Tag Archives: holiday

4th of July Fireworks from Auburn Alabama // Video

5 Jul

Each year we usually go see the fireworks put on by the city of Auburn, and this year they were worth the wait.  I wanted to post a very quick video of the finale, in part for a friend of mine who didn’t come out to see the fireworks saying he would prefer to watch them on the computer, so here they are.  I also wanted to test the video quality of my iPhone while shooting at night, not bad video for a phone.  Too see the full 720p HD version change the resolution below or click on the video.

Hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend.

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Memorial Day Flag Flying from Auburn Alabama

31 May

I am glad we still celebrate Memorial Day in this country.  Somehow it seems that as the political correctness of our culture takes over everything we end up loosing an understanding of what made this country great in the first place.  It sickens me to see stories like the one of the Iraq veteran who displayed the American flag in his apartment window and was told to take it down or face eviction due to the fact that the flag is offensive to some of their residents.

Charlie Price of Wisconsin served 8 years for his country in Iraq and Kosovo to find that he isn’t even allowed to fly the flag he fought for in his own window. The couple is now fighting to amend the Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005 to include renters, and I hope they are successful.  Sometimes it seems that you are no longer aloud to hold an opinion in this country because it might offend someone.  Who are these idiots who have now decided that we need to be a country of brown plain-jane, average, robots, who all believe in the same thing and can never disagree with anyone else?

There is no greatness in average, no conviction of ideals or principles in living a life of medium gray, and these types always seem to get the headlines. It gets tiring to hear the moaners, whiners, and complainers beat the drums of complacency and strive towards moving the country to be average, but sometimes they seems to be yelling the loudest.  Now, instead of being the innovators and inventors, we are having to rely on Russia and Russian built rockets to take us into space, who would have thought that 20 years ago.

It is still the greatest country in the world, I just wish some of it’s residents would take a history lesson and see that America was not built on being average.  The History Channel just finished an interesting series called America The Story of Us.  Though some of it was a little subjective, it showed the overwhelming story of how much innovation, determination, and sacrifice people made because they believed in themselves and what this country stood for.

My family has had people who fought in the Civil War, WWI, both of my grandfathers served in WWI (see Son of a Son of a Photographer), one flew a B-24 Bomber in WWII in Europe, my dad served in the Air Force, and my cousin decided to go into the Navy after 9-11 and is currently serving in the Navy on a nuclear submarine.  I am thankful for their service to this country.  Because they served, my wife and I are able to enjoy living in this great country.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day.  It has been quite a stormy weekend with some crazy weather but I managed to get outside and take a few photos (and some of the dog of course).  The heat is definitely on its way, the pasture, trees, and everything around has taken on the brilliant green of summer.

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National Polka Festival in Ennis Texas 2010

29 May

We have very few traditions in our house.  We usually try to have special days throughout the year, but not necessarily on the day everyone else decides it should be done.  One tradition we have maintained for the last five years is going to the annual National Polka Festival (their website needs a serious update) in Ennis Texas.  This year through all kinds of different circumstances we were not able to make it, but today, for the last five years, we have been in Ennis enjoying some of Deborah’s Czech heritage with all the other Czech, German, and Texan people from around the country.

Each year Deborah has hand made an authentic Czech costume, and I usually get a vest and or shirt to go along with her costume.  This past year her costume was red, white, and black.  In order to enter into the Czech dance contest you must be in full costume, so Deborah has made a point to hand make hers each year.

Since we were not able to be there this year I thought I would post a few photos from last year.  We are already making plans to be at the festival next year, but at least this year I saved about 10,000 calories from all the great Czech and German food that always accompanies the festival.  I am sure everyone will have a wonderful time this year, we will be enjoying our Memorial Day weekend at home, watching all these thunderstorms rolling through.

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Photo-Video Year in Review 2009

2 Jan

2009 was a busy year that saw a lot of changes in our household.  Throughout each month of each year for the past 15-18 years or so I have taken photos every chance I get, but it has only been in the past several years where I have taken photos of just about everything my wife and I do as we go about the year.  This puts a new perspective on the year when you look back at an entire year of photos and see what all we were able to do.

People often think you need special equipment or expertise to be a good photographer, and in some cases that is probably true, but for every day events, any picture is better than no picture.  Most cell phones have cameras now and they are around the 2MP range which is certainly good enough to shoot a passing smile.  In fact, a good majority of the photos you will see in the video below came right out of my iPhone camera.  It has taken some practice but I have gotten very good results with just using my iPhone camera, and there are many photographers that have made a point to compose a gallery here and there using their iPhone camera.

This video below is a combination of about 1,200 photos over about a 5 minute period, hope you enjoy it, happy new year to everyone.  If you want to watch the video in a larger window just click 2009 Year End Photo-Video.

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Photo Shoot and Thoughts of Thanksgiving 2009

7 Dec

Thanksgiving is now long gone (and so is the food I hope) but I finally got around to editing a few impromptu photo shoots that happened over that weekend.  We often move from holiday to holiday and are “thankful” when it is time to be thankful, and “merry” when it is time for Christmas, but the spirit should remain with us year round.  This past Thanksgiving weekend was a little different in our house this year.  We were home and able to share the meal with our extended family and had a wonderful time.  I had a photo shoot with my pastor’s family, my car died, and then on Thanksgiving day took a few shots of my Nieces and Nephews (I have several).

Christmas is going to be a bit strange for us as well as we make a move up to Virginia just before Christmas to continue our class work.  It will be kind of weird being in a new place during the holiday but Deborah and I are looking forward to making new friends and worshiping with new Believers.  Below are just a few shots from the Thanksgiving weekend (I am going to try to upload a few more to my flickr account).  The last shot at the bottom is my Niece Martha and my Nephew Levi, quite a pair.

DSC_6246-edit-ben

DSC_6390-edit-josh

DSC_6436-edit2-levi

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National Polka Festival in Ennis Texas 2009

9 Jun

Ebby and me at the Mississippi border.

This is a guest post by Deborah, she explains the Polka Festival far better than I do. Scott

Things around here have been so crazy that I have been unable to post this years collection of images from the Polka Festival.  Now that the mid-terms are over and the grandson has returned home I can finally turn my attention to more entertaining subjects.  Ebby enjoyed the trip to Dallas.

Closeup of the Chihuahua with an attitude!

Ebby and me at the Louisiana Border

Ebby and me at the Texas border.

The trip back was another story.  There were three of us, Me, Scott, and our three year old grandson William in the front cab of our little truck for the 14 hour trip back home.  Ebby lived in my lap the entire ride back.  All is well though.  We made it home without incident, unless you count the first hour in the truck when William turned to me and basically lost all his orange juice he had taken in before we left.  It was a mess, but we survived.

This year my dad and I competed in the King and Queen Dance again.  There were 21 couples competing this year and we didn’t even make it past the first cut.  We had fun though and the couple who won were far superior dancers and will represent the festival well in the year to come.

Nana and William

Competition was stiff!

Father/Daughter Dance

Don't we look smashing?

All the contestants are positioned around the dance floor.

Here is the video of our 2009, meager attempt at stardom…

On Saturday, we went to the parade as usual, but the parade was a huge disappointment this year.  Not only did it start about an hour late because of an inadvertently parked train across the intersection, but there were bands included in the floats that had absolutely NOTHING with Czech heritage, except perhaps that the members were residents of the greater Ennis area.  These bands were beyond metal in flavor and there was not a polka to be found.  Sad, really.  If Ennis wants to do something to promote the Polka Festival in the future they might want to try updating the website and begin thinking “nationally” again.  They are, after all, the National Polka Festival.  Ok, rant is over…  The best part of the parade for me was seeing Ebby all decked out in her costume.  She is truly a Czech/Mex dog!  Ha Ha

Trains

William

Ebby in Costume

We will not be attending this festival next year (or probably for a few years to come), mainly because we want to go visit some other festivals in other parts of the country.  Now that I have my supply of costumes, we can dance in style throughout Wisconsin, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Ohio, to name a few.  Stay tuned here for updates on our adventures to a polka festival near you.

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Giving Up Social Networking for Lent on Ash Wednesday 2009

25 Feb

Today is Ash Wednesday on the Christian calendar and popular belief around the Internet seems to mark this as a Catholic observation, but it really has nothing to do with Catholicism other than the fact that many Catholics observe Ash Wednesday and Lent.  Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent, which is 46 days before Easter (40 days if you do not include Sunday’s), and typically the ritual is to give up something for Lent.  The common trend online as of late seems to be for high profile online personalities to give up their blogs, twitter, facebook, and whatever online area that takes up their time.

Depending on your situation and circumstances this may be a good thing if and when it is done for the right reasons, but I suddenly got a pressing feeling that because they did this, others should follow.  As I read the details of each individual’s reasons I do understand why each person who chose this for their online life, but what if the online world has now become a way of life, and not something that distracts from life?  To take it a step farther.  A sin in one person’s life is not necessarily a sin in another person’s life.  So where someone may be consumed by their online lifestyle, and that lifestyle leads them away from the Lord, others may thrive in that area and be brought even closer through those relationships and interactions.

So if we, you, me find it necessary to give up something for Lent, why not just do it instead of making an issue out of giving up whatever it is.  If it is something you can give up so you can focus that time on the Lord, great, but if you are giving up something for Lent because it is Lent for Lent’s sake, have a Snickers while watching Amercian Idol and forget about it.

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President’s Day and Altocumulus Cloud Observations

16 Feb

President’s Day and Altocumulus Cloud Observations

Change is coming, all we have to do is look up and observe.  You may be asking yourself what does Andrew Jackson, the Blue Angels, and Altocumulus Clouds have in common.  Not much, but today, call it an observation.  Today being President’s Day, we are observing a day to celebrate the office of U.S. President if not the actual presidential person.  Since President’s day has been on the marketing horizon for a week or so the stations like National Geographic Channel and others have been doing biographies of each president.

I was only able to watch two, Lincoln and Jackson, but I still learned a bit from each and haven’t really had time to discern the historical quality of each show, but they were both informational non-the-less.

Andrew Jackson had a pretty incredible stay as President.  Outside of the Native Indians Trail of Tears when they were forcibly removed from the eastern part of the United States, he tried to do some great things as President, bold ideas that never took hold, but gave us a gimps of who he was and how he thought.  Jackson was the only President to ever pay off the national debt.  This should be a shock to us today when there is little hope of ever paying off the national debt when we move to pass an almost $900 billion spending stimulus package, but he was the only President to do so, ever.

What I liked about the story of Andrew Jackson was how the narration ended.  He spent a good part of his life in politics out of love for this country, but also for people’s freedom to be able to vote and live in a free country, and that the government should be run by it’s people.  It stated that Jackson would be dumbfounded and appalled that less than 50% of people vote today, and most are not even interesting in the politics of today.

An amazing statement since government control of it’s people has been passed down through history from the beginning of time.  We don’t all have to be political junkies, but everything the government does today has an effect on how we live our lives today.  We fought the British over a 4% tax on its people and today we don’t even notice when our taxes are raised by that small an amount. Observation.

The Blue Angels comes from a message given by Rusty yesterday about a man who came to know his Savior and later found himself face to face with the beauty of his Creator through the cockpit of a fighter jet.  After weeks of coming to a Bible study with his wife, the words of John chapter 3 in the story of Nicodemus came to life and he became a new creation.

He tells a story of this Marine fighter pilot who sees the sun rise from his cockpit and cried after recognizing that he now knows who created the sun itself.  It made me think about how many days we see the sun come up and don’t think twice about its beauty and how much more beautiful is our creator.  This pilot must have seen the sun rise from a cockpit of a plane 1,000 times before this, but this day it was different.  Observation.

Altocumulus Clouds are these clouds that roll in like waves or ripples in the sky, Alto (middle) Cumulus (heap or pile), and can be seen in advance of a storm system (like the one that is supposed to be here on Wednesday).  For those who don’t know, I am a little bit of a weather buff and have always liked to observe the weather that goes on around us every day.  Today a large band of Altocumulus clouds rolled in about 8am and were quickly starting to dissipate when I went out and took this shot.

Altocumulus Clouds Photo

How many times have you looked up at the clouds and recognized a specific type of clouds like we had here in Auburn this morning?  Are we all to busy to do that any more?  I have to admit, I recognized the system but for the life of me could not remember the name of the clouds, so a special thanks goes out to James Spann (Meteorologist for ABC 33/40 in Birmingham) for the quick answer to my question.

Altocumulus clouds signify change is coming.  All we have to do is look up and oberve.

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A Strange Valentine’s Day Today

14 Feb

A Strange Valentine’s Day Today

Does this seem like a really strange Valentine’s day to you? For some reason it being on Saturday seems like it got overshadowed today by Saturday being Saturday.  This is not to say that Deb and I do a whole lot to celebrate Valentine’s Day on a normal year, but this year I spent most of the day today at a leadership retreat for our church (post coming soon), and then we were able to catch up with each other for the Auburn vs Mississippi State basketball game (also post coming soon).

Holiday days of any kind are not my favorite.  They disrupt the flow of everything (which is not actually bad), but more importantly, Deb and I make a conscience effort to do these things all year round, not just on some special day because that is what the calendar says to do.  Instead of spending the day together on Valentine’s Day, we spend every day we can together, including every attempt to spend each Friday together all day without interruption.  That doesn’t always happen, but instead of a date night, we have a date day.  In that respect, we should act like it is Valentine’s Day every day, right.

Valentine’s Day [also here] contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.

Deborah has her own way to celebrate each holiday that rolls around, she has a pair of socks that she wears on one day of each year.  Today, those are the Snoopy Valentine’s Day socks (seen below).  I have mine, a few photos to celebrate the day, Valentine’s Day chocolate of course.  So to Deb’s socks and everyone else, happy Valentine’s Day.

Krispy Kreme Valentine's Day Box

Valentine's Day Chocolate

Valentine's Day Chocolate

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Valentine's Day Socks

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Beautiful December Day, Valkyrie // Friday Feet

27 Dec

Beautiful December Day, Valkyrie // Friday Feet

This was probably once of the nicest late December days that I can remember.  It was over 70* with partly cloudy, blue sky and I ended up working outside all day.  We ended up taking down our Christmas lights today and replacing them with our “everyday lights” which will remain up the rest of the year (these are lights that go around the inside of our patio).  We started decorating the patio for this coming summer, which actually was an idea in part from a friend Cindy Wall during her baptism (photos will be coming on down the road).

As the holiday days wind down I am really looking forward to getting back to work (without holiday interruptions).  We have so much coming up in the next few months, and I am really looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.  One area we will be ramping up is “Twitter church”.  So if you are not a Twitter member yet, sign up and see what it’s all about.  Once you have signed up, you can follow Cornerstone from @cornerstonebuzz and if you are so inclined, you can follow me at @scottfillmer as well.

My Friday Feet post is a little late because I spent most of yesterday with family and at the movies.  My dad and I went to see Valkyrie and if you have any desire to see the story about the assassination attempt on Hitler, I would highly recommend this movie.  I knew very little about this story from WWII and although it was a movie, it did seem to follow the historical account fairly close.  Although I am not a big fan of Tom Cruise any more, it is hard to deny that this was one of the better movies of 2008.

Tree in Winter

feet in concrete

My friday feet post today is in recognition of the last Friday of the 2008 calendar year.  This photo is on the corner of our patio.  Deb and I placed our feet in the wet concrete just about this time two years ago when we moved into our house.  It is a marker or reminder of the passage of time to me and I look at it almost every time I walk across the patio.  2006, 2007, and a lot of 2008 are almost a blur in history now but this image has become almost a time capsule in my mind of when we finally moved into our house here in Auburn.

Welcome home to all those who were traveling over the last few days, hope your New Year will be great.

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