Foto Phriday - 5/9/14

This is my one hundred and second Foto Phriday post. The pictures today are from some birthdays, Easter, soccer, and an abandoned nuclear power plant. Full set with all 90 photos can be viewed here.

I assisted an elderly lady with selling her original Nintendo Entertainment System a few weeks ago. I used to have this, but I think we sold it in a garage sale. Pretty sure you can get more for it now then we did back then, but they still aren't worth much. Speaking of gaming, my favorite video game of late has been Titanfall. Been playing almost every night. If you'd like to watch me play, subscribe to my Twitch channel, or check out the many vids I post on YouTube.

Logan's second birthday was last month and he had a party at his house. It was such a nice day, so all of the kiddos got to play outside.

Logan and his big brother James.

Easter was a little different this year because I attended Sakura-con all weekend (Blog post coming soon). I still managed to take a bunch of pics of the girls in their Easter Sunday dresses before I left.

Juliana and Coral on Easter 2014.

It was fun to watch Coral figure out the Easter Egg hunt. We had been reading a nighttime book where she has to find eggs, so it only took her a couple seconds to realize that we were having her do it in real life.

Juliana is in the middle of her first season of soccer. She's learning the basics of the game and seems to always have a smile on her face while playing.

At this age, they play the girls 3-on-3 while the coaches stand on the field instructing them. I'm the assistant coach, but I got to play head coach at last week's game since our regular one was on vacation. It was a lot of fun and I hope to be the main head coach one day.

My work gave us a great opportunity to visit the Satsop Nuclear Power Plant one day last week. Don't worry about radioactivity; this place was never opened.

I work in video production, so obviously we were there for a purpose. Part of the nuclear facility is leased out to NWAA, or Northwest Audio & Acoustics. NWAA Labs is an independent laboratory providing uniform loudspeaker testing and material testing to the audio, acoustics, and construction industries.

NWAA Labs is led by Ron Sauro, who gave us the tour of his company, as well as the majority of the facility. He was a really interesting guy. One of those people who has had their hand in everything. Kind of like Forrest Gump, but really, really smart.

Ron studied physics and engineering at Stanford University. He played with The Rivieras who created the hit song "California Sun." He was in the Air Force during Vietnam and was a satellite retriever of sorts. He worked for NASA on the Apollo 11. He helped design systems that are even still on the moon today. He designed the acoustical and speaker systems that you hear in Grand Central Station in New York City. The guy has freakin' done it all.

Ron let us walk into one of the steam vent towers. Despite what most people may think, the tall towers you see at nuclear power plants are just vents. The nuclear reactor is actually a smaller cylindrical unit in another building.

The tower is so high, that my 50mm lens could not fit it all in, so this is the best shot I got of the opening. This was probably one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

The echo in this room is just insane and so clear. Check out the video below for an example.

Under the venting tower are support beams and water.

Satsop Nuclear Power Plant was three weeks away from opening before it was shut down after the Three Mile Island accident. The anti-nuclear crowd got the general public scared of the form of energy even though it's the most effective. I don't think the total amount of money wasted on the project is known, but I imagine it's in the billions. The cement alone for construction of these facilities was $440 million, so you can imagine that the steel, designs, and equipment added on to that amount would tip it over the billion dollar range. What a waste.

This is part of the inside of the reactor building. It looks like a haunted building, or a first-person shooter map. Ron mentioned that they recently filmed part of Transformers: Age of Extinction here, so now I kind of want to see it.

Coral's second birthday was on May 2nd, so the family gathered for a private birthday party that night. I think she liked the attention.

Her real birthday party was Elmo themed and we had a bunch of people over to Bethany's parent's house.

There were noodles and pizza at her party. Two of her favorite foods.

David and Sam came to Coral's party and brought their newborn baby, Brooks. He was so quiet and adorable.

I can't believe my little Coral is 2 years old already! She's growing up faster than it feels like Juliana did. To see more pictures from her birthday, Satsop Nuclear Power Plant, soccer, and Easter, view the full set.