Monday, September 30, 2013

Delta Love

Many many moons ago, I was in a Sorority.  OK, two actually.  One was an Honorary Sorority, Tau Beta, Sigma, and I loved being in that organization so much, that when the opportunity rolled around, I rushed.  I became a member of Delta Delta Delta, the more typical greek sorority that you think of when you think of sororities.  Our house was small, and there's a larger story there than I'm going to go into here.  But, to sum up, our House got closed, and I was so crushed I had very little to do with my ex-sisters for the next few year.  But Facebook has brought me around, and in the past couple years, I've been lucky enough to get together with some of my Sisters.   This weekend, one of them living in Phoenix was in town for a wedding.  So we went out to dinner to meet up with her and a few of the gals.   Our spouses were kind enough to let us have a Girl's Table at Cheddar's.  We chose the new Cheddar's in Avon, since we used to go to the old one before it burned down.  But the menu has changed a bit since old times....maybe we have too.


I still got the Cookie Monster - I remember getting that dessert.  Eric missed them not having a Cheddar cheese soup he used to love.  I found that funny too.  I loved that even though we haven't seen eachother in 15 years, so many things were still the same.  Here's something really hysterical - we had a Kid Table too.  And all of us have boys.  There's only 1 of my sorority sisters that I know of that has girls...and she lives in Ireland.  Must be something there.



We let the big boys have their own table, and the little boys have a table.  It went pretty well, for a while.  Blessedly, the waitress was very kind and understanding of all our craziness, such that all in all, we had a really great evening. 


Thursday, September 26, 2013

Flowers from the Zoo

I do so love to take pictures of flowers.  I know you know this about me.  
But I've missed it so much by missing last spring, I haven't had near the amount of time I wish to do editing and whatnot, but still, here's a few pretties from the beginning of fall at the zoo. 


These little guys were in bloom going nutsy by the dolphin pavilion.  


**The Zoo was kind enough to reply and tell me that this flower is called Gomphrena 'QIS Carmine'
aka Globe Amaranth. **



And I wasn't the only one to find this little orange zinnia pretty. 


Lisa and I loved the white orchids.  



Apparently these are called Pentas lanceolata, also known as the Egyptian Starcluster, a big hit for butterfly gardens, that explains why they are inside with the butterflies and orchids. 


Found a Morning Glory in bloom.  I love these.  


What I really love, is this is totally unedited, just capturing the pure glow of the natural flowers. 


A canna lily, they're blooming happily time of year too. 


The water lilyies were blooming too.    If you star at this for a while, you can see all kinds of blooms. It was like that outside too too. 


OK, I did edit this 1, just this one, because I wanted to crop in closer.  


And last but not least, guess what time it is - Fall - that means Mums!  
I love chyrsanthemum season.   

To the Zoo

So, last Sunday, we played a little hooky from church.  Instead of going to worship God together, we joined my sister and her family at the zoo, and got to appreciate all God's creatures instead.   I know there's a lot of pictures here, but there were so many great ones, I just couldn't stand it.



I mean how can you resist all this Cuteness!?!


First the kids found the sea lions.  Ray was on the rock talking some smack and all the kids loved to watch. 


From there we went inside to the Oceans exhibit where all 4 of the big kids checked out the fishies. 


"Takin' on the Jellies!"


I love this dome that you can really get Into to see the fishies.  All 4 yahoos were trying to crawl up in there.  
But, you know, Ladies First. 


From there we moved on to the sharks.  They had some baby sharks that were popping their heads out of the water to say hello to us.  


All the kids were surprisingly good at putting their 2 fingers out to pet sharks.  Probably because Aunt Lisa was Right There saying 2 fingers, 2 fingers!  


Aren't they sweet?!  


Even the baby shark came over to right in front of the Wests to poke his nose out and say Hello.  


The kids discovered that if they look Through the seahorses they can see each other's faces, blown up and distorted.  It's hard to see that all 4 were doing this - but they were, and laughing hysterically. :) 


Then it was Penguin time.  And even better than that - Penguin Feeding time.  


Daddy took a break to give his Chuckles a little shake. :) 


My boys love to stare through the floor at the the penguins swimming underneath.  Luckily, at 10:30 on a Sunday morning, it's early enough to avoid the crowds, and they can do that.  The last few visits we've had have been during busy times, and they just couldn't stop traffic.   But on this day, they could.


Aww...Aunt Lisa spotted a pile of lemurs.  I think they are her favorite. 


Cousins be crazy. 


Now for Aunt Lisa to do her best Jacob cheeks impression.  
Yup, his cheeks are still bigger. ;) 


The West Family. 


The Willman Family. 

Unfortunately, when we went into the butterfly pavilion, there were no butterflies left.  Though the kids had a fine time running around trying to find them.  But really, there were only a few pretty flowers...but that's another post. ;)  So to reward the kids, we let them run wild outside in the gardens...for even more photographic opportunities. 


Annie plays Peek-a-pooka with me.  


Charlie wouldn't play.  Nor would she smile at me.  
I think her favorite look is 'shitty kitty'.  


The West family amongst the purple salvia. 


AND the Willmans among the purple salvia.  
This place in the White River Gardens is one of my favorite places to set the camera to take pictures. 


But when we tried to get the littles in a picture by themselves...it was not happening.
We put Eric in, and well, you can see how that worked out.  Eric's the only one smiling. 


We got lucky on the last one, just before Charlie and Jake lost their minds.


 I know what he's thinking.  Mommy taking all these pictures is completely exhausting. 


So we threw them on the ground, in hopes to at least get one picture with all their heads in one place.  


Nope.  

It was too sunny for Chris.  Then for Annie.  Then none of them wanted to open their eyes. 


Oh well, we got some sweeties in the sun then instead. 


Please excuse Lisa and James as they get all canoodly and smoochy all over the place.  


 Meh, who cares, it's a gorgeous day, snuggle up with the ones you love!


One more try at getting all the kids together.  I swear, this will be the last, I mean it. 



Sorry Charlie - she was cracking me up with her shitty kitty looks. But we almost got lucky.


While stopping at the outdoor restroom before hitting the road, Chris asked if he could hold Jake.  I don't think he tires of us letting him.  He doesn't have strength to do so for long, but he keeps trying, and I think it's getting easier as Jake gets older and can set up a bit more.   I love this.  


All my sweetboys. 


Seestors.  


A perfect day for a couple of goofi to go to the zoo.