it's okay, i'm an outdoorsy girl

For the past few years, my birthday has really sucked. I've spent the last few birthdays home alone. Last year, my presents from Ryan (besides a globe) were stuff that I decided I didn't want during our shopping trip the week before. Oh heavens. It's just been bad news bears for a while. I used to really love love loooove my birthday, but now it's kind of like "meh." And it's not that whole "getting older so it doesn't matter anymore" thing, it's just that I know it'll be another day. So I don't really look forward to it.

This year, Ryan was determined to make my birthday not sucky.  He planned and planned and planned and bought my present several weeks in advance. And gave me NO HINTS whatsoever. Maybe because I always guess what he gets me. Which I don't think I should be punished for; I can't help it he gives the most obvious hints ever. But that's besides the point. He made me feel super special.

For my birthday present, he bought me a lot of vintage cameras from Ebay.

It was so much fun pulling them out one by one and seeing what beauty was tucked under all that packing paper. These were some of my favorites:

I'm really hoping that movie camera (bottom left) works, cause I'm loving it. But I don't even know how to begin testing it. And I'll probably try and use that Polaroid 210 (bottom right.) It needs to be modified to fit a size of battery that is still sold today, but once I do that, the film for it is super cheap. So...that rocks. (Assuming it works, of course) And the top two Brownies are just cute/cool looking, so I'll keep those. There were a lot of Kodak instamatic-esque cameras in there, so I definitely won't be keeping all of my loot...but that doesn't even matter because Ryan only bought the lot for one camera.
One shining treasure.
One beautiful piece of photographic machinery.
Yes, you guessed it.
The Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera.

It's seriously so beautiful. I love it to pieces. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. BUT, we found someone to fix it for us. And the price of all those cameras+SX70+getting it fixed is about equal or less than buying a tested (meaning it definitely works) one. So no biggie. Just that I have to wait a bit longer until I can use it.
It's kind of killing me inside.
I was super impressed with Ryan because when he bought this I had only briefly mentioned in a conversation that I wanted this camera. And then after he had already bought my present, I really started talking about it a lot. Not only did he buy me an awesome present without me dropping tons of hints, but he also kept his mouth shut that he already had one for me when I started really obsessing over them!

As if this wasn't enough, Rye also planned a little camping trip! We headed up north and camped for a night by the Delaware River. We got some new camping gear for Christmas this year, so it was nice to finally get to use it.

Drake isn't always the best at posing.

We were right on the river. It was BEAUTIFUL. (I took my most favorite polaroid picture to date there, but you'll have to wait to see that.) And Drake looooved it! As soon as we got there he jumped out of the car and just ran around like a psycho. And then he jumped in the river and swam for over an hour. Ryan was so proud of our little swimmer. He has always hoped that Drake would love swimming and this trip proved that to be true.

It's surprisingly difficult to get a good picture of a dog swimming

There were several waterfalls in the area, so we went on 2 different hikes and got to see 3 waterfalls.
And I took a whole bunch of pictures. And had really terribly frizzy hair. But it's okay, I'm an outdoorsy girl now. So stuff like that doesn't bother me. You know how it is.

We had a blast and are so looking forward to our next camping trip!
Thanks for planning a "Birthday Extraveganza" for me, Ryan! I had so much fun and felt so treasured!

Haha. We look awesome. But oh yeah, I don't care about that. I'm outdoorsy now.