All I want for Christmas...

... is my two front teeth!



Happy first day of High School Paige!!!

Fun with lamprey

So I brought home a lamprey from work to show the girls these cool little fish. They are kind of like a little eel but have a sucker disk with all these little hooks and teeth which they use to attach to other fish and scrape a little hole to feed on. At work, its a dare to let them attach to you to see how long you can stand it.

 

Our baby robins hatched

Our baby robins in the nest by our back door are hatching. Aren't they cute?

Our robin laid her eggs

We had a robin build a nest outside of our back door on our light fixture. She finally laid her eggs yesterday. We have to be careful going out the door so we don't scare her but she has been pretty good about not flying off when we walk by.

Get out and move!

Up to 221 miles on my bicycling commute to and from work this year. Goal: 1000 miles by then end of the year, and considering spring in the Klamath Basin hasn't even arrived yet, winter should be three months late too, right?

I love to ride in the snow ...

... with a 30 mph head wind.

Our baby geese hatched!

Look, the baby geese down at the duck pond at the end of our street hatched out yesterday. For the past two weeks we would stop at the stop sign and make sure the momma goose was still sitting on her nest. Seven new little goslings.

If a hamster can do it...

Just cleared 100 miles for the year riding my bike to work and back.

Happy Easter

This is our Easter nativity

and the Last Supper

Madison and Avery slept out in the front room

thinking they could catch the Easter bunny

counting the loot

Everyone's favorite was the Toxic Waste sour candies

Paige gagging on the Toxic Waste

Hope you had as much fun with your Peep as we

did with ours!

See the Klamath Falls:

Here are the Klamath Falls at about 3500 cfs.

crgllswrth.blogspot.com

YeeHaw!! Check out our new horse!

So that's grandpa's saddle, Avery's stick horse

complete with horsey sound effects, and a

Home Depot sawhorse.

see more posts at crgllswrth.blogspot.com

New paint job for the kitchen

Here are some photos of the new paint job

and sliding glass door in the kitchen.

I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

Spring is here... somewhere.

The pelicans are back in the basin, that means spring is supposed to be here, right? Here's a picture I took of the pelican rookery on Clear Lake-- the lake we fly every week looking for the radio tagged fish we released last fall. Spring, spring, spring, rode the motorcycle today, supposed to be 63 tomorrow, go pelicans!

Crater Lake ski trip

Paige.... be nice to your sister!

Avalanche!!!

Avery the ski bunny 

Oops, looks like we lost one 

Yep, she's gone 

Here's Madison doing a backflip

off the road cut. 

Your turn Avery 

Paige and Madison made a cool little

ice cave in the side of the road cut. 

Crater Lake ski patrol weekend

 Here are some photos from ski patrol up at Crater Lake this past weekend

Ski out to the Crater Peak trailhead 

 This is a photo from the second floor balcony of the ski patrol house--

looking up at the snow drifts

 Cleaning out the webcam window in the Admin building-- Click the link below to see what a good job we did.
http://www.nps.gov/pwr/customcf/apps/webcam/dsp_image.cfm?webCamURL=http://www.nps.gov/webcams-crla/cameraHQ.jpg&refreshRate=240&title=6D869197A0DEB9764FDA29889F0AFD5C439CBD7389&width=1024&height=800&altText=49979691AD938A6D5D93348A8C1EB83F4786E95589AFD8AB85EF3E9BB202C97AC6FEDB96D9AD920CC587181795DEB49E894EBC41&description=689B9185ECAD9B7A59DF7DB1840AB46B4980BA36B8ABC2BA92BD529BB703C961D7FADA8B8C9A890BC9810445878C929AC712BC5F520ACD929A49A1DCEF20E8CC8113DED9DC8D8E83FCAFCAAA9C95C7AF5E9D90BB9B80BAD9B0BFA0B97B99EFDA405EF06EFCD0C69781AA0B40D4BA97E0CEBEEF8316B0A295BFBC3BB606BE15D9A49D814B5259C6A3A03CA19A475A010212CC29BEB7CAB89DEBE9BCB8F0C78DDC835648BD758A965BA8DD946AE94AEF4C9EA7BFAD8B5A158E9159EE9EF91BDB56205DB839928035&asPopup=1&0.6644598504657407

The rotery cleaning the parking lot

Resetting trail markers in three feet of new powder

My Chaco plug

Let me tell you how much I love my Chaco sandals. But last summer on my Grand Canyon trip the soles separated from the foot beds and by the end of the trip the duct tape/superglue/gorilla glue patch job had made them pretty ratty looking. So I sent them into Chaco still covered in glue and sand asking if they could reattach the soles, and while they were at it if they could put a different sole on with better traction. And they did, plus replace all the webbing because I had gotten glue all over them. Basically a new pair of sandals minus the splotches of glue embedded with Grand Canyon sand and grit (but that's a war-wound souvenir). Thanks Chaco.

Avery's butterfly

Last summer, I think it was about middle of August, the girls found a caterpillar in the garden and Avery, loving all things crawly, set up a caterpillar jar to keep it in. After about a week it turned into a chrysalis and we waited and waited for the butterfly to come out. By the end of November we thought it had died and so we emptied the jar and put the chrysalis up on a shelf and kind of forgot about it. Then last night as I was getting ready to go to bed, this big swallow-tail butterfly sails by my head. This morning I woke up Avery and showed it to her, and half asleep she asked where did it come from, did I leave me window open or my door open? I then told her it was her caterpillar from last year and her eyes got wide open and she took a deep breath and was so excited. Now we just need to find some flowers to keep it going until spring.