I try to make it a habit of picking up Whitney early once a month to go on a special "Daddy Day."  We usually go to a museum, park, zoo or something just fun.  It usually ends in ice cream and sometimes she gets her nails done.  

At the end of August Whitney will begin kindergarten.  She is going to be busy with school and our special little daddy days will not be the same.  So in a last ditch effort to hang on to my little girl before she heads off to school I plan on a daddy day each week for the next 8 weeks. 

On the 9th she will start swim lessons so we decided to go to the museum and then shop for a new swim suit.  Or like her and her brother call them "Fwimin Soup".  We went to the museum of science and took our camera to photograph butterflies.  Whitney had a big time and she chose each butterfly to photograph. 

 Whitney had a lot of fun and we were able to watch a butterfly lay eggs on a plant, feel a dead butterfly and have them land on daddy's camera. 

The little yellow dot at the end of the leaf is the egg.  The plant had eggs all over it. You would never know those were butterfly eggs.  It was super cool!

After we went through the butterfly house we decided to go check out the geological exhibit and the special diamond exhibit.  Whitney loves this exhibit because she likes to compare the diamonds to mommies diamond. 

These were all of Whitney's favorite rocks or jewels. 

We finished off the afternoon with bubblegum ice cream and a new fwimming soup.  Next week is the 4th of July so we probably won't do anything.  Once we showed James the pictures of the butterflies and the stones he was very upset and wanted to go.  So the good thing is that he is apparently ready for Daddy Days now.  So not all is lost.  I will just have to keep on having kids so I have someone to play with while everyone else is at work or school.

Until next time.

Posted by danny at 04:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fathers day was a lot of fun for the whole family.  Of course today it is not too much fun because we have discovered the Nintendo WII and all of our arms hurt. 

I received some great gifts from Whitney and James early Sunday morning.  After breakfast we went to PaPa's house for a day of swimming and BBQ.  We took the Pork Butt and all the fixins for lunch. 

Unfortunately when we got there it stated to poor down rain and the kids could not get in the water.  They were disappointed but were able to have fun in the puddles. 

Since we were not going to let the rain ruin our fun we decided to have a WII competition.  I am proud to say that I am the "King of the Ring"  and I'm not talking about the toilet bowl wither.  Nintendo has managed to come out with a toy that inflicts unbearable pain if played for a number of hours. 

Finally we were able to go back outside and let the swimming begin.  It was a fun day had by all especially for me.  The King of the Ring. 

Posted by danny at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we stoked up the clay pots today but with the pork butt.  I have never cooked a pork butt but learned a valuable lesson.  It is a tasty piece of meat but is better to cook it super slow.   

I started the 8.5 pound meat around 9:00 this morning and took it off around 7 this evening. It was internally close to 180 degrees.  The meat was good and tender but not "pulled pork".  But this was nothing the old Chinese Meat Cleaver couldn't fix. 

I found out after reading a few forums that the best pulled pork is around 200 internally.  Now this is pretty hot for meat temp so going from 180 to 200 could take another 10 hours.  We will just have to see how it goes next time. 

So the meat is done the kids are resting and we are headed to my dads house tomorrow.  He wanted BBQ for fathers day so I had to obliged.  We will have pictures of the fun tomorrow.

Posted by danny at 03:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First let me welcome everyone to our new blog.  It has been a while and I have fought this but have finally decided to create one. 

I thought the best way to kick this blog off is by discussing two of my passions.  One is photography and the other is cooking.  SO as you can guess I take a lot of pictures of cooking.  Today we took a swag at building our very own clay smoker.  The smoker consists of the following items:

1. 21 Inch tall clay pot
2. 21 inch short clay pot
3. 9 inch electric burner
4. 18 inch grill grate
5. smoker thermometer
6. heavy duty pie pan

With these items I was able to construct basically a cheap version of The Big Green Egg.  While these are very cool they are very expensive.  The total cost for the items above was about 65 dollars. 

Today we started our smoker with trial run of Turkey legs.  We are smoking them with Hickory and Cherry Wood.  Checkout the pictures of the build.

 So far this seems to be pretty cool.  It looks like the smoke stays quite consistent and cooks at a relatively low heat.  Approximately 200 degrees.  Well once the turkey is done we will let everyone know how it is. 

Tomorrow we are smoking a pork butt so that should be an interesting experiment.  Of all the meat I have cooked, a pork butt is something I have never tried. 

Posted by danny at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)