Last night we finally made it to the Heidelberg Castle Illumination. Three times a year they reenact the burning of the castle; it is an amazing thing to see and draws quite a crowd. Although we have lived in the Heidelberg area for about 7 years in total, this is the first time that we made it out to see this awesome event. Thanks to our friends, Holger and Angelyn, who took our German conversation group (of which, I tend to provide the most entertainment) up the Philosophenweg to see the lighting from the opposite side of the Neckar River. It was a great evening!

Last week, our friends Melanie and Richard visited us from Crete. On Friday and Saturday, I drove them down to Bavaria to see the Neuschwanstein Castle. No matter how many times I’ve been there, this is one of my favorite places to go in Germany. Maybe not so much to the castle itself, but the area around Füssen is amazingly gorgeous. The colors, the people, the food – all of it comes together to make you feel welcome in one of the most beautiful areas on the planet.

One of the reasons I had really been looking forward to making the trip is that I wanted to have some time to walk around and photograph the Neuschwanstein Castle. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t have the same plans for me. After grabbing a few gray, cloudy pics, I went to one of the restaurants along the path and enjoyed some of my favorite German cuisine while Richard and Melanie toured the castle. Now, I might not have gotten the photos I wanted (another time, perhaps), but the food was good.

See the rest of the photos…

All right, so you’re probably wondering what a Photoblog is anyways. I’ve basically set up a separate site where I can post the photos I’ve taken that I like the best. I wanted to have something completely separate from this blog so that the photos could just speak for themselves. Well, that’s the idea anyways. Besides, I’m a geek and I like to play with new stuff!

For those interested in checking it out, here’s the link: www.thebarkersworld.com/photoblog. You can also get there by clicking the link titled “Matt’s Photoblog” at the top of this page.

I’ve already posted my first photo so go check it out! I’m hoping to add at least one a week (hopefully more), but we’ll see how it goes.

Well, we finally have Internet at the house so I thought I’d share a few photos of the latest addition to our family. There will hopefully be a lot more pictures to come (house, boys, etc.) now that we are finally jacked back into the Matrix! Until then, enjoy our little angel!

A trip back home just isn’t complete without heading up to the top of Mount Lemmon. Nana and Papa have a cabin up there that the family gets to enjoy throughout the year. Fortunately, the big fire of 2003 didn’t burn it down. Some brave firefighters did some fantastic work to make sure that didn’t happen.

I was hoping to do an overnighter up there and get some pictures of the Tucson lights, but that didn’t work out. But hopefully you’ll enjoy the pictures I did get.

View the photos…

While we were staying with Nana and Papa, we took a quick trip over to a winefest at the Sonoita Vineyards in Elgin. Not many people know that they make wine in this area, but they do – and it’s pretty darn good at that. What’s even better about this area is the scenery; once you start getting into Sonoita, there is a drastic change in scenery – it is one of the most beautiful areas in all of Arizona. Hopefully the photos I took did it a little bit of justice.

View the photos…

Just working through some old photos; this one was one of my favorites of the boys. It was taken when Tristan was going to the local German Kindergarten.

Tristan and Gavin

I finally got my first photo uploaded to my new flickr account. Hopefully I’ll get some more up there soon. Enjoy!

Hey everybody!  I recently found a new website that I thought I’d pass on.  It is called Picnik and can be found at www.picnik.com.  This site allows you to do some fantastic photo editing, all without having to download and install any software.  I did the photo below in about 1 minute off another picture I had of Tristan:

And here’s the original:

Quick and easy photo editing that anybody can have fun with.  Check it out today!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Hi folks; these are just some pictures of our trip to Scotland in 2003. I am testing out a new photo service and wanted to see how well it integrates into the site. Enjoy the photos!

More photos…