Haven't had one in a long time

This weekend, it was the girls' turn to go camping with my in-laws at Jellystone Park in Sturbridge, MA. This time, mom and dad took 5 girls - Caitlin, Meghan, Samantha, Angelica and Melody. At least the weather turned out nice. If you don't live in New England...this had been a very soggy summer since mid-July til now. I think we're in a stretch of good weather - cross your fingers that it's just like it was yesterday - low 80's and sunny, no humidity - for my Tastefully Simple gathering next weekend. If you're coming, please bring your own outdoor chair.
Anyway, it was just Dylan, Adam and me until later today....the girls will be home sometime late morning. Dylan stayed with me at work a few hours on Friday night where he cashed in his piggy bank - $58.60...(some of it was the change in my purse that I hadn't put in the can we keep loose change in). He treated us on our date after work to ChuckE.Cheese (where a kid can be a kid).

After I got home from work yesterday, the 3 of us took off to the Museum of Science in Boston, MA. The last time we visited my parents in NYC, my dad bought the grandkids a membership to the NY Hall of Science. Their membership program extends to over a hundred different museums around the country including our own Museum of Science in Boston. So we got in for free. But we did have to pay full price for the Butterfly Garden. I took some pretty good photos there including these (I edited this down a little - just added some vignetting):
A blue morpho butterfly - besides the orange and black striped monarchs, I can't really identify what kind of butterflies they are - all I know is that they are pretty.
In this picture, one butterfly is still (the more focused one) while the other one is flying (the blurry one) The blur infers motion - sometimes, you want it - like in that picture. These butterflies were next to a sign that said if you find 2 stuck together they were mating. That bottom one tried to get some but didn't get any - in this picture, he was still trying.
One of this butterfly's wings was in focus while the other one wasn't. I can't remember if it just landed or if it was starting to take off but again, the blur infers motion. Let me rephrase:
you can tell if your blur is caused by you or your subject.

If your whole shot is blurry, either you moved (or I should say, the camera moved) or you took the photo OOF. If just a portion of your shot is blurry, chances are your subject moved. This is not applicable, if you took a picture blurring out the background, because sometimes you want that. In each of the pictures above, my background is blurry...I want that so we can all focus on the butterfly, but that blur adds to the photo because it gives you part of the story that the photo is trying to tell - in this case, what a butterfly would look like in it's natural habitat.
There are different kinds of blur - there is blur that infers motion which when it happens, you can kinda see where movement began until when you snapped the photo. There is background blur (done by adjusting your depth of field - aperature). Adjusting your depth of field can also blur your subject and make your background focused. We can get into this later.

In the butterfly garden, you can walk freely among loose butterflies (thankfully they don't land on the floor - that could be tragic). This one blue morpho butterfly loved Dylan:
This was on the way out. This butterfly loved him, landing on him 3 times before he took off. You should have seen the lady behind Adam who saw it land on him - I think she didn't like bugs too much. There's a mirror at the end of the garden that you use to check for hitchhikers and this shot was taken right in front of that mirror. This photo I did not edit - I will try later though to lighten up the background behind the butterfly to see him better.

Let me just say, I haven't had just one child in a very long time. And while it was nice, it was only ok because I'll have them all later today (and want to rip every hair out of my head after). We took a picture at the Museum of Science in the their Baseball as America exhibit - we were up against a green screen and then they replace the background with some scenery. Even though it was the best picture taken of me since 2003, Adam couldn't get it - two people missing from the photo. And while I totally dig that, I still wanted the picture....goodness, even Dylan had a decent smile in it. Of course, at that moment, I realized that I missed the girls - and like many moments, many times a day, I knew - I wouldn't want to have just one, or even two for that matter. I need all three and I couldn't have it any other way.