Here’s an example of mine

I got an extra added surprise when I saw a hummingbird making the rounds to each of my kangaroo paw plants and was able to capture some great shots of it as well. I also have video of it perched on my orange tree. Pretty amazing that all these shots and video occurred today in my backyard.

Baby Birds

Hummingbird

Guanajuato was founded by the spaniards in the early 16th century and soon became one of the largest silver mining towns in the world. The very first thing I noticed was the architecture and environment. Although I have never been to Europe, the town had a very European feeling to it from an architectural standpoint. They have done a great job of preserving as much of the old world feeling the town has by limiting the changes allowed to the environment. This includes not adding streetlights and allowing traffic to portions of the downtown area as well as limiting fast food and other commercial chains to setup shop (although a Domino’s Pizza has snuck in somehow).

The town has become most famous for it’s mummies. Their initial discovery occurred in the late 1800′s when several bodies were exhumed due to non-payment of a so-called grave tax that was imposed. A museum was created to display mummies later in 1965. There seems to be several opinions regarding the cause of the natural mummification process rooted both in the soil as well as the quality of air and altitude.

My visit included the famous mummy museum, but for me that almost became an afterthought as we continued to visit so many intriguing parts of the town. There seemed to be a church on every corner. And the churches weren’t small cookie cutter churches. They were magnificent. I also visited the home that Diego Rivera lived in before he became famous and married Frida.

A final surprise hit me as our small tour van was climbing a hill to one of the old mines for a tour when I saw a state of the art soccer and baseball field perched atop the town. Words do not do this town justice so luckily I took many pictures.

You can view them all at the gallery I created specifically for this trip here

 Alex was in his first baseball tournament this weekend
This was his first at bat in his first game
He tipped the ball and was hit in the face
He started to cry
The coach approached him to soothe and encourage
I had to hold back Esther from wanting to do the same
He hung in there and got a single
This moment is now etched in memory forever

Alex went on to do great getting about 7 hits with only 3 outs. The team won all 4 of their preliminary games and were the only undefeated team going into the playoffs. The won their playoff game by over 20 runs. Going into the championship game things looked good as they were facing a team they had already beaten but going into the last inning they were down by two runs. Alex led off the inning with a double, but then they got the following 3 batters out in a row. I am a very proud father tonight and couldn’t have asked for a better birthday weekend.

 see the rest here

see the rest here