day 340: Day trip

A friend and I took our kids and went to DC to visit the National Zoo.  Half way there, I thought to myself, "My DSLR memory card is still in the computer at home, and my spare one is in my computer bag.  Grk."  I had my point and shoot, which is good but still limiting.  We've been to the zoo a few times, so I didn't take many photos anyway, but there were a couple of things I wanted to do and couldn't because my camera wouldn't do as it was told!  Ah well--next time, I suppose. 

We stopped at the DC Temple visitor's center first.  The kids and I love going there.  We all love sitting in front of the Christus statue and listening to a beautiful recording of some of the words of Christ from the scriptures.  There was a beautiful display of bronze statues entitled (if I remember correctly) The Hope of Christ, which depicted a variety of scenes from Christ's ministry, including walking on the water, the raising of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, and many others. After we spent some time at the visitor's center, we walked behind the temple and had a picnic lunch.

Then from the sublime to, well, the zoo.  We've been to the zoo several times before, and I've taken photos of the animals.  Since I didn't have the camera that I needed to take particular shots that I wanted, I really didn't take my point and shoot out much.  I tried a couple of things, but they really didn't work out as planned, so my zoo photos are limited.  That's OK--it was nice to have the camera stored for a change.  Several of the displays were closed, so we didn't see many of the larger animals.  A LOT of walking!

And Julia, tired and trying to avoid getting her picture taken!  I have none of Adam, and even this photo was taken mostly as a joke to snap Julia out of her sore feet.

I guess it worked!

Other highlights:

Petting the cleanest cow I've ever seen!  The cows I'm used to, well, if you decided to pet them, you'd end up with a palm full of dirt and oil.  Bleh.  This one--clean clean clean and soft!

Getting blocked into the upper level of Amazonia by two spoon-billed something or other birds that also wanted out and didn't like us trying to pass them!  I wanted to take them (and their beaks) and use them to dig into a big bowl of ice cream.  Or maybe hire them to stir a big pot of soup.

The end.

Day 339: Halleluia

And here, ladies and gentleman, I present to you, after well over two hours of intensive labour...

...a car free of a summer's worth of sand.

Thank you very much.

Day 338: Fungus amungus

When visiting Maren and their new, very neat house-in-the-woods, I was fascinated by all of the mushrooms.  So today I grabbed Maren's kids and mine and headed out to the new digs to take some fungus fotos.  hehe.

OK.  This first one isn't fungus.  But I liked it!

And there you have it!  The best of over 100 shots!  Uh..yeah.  I was having too much fun on my stomach in the leaves and dirt communing with the daddy longs legs spiders!

Day 336:

I was at a loss yesterday as to what to take a photo of.  So in desperation, I raided the fridge.

BUT for today, I took a gazillion photos.  It's either a feast or famine thing in the photo department.  I can hardly wait to show them to you--some are pretty cool!  Editing now, so I'll post when they're done.  Yay!

Day 335: Oh. Yum.

I have been craving something vegetabley all day.  So this was supper tonight, inspired by a recipe I saw at Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman blog once.  Sorry--don't have the link to her recipe handy.  But go over and look around, if you haven't discovered her yet.

I wish I would have stopped to arrange everything nicely, with the asparagus tips showing.  Frankly, though, I just wanted to dive in and eat it.

Easy peasy to do.

Throw some olive oil in a pan.

Add some minced onion.  I wanted garlic, but reached into the cupboard to discover...none.

Add the pealed, deveined shrimp that you found in the bottom of your freezer from who knows how long ago.  Cook for three minutes, until pink.  Remove from the pan and set aside.

Add the zucchini slices in a single layer.  Cook for a minute each side, until slightly brown.  Scootch to the side of the pan.

Remove the corn from two cobs and throw in there.  Cook until slightly brown.  The smell will almost send you to heaven.

Scooch to the side and do the rest of the vegies in the same manner.  Slice.  Brown.  Scooch.  I used zucchini, corn, asparagus, mushrooms, and grape tomatoes.

When the vegies are done, throw the shrimp back in and heat through.

Remember afterwards that you were going to add some herbs from the garden but became so overwhelmed by the desire to inhale the vegies in the pan that it slipped your mind. Ah well.

I served it with couscous. 

And ate two, huge, heaping plates full of the stuff.

And wanted more, except I was sitting there in a blur of vegetable ecstasy and couldn't move.

I think I'll go to sleep now, and dream of lightly browned vegies.  Sigh.

Day 335: A lonely, lost soul

Came across this little guy yesterday and took a photo.  Julia made him when we were camping, and he was misplaced.  But now he is found. 

And now I have to figure out what to do with him.

Crumbs.

More from the party

Photo for today will be later, but I wanted to put up some more photos from yesterday for hubby and my mom.  And anyone else, too!  I didn't take many, since I was busy with the kids, but here are a few.  Maren's husband, Kraig, was running around with his camera, so I'm hoping he'll send a few along!  *hint-hint!*

Julia's buddy since birth (pretty much!) Saskia, has a birthday the day before Julia's, so this year we decided to celebrate their birthdays together.  Maren and I have been great friends since we met at storytime at the library when our kids were, gosh, not even a year old.  Handy how that works out!  Anyway, we had it originally planned for last weekend, but Saskia was the only one of Julia's friends who could be there, so we rescheduled.  We held it at a local park near the woods so there would be plenty of room for the kids to run around.  They found mushrooms, as I showed you yesterday, and frogs!

Made hobby horses:

Played a neat German party game that Maren had planned. 

Played and played and played and didn't want to stop for hot dogs or cake. Finally we got them in and I took a bad photo. So I'm not posting it! I posted the cake a couple of days ago, so you can look at that and imagine candles in it and Julia blowing them out. In a blurry manner. I made Saskia an identical cake, only with a purple mane, and Kraig took photos while I lit candles and such for Saskia.

Then presents:

The kids played some more--well after the official party time was over.  But we just let them run around.  Why not?

Maren pointed out that we didn't have a single photo of us together.  So her husband took one of us:

I was up quite literally all night prior, and you can tell!  Holy Bags Batman!

So there you have it.  A really casual birthday party.  No schedule to speak of.  We just kind of went with the flow, let the kids do their kid thing, giving them a couple of things to do to get the creative play juices going, and let them use the time however they wanted, for the most part.  Other than my not being with it enough to do the cakes earlier, it was pretty stress free.  All set to do the same thing next year, Maren?