National Zoo

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Today we went to the National Zoo.  We saw everything except the small mammal house.  The giant pandas were sleeping, but we got to see the lions awake.  I was so excited to get a shot of the blue-eyed cormorant (upper 2nd from right), the Mandarin Duck, and the monkey which was roaming freely in their Amazonia exhibit. We walked nearly 17,000 steps today from about 9:30 - 5:30 stopping long enough around 2PM to eat a picnic lunch.  Donnie was the best entertaining the boys who seemed to have boundless energy and want to wrestle their way through the zoo.  I was able to take all the pics I wanted and thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

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We completed our tour of all the Metro lines riding the orange line on our way back to the hotel tonight.  Joey was very pleased.

Tomorrow we head home making some stops in VA along the way.  It's been a fantastic week!

US Capitol

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We took the tour of the US Capitol today.  They added a Visitor Center which opened 12/8/2008 on the front (side away from Mall) since the last time Don or I was here (give or take 20-30 years).  It was pretty impressive too.  We were able to go into the Rotunda, the Crypt where George Washington was intended to be buried but isn't (he's at Mount Vernon at the request of his will), and National Statuary Hall.  We did not go into the Senate or House.  Maybe next time.  The tour is free, lasts about 30 minutes, and is well worth the walk from the Mall as well as going through security, etc.

Laura Johnson will appreciate today's ceiling shot looking up from inside the Rotunda.

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We also went to the Library of Congress and the Air and Space Museum today.  Maybe more about those after we get home or tomorrow.

Tomorrow we plan to go to the National Zoo.

World War II Memorial Washington, DC

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We visited a lot of places in Washington, DC today, but the one that impressed me the most was the World War II Memorial.  I've shared a collage of some pics we took there today as my daily.

Joey took this picture of me and Donnie there which I like very much.  He really got into picture taking at the memorial!

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Mount Vernon

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Donnie, the boys, and I are up in Washington, DC for a few days.  We drove up today and spent the afternoon at Mount Vernon.  What a fantastic fall day and great time!  Tomorrow we'll be on the Mall.  Can't wait!  Lots of pics on Facebook.

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Happy 10th Birthday Joey!

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Hard to believe 10 years have passed.  A big Happy Birthday to Joey!  He got a couple of games for his Nintendo 3DS, a Club Penguin membership for him and Johnny (Madi already had one), and a gift card to GameStop from Madi and Aunt Teen.  Pictured as my daily were the best smiles of the day.  Madi and Aunt Teen showed up with balloons and made his day!  Madi stayed for a while, and the kids were at my kitchen table each with a laptop on Club Penguin. I couldn't even get to my computer today!

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For a special treat, we got birthday cake ice cream from Porter Farms and Nursery.  Yum!

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Here's to many more great ones!

World of the Butterflies

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It started like this.

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It then transformed to this.

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And this.  I added a twirl to the image above but this is the one that still had the stems in it.  I need to redo without the stems if I'm going to do anything with this one.  I saved the PSD file:-)

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Don't ask me how things then morphed into the globe idea but it did.  Polar coordinates at 16% transformed the flowers into the waterglobe looking shape.  Maybe I shouldn't have tinted it orange.  I dunno.  I think it coordinated with the butterfly colors better.  Rainy gloomy day here yesterday and today.  I promise soon I'll be off this pp'ed creations streak.

Constructed Halloween Mandala

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I took some pics of our Halloween decorations for Joey last week.  He's using them in the Scratch programming tool as Sprites for a shell game program he's designing.  I got to thinking that I wanted to try constructing a mandala out of various parts/shapes and thought the decorations might lend themselves to the project.  It is after all October now:-)  I isolated each head and created the poster below where each head is one layer in the PSE7 PSD file.  Not too bad on it's own but not my final goal.

I started out with a mandala template that had bats around the center and used it just to line up the diagonal lines and angles of the parts I wanted to use to create the mandala.  The orange eyes and black faced pumpkin was put on first.  Next was the green eyed tin man.  You get the idea.  Is it what I had hoped for?  Probably not.  Joey will like it, so we'll consider this a work of art for him.  I applied a filter and a frame to spice it up a bit.  The filter helped to blend the layer/object lines.

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As seen out front of the local grocery store.  Boo!

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As seen at Porter Farms and Nursery.

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I need to take the boys for their yearly portraits with the pumpkins!