I love being a Dad

Weekends often fly by in a whirlwind and they go just the way I like it. Fast and Furious. I think the kids like it that way too. So a typical weekend with Dad is a little like this.

Friday the pickup:

After Jumah I go and pick up the kids, that is if I can make Jumah. I didn’t make it this week. The drama at work was thick, I accidentally spent $18K more than we were allowed so needless to say that I spent that day working that nonsense out. So I missed it. I came home changed chatted with my roommate and ran off to pick up the clan.

Picked them up at her house. She doesn’t want to really get divorced so we got all cuddly and took a nap together. She has all of the paperwork and I had the lawyer write them up to her specifications, but now all that has changed and she says it is going to take her a month at least to work it all out. I find it rather sad looking at the whole situation from my vantage point. So anyway we work out the details of the swap tomorrow and then I am off and running. We do our weekly ritual of going to Costco for Pizza and smoothies. So that worked.

Later on we get to the house eat. Niama is passed out so I lay her down and there she sleeps until morning. Mina and Ibrahim are amped so they go into the bath and then get dressed for bed. They go down to sleep and ah yes I was invited somewhere to shoot pictures, but I fell asleep with the kids so I kind of blew that. I woke up around 4am and chatted with my roommate a bit ate some dinner and then went to Fajr. We pray at 6 and I can’t wait until it goes to 545 so that I can pray before I go to work.

So Saturday morning I get up and make oatmeal and my wife is supposed to come by and pick the kids up because she is doing this special time with the kids thing today, but she doesn’t come. I had plans to go to Family Fest at the Adriane Arscht Center so you know what, I went and the kids had a ball. She was supposed to come and pick the girls up from there but as it goes you get distracted, can’t say that I am not guilty of that. However at the center we had a ball. When we got there we did painting.

  Mina coloring her shorts.

Ibrahim coloring his shorts resisting the urge to eat the crayons. Which he later did.

Niama during the first go round with the paints. She later resolved at the behest of her father to refrain from making a mud puddle with the paints and just use markers. She had fun though.

Even Zainab got in on the fun erm can we say Woo… Hoo… She had fun though.

Zainab then later promptly disappeared to the aerial show that was going on in the next court.

After Ibrahim was done making a total mess with the shorts we watched an impromptu play of the 3 little pigs.

I was really putting the D90 through its paces and finding out what I could do. I was fighting between shutter speed and Aperature to get the girls faces to come out but it wasn’t really cooperating so I eventually put it in manual and slowed my shutter down and opened up my aperature to get their faces clearly. It worked.

Then we all joined Zainab in the aerial show and the kids were entranced.  The show was a little mermaid theme and it was very interesting the parts we got from it.

Then the king got in on the act.

All the guys were telling their girlfriends I can do that, but in truth he made it look easy, but just the ab work alone looked hard.

The kids sat peacefully through the whole performance.

Then the big Bow.

Now on to the hugging of dudes in incredibly hot animal costumes. I’ve done that before talk about your weight loss program.

We were going to do the acrobatics lab but the line was ridiculous so I asked Zainab to stand in line while I got them facepaintings. The people murmured something to her so she ditched the line. It was long anyway but then the little ones didn’t get to do the acrobatics, but they had a full day so yay.

So that was the morning. Soon-to-be-ex still hadn’t shown up so I’m glad I went and got the kids to get into something. I was going to take them to the Children’s museum but she asked me to bring them to her and she would give me gas money. Cool (she lives far). So I drop off the girls for their day with Mommy and me Zainab and Ibrahim head for home. Then I take my roommate’s son and Zainab to the movies.  We saw Fast and Furious and she saw Obsessed then they wanted to go to the musical instrument store which was about to close, but it was good for dreaming. I’m not buying a drum set. No, No.

I get back Ibrahim’s crashed and Mom asked me to go down to the Coast Guard base for fishing. So I took her and my Aunt down there. They needed me because they can’t get on without ID. So I slept in the van while they fished. They had fun, my Mom loves fishing.

Back at home I crash the day is done it is also 2am. Ibrahim is on his own clock and is up at 7 something but I didn’t catch it because I went back to sleep after Fajr. Woke up and played with him for a bit the rest of the crew is still asleep. So what to do? Walk him so I walked him probably a mile and change to the park and he was a real trooper he didn’t whine one bit all the way there. Probably too far for an everyday walk but who knows maybe I will see. I love walking I can walk forever. So finally he gets to the park and he’s off.

What’s the best thing to do? Relax on the swings.

Yep have someone else push you why don’t you. So he played and played and played. He’s got a good arm too.

Cute isn’t he?

 

 

 

Check out that Arm.

  More swings and then it is off for home. He was getting tired and I wasn’t going to force him to walk back so I put him on my back and carried him all the way back home. He walked a little bit. I thought he fell asleep on my back at one point and he probably did.

He did well so there was only one thing to do, reward him with his favorite fruit. Watermelon. Watch the Carnage.

Don’t interrupt a man when he’s mauwing down.

That watermelon had no chance. Then it was off to bath because if you hadn’t figured it out by now it was desperately needed and some warm oatmeal and now a nap. He is sleeping now. She is on her way here with the girls so I think we will go to the beach later and if so I will update this post. But so far a great weekend. Love it. Sweet. I wanted to take them to see Madame Butterfly but the tickets were too expensive and she didn’t bring the girls back in time so we improvise, overcome and adapt to the situation. The beach will be in about an hour and I think that will go down. She just did their hair so she might get pissed, but hey. Nothing stands in the way of fun. What is for dinner I have no clue. We will work it out.

Ok so lets see what this livewriter thing can do.

Wow the live writer thing worked. That is really great so we actually made it to the beach. We didn’t stay long but it was very enjoyable. I put my old D40 through its paces. Now I will steal this moment to talk about some photography for a moment. First of all a SLR/ DSLR camera is head and shoulders over a point and shoot. The flexibility it gives you is the key to getting good shots. So let’s look at some. First the pictures are cute to say the least.

The sun was setting by the time we got there. So we only had about 30 minutes or so to have fun. I didn’t get in the water, but I still had fun.

So we start out with Zainab taking pictures. Here I am driving.

Now the D40 is a great camera however with any piece of equipment you need to know how to use it. Settings are everything.

When my daughter saw this she immediately thought of the AT&T Cingular ad.

When I grabbed the camera from Zainab her settings were off and of course I like taking pictures without flash so unless I have a 1:4 lens they are going to come out blurry. So starts the compensation and over compensation.

When I started at the flash it was cranked all the way up so I get the wash-outs so I turned it down.

Now once we got out on the beach we were in the shade of the buildings so it was artificially dark which now becomes a low light setting and in a low light setting you need a lens with a very large aperature and if you don’t have one you have to over compensate and so how I did this was to crank up the exposure and crank up the flash. We did get some good shots in though.

 

Cranking it up though sometimes has its casualties.

So there are the two extremes too light and too dark. So it is a delicate balance between the two to get the best shots.

Love life. Love fatherhood.

Awesome pic.

Sometimes you spend all day for that one shot. With photography sometimes that is just the way that it is. So the weekend went well and the turnover comes Monday morning. Such is a weekend with Daddy. Each one is precious and full of love.