Shark Week!

We had tentative plans to head north to King's Island today, but those were dashed when Shayne and Cassie opted out.

Instead, we parked ourselves on the couch for a couple hours and soaked in some good old fashioned SHARK WEEK!

I love... shark week.
So does Sydni.

Appropriately so, we decided to take a trip south to Newport, to the aquarium, to see some of this week's celebrities up close and personal.

but first... a turtle shell! 

creature of the hour
[sorry about the photo quality; the real camera stayed @ home]

shark ray

my little half shark ♥

For the most part, there can only be so many different pictures from the same aquarium, so we didn't spend an exorbitant amount of time today hovering around each exhibit... just some of our favorites.

jellies' tank

sydni named this one "brain jelly" 

My personal favorite from the afternoon:

a puffer and my favorite hands? yes, please! 

syd's favorite

And lastly, on to the baddest boy in the wetlands: Mighty Mike! 

awh. jussa wittle guyyyy... 

or maybe a bit bigger than that. 

ok, maybe a lot bigger.
.. sizing up to mighty mike! 

albino alligator on the way out ;) 

We followed the aquarium with dinner [& of course breadsticks] at the Olive Garden before coming back home. These no-agenda Sundays are my favorites, and to spend them with my favorites -- including Shark Week -- is more than I could ask for.

See ya on the work side tomorrow!

xo | cmd

Newport Aquarium & Stanbery Park

We had a blast today.
Between Nana & Pappy's visit with us to the Newport Aquarium, followed by lunch and a romp in the park, we are a tuckered-out little duo.

I gave the D90 some exercise today as we journied through the land of fishies, sharks & all things quirky at the aquarium.

Here's that story:


rawr.

^ We'll start with the first reason Sydni was excited to get to the NA today. Haha. My four-year-old wanted to see the sharks. I'm thankful that we're past the phase of being terrified by them swimming up to the glass, so I gladly embraced her request to stand in the water tunnels for ten minutes each. Hah.

shark rays

more sharks & shark-esque creatures..

We found some divers in the shark tanks..

up close & personal

.. so Sydni wanted to give it a whirl.

shark petting

^ Close enough. Haha. We'll take an actual dive with some swimmers when she gets the hang of the whole swimming thing herself. We're super close, but just not quite there yet.

lionfish

My personal favorites - pufferfish!

awhhh ;)

We found beautiful creatures everywhere. There were dots, spots, stripes, squiggles and all kinds of other patterns. 

spots & patterns everywhere!

And things that glowed in the dark..

jellyfish gardens!

And things that live in the dark... which, btw NA, you may want to move the No Flash Photography sign a bit lower... Luckily I knew this but there were plenty of folks today that certainly didn't see it. Poor octopus :/

octopus!

We saw some distant relatives, too - some who travel by land, and some by sea.

shelled beauties!

.. And some who do both (:


emperor penguins

taking a break to photograph a couple humans on the adventure

There's always of course at least one celebrity:

"mighty mike"

^ We found a sun-bathing groupie croc on the upper deck of Mighty Mike's tank; Mighty Mike is the 800-lb, 14-ft-long alligator who travels to various aquariums for us to admire. Sydni is about the size of his head. Crazy!

my girl ♥

I snagged at least one picture with mini before we called it a day at the aquarium. Our next stop was lunch at Bar Louie and then on home to unwind for a little bit before my parents had to head back home. The weather forecast has been buzzing with nothing but warnings for this impending winter storm, so Nana & Pappy made sure to get their driving out of the way before it all started to settle in. We'll see them again soon.

To ease the abrupt absence of Nana & Pappy, Sydni and I decided to squeeze just a little more juice out of the beautiful weather. We trekked the whole mile or so up the road to the park and spent the last few hours of daylight romping around the playground.

she's so busy!

love. those. smiles.

I have no complaints on the day, other than selfishly,  I wish Rob had been here to enjoy it all with us. There will be plenty of others, though. (:

From us to you, happy weekend!!!

i love you, forever & ever.

xo | cmd

GLAD IT WASN'T ME

WHOA, DUDE.

[random thought for today.]

Yeah. I just saw this shot and had to share it.
Note to self: My life could be worse.

Word.

xo | cmd

Soul Surfer.

I had heard about this girl the year that this event took place, but hadn't really tuned into it in detail until today when I watched the movie for the first time.

[[**Spoiler Alert**]]

Long story short: Bethany Hamilton was a 13-year-old surf prodigy, living on a fast-track to pro status as a competitor in Hawaii. She was resting off the coast on Halloween of 2003 when a tiger shark attacked her, completely severing her left arm all the way to her shoulder. She survived, and overcame surmountable odds to get back in the water by Thanksgiving of that year, and later to earn her deserved victories. And then, she immediately credited her amazing journey through all of it to her faith in Christ and His divine ability to save her life.

Pretty. Darn. Inspiring.

I tie into that story when I watched Soul Surfer, starring that adorable little AnnaSophia Robb as Bethany, and I would safely state that I cried for over half of the movie. Truth.

I spent a lot of time post-movie just reflecting on how drastically different my life would be if something like that happened to me or someone I loved. I've never had to summon courage like that from myself, but after seeing this, I'm reminded that nothing is impossible. This girl is a beast when it comes to surfing [youtube her if you don't believe me], but I admire her more for her unwavering faith. Talk about an incredible testimony.



the real bethany hamilton & annasophia robb | credit imdb

**+**

Once I pulled myself together, I got back to work on wedding stuff [yeah, I'm counting down the days until the 17th... is that bad?] I did manage to get some more little cards tacked together [hooray, cardstock!]. I spent way too much time arranging them on the coffee table for nothing, so here's that... :)

Five days.
It's kind of flying up on me sooner than I thought, but I expected to feel this way, so yeah. I'm dealing. Ha. We leave Wednesday after work to head back to Cinci to start all the festivities.
I'm excited ;)

xo | cmd