My Last Christmas Update:
We finally got our tree 4 days before leaving town. Each year we go to a U-cut farm and wonder around. This year we basically got out of the car in the Douglas Fur area and said "that one". Once home we put in Rudolf The Red Nose Raindeer (claymation classic version) and proceeded to only get the lights on the tree and a few ornaments out of the boxes before we got tired, lol. This year we'll be home and I play on decking out the house.
When I got married there were holiday traditions to be incorporated into what i understood the routine of them to be. Christmas my husband's family has the tradition of everyone picking out a new ornament - in a family of 7 that's a lot of ornaments - we continued the tradition. The skiing pine cone man is his and mine is the snowflake (i have a thing for them). This year we did add a new twist of purchased a joint ornament at the Dallas World Aquarium, the little turtle, which i'm happy about becuase i really like turtles and wouldn't mind owning one someday.
The penguins are cute but wow that area smells horrible! It is even outdoors and they do have heated water for the cooler temps.
My flamingo shots were at the beginning of the trip and i was having issues with low light and blurred photos. There was this tree that had the hot pink spiky flowers, i had to wait my turn to get close enough to shoot a few blooms. I'm proud of the bird shot because I was using the manual photos(new to me) and got the camera to focus on the birds and not the fence like it wanted.
It was exciting to see the river otters because they haven't been on display in about a year, not sure why. The turtles featured here live in the huge pond in the aquarium. The way its built there is a glass window a few feet from the surface on a lower level of the building. There are also two manatee in the pond but they were not at our end and we wanted to move on. I did notice on this trip (it being my 4th) that I payed attention to the smaller stuff.
The first two pictures (L to R) are baby crocodiles that will grow into the size of the croc featured in the last photo. That is actually their mom and I was able to get her picture from the walk way above her area. There is a male but he was hiding in a cave that is underneath this island thing in the middle of their pool.
If you're ever in Dallas I highly recommend going!
I've had lots of issues with low light situations with out using the flash. It's annoying when 50% of the time the shaky hand icon comes on screen. The camera does allow for manual change of the ISO and shutter speed but then i run into the issue of grainy shots and digitally grain does not look good. I'm not above saying it's user error half the time but even if with help from my photographer husband it's hard getting good shots in low light.
I'm looking to get the Canon Power Shot SX10 IS - it's bigger but has 20x optical zoom and an image stabilizer system which i'm hoping will correct for the formally mentioned problems. Thinking that i'd keep the A360 in my purse but take the SX10 for when i know i'm headed to big events - party, ocean, aquariums/zoo - things like that. 
