Just Keep Swimming

Well friends, things have been going smoothly here in the Holton household. During our week down in Eugene this month Ricky officially began his new career. Woohoo! I had planned on being productive with my time while we were there but I realized it was just too soon to look for housing/employment for me, so instead I played with friends.

September brought with it an unusual allotment of sunshiny days here in Seattle. I keep waking up in the morning expecting to need a coat and boots but I keep being wrong. I don't like to be wrong and I don't like to be too hot outside in autumn. Yes, I am probably one of very few souls who actually prays for it to cool down, be overcast and act like the PNW that I'm used to. Along with those too-blue-for-their-own-good skies, September brought a new season of football for our Ducks as well as the start of Ricky's LAST term in grad school. I like both of those things. I am so proud of my dear husband for plowing through his program with such rapidity and for doing so well.

This time of year tends to seduce many of us northwesters into over-zealous lounging and eating. When it (usually) starts to get cold and rainy and dark we sit around, eat cookies and watch reruns of our favorite tv shows. I personally tend to bake more and grow sedentary. If I'm going to put on extra weight, now is the time of year it will happen. Fortunately we are going to break up the monotonous weather with a trip to Hawaii (which I know I've mentioned once or five times) in December. Unfortunately I don't want to have put on my winter layer just in time to put on a bathing suit. So, I've taken up swimming. Swimming is exactly the low-impact, whole-body work-out I need. But I suck at swimming. Seriously, I was really self-conscious on the first day because I was convinced that the life guard was watching me more than other people because she thought I was going to drown. I don't really blame her. I feel like I look like a sloth that is just doing everything it can not to sink before it gets to the other side of the pool. Okay, maybe I'm not that bad but I'm definitely not related to Michael Phelps. Anyways, I've been swimming three days a week at the local pool for the past two weeks and I plan on keeping it up. It's difficult but I'm going to keep doing it. Check me out in 2.5 months, hopefully I won't look any fatter. ;)

New Toy

We bought a new toy last week, it's a camera. It's a fancy camera. We are super excited about being able to take great photos (once we learn how to use all the functions). Although our new toy was pricey, we are glad we will have it for our vacations in the upcoming year as well as all of the other exciting moments in our future lives.

This week we went all around Discovery Park, to Pike Place Market and the Vancouver, CA Aquarium to test drive the camera. Here are some of the photos we took, what do you think?

Point Defiance

A few weeks ago we took a little trip down to Tacoma and visited the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. As far as zoos go it was pretty small (I'm basing this off of Portland Zoo and Woodland Park Zoo size). Despite its small size we saw some really neat animals that we don't usually get the opportunity to see.

The star of the day was definitely Tilly the ardvark. In this photo she's asleep but later we saw her use her long tongue to lick yogurt out of a bottle and she walked on a leash!

 We also saw a beaver walking around the zoo on a leash. It was awesome and cute. Point Defiance Zoo had a lot of interesting extra things going on. It had animals that weren't in enclosures that zoo staff were showing people. Another one was this ancient tortoise.

We saw two adorable clouded leopard cubs and two red wolf pups. There were also two sumatran tigers, one of which was a week away from giving birth and the other one (in the photo) who put on a show for us. The tiger did something that Lucy does all of the time--it got up, walked around, ate a bunch of grass and then barfed. It was the most action I've ever seen from a tiger at the zoo.

The best part of our trip was the presentation we went to in the afternoon. The two-toed sloth, barn owl, vulture, bald eagle, parrot, iguana and other stars of the show were spectacular. The barn owl flew so close to the top of my head I could easily have touched it. I was so excited I almost peed and definitely got teary.

Overall it was not my favorite zoo I've ever been to but it had some really great attributes and I'm super glad we went.

This peacock came to bid us farewell as we walked back to the car.