A Museum and Butterflies

Dave's parents came to visit in August right before Miles started school.  It was a quickie, but a goodie!

We all headed to the museum of natural science.  It's really fantastic.  I was not disappointed.  We went to the butterfly exhibit thingy.  It was super cool!

They have a variety of other bugs and things to look at before you go into the butterfly place.

This grasshopper was ENORMOUS.

These cockroach pictures are up equal parts for you and for Miles.

They are up here for Miles because he claims they are his favorite "animal."  It's all he would consider taking as a pet, though he wouldn't really have the guts to do it if it were actually a possibility.  He's royally afraid of pretty much all bugs and creatures.  I'm not sure why he raves about them-- probably just for the reactions.

They are up here for you so you can feel bad for me that I live in a land of roaches and have seen many of them this size in my house.  In fact, Dave killed one in our bathroom this morning.  Good ol Houston.  What's not to love?

Moving on.

They have cases of chrysalises.  It's super cool.  We watched one butterfly come out of its chrysalis.  It was pretty freakin' rad.

Enjoy the pictures:

Miles Eats Breakfast

Dave took these pictures one Sunday morning.  Just Miles eating breakfast.  In his underwear, of course.

A Real Live Jack o Lantern

After Miles lost his third tooth, he became a jack o lantern.  It wasn't long, though, before that permanent tooth started making it's way in, so we had to hurry and grab a picture to remember the jack o lantern days!

A Couple Dave-isms

Let me share a couple adorable things about my dear, sweet husband Dave.

He collects pens like you wouldn't believe.

 This pile doesn't even do it justice.

He doesn't do it on purpose.  He just brings them home from work in his pockets, takes them out and puts them somewhere annoying and then repeats the next day.  I pretty much find them everywhere, but we had quite the collection on our dresser.  It really was a mountain of pens, balanced so carefully by me when I would dust.  The mountain was growing by the day, though, threatening to topple over at the slightest bump or breeze so I decided it was silly to have a mountain of pens and it was quite the ugly decoration, even though I sort of hid them behind a picture.  Since their existence was relatively bothersome to me, I started putting the pile on Dave's pillow or somewhere that directly affected what he needed to get to.  I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting to happen, but Dave couldn't have cared less, would move the pens from his pillow or wherever to the floor and carry on with his life, completely unaffected by my blatant hints.  To be a man!  At any rate, the pens have found a new home.

Next up, we have his bachelorhood.

This was our bed the whole time he was home alone.  Bare necessities, ladies and gents.

As a side note, and one you don't likely care to hear, seeing this picture makes me slightly depressed.  I really do believe that we will someday live in a more settled circumstance where we can finally invest in some furniture (i.e. headboard), decorate, and where we will have a little more space so I don't have to keep the last couple boxes or extras in the corner of my bedroom.  You know what I'm saying?

Anyhow, men are amazing.  They really are.  They are so different from women and I think I'd rather deal with somebody's silly pen cluttering than somebody's PMS.  So hooray for men and hooray for Dave!

Seattle + 9 Years

Dave and I spent our actual 9th wedding anniversary apart.  It's cool, though.  Our anniversary was on a Tuesday and Tuesdays are notoriously crappy days at work for Dave.  He came up to Coeur d'Alene super late that Friday night and on Saturday, we headed to Seattle for a little getaway and celebration of 9 freakin' years of marriage.  Crazy.  I don't feel old enough to have been married for 9 years.

The drive over to Seattle was so super pretty and we stopped off in Cle Elum for some pretty epic Taco Bell.  It was great (for real, I'm not being sarcastic).

Our trip was short, but so great.  I love Seattle.  We moseyed around the piers, ate Beecher's grilled cheese, drank a bunch of retro sodas, went to the market, took a nap, listened to live jazz in our hotel lobby and enjoyed our complimentary ice cream sundae or root beer float each night!  It was super fun and the weather was phenomenal.  Couldn't have planned it better.

These were a couple of our favorite sodas we tried.  The vanilla one actually has a "fat free" version.  I didn't bother with it, though.

The piers:

These next three photos are the very sequence of me thinking I just got pooped on:

No poop, just my grays.

We played around with the new lens a lot, trying to figure out the distortion, etc.  Here's some distortion for your viewing pleasure:

Cute, right?

OK, now I need to talk nerdy for a minute about this lens.  If anyone that ever reads this has an interest in photography, I need you to know that this lens has the craziest image stabilization (IS) I have ever seen!  Depending on the lens I'm using, I typically can't get a hand held (without a tripod) picture without camera shake unless my shutter speed is 1/125th of a second or faster.  This lens, though, was taking pictures HAND HELD with minimal to no camera shake with a shutter speed as slow as 0.3 seconds!  IT'S AMAZING.  Since I know you care, I'll share the shutter speeds of the pictures where it shows the IS off.

Cool fountain Dave took this picture of.  (1/15th of a second shutter speed.)

The market.  I love the market.  (0.3 second shutter speed.  Seriously?!  Hand held, people!)

There was a tour going on.  (1/20th of a second shutter speed.)

The first night we were there was the seafarers parade.  We walked past it on our way to the hotel, but that's about it.

To market, to market to buy a fat pig.  All of these pictures are with the wide angle lens:

He may be dead, but he's still hungry.

This is where I switched it to the 100mm macro:

Buzz buzz.

On the ferry:

We were wuuuusy Texans and were cold and got hot chocolate on our ride.  It was so yummy.

Both of these skyline pictures were taken at 0.3 second shutter speed on a moving boat.  I mean, seriously... unreal.

To sum it up, I'm sorry for gushing so much about the new lens and Seattle was so fun and Dave and I have been married for 9 years.  That's almost a decade.  Pretty crazy, but I'm so glad we've had each other through all the ridiculous and crazy life changes (living in Houston/Dave's job here has been pretty nuts) we've endured all these years.  

Here's to you, Dave, and to Amsterdam.  Love, Ash.

P.S.  I found a 100 dollar bill on the ground (no joke) but Dave lost it.  That sucked, but we were none the poorer.