Abby

Bubble Attack

Aunt Jodie gave Abby a bubble bucket and boy, does it make great bubbles. On Wednesday we blew bubbles and Abby chased them around the yard with a stick. The cat had great fun chasing bubbles, too. If you look closely, you can see the bubble bucket in the pic on the grill.

This doesn’t have anything to do with bubble antics, but I heard one of my favorite song lyrics on the radio yesterday: “She stepped into the alley with a single-shot .410.” I won’t break down why the line is great. Those of you who get it know who you are.

Intents

I took the day off to watch Abby while Gina went to an all-day job interview. I dragged out all my camping equipment to take stock and decide what to take on my float trip to Colorado later this month. Abby and I went Wal-Mart and got a new air mattress, a headlamp and some other stuff.

When we got home, Abby helped me set up the good tent. (The one on the right.) But it took a long time to set up (about 20 minutes) and it looks way big for one person. So I went back up in the attic and got out the 17-year-old 14-year-old dome tent we bought for our honeymoon to Arches National Park. The last time the tent was used was in a west Texas sandstorm in Big Bend National Park. It’s actually only been used five or six times, so it’s still in good shape. Plus it’s smaller and it only took about five minutes to set up. The only drawback is that the queen-size air mattress I bought won’t fit in it. I’ll have to get a twin size.

I thought Abby would get a big kick out of the tents, but she didn’t seem very impressed.

All the pretty flowers

botanical garden

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Northwest Arkansas Botanical Garden, which is either in south Springdale or north Fayetteville, it’s hard to tell which. I was pretty impressed that NWA has such a flowerdy place. I was expecting a few ferns and maybe a pine tree, but the gardens are fairly extensive. It’s still early in the spring and some gardens are still under construction, so it should be better in a month or so.

Abby got a big kick out of the little ponds scattered all over the place. She spent a long time in the unfinished Japanese garden throwing decorative stones into the little pond. Each time a rock hit the water, she yelled out “blooop!” and clapped like crazy. We also saw a lizard eat a cricket. That wasn’t part of the garden show, we just got lucky. Abby really liked that because she’s really into lizards right now.

I was practicing using fill flash and I think it made the flowers pop a little too much in the above photo. I need to work on using the flash compensation button to dial it down a little, I think. The photos posted over on flickr look a little better.

The many moods of Abby

abby trip

Abby was having a good hair day, so I got her in the dining room in front of the big window to get some nice light. I used my 50 mm F/2.8 lens, which won’t autofocus on my D40. Because the lighting called for a large aperture, it was hard to get the pictures focussed well, what with her jumping around and wanting to sit in my lap to see the pics. These three aren’t supersharp, but they’ll do. Also I’m not proficient yet on sharpening photos for the blog, so I think they suffer from that, too. But they look pretty good, I think.

The animal fair

Who’s got the best mane?

Abby, Gina and I drove over to Gentry to visit the Wild Animal Safari. It’s a 180-acre primitive zoo. You drive on gravel roads through several big pastures where African antelope, camels, deer and other ungulates spend their miserable lives. Every now and then you come to a cage – some are big and some are small – holding more dangerous animals like lions, tigers and arctic foxes. The animals mostly look bored, which I’m sure they are. Click on the photos to see them much larger.

The best part were the pens with the animals you could touch – goats, pigs, turtles, kangaroos, etc. The tiny goats were very cute. We stepped in a lot of poop, though.