Friends, fireworks, and...outhouses?

 I think I'm starting to make a habit of posting pictures from holidays long gone.  First Easter, now Fourth of July.  At least it's still July.
But anyway, some friends and I went to the main fireworks event in Boise.  It's always held at Ann Morrison Park, and it's always packed.  Or so my friends say.  That was actually the first time I've been there since I was like, seven years old or so.  We've done some smaller fireworks in the past in our driveway, but they just weren't quite the same.  Except the sparklers.  Those are always fun no matter what.  What I'm trying to get at, though, is that seeing those huge fireworks light up the sky was absolutely magical.
Unfortunately, not everything went quite as planned.  We got there several hours early to get a good spot, which meant I had time to get a huge lemonade....and drink it all.  (Well, actually, I had a little help from Maggie, but it was still a lot to drink for me.)  So naturally, after about an hour, the privy was calling my name.  Being the kind friend she is, Ashley went with me because I had zero ideas of where I would find a bathroom.  Together, we located the outhouses.  However, by this time, the sky was shutting down for the night, and the only lights at that time were a couple of mini fireworks some kids were setting off.
And as we all know, outhouses don't have any form of light to speak of.
I was standing in line with Ashley, and as that fact occurred to me, I started thinking twice about stepping into an outhouse.  But what are phones for, right?  Finally, one of the outhouses opened up, and I stepped inside.  Paranoid as I am, I checked for toilet paper.  Ta-da, there was none.  So I stepped back outside, informed the next person in line that that particular toilet is lacking paper, and got into another line.  The next one that opened up apparently had....erm....an unmentionable substance all over the seat.  Definitely not taking that one.  Finally, a decent outhouse was available for me to use.  (Outhouses are terrible enough without having to worry about dropping your only light-source into their depths; luckily, I'm still in possession of mine today.)  But as I was in the midst of doing my business, I heard a bang.  And then a few more.  Are you kidding me right now??  Ashley confirmed my fears from outside: "Hurry up, Erica!  The fireworks are starting!"  And hurry up I did.
We started running back to where the rest of our friends were seated in the grass, but then had the realization that we really had no idea where that was.  So we were sprinting in the general direction of where they were, trying to avoid people, and watching the fireworks in the sky at the same time.  Kids, don't try this at home.  Thankfully, we didn't trample any hands or legs, and we spotted our friends.
The rest of the show was delightful, and I captured a few pictures to show for it.  So here's some pictures!

This is Amber, Ashely, me, and Katelyn.  Katelyn's boyfriend, Fancisco, and his sister, Fernanda are the ones behind us.

Same people, except now it's Maggie in the background.  Don't worry, she's not pouting because she's sitting behind all of us.  She's just being Maggie. :)  Although she does look pretty unhappy....

Ah...here she's having fun!  With Katelyn's amazing Superman cape that Velcros onto her shirt.  I found that absolutely fantastic.  I'm pretty sure I need one of those shirts.

Amber and Ashley being their awesome selves.

 Maggie being her oh-no-it's-a-camera-I-must-hide-my-face self.

 Francisco and Katelyn being dorks.

We decided it would be fun to all go under the blanket we brought.  Now that I think back on it, I have no idea why we did it.  We didn't stay under very long though.  It got hot and stuffy fast.  And we were probably annoying everyone around us.

This picture makes me chuckle.  I love getting funny expressions on camera :)

(That's Garrett, Aubrey, and Maggie.)

Fireworks!  I am still learning how camera stuff works, and shutter-speed is one of the things that I really need to get a hang of.  Most of the pictures I got of fireworks ended up all squiggly-like because the shutter speed was too slow.  But these ones didn't turn out too awful.

Is it just me, or does this resemble a dandelion?

This is one of my favorites.  It's a bit wonky, but it's probably the best one I got.

Mini explosion!

Have some faces, yeah?

(Katelyn and Ashley both have blogs of their own, too.  You should check them out. :)  Click here for Katelyn's, and click here and here for both of Ashley's.)

(By the way...if there's a picture with my face in it, it's probably because Francisco had my camera at the time.  In case you were wondering.)

Lights (Fact of my past self #1)

We all have those things we remember from when we were children.  They aren't necessarily specific events that happened, just part of who we were back then.  Well, I was going to put several of mine in one blog post, but then decided it would be easier for everyone if I just did one at a time.  (I don't know if you would agree with that, but my logic is sometimes a little off-kilter, so it makes sense to me.)  And because I like pictures so much, I am going to try to find a picture from my childhood that is relevant to the thing I'm talking about.  But it's more likely that I won't find one, so the post will be without a picture.  (I will try drawing pictures for the post if I can't find a photo, but if you don't see one, it means I gave up and scribbled all over my attempted drawing....so in other words, I can't promise anything.)

As a kid I never wanted to be up after my parents went to sleep.* I only stayed up reading in bed if my parents were still up.  My light was never the only one on.  Their bedroom is just across the hall from mine, and so I always kept my door open just enough so that I could check to see if their light was still on.  If I found that it wasn't, I shut my book and turned off my light not a second later.
I'm still unsure as to why I did that.  Was it a fear thing, perhaps?  I really have no clue.
*This does not apply to sleepovers.  If I spent the night at a friend's, I did not call my parents every 2 minutes to make sure they were still up.

Here a cat, there a cat...and...oh look, there's another cat

If you are one to be annoyed at people for posting pictures of cats on the internet, don't read this post.  Because I don't want you to be annoyed with me.  And I know this is kind of a ridiculous amount of pictures of a single cat, but I can't help myself.  Picking just a few pictures out of the multitude I have of Nikita is quite a task.  I hope my captions can compensate a wee bit at least.

Anyway, enjoy, or don't enjoy.  

(Oh yes, and just a quick side-note...or a top-note as the case may be...: I'm sorry for the quality of a few of the pictures.  These are pictures that I have taken over a long period of time, and some of them are pictures I've taken with my iPod, so they're a bit grainy and the lighting is terrible.  I hope you don't judge blogs on the quality of the pictures....)

Her beached whale look.

She likes variety when it comes to her beached whale look.

She hides her face a lot when she sleeps.

She's probably unconsciously trying to hide her maniacal grin as she dreams about taking over the world. 

See, you can almost see it there.  She's just killed off the entire dog population, and now she's moving on to humans.

Here she's completely smashed her face into the chair.  Probably to muffle her laughter as she's dreaming about sitting atop her throne looking down at all the dead bodies splayed out before her.

Okay, but at least she's cute when she's dreaming about taking over the world.

The does-it-look-like-I-care side of her: 

(this is the most frequently occurring personality of hers)

She demonstrates the "talk to the paw" very nicely.

Aaaaand.....she doesn't care.

She also doesn't care that she is ridiculously un-ladylike.

I'm keeping this if I ever need blackmail....

....But she doesn't care.....

....As she looks down upon her imaginary human slaves and spites them all.

And lastly, her rare innocent moments...

Being a cute, curious kitten.

Taking the form of a boulder works, too.

I don't know why, but she was so irresistibly cute and tiny looking that I had to snap a picture of her.  She was just sitting in the hallway looking at the floor, and for some reason it made her seem super itty-bitty. 

Typical cat...

If there is an empty shelf on a bookshelf, you will likely find Nikita there.  Unless it's one of the top shelves.  She's become so lazy over the years that she's forgotten how to use her legs.  They're only good for getting her from point A to point B and back again if point A involves somewhere to sleep and point B involves food.  Jumping and doing anything active not included.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to scroll through a bunch of pointless pictures of the same cat!  I apologize if I disturbed you for being so morbid at times.  But Nikita is not as lovely as she seems in these pictures.  Some of the things she does....it makes me wonder....

Another overload of blog stuff

I'm back for another lengthy post.  (A late, lengthy post, that is.)  This one also has to do with my trip to the beach, but these are pictures of the Newport Aquarium.  I unfortunately didn't get any good pictures of the seals or any of those die-of-cuteness-overload worthy animals, but I did get some pretty good pictures of other fascinating creatures that they have there.

Here we have the octopus.  It was surprisingly very active.  Well, I suppose I don't know if that's a surprising thing or not, but to me it was because I'm used to seeing animals at the zoo that are completely stationary.  So seeing this guy writhe around his home was quite fun.

And here, we have the....erm.....the octopus.  The same one.

Okay, last one of the octopus.  I was going to put them in a collage like I did in my last post, but......laziness got a hold of me.

A pair of pouty puffins.

I love how much the tanks look like the ocean with the sun rays streaming in.  It's gorgeous.

 Why do fish always look so forlorn? 

 I like taking pictures of people taking pictures of things.  (That would be my sister in the picture.)

 See?  Here we are again.  Kids, don't make this face or else you'll end up like these guys, and will have a frown on your face for the rest of eternity.  You know how your parents always tell you, "If you keep making that face, it's gonna stay like that."?  Well, I suggest you listen to them.

This is about the only none-blurry picture I got of the sharks.  They had things to do, places to be, and they had no intention of stopping to smile at the cameras.

This is a Japanese Spider Crab.  They can grow up to be 4 meters (about 13 feet) long.  This one was just a young'un, though, and he was relatively small.  They had a mural on the wall next to its tank of a full-size one that showed how big they can get.  It gave me the heebie-jeebies.  One more reason I do not want to go in the ocean anywhere.

Such an adorable itty bitty squid!  He was in the Japanese Spider Crab's tank for some reason.  Hopefully not for food, though.  He was too cute for food.  And he just sat there.  Looking cute.

I took about 50 pictures of this fish, and this one was really the only one that came out clear for the most part.  He would not stand still.  Or swim still.  Or float still.  Or whatever fish do when they aren't moving.  Anyway, I like him because of how orange he was.  He stood out from everything else in his tank.

And we can't forget the jellyfish.  They're just too cool to forget.

And more jellyfish!  Yes, their tank is really that blue.  I'm not sure why, but it looks cool.  Maybe that's the only reason they needed.  Coolness. 

Random little fish that needed a picture.

Whenever I see urchins, I think of Freddi Fish.  You know, that video game that you used to play when you were little?  With that yellow and orange fish and her little green and white brother, Luther?  No?  Well, then you didn't have a childhood.

Anyhoo, it reminds me of that game because, unless that part of my memory has failed me already, they always had to collect little purple sea urchins.  At least in one of the games.

 Not really sure what you call these things, but they were nice to look at, so I took a picture of them.

And another one.

I'm running out of things to say that are interesting to read.  But here's a hermit crab.

 Don't know what these are either.  But they looked nifty.  And creepy.

 I don't know if you can tell, but that's a fish....that's small....and it's looking at the camera.  So therefore it's cute.

True love.....starfish style.

I just thought this was a cool picture, so I decided to share it.

Ditto.

Because I have nothing to say about this picture.

And the sand dollars.  (I shouldn't admit this to the Internet world where everyone can laugh at my ignorance, but I feel like I should be honest with you and say that I didn't know before this trip that sand dollars were black and fuzzy.  Whodathunkit?)

Farewell, my friends, and have a lovely weekend!