Playtime in the OBX

On Saturday morning we all headed outside at my parents' house for some playtime. On Friday night we had gone to a local restaurant to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday, and Natalie was given her "kids meal" on a frisbee! So it was time to teach her how to throw and catch one. She got the hang of holding her arms in the right position for catching the 'bee very quickly! These three were all taken in a row - me throwing, her catching, and then the excitement of the catch! 

Throwing Henry around in the air 

Then it was time for the kids to ride on everyone's shoulders/back!

We all love family playtime!

Burning down the house

On our second day in the Outer Banks, two weekends ago, my mom, sister and I were heading to the store. I noticed a giant cloud of smoke up ahead, and as we rounded a curve we saw a house up in flames. However, it didn't seem to be a sad occurrence: plenty of people wandering around with drinks, watching the house burn, firemen sitting around calmly, EMTs, etc. Turns out that the burning house was condemned after the hurricane last year, and the owner contacted the fire department to have them burn it down in exchange for using it for training exercises. By the time we got there the firemen had all pulled out of the house and were simply containing the burn. You can see at the start it was mostly in the attic/roof.

But slowly made its way down the support timbers, through the garage door, etc (I don't have photos of that). 

I really liked this shot of the firemen controlling one of the two giant hoses.

Natalie of course enjoyed that the firemen let her look into the fire truck.

I took a couple of last wide shots of the site before leaving...major difference from the first picture above!

You don't often get to see something like this, where a house is taken out by fire and it's not a total tragedy. After we were finished at the store, we had to drive back past the house to get back to my parents'. I didn't get a photo, but the site was empty except for rubble, some iron stakes, and a bathtub. Pretty cool, huh - scary and fascinating all at the same time.

Family on the beach

After arriving at the Outer Banks to get Henry, we decided to head over to the beach. My mom and sister had taken Henry over there earlier in the week, but he wasn't a big fan of the sand so we figured we'd try again to get him to walk in it. Plus, my mom had seen this big piece of drift wood that my parents wanted to take back to their house to put in their flower bed as decoration

As you can see from how we're all dressed, the weather was pretty ideal for walking around on the beach!

Some pretty photos of the beach and sand

Henry didn't really know what to make of the sand at first, but after seeing Natalie in it, he was at least willing to try walking on it. He didn't seem to like the softer sand up near the dunes, so we headed down to the more packed sand by the water. That seemed preferable to him, although he still didn't like getting sand on the tops of his feet.

After a little while though, all fear/dislike seemed to pretty much disappear and he went wandering about on the beach by himself, including in the softer sand. How cute is this kid?!!

Then it was time to do some digging, which is the most fun beach activity for kids, right?

Day trip to DC

After dropping Henry off with my sister on Sunday March 11, we had made plans to meet some friends of ours at the National Zoo in DC. Evan and I realized it made the most sense to continue up to DC from Fredericksburg instead of going home first, but we had a few hours to kill before meeting our friends. That meant, time to do some exploring in DC!

We found free parking just off the National Mall near the end by the Capital Building. I'd had yet to see the National Botanical Gardens, which Evan thought I would enjoy, so we headed that way. On the way, we passed by the National Museum of the American Indian, which I had never seen before. We didn't go in, but I love the outside of the building! (left, below). Outside of the entrance to the Botanical Gardens I snapped the picture on the right of Natalie and Evan with the Capital Building in the background. Love it!

We found upon entering the Botanical Gardens that their current exhibit is all orchids. It was breathtakingly beautiful - see for yourself! This photo has not been retouched at all - this is how beautiful the light and colors were inside.

I have about a bazillion photos of orchids and other flowers inside of the Botanical Gardens; I won't bore you with all of them, but just post a couple of my favorites here.

This is one of my favorite flowers: a bird of paradise

The plant above is called a stalk cabbage, and there are fewer than 20 left in the world. I think having three sitting right here, given those numbers, was pretty cool! The botanists at the gardens are working on getting the numbers up both in the greenhouse and in the wild.

Then it was time to do some posing...

We left the Botanical Gardens after about 30 minutes and went over in front of the Capital Building. I got quite a few photos of Natalie running around and/or posing in front of the Capital, but I think those one of her on the steps was my favorite.

Look Mom - I'm taller than the Washington Monument!

Regardless of how you feel about the people who work inside, you have to admit it's a gorgeous building.

We then walked over to the National Air & Space Museum. Along the way we passed some people feeding birds; they were nice enough to let Natalie feed them as well, and I got a couple of very cool shots of the birds in flight.

Inside the Air & Space Museum. Go NASA!

After a late lunch it was time to head up to the National Zoo, where I was able to really put my telephoto lens to good use. I love being able to get these super close up shots of animals!

I love that it looks like I'm about 4 feet from this lion. In reality, we were a good 50 yards away!

This shot was accidental. I was trying to get a photo of the mom and baby gorilla, and ended up capturing my own reflection in the glass. I think it almost came out better than I had originally planned!

These are Golden Lion Tamarinds, which are very endangered in the wild. 

I love these little monkeys!

Our friend's little girl Ellie really wanted to get out and walk at the end of our trip. Here's Natalie helping her walk along with her mom, Beth. I love this photo!

All in all, another fantastic day in DC. I'm really happy with how much we've done in DC lately. Evan and I feel that the city offers so much, mostly for free, and lots of things for the kids to do, only about 40 minutes away, so I'm glad we're making an effort to get there so much!

Annapolis MD

Ok, so I lied in my last post and decided instead of skipping over my trip to Annapolis and our day in DC, I would make myself go chronologically and get the photos up here of the two before talking about the OBX. Since I'm actually here almost all of this week (only going to Pittsburgh overnight Tuesday), I may actually be able to get totally caught up by next weekend! Ambitious goal, but hopefully reachable. As I was telling Evan tonight, I'm feeling torn in the evenings between the three things I really want to do: 1) organize/edit/post my photos (i.e. be on the computer); 2) cross-stitch (which has really been suffering lately with everything else going on - I'm so behind on my projects!); and 3) read my current book, which is the second in the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin. I finally finished the first book and first season of the show on HBO, and it's SOOO good! Unfortunately, while I do multitask well, I can't do all 3 of those things at once. I know that on the grand scheme of things this doesn't even qualify on the spectrum of legitimate problems, but it does mean figuring out better how to split my limited free time in the evenings!

Anyway, on to Annapolis. I was there from March 7-9 for a conference, and after arriving mid-afternoon on the 7th, it turned out that I couldn't really get anything setup at my booth until first thing Thursday morning, so I did what I could and then had time to wander around the city.

It's absolutely beautiful! My hotel had a free shuttle (a large electric street-legal golf cart, basically!), so I took that down to the water front to walk around, take some photos, and have a nice dinner. I started down at the water front, despite the really cold wind I was dealing with!

 I then started walking back into the "downtown" area. The light was really pretty then, as the sun was starting to set. The photo to the right has not been retouched at all; this was the quality of the light.

There were some very neat little shops along the way, both boutiques and more touristy shops. I got Annapolis t-shirts for both Evan and I, as we like getting shirts from places we've gone (Evan just likes shirts from locations, regardless of having gone there himself).

This shot is a more close-up shot of the large church at the top of the hill (you can see it very small in the center of the above photo.

 I then wandered around in the Naval Academy/City Center area for a while. I have no idea what this building is, but I thought the setting sun reflecting off of the top of the building and the garden in the front were very pretty.

 Near the Maryland State Courthouse was this statue of Thurgood Marshall.

 And the State Court house. Again, setting sun was really pretty (although I did edit this shot a bit to amp up the reds).

 Here's the other side of the courthouse. This is also Evan's favorite photo of my trip :)

 Thursday morning I finished setting up my "booth". The conference was mainly in the open reception hall at the Loews Hotel; this is the ceiling. Pretty, right? And at least if I had to be inside all day during the conference I had lots of daylight streaming in. This is also where the poster sessions were setup.




And here's my "booth". It's the standard term we use, even when the more accurate phrase would be "table". This was a pretty small conference (about 150 people), so there wasn't a need to send much with me. Being the only vendor did get me some traffic, and hopefully we'll get a couple good leads from the conference!

 During the aforementioned poster sessions, there was an unexpected surprise: open bar and appetizers! My standard drink of choice each night during the poster sessions is shown here: Malibu rum with Sprite and a generous helping of marischino cherries. Yum!