the Novakz » san diego

Mom and Dad’s 35th Anniversary

Bryan — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 17:07:18 +0000

We went to Casa de Vega is Escondido to celebrate Mom and Dad’s 35 Wedding Anniversary!! Wow that’s a long time! Congratulations on another great year!!

View the slide show below, be sure to click (full screen) for optimum viewing!

Happy Easter from the Novaks

Bryan — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 21:21:29 +0000

We did a little “Easter” shoot to ring in the Spring time. We’ve been wanting to take some family pics which means I didn’t have complete creative control. I had to be IN the picture. Gasp! Imagine that. Many thanks to my tripod for holding my camera and to my mother for vigorously shaking baby toys in an effort to get Bella to look up. The flowers proved too much of a distraction, she was more confused than anything, so no smiles! She looks cute in her spring time outfit regardless.

I tried something a little different this time, I’ve embedded a flickr slideshow, just click play to see the pics below. You can full screen the slide show if you like.

enjoy.

Balboa Park at Dusk

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:41:54 +0000

Phia and I took Bella to Balboa Park and walked around a bit. It was a lovely night. Bella slept through the whole thing but it was nice to get out of the house.

Phia’s Maternity Portraits

Bryan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:09:33 +0000

Phia and I are hoping to arrange a real Maternity photo shoot with her Aunt Stephanie, who is one of the most amazing photographers I’ve ever seen. If you’ve ever seen the Engagement shots she did for us, you know what I mean. In the mean time, fears of an early baby prompted us to give it a try on our own. The last thing we want is for the baby to come early and miss our window of opportunity for some nice pics. By no means to do either of us really know what we’re doing, I have a lens and just enough knowledge to be dangerous and Phia’s just gorgeous so that helps. I didn’t even know what the heck a “Maternity Portrait” was at first and that scared me a little. But I looked around online and got some ideas of how people shoot then and did my best.

I always enjoy shooting pics of Phia as EVERYONE knows, so I didn’t need a whole lot of incentive to start snapping. Anyway we headed out to Guajcome Lake Park near our house yesterday evening and gave it a whirl. It turns out that place is a treasure trove of photo friendly spots so were weren’t short of beautiful scenery. It was actually really fun to fumble our way through it just the two of us. At first I think we were both a little apprehensive without any real direction, but it turned out that figuring it out was really fun!

What follows is the fruits and our labor (sorry honey, didn’t mean to use that word!) anyway we think they came out pretty nice. To be honest, it’s all but impossible to screw up a picture of Phia, so I can’t take much credit. Below is the gallery, simply click on any image to view it larger and click left or right to see the images before or after. The little “x” will close the window.

Or if you have any trouble viewing them, you can see them here on Flickr. Enjoy!

Lightning Strikes…

Bryan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:51:42 +0000

Some of you know that I am housing my father’s almighty Ford F-150 Lightning in my garage. Or as I like to refer to it, my inheritance. I actually feel that it’s really fair to call it co-ownership since what’s my dad’s is mine and .. how does the rest of that saying go? Well anyway it’s in my garage and I get to drive it so it feels like mine! If you don’t know, The Ford SVT Lightning is a sports/performance version of the F-150 Pickup truck designed by Fords tuner division (SVT). The Truck sports and 5.4L Supercharged V8 and tuned suspension. Stock, the engine was rated at 380hp, but after some tweaks and mods here and there, my father had it dyno’d at 500hp (approx 410 to the rear wheels) and a whopping 575 lb ft of torque! Yikes. Yes it burns out very well…uuuhh not that I know first hand or anything.

Anyway I took the Truck out the other evening and snapped some cool pics as the sun began to set. Driving that truck is probably one of my favorite things to do, even at idle it’s sheer joy, but wide open, there’s almost nothing better. Let me know what you think of the pics, and if you want a ride, then come on by. In case you’re wondering what mods it has, here is a list of the items that have been added, upgraded so far.

2001 Ford SVT Lightning F-150
Dyno’d @ 500hp (410 Rear Wheel)
575 ft lbs Tq

- Bassani Cat Back Exhaust
- Twin 90mm Throttle Body
- Air Raid Cold Air intake
- Upgraded Pulleys 15lbs Boost
- Re-programmed Computer
- Lowered Front / Back
- Triple Guage Pod
- Color Matched Tonneau Cover

Below are the pics, click any image to view larger and scroll through the gallery.

Shamu Is Watching You!

Bryan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:30:15 +0000

For my birthday Phia got us annual passes to Sea World! She knows that I grew up going to Sea World and that I have a real attachment to going. It was wonderful of her to get me such a great gift and I look forward to watching Bella grow up with Shamu like I did. We went recently to get re acquainted with the park, things are much different! There are lots of rides now and new attractions that they didn’t have the last time I was there. By the way it’s been literally years and years.

We’ll have to wait until after the baby is here to try out the rides since they are not recommended for preggy girls! But they looked like a lot of fun. All in all we had a great time and since we have passes we’ll be able to head out there a lot more times!!

Below are a few pics (click to view larger) from the day or you can click here to see all the pics from Sea World.

The San Diego Comic-Con

Bryan — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:51:35 +0000

Thanks very much to my sister Kris for hooking me up with the guest passed to this years Comic-Con. Phia and I went with Eric Koda and Martin. There we met up with Todd Andersen and Al Erickson and his girl friend. This is the first time I’ve been to the show since I was in high school and the only time Phia has ever gone.

From my perspective things sure have grown. From all the media coverage I knew that it would be huge, but you really have to see it to appreciate just how large the show is. Also it was just really cool to get out and have some fun with friends. Phia and I have been in our house working pretty much every weekend for quite some time now. So to get out and enjoy the sun was really awesome.

Phia also had a really good time. Over the years she’s spent with me, she’s really come to appreciate SciFi / Super Hero movies. Plus she loves to people watch and seeing so many people dressed up ranged from funny to disgusting, to really quite amazing. We we’re a little worried about her being pregnant with all the crowds but things weren’t as bad as we thought it might be. If you stayed away from the G4 (the TV channel) booth we were able to navigate through the people pretty well. Many of the show goers where there to see the panels, which are where the starts of a movie / show sit and discuss their project. We avoided those because they generally take a few hours of waiting in line to get into. Phia was a little regretful because we found out that Johnny Depp was there at the Alice in Wonderland panel which I am certain she would have been happy to wait around for. Next year honey.

For Eric the Con is more then just fun and games. As many of you know he is an amazing artist and he submits his work to the various comic companies for their review. This year he got personal interviews with Top Cow and DC, two very big companies, so Phia and I wish him lots of luck with that. I know he’s got the talent so it’s just a matter of time before he hits it big. Eric don’t forget the little people.

Here are a couple of pics from the show, if you want to see all of them, click here to check out the flickr set.

Glorious Grass!

Bryan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:50:19 +0000

I never realized how wonderful grass is / could be until we got this home. Those of you that saw it when we bought it know how horrible the yard was. There was literally 0 maintenance done to the yard while it was on the market. this allowed the lawn to die completely and weeds to over whelm every inch of yard there is.

After much weed whacking (thank you Mom, Phia and Brad!) the yard was dead but at least somewhat orderly. We tried watering the … dirt but really all that seemed to be growing back was crab grass and weeds. After a little research Phia found a gardener on Craigslist that seemed to be up to the task while remaining within our budget. We thought greatly about trying it ourselves, but if you’ve been to the house lately you know we’ve still got our hands quite full with a lot of other stuff. Better to let someone else handle at least some part of the remodel.

Joaquin was wonderful, and knocked it out in two days, including, pulling all the bad stuff, roto tilling and prepping the soil. He also installed some drain pipes, fixed any broken sprinklers and dailed in the sprinkler spray pattens. He was reasonable with his labor costs and we pretty much paid directly for all the supplies so the costs were what they were. I’ve attached some pics so you can see how it all turned out. I would recommend Joaquin to anyone needing yard work, he’s good, he speaks english pretty well, brings a team of guys with him and is very motivated. Let me know if you need his contact info. He does bigger projects like this or monthly maintenance as well. He also knows concrete.

Check out the before / during and afters below. Pretty awesome!! Should be all set for the House party BBQ we’re planning on having once we get the inside all set!

Before:

During:

After:

Back Yard

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