Poor pinning, and some really cool bugs

I made my first insect collection in fifth grade, and have been keeping it in my closet at home. I was considering having my mom mail some of it to me, until I realized that everything was pretty badly pinned, and I didn't really have that much interesting stuff anyways (the shiny green beetles are pretty cool, but I forgot to label them...). Anyways, my mom graciously took pictures of my bugs, so here they are.

I originally had all of these pinned to a piece of cardboard in a plastic pencil box, until my granddad gave me this snazzy box.

Hopefully my pinning skills have improved since fifth grade...

My mom also sent me some pictures of my granddaddy's collection, most of which has ended up in a museum at this point. My granddad wasn't an entomologist, but he was a chemistry professor who loved collecting insects (as well as minerals and stamps and African art. And cacti.). He taught at UCSB but was able to get crazy-awesome teaching gigs in other countries, and subsequently traveled all around the world when my mom was young. They lived in Malaysia for a year when my mom was eleven, and in Liberia for a year when she was sixteen. My mom spent a lot of her childhood holding a butterfly net and running around the jungle with my granddad. I guess some are luckier than others...

So here are some pictures of just a tiny portion of his collection. I tried to add captions, but I couldn't come up with unique things to say for each picture. All I could think was These. Are. So. Cool.