Nine to Phive: "All Creatures of Our God and King" (London, England)

Happy belated Travel Tuesday! I really just need to give in and make it Travel Wednesday . . .

Supposedly it's terrible blogging/photography/modeling/everything etiquette to include photos of multiple "poses" of the same thing when presenting a variety of photos publicly. They tell you to never include photos of the same outfit in a portfolio, no matter how different they may be in terms of angle, lighting, pose, etc.

Well, I've never been good at etiquette :-/

These photos of delightful critters at the London Zoo and Saint James Park are all so magnificent I couldn't possibly pick out just one photo of each beautiful beast! Part of why these pictures turned out so well is because they were taken with the childlike eye of my wonderfully creative husband Josh.

It's Josh's birthday today!

Happy birthday, sweetheart, and thank you for stopping time with me to capture the seemingly insignificant details of life's moments. I love sharing a hobby with you! Speaking of which, we're due for another photo shoot, don't you think?

Josh has taught me so much about enjoying life. He seems like such an amazingly balanced person to an over-achiever and over-committer like myself. He loves photography (between the two of us we have almost 5,000 photos from the past six months), but he loves to put the camera down and take in the moment with just our memories as well. He is extremely intelligent, but he still finds wonder in every day discoveries.

For example, the above zebra-giraffe-mule mashup known as an okapi was quite familiar to a veteran player of Zoo Tycoon such as myself. I remembered them not only from their unique appearance, but also because they are an endangered species that required a great deal of research and funds to procure in the computer game, and if you wanted to breed them--whew, that research program would keep you from your homework for days.

All this to say, while it was amazing to see the creatures in real life, my excitement paled in comparison to that of Josh who had never seen such a thing. I still remember the look in his eyes as he turned to me with his mouth ajar and said with disbelief, "Noooo . . ."

As in, "These things really exist????"

He snapped picture after picture of the okapis and their neighbors (the giraffes and zebras, of course). Sadly, I was too busy stewing over the fact that the camera battery was about to run out to appreciate his enthusiasm at the time.

Thank you, sweetheart, for keeping the innocence and excitement in our relationship even when I try to take life too seriously.

P.S. There's a freakin' huge pelican below the jump! So read on!!!!

Title is from the hymn by St. Francis of Assisi.