On the trestle with a train

We took a weekend trip to Letchworth State Park with the Math and Science Club and headed up to the railroad trestle. When I heard the train whistle blow, I ran off the bridge, but Doug and some others stayed on with the train.

Rock Star

A while back we had a Rock Band, chocolate cake and sausage party with our young adult group. We discussed wearing costumes so we would be like rock stars, but only some of us (read: the Grahams) took this idea seriously enough to carry it out....Doug is on call tonight and is still at work and has 2 cases to go so he can't prevent me from posting this rock star photo ;)!

Young buck

My aunt said when we moved here that we would grow to hate the derr, but I don't feel like I do yet even though they do like to munch on all things green. I watched this spike eat our tree for awhile until Daru scared him away.

Hiking the M

The University of Montana is the only college with a mountain on campus so they put a big concrete M in the middle of it, you can hike to it and then buy a t-shirt that says "I hiked the M" though I suppose they would not prevent you from buying the t-shirt even if you didn't hike it. Last summer, some kids had started a fire near the M so we couldn't hike it because the trail was closed, so we finally had this experience this year. Here you see part of the M and part of Missoula.

The Pinata

We tried in vain to break the pinata with a frisbee but ended up resorting to the field hockey stick method.

See we were there!

Doug and I were a little underdressed for the event...

Where did May go?

We had a crazy busy May with lots of travel adventures and family activities and fun. In the middle of May we headed for Rebekah's graduation with a PhD in mathematics. While our airline adventures (don't travel with us!) did not allow us to actually make it to the graduation, we arrived right after it was over and recreated it to simulate the experience minus the speakers and all the other graduates.

Everything's coming up lilacs

This week marks the beginning of the festival season in Rochester with the most famous festival- the Lilac Festival in Highland Park. We took a picnic there to see the lilacs, and I must admit I was impressed by the variety of types and colors.

Wiscoy Creek

We got to visit Wiscoy on our way back from Houghton last weekend. If the water were warmer, we would have gone in, but we did hike/crawl all the way up to the dam at the top.

A Perilous Journey

This ant ventured across the bunny ear cactus which is pricklier than it looks...if you touch it at least!

More Lamberton

Doug thinks this should be called string of peas....

14 oz.

After hours and days of boiling, we think we have about 14 oz of syrup that is passable as actual maple syrup. These photos are from the first batch and beginning of the second.

Lamberton Conservatory

Doug and I visited Lamberton Conservatory in Highland Park a few weeks ago so I could prepare for an upcoming field trip. I really liked the desert room. I learned that cactus spines are actually modified leaves and serve not only as protection from being eaten but also as sun protection (for some cacti that have a million spines). Here you see a Golden Barrel Cactus in the upper left, a Bunny Ear Cactus in the lower left and I don't remember the other 2 kinds!
Side note: if you google Lamberton Conservatory, Neil Cowley's website comes up as the 5th entry I think (we went to college with Neil).

A Lucky Dog

Daru had a run-in with some object in the woods last weekend and had to go to the vet for surgery. In the bottom left, she is recovering from the surgery. The top left shows some of her shaved chest and leg (for the IV) and the right side shows Daru in her day wear. She has to wear the lamp shade and shoes to keep from scratching her stitches out. The vet said she was a lucky dog since there were no major organ injuries.

I love seahorses

The Monterey Aquarium is opening a new exhibit on seahorses on April, 6th so Dawn and Nate will have to enjoy it for us, but we did get to ses a couple of different kinds of seahorses in their regular exhibits. Doug took this photo.

Not a great photo

But it has a better story! This is a female octopus with her eggs. Before we got there, she had left the eggs unattended and an unsuspecting starfish was climbing the window toward them (to eat them?). The mother octopus (though they don't think the eggs are fertile) jetted over, pried the starfishes arms off the window with her tentacles and threw it on the ground. I wish I had seen it!

Crab and more

I can't remember what kind of crab this is, but it is pretty scary looking (or it would be if it were larger!). We were really interested in the decorator crabs we saw, but we didn't get any pictures of them.

Monterey Bay

These are some facebook rejects- Andrew psots his blog rejects on fb and I post my fb rejects on my blog...

Meterology

We visited the Rochester Museum and Science Center when my family came at Christmas. Here Ryan practices weather forecasting for some weather incident that I don't remember. You could e-mail the video of your forecast to someone. We were entertained by ourselves.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Daru loves snow and won't come inside even when it looks like this!