194/365...Worn out

I've owned my guitar for a little over a year and have been seriously playing for about two months. I'm actually quite proud of the progress I've made in the last couple of months. It's amazing what can happen when you actually start applying yourself and paying for lessons. The drawback? You end up blowing through strings much faster than normal.

193/365...Sunflare

The Long family has been lacking lately In the Sunday family outing business. So, when we got the opportunity to head up to Phillipe Park tonight to scout out some locations for my wife's soon to be first wedding shoot, we jumped at the chance. The time of day also allowed me to get in one of my all time favorite pictures—a sunflare shot.

192/365...Filtered

I went to bed last night pretty sure that I hadn't taken a picture yesterday. However, I remembered just before settling in for the night that I snapped a couple of pictures at dinner. One was absolutely terrible and the other one was actually pretty decent...after applying a couple of filters in Camera+.

191/365...Playtime

Today was our oldest son's first week in the church youth group. What that means is that we have about two hours to kill on late Sunday afternoon with our youngest son. There's only so much time you can spend in Target, so we headed to a park just down the street from our church. This isn't the best composed or lit picture I've ever taken, but it definitely caught Jackson in the few moments of playtime we had today.

Today I'm linking up with Sweet Shot Tuesday at Life with My 3 Boybarians. Go check it out.

187/365...Resurrection

A little bit of hyperbole never hurts. Especially not when we're talking about my beloved iPad that has risen from the dead. Or, more accurately, has been kindly replaced by Apple. I am now back in business with my nifty little gadget. Huzzah!

186/365...Death

In case you're wondering, an iPad doesn't do too well after a three-foot fall to a tile floor. I learned this the hard way tonight. Here's hoping I can get Apple to give me a replacement when I hit the store tomorrow.

185/365...Near Sunset

We ended up with a REALLY busy 4th of July this year. First, we spent some time at a friend's house watching the Nathan's hot dog eating contest and then we were off to Holmes Beach on Anna Maria Island to spend time at the beach and then to watch the fireworks. All the pictures of the fireworks stunk, but I did catch this shot just before sunset.

184/365...Ink

Slow day for a picture. We didn't have a family outing and ended up staying in and watching a movie last night. However, this lovely set of tattooed legs was captured at the Redbox by our house. So lovely.

183/365...Meltdown

We had company tonight. The most excellent kind of company...my brother-in-law, Jacob, and his family. No doubt, I've written about my two incredible nieces, Molly and Ruby. The picture today is a collage of what happens when an infant has had enough. Of what, I'm not sure, but she was certainly pissed about something.

182/365...Red, white and blue

I was looking for an inventive way to display the red, white and blue. Crayons sounded about right and this is what I ended up with.

For this week, I'm linking up with the Live Every Moment photo challenge.

181/365...Five

So, my wife is in the process of doing something special for someone special. That would be planning my 40th birthday party. Problem is, she won't let me know/see/feel anything about my party. And to top it all off..she prances around the house singing little songs and dancing little dances about all the cool/fun/awesome things in store for my little party. And it's starting to piss me off a little.

So, I go in search of a picture subject for tonight, right into the den of party planning central. Wife freaks out, thinking all surprises are ruined. What she forgot is that I am an idiot. An unobservant idiot. All I am looking for is something to photograph and I completely missed my shot to soak up all the glory that will be my birthday party. As I said, an idiot. So, what I have is this:

P.S. My party better be awesome.

180/365...Pickup sticks

Have you ever had this moment? You're minding your own business when a picture subject jumps out at you. How about the moment you realize you never even knew this was in your house? Yeah, that happened today. With a box of pickup sticks. If you don't know what those are, just stop reading right now, buy some and learn to play. Seriously. It's a right of passage no one should be denied. Right up there with stickball in the street and summertime hide and seek after dark. You know, when your mom had yelled for you to come home ten minutes ago, but doing so would give up the best hiding place ever.

179/365...Game face

We're into day 3 of our "Long, party of three" week. But, we've had to find creative ways to keep the littlest Long boy engaged and from missing his brother too much. We don't often remember just how close our two boys really are. Without Ethan, Jackson just isn't himself. So, last night, we broke out the UNO deck and played a few rounds. I only won once, which I later learned was a concerted effort by the wife and little one to allow me to win. It worked.

This picture was taken just before the first deal.

178/365...Popcorn

We're now into day two of "Long, party of three" time. So far, things have been uneventful. Except, poor Jackson has been pretty bored without his best friend in the world around. So, we ended up grabbing a movie from Redbox tonight, cooked microwaved some popcorn and had some mom, dad and littlest Long boy time. And it was pretty awesome. I'll keep you posted on any further adventures this week.

177/365...Trash

Readers of the Long family blogs probably know by now that we like to make a habit of Sunday afternoon outings. This week, however, we are down one member. Don't get worked up...nothing tragic has happened. Unless you count the passage from kidhood into tweenhood tragic. I'm still on the fence, by the way.

So, Ethan is spending this week in sleep-away camp. For the first time. It's been an adventure. So, we headed to the beach yesterday. And it was a wet, stinky mess. No fun. At all. But, I was able to snag one picture. So, there's that.

175/365...Pick

So, so much of my time lately has been spent with a pick in my hand. I love learning new things and guitar has definitely been one of my very favorite things to learn.

174/365...Leftovers

Our most awesome nieces were at our house the other night. And miss Molly left her shoes. And, like all things Molly, they are just too cute for words. These are the kinds of leftovers that I like to have around.

173/365...Honey

Since I seem to back on the blog/picture-a-day horse, it makes perfect sense that I would struggle on the third day to find a suitable/creative/interesting subject. So, I present honey.

172/365...Dirt

This is the second year that both of our boys have had the chance to participate in Pioneer Camp here in St. Pete. Pioneer Camp is basically just an all day outdoor playing in the muck, mire and dirt with no restrictions or limitations kind of thing. Both of our boys LOVE this. What boy wouldn't. These are two of the feet that came home today. Nothing had been washed off when I took this picture. Jackson had just removed his socks and shoes and I snapped the picture. Now, that's one dirty kid, folks.

What I've Been Doing, or Lame Excuses for Not Blogging

**WARNING: Picture-heavy and ramble-heavy post below**

"You're a good for nothin', lazy, bum of a blogger!"

In my mind, that's what you've all been thinking. In reality, it's probably more something like this:

"Who? thekenlong? Did he even have a blog? Seriously...who/what are you talking about?"

Yeah...that's probably more like it. It's been over a month since I've taken a serious stab at taking a picture of the day. Or updated my blog. Or really even wanted to update my blog. Not entirely true, but it's an easy habit to get out of completely if you're not careful. And I haven't been careful at all.

The honest truth is that I have been busy lazy distracted lately and other things have taken priority over updating my blog. At first, it was a fun day trip to Epcot. I even took a picture or two myself:

There has been A LOT of this:

For the un-initiated, those are callouses developing on the ends of my fingers from learning how to play the guitar. I've been taking professional lessons for a little over a month and am actually getting pretty decent from all the practice. Seriously...I haven't been this dedicated to learning something in a VERY long time. I'm sure my wife and kids will vouch for me on this one.

I spend about an hour (sometimes two) each day going over chord charts, practicing scales, picking patterns. It's insane, exhilarating and personally super-satisfying all at the same time.

Mixed in there have been mini road trips...

Oh, the irony (take a moment to see prohibited item #1 in the first picture compared to what was actually found INSIDE the park).

There have been really fun and super-awesome Long family Sunday outings...

We've helped some dear friends move, laughed a lot, loved even more, attended a worship conference and threw in the most epic road trip/concert experience of my life to this point. 

This is a crap picture, but oh-so-necessary.

I say all of that to simply say this...I'm almost back.

171/365: