Snapshots with Stories

Hello! Ann again; we wanted to switch it up some to change up the content now and again, just to make it a little more interesting. This week, I’m going to focus less on where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing, and make it more about the quick captures I take of our adventures instead:)

First, I’ll start by stating some of the places we explored while in Alabama: Huntsville and Birmingham. Let me just say that the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville is INCREDIBLE. It is so kid friendly and we had a blast walking through and soaking up all of the rich history from the space age. Made me totally ditch the idea of using Mom’s phone and had me constantly whipping out my camera!

These guys had a blast with pretty much everything in that building! I took so many photos during this trip, but when I was uploading them all to my computer, I noticed a pattern with all the shots of Matthew… When he concentrates on something long enough, he makes this pucker/chewing my lip face, and it’s the cutest thing! Comment if you agree:) These pics were completely candid, and he has almost the exact face in each one. I thought it was adorable, but don’t tell him I said so!

Benji wanted his big sis to take a picture of him in the capsule so badly. She finally gave in and was rewarded with this adorable shot!

The Huntsville Space and Rocket Center was super kid friendly, and had lots of hands on exhibits. If you have a D.C. type museum in mind-not even close. It still had a lot of reading, but it was perfectly balanced with the stuff for kids! They had a Mars themed climbing wall, and the boys totally rocked it! *pun intended* I would’ve totally done it, if my foot had been ship shape. Emi was chicken; she didn’t want to climb if I wasn’t:) You may have noticed that I didn’t really get too many pics with Emily in them…well, she wasn’t inclined to have her picture taken on this special day, she wanted it to be about Benji. Happy 7th birthday big guy!

About a week later, while we were in the Magic City (Birmingham) we decided to take a little field trip. Dad was at work, so what better time to go explore the city some, right? Well, we landed at Sloss Furnace, and that was the exact opposite of little. The place was MASSIVE. Being that it was an extremely historic landmark, and that it would give me a great chance to take some industrial photography, this was probably my favorite part of Birmingham.

Right as I was taking this picture something unbearable happened…

Okay, maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but I really couldn’t believe it… My camera battery sign flashed red and my card was full!!! Mom decided to surprise us with this trip, so I couldn’t prepare!

We were only halfway through the self guided tour, so I frantically had to delete a bunch of over-exposed pictures, and hope I wouldn’t corrupt my card. As for the battery, I started taking fewer pictures and hoped for the best. It was amazing that this one turned out, because at this point, I was panicking. It was really cool though; we were in a warehouse, and I looked out the window and thought “That would be such an awesome photo!”, then the chaos began!

These two are shots of alleys that were riddled throughout the place. They were definitely significant at one time, but that day, they were there solely for the purpose of us losing at least one family member every five minutes! The first picture, though, was an underground railway used to transport the iron to the furnace. We found an opening, and went right down. There was a bunch of rickety, cool bridges that freaked Mom out, but it was completely open. Further down, we found a staircase that led to the exit, so obviously, that’s what we used to get out. Except, it was gated at the top! Thankfully we could get over; it was only as high as our waistline (mysteriously, the boys were experts at climbing over), and we could resume our walk. Mom went nuts. “How do we know that it was safe to go down there?” “What if it wasn’t okay and they just forgot to gate the entrance?!” “I’m sure if it was that important, they would be more careful and check the gates.” “It was probably fine.” She was hilarious, and I’m proud to say we all were fine and survived our trekk underground!