Invasion.

Every summer we hear the pleasing sound of crickets outside our house. It's a pleasant sound of summer...until that sound is coming from a corner of our bedroom in the middle of the night. A few weeks ago, Tropical Storm Hanna drove hundreds of crickets into our house. Every day we kill several of these huge black hopping creatures throughout our house. It's usually an amusing game of whac-a-mole that ends in a mess. I have actually had the unfortunate experience of unintentionally squashing a few crickets with my bare feet walking through the kitchen at night, which is actually pretty impressive since they are quick.

I was so proud of Amelia this morning when she spotted a cricket and yelled out "I'll get it" as she ran to get a shoe (Ben's shoe, as I've trained her). She then exclaimed "I totally got it! His guts are coming out his bottom!" and was quick to tell me I "forgot a leg" when I cleaned it up.


Laundry room cricket. Moments before death.

The weekend.

Amelia was thrilled that her friend Ethan got to stay with us Friday night. They had so much fun playing together.



We enjoyed lunch and a visit to our favorite frozen custard spot with our good friends the Dyckmans.


Ben and I went out Saturday night to one of the last Nationals games.


Ben enjoying a Nats dog from our birds-eye seats.


We stuck around after the game to watch "Field of Dreams" in the stadium.

We toured an old prison that has been converted into a new arts center that has working studios as well as art galleries and performing arts spaces. Some of the artists were in their studios working as we walked through. Amelia was really into looking at all the art, even though she described much of it as "strange."




Elsa turned 4 months old! Amelia slipped a peanut m&m into Elsa's mouth when we weren't looking. Her green lips tipped us off. She was quite happy.

A monumental bike ride.

Ben and I enjoyed a lovely bike ride last night around the monuments and Hains Point. (Thanks to our friend Sarahanne for watching the girls.) The weather was beautiful and the crowds had diminished. We ended our ride at the Jefferson Memorial and we were the only two people there. It's rare to get a moment alone in D.C.






A quiet Jefferson.




Ben in chain link.


My bike meets Lincoln.


Silhouette in repose.

Beach camping. Dolphins and wild ponies included.

Sometimes just trying to get out of the house is the hardest part of going on a trip. As we were attempting to leave at a reasonable hour on Friday morning, I had flashbacks of childhood vacations involving great stress (for my parents) just trying to get past the driveway. Was the oven turned off? Did we lock the back door? Did everyone go to the bathroom?

We were doing pretty well until we tried to start the car, only to discover that our car battery was dead. We found a neighbor to help us out and got the car started. We began piling in the car again and Amelia slipped and landed in a huge mud puddle and so we headed back into the house to change all of her clothes. We finally got on the road and were enjoying our favorite road trip food, Chex Muddy Buddies, and became so engrossed in a conversation about the song "Sister Christian" by Night Ranger, that we drove about 10 miles beyond our exit.

Despite the rocky start, we had a great time camping this past weekend on Assateague Island, about 3 hours away. We met up with our great friends the Dyckmans and really enjoyed spending some time with them and watching Ethan and Amelia play together again. Sarah was pretty brave to attempt camping at 8 months pregnant. I particularly enjoyed some kid-free time swimming with Sarah while the husbands cleaned up camp.

We were expecting some rain but ended up with great weather. It actually got really hot on Saturday so we all enjoyed cooling off in the ocean. We even saw some dolphins cruising along not too far from the shore.


It was pretty windy on Friday which made putting up the tents an interesting challenge.


Amelia loved the waves and wanted to swim by herself.


Ben and Amelia playing in the water.





Ethan and Amelia trying to warm up after their evening swim.


We had fun feeding the birds and watching them dive for food. We also got to see some kite boarders which was fun to watch.



Amelia spent most of her time busily collecting shells at our campsite.


Roasting marshmallows.


Eating s'mores.


Hanging out in the tent.


We woke up in the morning and found several wild ponies strolling around our campground.




A sunrise stroll along the beach. Notice Amelia is yawning...we thought Elsa would be the one to worry about at night, but she slept soundly all night long. Amelia, however, woke up in the middle of the night screaming and we couldn't snap her out of it for about 10 minutes. The wind was blowing the tent a lot and was really loud and I think it gave her nightmares.


We drove down to Chincoteague on the Southern part of the Island Saturday afternoon and went to this lighthouse.



After viewing some wildlife on Chincoteague Island, we went into the town and had some delicious pizza at Ledo Pizza (highly recommended) and then stopped for ice cream before heading back home.

It's no longer hip to be square...

...at least according to Polaroid, who has officially ceased all instant film production. Digital killed the Polaroid star, and one of my old hobbies, which I suppose was pretty much dead already.

Here is my Polaroid lament.

If past habits are any indicator, it wouldn't be surprising to know that in addition to my many other collections, I also had a pretty large collection of old Polaroid cameras. When I left college, I decided it was time to downsize my moving box collection so I gave most of the cameras to my old photography teacher, but I did keep my 1971 Polaroid 450 that I used to do emulsion transfers (see photo below). I also kept a 1965 Swinger, mostly because it was in amazing condition and came in a fabulous case.

There is endless fun to be had with Polaroids and endless experimenting to be done with various types of film and transfer methods. Polaroid is the "Honest Abe" of photography. (Too much?) No dark room manipulation. No Photoshop filters. Just unique textures and colors capturing a real moment. It is instant analog gratification. The imperfections of the cameras and the film make the end result all the better. Who doesn't love staring at that empty little square, just waiting for the image to slowly appear before your eyes.

Let's face it. Most of our digital photos sit on our hard drives or in our memory cards and will never see the light of day (or the ink of a printer). The Polaroid gives you this permanent record of a moment that otherwise may have been deleted because someone made a funny face.

All that being said, I just used my digital camera to take a picture of the Polaroid cameras. So yeah. Here are the ancient relics, along with some emulsion transfers I did long ago (some of you will recognize the locations).

It's no longer hip to be square...

...at least according to Polaroid, who has officially ceased all instant film production. Digital killed the Polaroid star, and one of my old hobbies, which I suppose was pretty much dead already.

Here is my Polaroid lament.

If past habits are any indicator, it wouldn't be surprising to know that in addition to my many other collections, I also had a pretty large collection of old Polaroid cameras. When I left college, I decided it was time to downsize my moving box collection so I gave most of the cameras to my old photography teacher, but I did keep my 1971 Polaroid 450 that I used to do emulsion transfers (see photo below). I also kept a 1965 Swinger, mostly because it was in amazing condition and came in a fabulous case.

There is endless fun to be had with Polaroids and endless experimenting to be done with various types of film and transfer methods. Polaroid is the "Honest Abe" of photography. (Too much?) No dark room manipulation. No Photoshop filters. Just unique textures and colors capturing a real moment. It is instant analog gratification. The imperfections of the cameras and the film make the end result all the better. Who doesn't love staring at that empty little square, just waiting for the image to slowly appear before your eyes.

Let's face it. Most of our digital photos sit on our hard drives or in our memory cards and will never see the light of day (or the ink of a printer). The Polaroid gives you this permanent record of a moment that otherwise may have been deleted because someone made a funny face.

All that being said, I just used my digital camera to take a picture of the Polaroid cameras. So yeah. Here are the ancient relics, along with some emulsion transfers I did long ago (some of you will recognize the locations).

First day of school blog post? Check.

Amelia has been waiting all summer for this day to come. Luckily, she loved her first day of preschool. Her initial response to my question about what she did at school today was a bit vague..."we did everything," but she slowly spouted off more information later today about new friends, snack time, and lining up for the bathroom break. Her school seems to be great and her teachers are very enthusiastic and nice. Since she meets at the rec center, they have access to a great playground, an indoor soft play room, an art room, a dance studio, and riding bikes in the gym.

Amelia was very anxious to get going this morning. I was trying to get ready to leave and she was just waiting at the door yelling "What are you waiting for? It's the first day of school!"


She saw another girl in her class as we were walking in and immediately ran up to her and said "Hi, I'm Amelia. What's your name?" I guess all those pep talks about meeting new friends actually sunk in.


Amelia is in the dolphins class with Mrs. Watson.



When I picked her up after school, the first thing she wanted to do was see Elsa and say hi to her. Elsa returned her greeting with a huge smile, as if she recognized that her morning had been missing something.

My Morning Jacket.

Besides having an absolutely fabulous band name, My Morning Jacket puts on a seriously rockin' concert. Ben and I were able to go to their show in D.C. last night at DAR Constitution Hall. We ended up with pretty decent seats (other than the world's tallest couple that was seated in front of us) and they played for over 2 1/2 hours. I saw them perform exactly 6 years ago in a very small venue as the opening act for Doves. I couldn't remember much from that show except there was a lot of hair involved and they rocked out hard on stage despite my impression that they were somewhat mellow. Last night's show did not disappoint with equal amounts of hair and rock. The crowd was quite eclectic and entertaining to watch. (We also didn't feel too old for this concert, considering that there was an old man sitting next to us who actually kept dozing off.) The lead singer is a great performer and is one of the few that can get away with wearing a cape on stage.





A few sound bites for those interested:



(Yes, there were bears on the stage.)

On a side note, after we left the concert, there were guys on the street selling balloons filled with some sort of gaseous substance. People were passing by them unphased or else they were sitting on the curb enjoying whatever was in these balloons. I realized we must be completely unhip since we had no idea what the deal with the orange balloons was. Thank goodness for google searches. Turns out they were selling nitrous oxide for a quick high. Brilliant.

Laboring away on the beach.

It took all summer, but we finally made it to the beach. We debated about the beach on Labor day since that seems like a recipe for huge crowds and traffic. But it turned out to be perfect. The beach wasn't too crowded, the weather was great, the water felt nice, and we only got stung by jellyfish a few times. We managed to avoid any traffic and actually encountered fewer cars on the road than normal. We went to Sandy Point State Park on the Chesapeake Bay, which was about 45 minutes away.


As usual, Amelia wanted to be left alone in the water and did not want any help with swimming. Elsa was fairly content under the shade of a towel most of the time.