Final showers, a hobo party, and a new camera

Vivian and I are going to be childless for only a few more weeks as the baby countdown is well underway. Vivian's had a number of showers up to this point, one most recently at our church at Twin Valley. It's all very overwhelming, since we both have such generous friends and co-workers. We have enough diapers and baby wipes to last us well into our child's teenage years.

We've still managed to have some fall fun with our friends as well. Our friend Tamra threw an impromptu "hobo party," which involved eating chili out of tin cans and trying to figure out how to have a fire inside a large boat shed while the wind was howling outside (too much to keep a fire going). Joining Second-Hand Matt and Sassy Pants Vivian were Grubby Heather, Goofy Jenny, Wild eyed Lou, Two-Tooth Tamra, Cardboard Mark, Jon, Heather Amanda and a couple others whose hobo names I can't remember. Mark broke out the guitar at some point to strum through some sheet music from the 70s and we spent a couple hours of hammerschlagen before retreating inside to watch MST3K (the Deadly Bees).

You might notice the pictures above are a slightly slightly different dimension than my other photos on this post. That's because Vivian and I finally broke down and bought our dream camera — Canon Rebel T2i DLSR. Our excuse was to be able to take some beautiful baby pictures once our bundle of joy arrives, but it also works beautifully taking snapshots at Jitterbugs Night Out or just eating pizza with the Stubbs for Deena's birthday. The nice, big lens makes it easy to get sharp photos of action on the dance floor with those horrible dust globes swarming around.

This new camera actually brings back memories of using my dad's old Nikon film camera for my photography class. It was always so much easier to get beautiful pictures using a "real" lens and film that I could with a tiny point-and-shoot camera. Vivian and I broke in the camera over the weekend traveling around Omaha and taking a few nice, high-quality pictures of landmarks that had entries on Wikipedia and no decent pictures to go with them (such as the Sokol Auditorium, the Bohemian Cafe, the Saddle Creek overpass, and the Joel N. Cornish House in the old gold coast district). It's already proven be useful getting pictures of our pastor's family (for a Christmas photo) and some last-minute baby belly pictures with Vivian before our inevitable due date.

The next entry you read here will likely be about our new bundle of joy, so stay tuned. Our original ETA is November 30, but just about anything could happen between now and then.