Avast me hearties!!
What's your pirate name?

September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

My pirate name is:

Dread Pirate Rackham

Like the famous Dread Pirate Roberts, you have a keen head for how to make a profit. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.

You've got til tomorrow to get your Pirate Lingo down!

ARG!

As I type this on my laptop, my main work computer is over in the other room chugging away at restoring from a backup & a clone.

If you know about computers, you know that means that I had a MAJOR system failure.
So today, on Father's Day, when Jason should be sitting on the couch watching Penguins of Madagascar,
he's working on bringing my computer back from the dead.

My computer will be back up and running eventually,
and I'll try my best to make sure that Jason gets a GREAT Father's Day, too.

That will include a lunch at Miguels in Eastlake with their sinfully yummy white sauce..mmmmmm!

Last night Rory made Jason's Father's Day card with her new glitter construction paper.
Jason's upstairs in the shower getting ready for church, so I took the chance to snap this pic of the card with my phone:

The inside says:

Dear Dad,

I hope you love the puppy I drew for you.
Guess what I got you.
I got you Love.
I ceep on thinking about you when you are away from us at work
or when I am at a sleepover.
So I just want to say that I love you so much.
Happy Fathers Day
from Rory Diane Schumacher
kiss kiss hug hug kiss kiss hug hug

That card is going in the fireproof safe after its stint on the fridge!

And for you other Penguins of Madagascar lovers,
here's some funniness for your Father's Day:

There will be no sucking of seed!

~Carey

The new Barefoot Memories website launched months ago, on January 1st.

Since then, I've been meaning to update the "About..." page with more videos
that didn't make it into the initial website release.

I launched the site with twelve videos and thought, "I'll put in the others 'later'."

Of course, in my mind, "LATER" was a week or two.

In my procrastination-rich reality, "LATER" turned into five months, but that's OK. I finally got it done!

I've added eight new videos to the "About..." page, so if you want to kill a few minutes,
CHECK IT OUT HERE!

There are videos on:
-my christmas tree
-if my house were burning down..
-where I got my edumacation
-dogs & cats
-how I totally rock out like Kris Allen (not!)
-how I get my caffeine
-what boobtube shows I like
-my dream vacation

Silly stuff, I know.

THANKS AGAIN, DANA, for helping with that!!!

If you're a Facebook'er (who isn't these days??),
I've created a FACEBOOK PAGE, too.

Seems like having Facebook fans is what all the cool kids are doing,
so if you have one extra mouse-click stored up in your index finger,
feel free to click that cute little thumbs up icon!!

ONE LAST ANNOUNCEMENT before my Diet Coke from Carls Jr wears off...
Because of all the rescheduling going on over the last month,
I've got an opening for a MINIin Balboa Park this Saturday at 4:30!

Want an afternoon mini in the park? Here's your chance!

EMAIL ME at barefootmemories@gmail.com if you're interested.

Have a great afternoon!

~Carey

Last weekend wasn't full of beach parties and BBQ's for the Schumacher family.

If you're a parent in club soccer, you know that last weekend kicked off SUMMER TOURNAMENT SEASON!

I'm SO PROUD of Mat's team because they entered their first tournament under a HUGE umbrella of question marks,
but they didn't let that intimidate them.

We took the team from last year's club, got a coach from yet another club, and joined a club
where the costs are low (HUGE releif for a lot of families on the team).

The team practices on fields far away from other club teams,
so not may folks know what we've been up to for the last few months.
Everyone (including the local soccer community) was wondering how on Earth this new team would fare
in their first big test.

And how did they do?

We took them to one of the biggest tournaments in town, and THEY WON THE WHOLE THING!

They made it to the championship game, and went into halftime down 2-0.
That wasn't good enough for them.
They came charging back and won the game 3-2!

All of the boys and the families were SO EXCITED and SO PROUD of the boys and the coach.

Next stop is the Pegasus Cup tournament in June.

By that time, we'll have our cool team banner all ready, too!

Last year's banner was a HUGE hit, and this year's is going to be awesome, too.

I took the pictures before the boys' first weekend game during warmups.
I brought my lights & my portable power to the field, set up a little photo set in the corner of the field,
and quickly pulled boys out of warmups one-by-one to get their pictures done.

Here's the final team image for the banner:

Don't they look tough!?

Here's how I created the images...

I took each boy's picture individually with two lights.

One light was to my LEFT, pointing at the boy from his right side, with a big softbox on it.
Another light was behind the boy to my right, pointing at the boy from behind his left shoulder.
That rear light did not have a softbox on it, and I had the power set lower because it was just for accent.

I triggered the lights with a remote trigger attached to my camera's hotshoe (where a flash usually goes).

Here's Micah... I took the shot, brought it home, erased out the background with a layer mask,
and brought Micah into the banner on the black background:

I did that with each boy,
so the banner image got REALLY big:

Once I had each boy in the banner as his own layer, I arranged them the way I wanted,
then I put in a totally black layer over the top of them.
I set that layer style to "OVERLAY" instead of normal so that they took on a really cool over-dramatic look.
I really like the effect! I put in a layer mask on that layer and brought back in a little detail on the boys' faces.

I added in one more layer and put in a gradient to fade their legs out to black.

Now I have to add in the team logo & our sponsors' logos, and get this banner ordered!

I think it's going to be a head-turner for sure!!

I've gotta go get to work on this banner layout.

Have a great afternoon!

~Carey

Getting the mail isn't as high on my "exciting things" list as it was when I was little.

Nowadays it's mostly bills and junk.

EXCEPT FOR TODAY.

TODAY was SOCCER MAIL!

First, Mat's "Totally Frank" (Frank Lampard's autobiography) arrived.
If this won't get him to like reading, I don't know what will!

THEN, under all of the junk (oh, and Costco coupons, gotta look through those!),
there was something very exciting:
our first issue from our free subscription to SOCCER AMERICA MAGAZINE.

I subscribed to Soccer America a few months ago, and this was the first issue to arrive.

As I was flipping through it,
I came to the centerfold,

AND THERE'S MAT AND HIS WHOLE TEAM!!!!!

Mat and all of his friends made the centerfold of SOCCER AMERICA MAGAZINE!

I told him he's got to work on his autograph a little more before I let him sign it.

Thanks for enjoying my fun mom moment with me!!

~Carey