1 down, 8 to go....

This is Doug's house that he stayed in for his first rotation. Thankfully his second rotation fell through and he will now be staying home for his second rotation! Unfortunately he was completely spoiled in his surgery rotation, free food all the time and they gave him scrubs. His 2nd rotation will not be so luxurious since he will be living at home =)!

  

Bumper boats

Need I say more?

  

Oldest and youngest

Stephen and Matthew in a tree...

  

The White Coat

Here is Doug getting "coated". The coater was one of his profs- I can't remember what he taught. He is actually not wearing his coat in his first rotation, but he probably will in his next one.

  

The Graham Fam

All of Doug's immediate family in front of the castle....


  

The bride and groom

So I realized that I have no pictures of Dawn and Nathan from the front-oops! So here they are with Mom G.


  

the three amigos

The Friday after Dawn's wedding Doug had a white coat ceremony. After the didactic year, they have a ceremony for the students before sending them out on rotations. It was a nice ceremony though a little surreal. This is Doug with his two study buddies Adam on the left and Mark on the right.


  

Flower girl/ringbearer

We think for Becca it was love at first sight....

  

Doug- pay attention!

Sarah took a great picture of Doug as a groomsman...

  

The barge

This giant orange barge went by the wedding during a prayer. We decided that only Shan (the pastor) had his eyes closed during it....

  

The castle

Doug's youngest sister Dawn got married to Nathan on July 29th at Singer Castle in the 1000 Islands, NY. Here his oldest sister poses for her daughter Sarah to take a picture with the castle in the background. It was a beautiful day despite some early clouds.....

  

A dog nap

Daru was sleeping with her teddy bear which she has ripped the head and several legs off of and pulled all the stuffing out of. Kina likes to play with the empty legs. It is kind of weird. The teddy bear empty head is in our backyard. One day Matt and Gaby came over and the head was laying on the patio. Matt was a little creeped out by it.


  

Before and After

Here are the before and after pics of the first color in the living room- I forgot to take afters of the second color....


  

Up but not down

When I painted the living room a month ago, I foolishly taught Kina to climb the ladder. Siamese cats are supposed to like being up high and hs e does like to hang out on the mantle when she can get there. Although this picture seems to make it seem like she did, she did not like coming down the ladder, so when she wanted to come down, she would cry.

School starts tomorrow. As in the kids are coming. Sigh! Doug is with his family in NY for the week. He took the camera.

  

Wedding #2

My best friend from high school, Mandy, got married in State College the weekend after Mindy got married. She and Jeff had a nice outdoor wedding despite the threatening clouds. I was glad to be there, and Rebekah was a nice stand-in for Doug.

  

High Falls

High Falls is the first of 3 (or last depending on your direction) waterfalls along the Gennesee River in Rochester. It is the largest of the 3, standing almost 100 feet. We visited the Visitor's Center as well and learned a lot about Rochester. One piece of trivia- French's mustard was invented there.

  

Oh deer!

We visited High Falls in downtown Rochester with my family (picture tomorrow). While we were looking at the falls, we saw a turkey (not a peacock) and then a deer ran across the field in the gorge. While we were marveling at the deer, two fawns came out of the woods and started nursing. Right in the middle of downtown Rochester! It was amazing. I love how both of the fawns have their white tails up.


  

Pancakes for breakfast

After Cedar Point, my mom, my sister and I drove up to Rochester to see Robin and Steve and Matthew and took a detour thorugh Houghton to see campus. Matthew has grown so much since Christmas! He is very verbal and learns really quickly. He helped to make our breakfast Thursday morning. I am weeks behind on these pictures- this was the 12-13th of July!


  

The highest fastest roller coaster in the world....

Though the picture does not do it justice nor have any redeeming artistic value, you are looking at the fastest and highest roller coaster in the world. In the center of the frame you see an upside down U. That is the Top Thrill Dragster. Yes, the name is cheesy, but the ride is unbeaten. My family went to Cedar Point in Sandusky OH after Mindy's wedding. Cedar Point is a roller coaster enthusiast's dream come true- 16 roller coasters including three that have at some point been the highest and fastest coasters. We went for the highest first and worked our way down. Top Thrill Dragster, henceforth known as TTD, is hard to describe because it is not like any other roller coaster you have seen. You are strapped into a dragster and sent forward to the Christmas tree of lights (this may be familiar to NASCAR fans or other racing fans). When the lights say go, and it is a terrifying wait since you know what is going to happen to you, the train is hydraulically shot from 0 mph to 120 mph in like 3 seconds. Yes, you read that right 120 mph! You go up 420 feet at a 90 degree angle with a 270 degree twist. The signs talking about the ride warn that sometimes the train does not make it to the apex and not to panic, you will just return to your starting position. Rebekah and I were not sure that was reassuring- going down 90 degrees backwards....When you reach the 420 foot apex, which we did with no trouble, you see Lake Erie briefly before you head down at 90 degrees with a 450 degree turn. I apologize to Cedar Point for my initial skepticism that a 30 second ride could be that exciting. It was. My mom said they should send you around twice. I am apparently wussier than my mom, because when I got off I was shaking. A lot. I am not sure I would have made it around twice. The website has some point of view videos of the different coasters. It does not do this ride justice. After this one, the rest were only okay. There were several others we liked and did not like, but the TTD was wild.

The 2 other biggies got mixed reviews from the fam. Wicked Twister (my dad had stopped riding rides by this point because of his torn and bruised hamstring- not a good idea to injure your self on your posterior end before riding on roller coasters) was good. Rebekah and I almost blacked out on Millenium Force which has a 300-something foot drop. Too many Gs I guess. We did like the Raptor a lot- our last ride of the day before hitting the road for PA.

  

Mystery man

A mysterious shot of Andrew taken by ????
Andrew is the only Houghton friend we actually got a picture of at the wedding (except some balcony shots or their heads).....someone needs to e-mail us some!