Egg Hunt at Woodland Park Zoo
The whole fam spent the day at the Woodland Park Zoo last weekend for the annual Easter celebration. Our fellow Seattleites were out in force, enjoying the beautiful weather, the egg hunt and the other activities.
The animals also seemed to be enjoying the beautiful spring day with plentiful sunshine and glorious blue skies. We captured some great shots that day including this close-up of a sleeping flamingo surrounded by his loud and smelly neighbors and a shot of the wolves hanging out in the sun (taken by my 12-year-old nephew).
Wolves Enjoying the Sunshine
Tags: photography
Young salmon swimming
Mama and baby otter
In addition to a love of all things train and car, my almost 2-year-old nephew has a funny obsession with fish. I say funny because it’s funny to watch his reaction whenever he sees a fish of any kind in any medium…he jumps up and down shouting “FISH! FISH!” until we acknowledge that we, too, are marveling at the wonderfulness that is fish.
So you can imagine how excited he was when his older brother and I took him on his first aquarium visit last weekend. It was three hours of fantastic fish sightings! The Seattle Aquarium now boasts an amazing wall aquarium that towers over visitors as you enter the aquarium. We spent almost a third of our time there, just watching the large variety of fish swim by (even catching sight of a diver during feeding time).
My older nephew is a longtime aquarium fan and eagerly dove into the role of trip photographer. This was our first trip since the baby otter was born so, of course, we huddled in the rain with the other guests to catch a few glimpses of the adorable baby.
Tags: photography
(Here is a letter I wrote as part of a self-discovery exercise for a class I was taking in 2001.)
Dear Soul Mate,
It feels strange to write to someone I’ve never met before. Of course, maybe we have met and I didn’t realize who you were. Either way, we aren’t together right now in the way I know we are meant to be together. Maybe we’re acquaintances. Maybe we’ve never met. Maybe we’ve passed each other on the street or in a crowded restaurant.
I dream about you. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I feel your arms around me. I feel comfortable. Peaceful. Secure. Loved. Sometimes I wake up and my first thought is: “I miss you” and I know in my heart that it is you, my soul mate, that I am talking to in that moment.
I guess we aren’t together yet because it isn’t time for us to be together. I worry that time is running short. My mind wants to meet you and start the fabulous journey that will be our life together.
But, right now I am content knowing that you are out there, taking care of what you need to do in your life before we can meet. I also understand that there are things I need to accomplish before we can be together. My goals now are to discover those things and do them. To bring us ever closer.
I love Richard Bach’s book The Bridge Across Forever because it reminds me that you are out there waiting for me and that I will find you, someday. Because I believe that life brings us the people we are meant to know. And who is more important in our lives than our soul mate?
I wish you, my friend, peace, love, light and every happiness.
Until we can be together…
It’s that time of year when students around the country scramble to develop a science fair project that is at least somewhat interesting to them AND can be completed before the deadline.
This year our science fair project (I say “our” because it really is a group effort helping him narrow down his options, select a topic, discuss the best way to do the experiment, guide the production of the final board and presentation, etc.) was all about a heat lamp, colored construction paper, jars of water, a thermometer, and lots of hours.
After last year’s successful project my nephew was much more confident with organizing his time and materials and performing the experiment. He also better understood what the presentation board needed and how to make it more pleasing.
As a sixth grader he still needed a lot of hand-holding and step-by-step guidance but much less than he needed the previous year. And, I hear tell that performed exceedingly well on his oral presentation. Good show!
My family and I are loving the explosion of creative Muppet-related items appearing in the world! And I’m always on the look out for new ways to decorate cupcakes. There are no how-to instructions but I think I can figure it out with a little work. Love these!
Ah, the web designer’s dilemma: when to declare a site is finished and ready to go live! With a straight HTML site, this is easy…you move the files to the live server (from your testing server) and your site is live. With a WordPress site, it’s a bit more complicated to transfer files from a test server to the live server (it’s not TOO complicated, just a bit more complicated). So sometimes, especially when I’m transferring a site from one host to another and/or I’m not the only one working on building the site, I choose to use the live server as my test server and not transfer the DNS from the current live site until the new WordPress site is looking and working beautifully.
Of course, there’s a trick to doing that successfully. You can edit your computer’s HOSTS file or you can edit your WordPress installation’s URL settings. When I’m not the only one building a site, I choose to update the WordPress settings to keep everything straight at the source.
The best step-by-step explanation I found for doing this is at Koza Communications. Works like a charm and doesn’t require backing up databases or moving files. You change WordPress to your hosting server’s temporary URL while you are building the site. When you are finished and the site is ready to be live, you change WordPress back to the real URL.
Street embroidery in Barcelona, Spain
Stumbled upon this lovely example of street embroidery from Barcelona, Spain. The cross-stitched dog and other designs were embroidered on a long railing/fence in a beautiful park in the heart of the city.
A perfect grid surface, a little colorful rope/string, some creative folks and we have a wonderful piece of street art.
For more photos, see the whole story here (it’s in Spanish but the photos speak for themselves).