Sunday, September 12, 2010

Deep Sea Fishing!

Second day of LA trip:
We got up early Sunday morning to go fishing. We were pretty impressed with ourselves that 5 of us were able to make it out the door (with one bathroom) before 6:30 am! The boat headed out at 7:30 for 30-45 minutes before finding a good place to fish.


Seals and birds lined the rocks on our way out to the middle of the ocean! (Ok - It wasn't the middle, but it felt like it!)

Fishing poles were ready and the boat was rockin!


The morning was overcast and chilly. I was glad to have a long-sleeve t-shirt on and a light jacket to cut the wind. The sun eventually came out and fried my neck! In this picture the deckhand is flinging bait overboard to get the fish stirred up and hungry . (This is actually only a guess as to why he was throwing bait over people's heads. I basically had no idea what was going on most of the time. Deep sea fishing is a lot different that pond fishing from the bank. And I have only done that a hand full of times!)


Tyler and Craig were nice enough to bait my hook many times. (Several of my pictures aren't very good, but I blame it on the rocking of the boat and my queasiness!)

Craig baiting my hook with squid. The next day we ate calamari that looked strangely familiar!

Tyler caught many fish...like 7 or 8. He was definitely on a roll. I didn't understand it - his line was 2 feet from mine and I wasn't catching any! Finally he told me that my line probably wasn't on the bottom, told me what to do differently, and then 5 minutes later - I finally caught one! I only caught one the entire time, but I was happy to at least catch one. We mainly caught sculpin fish. They measured the fish and if it was over 10 inches, we kept it. We ended up with about 3 fish, but gave them to another couple that was fishing next to us.

Amanda caught several. Ben, to her right, also had good luck catching several.

Another beautiful, spiny sculpin! Craig found out the hard way that these fish aren't like Indiana bass that you can grab and take off the hook. He found out after he had his hand around it that it was venomous! His hand itched the rest of the morning, but apparently it wasn't too bad.

As we made our way back to the shore, the deckhands filleted the fish. The "extra parts" got thrown overboard and made for a great seagull and seal lunch. As we were fishing, we had a couple seals that would swim around our boat hoping to eat our bait before it got to the bottom.
Overall it was a great experience! I'm glad we got to go and experience something new that you can't do in Indiana!

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Hollywood

For some reason, I can't move the pictures around in this post and I'm out of patience trying, so here is Hollywood...in random order! We did the zoo and hollywood on the first day.

Christopher Reeve
I started taking pictures of the stars that I recognized. Then I realized...I knew most of the names and the sidewalk was very crowded, so I stopped after 10 or so. We happened to be there on Michael Jackson's birthday, so his star was full of people and flowers.

Dick Van Dyke - Danville native!


Rodeo Drive...around 6 pm after everything was closed.
We couldn't afford to shop here anyway!


Craig looks so happy to get his picture with me

$$ Rodeo Dr $$

Will Smith - "Change the world"

Roy Rogers (1949!)


The famous HOLLYWOOD sign

Chinese Theater

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

LA Zoo!

The day started cloudy, but turned into a beautiful day for walking around learning about animals.


Our group (L to R): Amanda, Tyler, Craig, and Ben. I have face shots later in our trip!






Hopefully I'll get more of our trip posted soon!





Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Nails

Craig waiting at the airport...what a perfect background!



Tuesday was a wonderful day! My mom came to Bloomington to spend the day with me! We got pedicures, spent the day shopping the square, and talked...a lot!

Our beautiful, pampered toes!

French pedi with flowers! How fun!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

pHoTos!

Craig was out of town last week and I had a little too much time on my hands! I found a free app for editing pictures and had a lot of fun!
My handsome husband


Wet flower at the farm



Barn/poppy at the farm


I tried to make our eyes stand out...

Blake and Elizabeth

I also spent a day with Sarah on Tuesday. We braved the 110* heat index and went to the Colts camp at Anderson. We were dripping wet just standing and watching. We finally decided that we weren't that big of fans of the Colts, so we only stayed about an hour.

My footprints


Frog at Oliver Winery


Flower at the farm


Lilly at Oliver


Moon and sky after a storm


The hairy elephant I got to pet!



The flower on our table outside at brunch

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Zoo Wedding!

Craig's friend from college got married Friday evening. Their ceremony was held outside at the Botanical Gardens at the Indianapolis zoo and the reception was held in the dolphin area. It was an amazing wedding!


Elizabeth and Blake before the wedding, getting photos and greeting the guests with an elephant.

Men of the wedding party!

We got to take pictures and pet the elephant before the ceremony. How neat! The elephant actually felt pretty hairy!


Cutest usher ever! Craig escorting Grandma Jo to her seat.

The weather was perfect, low humidity and slightly cloudy, keeping everyone comfortable.
A few birds greeted us on our way out of the ceremony.

The dolphin area was so neat!

Beautiful place to hold a reception.

Blake and Elizabeth after the wedding, getting relaxed with some appetizers and drinks after their special day. They had an amazing wedding!