Fall showers bring....

I guess the end of September brings strange wildlife to my little flower beds...

crazy big spiders (yeah yeah I shouldn't dislike them because they eat other bad bugs but EWW)

this looked gross and smelled even worse! UPDATE: Found it! ...and if you want to be grossed out click here.

But on the bright side, the break in the oppressive heat plus the frequent rain changed my cute little flower bed into an almost jungle. Tons of green and purple everywhere!

DC Trip Part 3

The Mineral & Jem Display at the Natural History Museum


crazy necklaces


Huge diamonds - I think the 10carat round (I am going by memory so that could be wrong) would look quite nice in my current setting :-) and Marie Antoinette's 20 carat earrings would also look lovely!


crown jewels
a bejeweled ring

more crazy necklaces

pearls


more huge rocks
bejeweled butterfly
...and...the Hope Diamond

Just so you know you could lose an eye by being short and trying to see the hope diamond. Those ladies and gents are vicious trying to get their photos. At one point I thought I was going to stand there all day when people would not let me AWAY from the display...then they realized that the display rotated and I was no longer on the "good" side! :-)

DC Trip Part 2

The Monuments and Buildings

Capitol Building

WW2 Monument

Lincoln Memorial and ol' Abe himself

Washington Monument from a few different spots (the 2nd of which I was pretty sure my feet were about to fall off from walking all over the place)

White House from a few different locations

And just for fun I have to post the crazy lady (protesting, possibly homeless) that was being yelled at by another crazy lady (tourist?) for her protest topic of choice. That topic was obviously so important that I have no clue what it was! There were also a couple of folks singing patriotic songs while wearing shirts that looked like they should have been in Myrtle Beach instead of DC but I do hope they were having a good summer vacation! :-)

DC Trip Part 1

The hubby and I went to PA this weekend for his 10 year HS reunion. We flew into Baltimore and took a one day detour to DC with his parents.

The Library of Congress was awesome. They really knew how to build a nice place to store important documents back then (250+ years ago).

golden lettering everywhere plus neat quotes

awesome mosaics with stories

23k gold foil ceiling and check out the moldings

more ceiling greatness

intricate painted details all around

statues and carvings

even the floors were awesome (Mom this is for you) I tried to get all of the astrological like symbols but the pesky other tourists were getting in the way.

We also saw lots of books, old bibles, rough drafts of the Declaration of Independence and so much more that we couldn't take pics of. All around was an awesome place to visit.

My how they have grown!

While we were away the flowers just took off! The elephant ears grew to a massive size and sprouted babies/



These lovelies filled out nicely...



And all the purple is awesome...just need a little more orange and we will be all set for football season ;-D