Our Spring Trip to Maryland

Wendy and I began our spring break on Friday! This is doubly cool because both Wendy’s birthday and our anniversary fall on this week. We spent some time talking about what we’d like to do, opting for something both fairly economical, but also unequivocally awesome. The conclusion?
Visit Ethan. (Oh yeah, and Loren and Betsy.)

Just before leaving for the trip I bought the Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens, so I couldn’t help trying it out. (Okay, I actually kept it on the camera almost the entire trip.) I really like this lens, but it’s not really designed for portraits, as you can see above.

Betsy and Loren suggested that we take Ethan to an amazing local park that has everything from outdoor percussion instruments to a pirate ship to a climbing wall. Ethan–not quite ready for the climbing wall. Loren, however, flexed his simian side.

While Loren monkeyed around, Ethan found a bridge that swayed and jiggled while he walked on it, and walk on it he did. I’m going to guess that he crossed that bridge thirty to fifty times while we were at the park. Even getting him to go down the slide involved some pretty intense persuasion.

Finally, Wendy had to put Ethan on her back and run so fast that the sheer excitement of the ride distracted Ethan from the awesomeness of the bridge which he was leaving behind.

The next day, given all the museum choices available to us in DC, we opted to visit the one featured in a mildly entertaining Ben Stiller movie.

While there, I learned a few things about the Museum of Natural History:

1. -One-year-olds would rather watch a video of a fish eating a worm than see the BONES OF ACTUAL DINOSAURS
2. -The lighting in the Museum of Natural History was not engineered with photographers in mind
3. -The insect exhibit is sponsored by Orkin.

Given that I was once a ten-year-old boy, you can probably guess what my favorite part of the trip was. (Special thanks to Loren for holding the flash for me while I took these pictures.)