Taking Valerie for Brunch

This weekend, we also took my niece, Valerie, and her family out to brunch at a local diner in Minnesota:



Unfortunately, no food was available for her, so she made a grab for my French Toast:


Taking this away from her was not a good plan:


Finally, a shot of everyone:


Thanks to Kristine, Jim and Valerie for having us for such a fun weekend...

Minnesota for Memorial Day

We're visiting Minnesota for Memorial Day weekend, to see Jim, Kristine and Valerie. Valerie has grown a lot since we last saw her at Thanksgiving:



She can sit up now and play games, although seems quite intent on games a little above her level.



We also took her too the zoo to see the bears, which luckily were behind a thick wall of glass:



Finally, Sarah and me took a visit to the Mall of America, and found the coolest Lego Store ever:

Walking Adventures

A busy couple of weeks, with friends visiting and Spring arriving. We've also been exploring further north of where we live, visiting Sugarloaf Mountain and doing a nice walk around the summit:

This weekend, we headed out to Gambrill State park (also north of us), and foolishly took the walking trail labelled 'Black'. There was a beautiful view from the top of the mountain, and the trail had a strange habit of veering up and down the mountain, making our legs quite sore...

Much relief was had at reaching the end of the walk:

Today am sheltering inside from the heat, and doing odd-jobs in our house.

Spring!

A nice Spring week, and a photo from on my run today:




Plant doing well, except for my weed transplant experiment....

For Science

This year, we begin the second phase of our experiment with gardening. Also, we have the knowledge gained from last years experiments, including a requirement for extra sunlight than was provided by our balcony at our apartment.

In order to provide more sunlight, we purchased a new house supplied with a larger deck and a greater degree of sun coverage. To test the requirement of plants for sunlight, we have planted some new plants, as shown below:










Further, for science, I set up a water measurement station, and attempted to transplant some native plants into it (as we had run out of plants by this stage). Sarah said the plants were weeds, but they looked remarkably similar to the ones I studied during my PhD...




We will see how our experiment progresses.

Skyline Drive

This weekend it was beautiful weather, so we decided to take a trip to Skyline drive, an hour west of DC.

The scenery was amazing, and it was really cool that as we went higher into the mountains, the trees were less and less green. We tried to capture this in the photo below:

We also went on a hike through the forest, near the Appalachian trial.

Eventually, I found a wall and was able to get a good view:

It was good to get out into the fresh air. The weather is perfect for this. Its good running weather, not too hot and not too cold.

Today, we baked some cookies, and will watch the playoff's tonight on TV...