All Hail The Kings!

Settle down my little Cameron babies!! (props to Conan O'Brien on that line) I know many of you have been just anxiously awaiting another overflow of thoughts from my large brain...well wait no more. I will try to keep this posting as upbeat as possible but i fear that it will turn into the melody of one Dave Teters Dobro exhibition on Sunday night. I am giving my farewell to the Kings blog like much of my fellow bloggers have done this week. Today started off much like alot of other days in the recent past... me, tim, and ryan off on some crazy adventure. This has been a recurrent theme over the last oh 2,375 days and become much more about the ride than the actual task at hand. But today we were marching to the beat of a different melody, unlike so many other constructive adventures that have gone before today we found ourselves disassembling the Kings life here in Sparta. Its a weird thought that has really hit me hard today. I have spent more time with the Kings over the last ~7 years than many members of my blood family and in that same breath they have become as family to me. Barring some multi-million dollar blessing and this side of Our Eternal Home....these next few days will be the last days that our crews will ever actually live in the same little circle. Like everyone else who grows older I have experienced many difficult things: divorces, personal and profession medical tragedies, and many personal struggles. The Kings exodus will definitely fall into the very difficult category. Sure life will go on just like it did for my some ~20 years before the kings came but most definitely life will be different. worse? no! better? definitely no! But most certainly different than before i met them. I remember everything from the early desk assembly with Tim, Daniels "Be Silly Shoes", the quiet reserved Wenge and yes the life before Emma. So many adventures, so many silly talks, so many serious discussion, so many dreams shared, so many memories that will last forever. Tim has become like a brother, Wenge a 2nd mom, Daniel and Emma I have become to love and brag about like they were my own kids. I won't really miss the Tim as the youth minister of FBC but by far more the close friend who is at multiple weekly lunches and late night secret ops missions. I could go on and on about the many stories of affection for the Kings but the one that will stay with me forever is my beautiful wife Tara. As many of you know Tara is from tim and wenge's hometown of Mocksville and they played a huge role in our dating and our marriage. Long before Tara would even acknowledge my existence i sat with Tim on multiple occasions expressing my unexplainable attraction and love for this girl for all intents and purposes I knew nothing about. Many years later i learned that Tim could have maybe been a little better friend to me by telling me that he was having similar conversations with Tara at some points in time but thats a whole different blog at a different time. So whenever I tell my grandkids about how papa and nanny met each other the story will always be tied to the Kings on their adventure thru Sparta,Tn. Well if you Kings actually read my blog I want you to know that I really do love you and I will truly truly miss seeing you most everyday but it will only make other gatherings that much more special. I feel confident with both our family's in mocksville our paths will cross many times just in passing but it would still be nice to have you right down the road. I wish for you that all your wildest dreams come true and hopefully we both won't fall into The Bignate blog curse so we can still know all that is going on across the 340 miles of I-40.

Night on the Town with the Big Al

Today turned out to be a pretty good day even though it started out with great rage and frustration for me. The last few nights i have went to bed with pounding sinus pressure and drainage. I did not sleep well at all last night...i tossed and turned all night and could not get comfy. I figured it was just from sinus stuff but maybe it was my conscious trying to urge me out of the bed for other reasons. It may have been better that i didn't make it up and look outside because it would probably have resulted in a dead man laying out in my drive way before the sun came up. As i got in my car to go to work I noticed that something was not right. The ole mule has been faithful to me for almost 8 long years. so i'm pretty in tune with the inside. As i scanned the scene i realized that someone decided they needed my XM radio more than i did. yes...somewhere between 6pm friday and 8am saturday the ole faithful soldier of almost 2 1/2 years was snatched from its loving docking home. Well as you can imagine i was pretty hot and baffled that someone would do that here in ole Gillen. Almost immediately a suspect came to mind and all you faithful readers and followers can insert that well known name into the blank now........ But after calming down i gave the police a heads up knowing that they could do nothing really. The story ends with a new discounted XM radio and free home and car kit on its way to me this week. So if the stealer of my XM radio is reading this blog...please beware... I have enough ammo in the house to hit you as long as you want to run or at least scare you to death if i miss. The last part of the day ended with great fun. Tonight we got to get the big Al and go out for a night of fun. Ole predictable allie picked chick-fil-a for her place of dining pleasure. So about 530 or so we set our course towards the big chicken hut. I guess Al has a pretty set menu and knows all the rules that she must complete to get in the big fun zone. It worked out good cause there was about 5-6 other kids in the play area that she played with for about 20-25 minutes. As we were ordering our real food she put her sites on a brownie that she wanted and i gave her the typical oh we will eat first and play next speech. Thinking that she would prob forget about it we went on but as soon as her little crocs were back on her feet out of the fun zone she was screaming for that special little treat. After eating and wearing alot of her brownie we were out the door and headed for our next adventure. We settled on something that Allie had never even heard of I guess but decided it would be fun times. We headed to Bowling World to play what allie now calls "rolling". It was fun times and she had a blast. I think she was alittle confused at first but by the end she was really in to it. We got some good pics that will be up on our Flicker page. We returned home for a nice bath and then a little hair braiding time with Sarah C. and Tara. It didn't take long for her to crash out with her bobo. She is a pretty cool little gal and will amaze you with some fun sayings. Well i'm off to crash for the night myself. Remember kids.....lock your doors and cars. Evil loves the night.

Corn and Cardinals

This past week has been quite the interesting week. I welcomed today with open arms as it was a day off for me. Up to that point i had worked 7 of the last 8 days which was totally cramping my style of trying to follow Dr. Jones methodology. It never ceases to amaze me how your day off seems to fly by but the ole work days crawl by at a snails trot. All in all life has been good though and i'm back on my normal schedule. The last week has also brought us into the corn making business. Wenge finally revealed the true caramel corn recipe and we have already made a few batches. I will have to say that it is delicious and pretty easy to make. Granted that its just one more thing that is gonna hold me back from losing the 10-15 lbs that i need/want to lose. I have shared a picture of our yummy goodness as it was basking in the warm oven's sun. There has been one other creature that has made a glorious appearance to the Heady Estate over the last week or so. Over the summer we added a hummingbird feeder and a regular bird feeder. We had pretty good success but over the last week we have changed our feed to Black oil sunflower seed and have seen a 100% increase in our Cardinal population. We rarely ever saw one on the other feed but now we have a large Cardinal Sanctuary. After seeing the numerous beautiful creatures in our back yard, i began to see the world in pictures again and drummed up the idea to get another bird feeder to place outside the front window. With the new front window setup i have the Nikon D50 perched on its tripod and pointed right at the bird house with the hopes with the little camera remote that we will catch some great pics to post on the web. Only a few hours in operation we had our first visitors but it was already starting to get dark and was not able to get a good picture. As always, I can never just have one opportunity at a good shot so i have added another hummingbird feeder along with a Finch feeder to hang on the same pole as the new bird house. Check back in a few days and hopefully you will see one of our pictures from our new bird window.

Sarah BB game...

Tonight was lesson one in photographing basketball for ole man Heady . Like alot of things in life you learn as you go and tonight shooting pictures was no different. It was my first indoors low light test with my lense and as far as lighting goes i have no complaints. I pulled out the big zoom lense and right away noticed a big difference in being able to focus and not get dark pictures. Just looking at the pics on the computer tonight i have already learned a few things that will hopefully make future pics better. My little sister Sarah played pretty well tonight like all the nights we have seen her play. Unfortunately her team just never seems to put it all together while we are there. Sarah had 5 threes tonight but it could have been more like 8-9. she had a few just rim out. Out of the teams 38 or so points she had 15 so i would say that is pretty stout. Like always if she ever wants to see someone rain down some threes and put her in her place she can just come knock on ole C. Heady's door. hahah i will have to give it to her she is pretty deadly from behind the three and if she doesn't hit the three she might just hit you in the eye. She is pretty intense and quite often can be seen burning a hole thru someone with her cutting looks. All in all it was a fun night. Like all photographers there is comfort in numbers and i shot prob about 150 shot tonight to turn out with a few good ones. I will share a few here and you can catch some more at our flicker page. Have a good week.

Happy New Year! First post of 2008

Greetings to all you loyal and faithful readers. I will echo the cries of other fellow bloggers that the Holiday Season brings a new degree of difficulty to blogging. But hey i'm not gonna ride that excuse hah. Christmas was great once again. Once again just another reminder of how blessed we truly are. Even though this year was a little different with Me and Tara taking a journey to NC it was all good. We had a great few days with Tara's family and getting to meet the Newest whittaker was pretty cool. he is a cutie. We had both her mom and dads Christmas gatherings on Christmas Eve and then we set sail around 9 oclock Sparta time setting a blazing trail towards TN. About 20 Miles into the 340 mi adventure i was having my doubts. I 'm not sure i have ever been more tired in my life but like all good running backs and race horses i got stronger as the night wore on. By the end it was just me and andrew peterson rocking down the road till we finally arrived at about 2am at Nanny's house. I had never drove at the wee hours of the morning on Christmas but it was pretty wild to see what other people are doing. Random bonfires by the house, late night bar crowds and the occasional random drivers. Christmas morning found us with the traditional breakfast and then just chilling out the rest of the day till daddys party that night. Our Christmas was concluded with Mom's gathering on Wednesday night at her house which was also a Celebration of Sarahs 16th Birthday. Since that time i have found myself playing with new little gadgets and working like a borrowed mule. This year i find myself on the bottom of the ladder and with 3 other providers that want to take time off around the Holiday...that left good ole Cam to fill in those days. All in all it has been good and I will never turn down a pay check. Tara has also entered the work force where she is working for the local phone company while one of the regular employees is on medical leave. Now that she has hit the gold maybe i can cut my schedule farther back to reflect my friend Mr. Jones schedule. The last few days i have found myself toying with something that i bought for myself after the Christmas holiday. I have really grown to love photography and playing with all the different settings to see what i can come up with. Not really sure where this hobby came from but its one that is pretty neat once you get into it. Over the last few months i have found myself learning some of the technical blab that is associated with photography. My recent purchases was a little Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens. Photography is much like alot of other hobbies The more money you have brings more little bells and whistles you can put to use. Well unfortunately i don't have alot of money to throw around but this one i couldn't resist at just over 100 bucks. Its neither the latest nor the best but it has some great potential. All readers other than Bignate will have probably checked out by now but i will explain whats so fun about this little jewel. Even though its a 50mm lense, with the new DSLR digital sensor it essentially has a 1.5x crop factor that makes it the equivalent to a 75-80mm lens. I now have 3 lens which all cover the 70mm range at some point on their spectrum. The lense 28-80mm, 70-300mm zoom and now this 50mm (=75mm). Each one has its limits and one of them is called the fstop or how big the hole in the lense gets that lets light come thru. My new lens goes down to f/1.8 where all my other lens at that same focal length were prob 4-4.5. Which
really just means its alot faster and works better in low light. here is a little test i did to show you the difference with 3 lens all set at the same exact settings (as close as i could get on focal length) but oh look at the results. I hope you enjoy. first pic is with 70-300 zoom lense. then my new lens in the middle and last pic is with 28-80mm lens. As you can tell lighting is quite different. This makes it a great indoor lens when you don't want to use a flash or if you do just a good fast lens even though its not a zoom lens. hope you enjoyed! have a great day.

Christmas EVE Gift!!!

Merry Christmas and Christmas Eve Gift!!! I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas season so far. As i write i sit in NC at Tara's dads house where we are soon going to be exchanging gifts and sharing the Christmas excitement together. This year brings a season of change for me personally, this will be the first year ever really that i will have not been at Papa and Nanny's on Christmas Eve. All of my most cherished Christmas memories are there and its weird knowing that I will not be there for tonights activities. The annual UNO game, Little Pigs in a blanket and last years new addition of the Chocolate fountain that was big hit. Those are times and memories that will stay with me forever. Hopefully, If the good Lord is willing me and Tara will at least make it to sleep and wake up at Nanny's house for some good Christmas morning grub. Well, I guess i'm off to enjoy a warm NC Christmas Eve with the family. And since i will not post again before Christmas.... I will go ahead and send you My CHRISTMAS GIFT!! If your not apart of our family that may not make alot of sense but ask us sometime about our Christmas family tradition game that we always play. Merry Christmas to All!

Pretty Lights and Sore Feet!

Merry "Early" Christmas! The Christmas Season is here and in full force. I really do love this time of year for many reasons. No matter what someone's spiritual mindset, I think most everyone looks towards this time of year with hope and a sense of excitement that supersedes the presents and food. I tell myself every year that i'm not going to get caught up in the gifts and the craziness that the month Of December brings. However earlier in the week, me and tara found ourselves in a desperate gift shortage for everyone. We decided that we needed to make a run to Nashville and try to knock everything out in one large adventure. So Tuesday morning we awoke and headed to Nashvegas about 9am hoping to return with no more shopping to do. Our friend Andrew Peterson ushered us along our way setting the mood with his always popular Behold the Lamb Christmas show. We first stopped in Mt. Juliet and browsed target, books a million and a few others i don't remember. At this point in the day I was pretty upbeat about shopping but my love would soon diminish as the steps and hours added up. After about an hour we headed on to Opry Mills to the food court where we would enjoy some bourbon chicken/fried rice from our friends at Kelly's Cajun grill. Flash forward a few hours and what seemed like a million steps my love had faded and I was slowly turning into the Grinch who stole Christmas. About mid afternoon we met up with The Don and Judy who happened to be in Nashville shopping as well. Judy employed me for about 30 minutes to walk the Don around while she slipped off to do some shopping for the big D. If you know the Don you will find a humorous picture in your head of me and Don walking thru Opry mills. We are not what you would call two major shoppers. After that we realized that we had exhausted our Opry Mills honey hole and headed back to Mt. Juliet to pick up a few things we had seen there. Then it was time for a trip to the Big Olive Garden where we used the 'no wait' no smoking bar seating that was actually nice and kind secluded. After about 5 Dr. peppers and raspberry sweet tea's we were off to the Opryland Hotel to see the lights. Tara had never seen the lights and was quite excited to see them for the first time. Just a little bit of advice to the two people who will prob end up reading this. If your gonna go see the lights, bypass the $16 dollar parking and park in the lot of Opry Mills that adjoins the theater in the mall. You can park and walk thru a little walkway right into the back of the hotel. Once again it was quite beautiful and mind boggling thinking about how many lights there were. It was quite relaxing walking along the river and watching the cool lighted water spout show. The flowers were quite amazing too. It was a fun night from a photography stand point as well. I always enjoy fiddling with different settings and trying to get that perfect shot. I have given you a few samples of the photos that we took in the course of the night. If you want to see the rest check out our flicker page for more Christmas light pictures.
I pray that God continues to bless each of you as we draw closer to Christmas and that we don't get blinded by all the pretty lights and big gifts and lose sight of the Birth Of Our Savior Jesus.

Christmas Tree Adventures!!!

Season Greetings to all you readers out in blog land. Everything has been really good since my last blog. (sorry its taken me so long to get another exciting adventure published). I'm just now starting to come out of my turkey coma but i would do it all again in a heart beat. Unfortunately if i keep doing the fried turkey deal I probably won't have many heart beats left. Since our last blog we have spent a weekend with the youth from church at the annual Big House. It was a great weekend just to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Our latest adventure has led us to choosing our first Christmas tree together which will hopefully become a tradition that we can experience with our family for many years to come or until we have a child who is deathly allergic to pine trees. Growing up I never developed the love for a real tree inside, rather me and ryan developed a love for a tree that had so many parts that you had to have a algebraic formula to get it put together. It was one of those artificial trees that had separate branches for each level that were color coated for assembly purposes. By year 30, most of the paint was gone and that made putting up the ole tree that much more fun. Christmas time around the Heady home was always full of traditions. The Don had a specific place for each decoration that was never a millimeter off from year to year. Ryan and I over the years developed somewhat of a "tree narrative" with our Tree ornaments in which they were placed at strategic points on the tree to act out a little story or had just developed sentimental value to us over the years. Some how thru all those years decorating the Heady Home tree we always ended up watching Home Alone as it was usually shown the weekend after Thanksgiving. As time moves on and we grow older all those traditions have slipped into memories that I will cherish forever. I'm excited about the new Christmas traditions that will be born over the years with 2007 being the first chapter of mine and Tara's story. I hope some day that our kids will be sitting at their hologram blogger talking about how many strands of lights ole Dad always managed to throw up on the chosen tree and smile when they think of all their silly Christmas traditions. I guess the cool Christmas tree thing of the year is a time lapsed photography of the tree going up. Well we don't do that sort of thing around these parts so I will give you a still shot of our tree so far. She's a beauty even though she is not totally decorated. If your interested in the time lapsed photography or just confused about how the whole Christmas tree assembly process... please check out rhino or bignates blog.



Welcome Solomon Jacob Whittaker!!!!!!

This past week we had a new addition to the family. Tara's brother and sister-in-law welcomed Solomon Jacob into this crazy world. He was born on November 28 around 5 pm. He weighed 5 lbs. 13 oz. and was 19 inches long. Solomon came a little earlier than expected (3 weeks), but all is well with baby and mommy. Scott and Julia are adjusting well to having a little one in the house. We are looking forward to seeing Solomon at Christmas when we visit NC. Isn't he the cutest baby boy you have ever seen!!! (Aunt Tara).

Well I hope you have enjoyed this extended version of blogging. Check back to our flicker page in the next few days for pics from the Turkey Shoot fest, Big House and our recent Tree adventure.

Its Tryptophan Time in Tennessee!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!! Being Unemployed for a month or so left me where i could only afford a pack of turkey instead of a real turkey. What a great day and a great time of the year. Even though there has been some people in the news lately doubting that our friend tryptophan is truly the source of our sleepiness, it will always been number one in my book. I'm just pumped about the next few days thats all i can say. This morning i participated in the popular Turkey bowl football game with all the guys at the church. I'm happy to report that myself along with everyone else walked away unharmed. Even though it was cold and rainy its yet another good source of memories to look back on someday. Hopefully we can all say that after we have our shoot fest on Saturday. As i look back on yet another year that has slipped by, I see many memorable moments that I have nothing but thanks to God for. I saw myself starting a new career and marrying the woman of my dreams. This will be our first Thanksgiving and Christmas as a married couple which i'm really excited to share such a special time together. With all the happy thoughts in my mind, this time of year will always carry a saddened feeling for me through out all my Thanksgiving days here on this earth. I found myself standing in the family cemetery on Tuesday looking down at my Papa's tombstone just baffled thinking that it has been a year already. Many of you have probably read Ryan's blog already and it was special just to see him and hear his voice again. There will probably ever be only one man who I will ever have more respect for than Harold "papa" Howard and that is my dad. There are so many lessons and memories that Papa left behind with me and i'm forever thankful for that. I MISS YOU Brother Harold. Standing there in the graveyard with my wife, maybe more than ever it made me realize that time is fast and our life is fleeting. So I hope everyone enjoys and cherishes this time to fellowship and make memories with your families. Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!

Technology man, new jobs and Safes

The last month or so has truly been an interesting experience. As many of you know i have been taking unpaid vacation time for the last month (aka jobless). Alot of that time has been spent soul searching trying to discern where God would have me go to take a job. All of those options spanned from the Virgin Islands, the national guard, Indian reservations, and beachfront NC living. Many of you also know that i am not the most computer smart guy, but the last few weeks i have found my self updating pics to the fbc webpage, burning dvds, and toying with pics in photoshop. it looks like my days of nothingness will be over soon. I am going to start training on Dr. Webbs electronic medical records and will soon start doing 2-3 days of work for him and hopefully fall into a position in about a year that will pay off my student loans. It will be good to be back in the saddle again and hopefully save Christmas for all the little boys and girls at the Heady home (well at least two grown kids). Yesterday i found myself in another situation saying "this could be bad boys" aka Moving Jones 10 ton safe. I will let you check out BJ and Rhino's blog for all the details. Needless to say it was a fun experience. Looking forward to national bird day and all the yummy goodness that it brings. I'm also looking forward to hopefully doing some bird eating and skeet shooting with our good friend bignate. I was browsing Youtube today and found a few good videos. I thought this one was kind of funny in light of our upcoming shooting festival. It could be any of us in a few years....




Well, i will go for now. Check out our picture page. I'm slowing working my way up to being up to date. One year ago yesterday, me and my beautiful wife were engaged. So check out our pics of that fun day.