Guess What?

I'M PREGNANT!

Are you surprised? haha

I guess it's possible there are people who check this blog that don't know...

Pictures for posterity's sake...

14 w 3 d

16 w 6 d

Trip part 5

We drove down to Tucson and stayed at Bonk and Kebbo's house with their two cheeky sons. By this point both Little and Littler were getting a bit bewildered by all of the cousins on the trip, but they had a lot of fun learning how to play Wii with Icklefattikins and Noer.

Our first day in Tucson we drove to one of our favorite birding/exploring areas: Sonoita creek, near Patagonia [AZ]. It was pretty dang hot, the birds were all hunkered down, and we were all quite tired by this point, so we--you guessed it--just played around in the water for a bit. Sonoita creek is pretty much the archetype desert-oasis thing except with the largest cottowoods in North America instead of palm trees [plus a thick-billed kingbird and some gray hawks, of course].

Little does this whenever she's in water:

We spend our nights hanging out with Bonkers, Kyky, Nicoplasm and Narpete, playing Wii and listening to music. When Daddy was out playing basketball with Nicwise, Gobot, and Kyky, Mommy and Bonky found a Sonoran desert toad in the yard, and captured it for Daddy to get a look at:

Daddy also found a great plains toad in the yard--gotta love monsoon season!

Daddy's main goal in Tucson was to play ball with Nicopotamus and Gobot and Kyky as much as possible. Like-mindedly, Nicasa took a whole day off from work to hang and play ball. And they played quite a bit, though the games always ended somewhat shy of epically do to lighting and timing issues. Daddy wants to include these pictures because he thinks they make him look cool [he searched hard for pictures showing Nicodemus with a funky expression or showing, you know, his butt]. Gobot was there too, but mostly he showed up on film as a lanky blur.

And, finally, Daddy felt strongly that a great deal of his nerdy rep would vanish if people could see how awesome he really was, so he had Mommy get a picture of him touching the rim and tried to think of ways to subtly remind people that he is only 5'7", which he imagined would cause them to say things like "wow, he's got ups," "look at that, white chocolate," and "oh my blazes he's sooooo awesome." Basically he failed; he touched the hoop but he's still pretty sure the whole setup is pretty transparent [and, you know, it would have actually meant something if he had dunked over Nicked like he's been promising for the last... 15 years, instead of being blocked over and over again by Gobot]. Nikolaus grabbed the rim solidly but Daddy vetoed the picture because it would make his accomplishment so much cheaper by its inclusion.

We hung out at Mommy's parents' place a bunch and went swimming with them; Little still loves Gobot to death. Bonksters and Kybbles were super generous and pretty much ran a B&B while we were there. Eventually, though, we had to face reality and head home--a 15-hour straight shot from Tucson to the Bay in one long, noisy day.

Thanks everybody for a great trip!

Tickling

Today Little told me that she wasn't silly. I asked her to prove it. So she invited me to squeeze her knee and she'd prove that she wouldn't laugh.

So I squeezed her knee and she stayed heroically, deliberately stoic. Then I squeezed harder and she made a little gurgling noise like she was about to ralph. She looked like she was going to ralph too. But, determined not to be silly, she didn't laugh or even giggle, not even smile [which, for her, is a part of breathing]! By this point normally she'd be convulsing on the floor hysterically.

So I decided to pull out all the stops and I really gave her something to laugh about... I squeezed just in the right spot with just the right pressure. With completely overlydeliberate calmness she said:

"that's enough."

:o)

Trip part 4

After Daddy and the dudes got back from their hike, we packed up and drove to Aunt Kathy and Uncle Tydye's house in X, Arizona. It's "X" here because we don't want to be responsible for another human being being aware of how awesome this place is. Then people would go there and it wouldn't be so awesome.

Little was superexcited to see another whole bunch of cousins. First, there was Madrigazella, an intriguingly feminine older girl. Little has always worshiped big girls and Mads played her part perfectly; she pranced around and did girly things and waited for Little to follow, and showed her novel things like dolls and stuff like that. Little was just nuts for her big cousin. Little following Maddicakes:

Next, there was Samwise, who is a couple years older than Little but was mostly interested in being impossibly sweet to Littler. Little was too distracted by the all-girl oldest cousin to spend much time with the all-boy Samwish, especially considering that all her friends are boys and this girl thing was quite a new experience. But Littler sure loved all the loving attention he gave her, and their no-holds-barred attitude in life seemed fit for each other even though they're several years apart in age.

Next there's BinJamin. His mom said he was uncharacteristically cranky when we were there, but we couldn't really tell. He's a really, really sweet little guy. Little and Littler both liked to play with him, especially on the monstrously rocking tire swing they've got in their front yard:

[Samwhich and Benegal on the tire swing]

Benyammin and Littler shared a stuffed pony for most of the trip, occasionally even altruistically. Here Benz rides the tire swing with the pony:

The tire swing was worth the drive in itself. Well, you know, the company was good too, but that thing was AWESOME:

Little never took her eye of the big girl cousin.

Littler found a doll. It was very exciting. She used it as a blunt force instrument:

Did we mention how cool the swing was? And Little liked it even more than us...

One thing that Little has always liked is the thrill of going "super duper HIGH!" [Littler calls it "dipper dipper HIGH!" So:

Madimoiselle showed her how it's done:

We drove to a sweet little stream in the mountains nearby, just to hang out for most of the day and do some fishing. Here, Little and Bendito do what they both do best: get very serious and contemplative about nothing at all.

If there's anything Chesters like, it's romping around in water.

Uncle Tyler pretty much rocked the whole day; Daddy was afraid his kids would defect. Here he teaches Little how to fish:

Then he helped her find some worms:

Then he let her catch her very own trout!

Little was way too excited; how can a Daddy compete?

So Uncle Tyler caught a garter snake and let her play with it. At this point Daddy decided he might reclaim some Dad points by appearing in pictures with both the snake and the daughter:

Little spent about 3 seconds pretending to be scared, but her face kind of gave away her real sentiment:

Little was beside herself with joy at having this little living thing in her hands. Unfortunately she had absolutely no sense of... shall we say animal welfare? She tried to tie knots with the snake, she squeezed its head to see how squishy it was, and she waved it around like a jump-rope.

Daddy had a photo session with the snake:

Then Mandolin let Little help her release the snake back into the water.

Littler, not quite as interested in the snake, cuddled with Mommy [to the degree that either of our kids cuddle with anything] and basked in the sun. Mommy was suffering what we think was altitude sickness, so was a little more laid-back than normal:

Little and Littler both find water completely and absolutely irresistible. Benyamine and Little somehow found a way to go swimming in 4-inch-deep water:

We love this picture because it illustrates exactly what we love so much about the KTnTYs and also X, Arizona. Benifactorial painted himself like a tiger and went out looking for fish and snakes along the river while his Dad fished nearby:

Madikins gathered flowers to give to Little, which flattered her a great deal:

So we went home and got ready for dinner. The kids didn't want to settle down so they put on some Weezer and went absolutely nutty:

On our last day the Daddies took a few of the kids out to go exploring in the mountains. Ty drove them in his pickup out over roads the very mention of which would cause our car to spill some serious oil. They found a little stream with tiger salamander water dogs in it, which was awesome.

There were a couple more garter snakes in this stream.

Little likes snakes in more than one way:

Madesian is outrageously cool.

They drove some more and found a beautiful meadow with a muddy stream, so they hopped out and waded and caught crawdads. Little was pretty much in heaven there, with awesome cousins in a new wide-open space to explore, and with little snappy things underfoot that were nearly catchable.

Cousin Mads was super, she helped Little through the deep parts and made sure that no crawdads nibbled on her toes. Little eventually got tired of the day but her big cousin was always there to cheer her up.

Before leaving town the next morning, we played for a bit with the cousins at a city park. Daddy took this opportunity to show up his brother Christobal, who is well-known for jumping over the hoods of cars [mostly Miatas, we expect]. So Daddy jumped over a whole car and Mommy got photographic documentation of it.


We took the "scenic route" to Tucson, which involved what felt like 34,839 miles, more or less, of winding mountain roads. Daddy got sick. Littler barfed. Next stop: The Bonks and the biggest cousins yet!

Trip part 3

Daddy and his brothers Chris Tophranklin and Van Johndenbergh packed their bags with lots of cheese, summer sausage, olives, crakers, a couple pounds of guittard bittersweet chocolate, and sleeping gear and headed off to Boulder in preparation for hiking Death Hollow. From Daddy's point of view:

Chris and I drove down together, planning on meeting Van in Boulder. Chris lost a tire:

but that was OK because we both got to pretend like we're manly. We may have grunted a bit while jacking up the civic. Our specialty outdoors-wear amplified the effect; you can't get tougher than loafers over earth-tone socks.

We ate at Hell's Backbone Grill in Boulder, which was fantastic as always. I spent a considerable time on some goat cheese and beets, then my encrusted trout, then my niece's noodles, then some chocolate riotous dessert, so we started a wee bit late. We loaded into Van's truck and bumped over the Boulder airport to the trailhead, downed a bottle of Pellegrino, then started off. It was getting dark by the time we descended the first major grade so we found some soft sand in a wash surrounded by miles of ripply sandstone. We busted out the stilton and crackers--of course--then spent a considerable amount of the night taking pictures under the full moon, being periodically serenaded by an angry but undoubtedly puzzled bear down the canyon from us.

The troika throwing them up:

Getting on near midnight:

We're a sexy bunch:

Things got a bit rowdy:

At about midnight:

We found a little vernal pool with some Woodhouse's toads in it. We caught one and I harassed it long enough to get some pictures:

In the morning we rolled up our bags and started walking. We had lost the "trail" over a mile of pure slickrock, so we just decided to walk downhill until we met a drainage, and follow that until we reach water. We figured that water would be Devil's Hollow, and if it wasn't it would still be fun anyway.

We quickly found some water:

Yes, my brothers are getting on in years [a disclaimer here: I'm not sure how much they like me saying this, which is exactly why I keep on doing it. But seriously they're not THAT ancient, just that much more than me!].

Chris even discovered a new talent on this hike: shining, radiant biceps.

We spend the better part of the early morning pushing through thick willows and flood detritus. It was slow going, but we were in the water so we couldn't complain. This area is exactly the type of place that calls to me: very, very wild and rugged and harsh but beautiful. The drainage was pristine and wild; Van said he saw fewer invasives here than in any stream south of the Brooks Range in Alaska. We saw exactly one sign of humans along the whole creek bed: a partially used bottle of spray-on sunscreen [which Chris's bicep utilized repeatedly]. But we saw a ringtail [!] and at least 3 sets of fresh mountain lion tracks [!!]. I lived in Arizona [state mammal: ringtail] for 20 years and hiked almost every mile of running water in the southeastern corner of the state and have seen ringtails maybe once or twice, so that was a major treat.

After not too long we started reaching sections where the water got pretty deep:

This became somewhat of a challenge. I brought my camera and 3 lenses and various equipment--about 15 pounds of hydrophobic gear. And all our gear needed to stay dry so we could sleep that night. The bottom of the creek was obscured by the murky water and was composed almost entirely of large irregular boulders. In several places the water would go from one foot deep to well over our heads in a single step. We didn't mind getting wet--in July in southern UT that was welcome--but we also couldn't tread water and hold our gear dry, which meant we spent a great deal of time and effort engineering ways to transport our gear across.

It wasn't as easy as this looks:

We spent several hours of surprisingly challenging planning and execution getting down to our lunch spot: an overhang with cool sand and a great view.

A 30-second timer wasn't quite enough to pull off this shot:

So maybe next time I'll have a remote trigger!

Chris spotted something that I had been really excited to find on this hike: a snake! It was a young great basin gopher snake:

After lunch we spent a great deal of time arranging pictures of him. I was aiming for capturing the reflection of the opposite canyon wall in his eye like a fisheye lens.

So that was very exciting for me. The snake was beautiful and mostly cooperative.

We started off again, but the baggage transportation became even more difficult. It took all three of us at nearly every challenging spot to get our gear across, and it took all of our strength and resourcefulness to accomplish it. It's hard to accurately describe, but having this experience with my two brothers was an incredible and wonderful experience--I'd say it was bonding of the first order but that word has lost too much of its impact. Anyway, several times we were precariously close to disaster, but we pulled through.

Here Van suctions himself to the side of the canyon while Chris tries to get my pack to him. I'm valiantly standing by and taking pictures.

OK, we did have a disaster or two, but they were the kind that didn't result in funerals so it was all good. At one water hole, Chris lost his footing and fell completely in the water. And by this I mean that his entire body went underwater, including his own pack which he was ferrying over his head. We fished the pack out and threw it on shore, hoping that he'd have a dry bag by night time. Then Chris delivered what was possibly the second worst news we could have heard at that point [considerably behind "oops, your camera bag..."]: his glasses came off in the water. The bottom of this hole was maybe 8" of slick muck lightly resting on the bottom with boulders strewn about. At 5' down, the bottom was completely impossible to see. So we decided that Chris would very carefully search around him with his foot. The problem is that he didn't know where he was when his glasses came off, so we were looking at the possibility of him searching a couple dozen square feet blind with his toes. Leaving them there wasn't an option--he's almost as blind as he is shockingly white.

So Chris put his foot down, and... brought up his glasses. Immediately. It was quite something. So we did a certain amount of brotherly yahooing then went on our merry way.

Then we came to a nearly impossible hole. It was long, deep, had perfectly vertical walls, and there were basically no places to step. Chris painstakingly mapped out a route which consisted of hopping from one underwater, invisible, deathly slippery boulder to another. Toward the end of the route there is no boulder to stand on, so he waited there on his tippy-toes on a lower boulder. The plan was that he would boost us over the gap. As long as we put our feet exactly where he said--the boulders weren't visible at all--we should have been able to get across fine. We got all the gear across in this manner except the last bit: my camera bag. I don't know if you can fully appreciate the value of my camera bag to me. Think "like a son to me" and you're getting there. Anyway, Van was ferrying the 15-lb camera bag across, balanced on one hand because he needed the other hand to grab Chris's hand for the boost over the gap. As I watched, about 10 feet away, I saw this--and don't ask me how it got this way, but this is how it was--Van was holding my bag like the Lady Liberty torch, suspended above the water by Chris who was treading water to hold them both up. It was clear that Van couldn't reach the next boulder, and Chris was sinking. It was happening very sloooooowly. So Van said "I'm going to have to throw it." And he did. All my camera gear went sailing across 10 feet of boulders and deep murky water, propelled by a little wrist flick from the end of the outstretched arm of an old man relying solely on my aging brother's water-treading abilities for counterforce and balance. And I caught it. Van and Chris went sprawling into the hole but I got my gear and it was all in splendid shape. So you see why my brothers are my heroes, right?

We had so much fun doing this that we did it until we couldn't any more. There was a hundred-plus foot stretch ahead of us that required ferrying and mapping and that was just too much. We paused for a bit, and I climbed the side of the canyon to get a view. Turns out we were just around the corner from where the creek drains into Escalante river. We decided to turn back and start our way up the river since we hadn't seen a suitable campsite since... camping that morning. Being us, we really hadn't thought about a minor detail: we spent all day going down the river, so how quickly should we really expect to go back up? We were more efficient at going through the holes--we knew each one now and had a strategy to beat it--but when we passed the holes and got to the thickety part of the river, we ran into something that slowed us down considerably: the willows that had futilely resisted our path down were now daggers aimed right at our shins. Boulder had seen a lot of rain earlier in the summer and any high water sweeps the willow branches down until they are all pointing downstream. So just powering our way through the brush was not an option. And it was THICK. Oh yeah, and another thing: it was well past sunset.

By the way, it really was that bad. I've done a considerable amount of thicket-whacking: willow tundra in Alaska, mesquite stands in Arizona, scrub oak thickets in Utah, and dozens of riparian brambles in Arizona, and I've never been in anything quite like this: usually you can just power through and accept the loss of skin or be careful and take your time and arrive relative unscathed. But this hike was the worst of all: everything in the drainage seemed pre-engineered to prevent us from hiking back up the river, like a punji stick pit. We just had to accept a certain loss of progress and a certain loss of skin and flesh.

Eventually we all felt at least a mild amount of fear. We had no way of recognizing our path out of the creek in the dark, we were not on any established path, we were soaked [the 60-degree water that felt so nice in the daytime wasn't so nice when it got chilly] and freezing, we had gone much MUCH further down than we realized and had a long way to go, and the moon was behind the canyon walls so we had no light besides the two working flashlights we had between the three of us. We were facing a very real possibility of being very lost and having no place to set down for the night and get dry and warm. We prayed, we planned, we discussed, and we pushed on. The undergrowth was absolutely brutal, as was climbing up a slippery bouldery stream-bed in the pitch dark.

At one particularly dense thicket, Chris--who had basically gone the entire day without eating due to inflamed tonsils and was running probably a 5,000 calorie debt by this point in the day--got down on his hands and knees and slowly worked his way through willow spears. Half his body was under water and he had to identify and move every one of the dozens of sharp points in his way. He contorted his body to allow clearance under a big stick and, after scraping himself on a rock and getting stuck repeatedly with branches, he managed to get through. I was following him since I had no light and he did. I was too tired to do the whole soldier-crawl thing, so I just tried to power through the thicket. I braced for multiple stabbings and strong resistance but the only thing that happened was I burst through and almost rammed Chris. I said right in his ear "you know, I just walked right through that" and felt almost awesome. I think Chris might have cried. Maybe you'd have to have been there.

Somehow, thanks to Van's internal magnetic orienteering or whatever the heck he used, we found a drainage we recognized from our hike in and went up it and found soft sand. We built a fire--illegal but at this point completely critical--to dry out our stuff. We probably pulled in around 11pm, completely and utterly shelled. It was bad enough that those of us without a dry change of clothes--namely, Chris and I--talked about but maybe possibly didn't quite consider yet [?] stripping down nekkid to get warm and dry. I'm glad that wasn't necessary.

Here's a time exposure of our camp that night, with Chris and Van sleeping, then a picture 12 hours later in the late morning. The moon in the first picture and the sun in the second picture are at very similar locations:

Our hike out the next day was short but plenty hot and bright. The climb out of the drainage was steep but worth it.

When we got back home, we looked on Google Maps [...is the best. True that, DOUBLE TRUE!] and discovered that we had never been in Death Hollow. We traveled all the way down sand creek, and here's a link to sand creek where we met it--we traveled basically all the way down to where it joins a much bigger river [Escalante]: map

The distance measuring tool in google maps is prone to under-estimation, and my tracing of the path put our total trip at 16.2 miles, with about 14 of the miles coming in the one big day through some of the most brutal terrain I've ever hiked in.

Within days my entire body was covered in poison ivy rashes but that's a story for another time. I still have a bruised and swollen subpatellar bursa from smashing my knee on a boulder in the dark, but that's a small price to pay. Thanks for an incredible time, bros!

Road Trip 2009 pt. 2

Little was super excited to see her cousins in SLC. We drove down and stopped at "[Maggum]'s house." We stayed there for several days, and during that time, we occasionally saw Little, but only in the form of a giggling blur flying past in pursuit of various cousins. She especially LOVED Ambrodesiac, Wire-Delish, Yahn-Bahn-Appetit, X-babykool, Kelvinatorious, Maggnum, Pinkleberrilicious and Winkleberritissorious. Ok, so pretty much she just loved everybody. Mommy and Daddy are pretty sure that Little has never been happier or had more fun than the week she spent there--and that's saying a LOT.

Daddy spent a lot of time taking care of the kids--and by that we mean being crushed repeatedly by Yahn-Bahn-Et and X-bayesian at foosball. Mommy, Daddy, Christofferson and AD spent many nights up way, way too late watching Flight of the Conchords on YouTube. Littler spent most of her time following around the bigger cousins and generally failing to keep up but nevertheless having lots of fun mimicking them.

Ambrosiac took lots of pictures with our camera, pictures which we have now stolen and use as our own. Pretty much every picture in this post that is an intimate head-shot of a cute kid is hers, plus some others. She did a fantastic job.

X-bah-baby:

We went cherry picking at one of the cousins' friend's house. Winkleberrified:

The Amtographer:

Little cherrypicking:

Yahn-Bahnneroo:

Back home, Maggumator, Little, and Pinkleberrissima played X-babastic's guitar together. Mommy and Daddy loved how Little felt so comfortable with the cousins even though she only gets to see them once a year and is often shy.

Ok, so here's a sequence that we just couldn't trim down to fewer pictures. Kelvinatidine is reading Maggnumnation and Little a story. Little and Maggnificent have just about the most expressive mugs possible, and they love each other. It's dang sweet.

Later, the bigger kids and Daddy played "Peterball" on the trampoline. Here, X-bababay executes a sweet attack on Yahn-Bahnbastic, but gets convincingly stuffed. Ambidextrose got a rocking capture:

Peterball himself prepares to annihilate X-baylien:

Wire-Deestruck came back from a summer camp and Daddy was way excited. She was a little more excited by her drink but Daddy didn't notice:

Little gets a push from X-babbed:

Littler had plenty of fun too. She loved Winklebusterblister a lot. And when we all played kickball together, she ran around trying to kick the ball very determinedly and seriously:

We all went to go look for July 4th fireworks but the streets were all clogged. So we drove into a random neighborhood near the fireworks and watched from the street. Later we found an empty house and watched from their derelict lawn. It wasn't the best view but it felt exciting.

One day, Christofferson and AD wanted to go to the temple and left their kids in the care of Mommy and Daddy. Daddy said, "you can count on us" or something like that. About an hour before they were due home, AD called Daddy and made sure everything was alright. Daddy assured her that everything was perfectly in order. She asked specifically if Winkleberioso had stayed inside the gate, because apparently she sometimes is tempted to leave the yard. Daddy confidently assured her that Winklebell was safe and sound and that she couldn't possible avoid his eagle surveilance.

At that moment, Winkleboss was wandering up the street in nothing but a full diaper. She crossed a residential road and a couple saw her and called the cops. Daddy found her screaming and had the pleasure of trying to convince the cop [who was, after all, just about as friendly as cops ever get] that she belonged with him and that he wasn't a horrible, good-for-nothing lazy irresponsible babysitter. He succeed with the former, perhaps not the latter.

Overall we had a blast with the CAD cousins and their parents. But we also visited Daddy's parents at their current laborschloss [the Family History Library in SLC], which was great fun. And we had a particularly rockfull night at Daddy's brother Venn's house with two more cousins, Ketrifect and Marigrossa, who were supremely awesome hostesses.

Next up: sand creek hike; Daddy, Christofferson, Vonn's adventures in southern Utah's finest.

Littler

Right now--and this has been going on for 2 hours now--Littler is upstairs in front of the hall mirror screaming at the top of her lungs with joy. She's just shrieking and waving her arms in the mirror endlessly. She's so weird. And cute.

Road Trip 2009

Well, we haven't finished the Costa Rica pictures yet, but now we've finished the pictures from our Oregon-Idaho-Utah-Arizona road trip in June/July, in multiple parts.

Part I: Oregon and Idaho

One day we started driving and ended up in Oregon at Crater Lake National Park. Little was beside herself with excitement anticipating snow, and Mommy was jittery looking forward to her half-marathon. We set up our circus tent:

Adhering to true wilderness-survival principles, we packed all 7 kinds of cheese that Chesters like best: emmenthaler, stilton, brie, lots of various goudas, camembert, wensleydale, jarlsberg. Little likes cheese:

Believing that going rough builds character, we of course brought along Littler's pack-n-play and two air mattresses.

We found a little bit of snow, which pleased Little to no end. Littler didn't think much of it:

The next morning we awoke and went to the actual crater lake. Daddy was excited for this moment since he had a very potent memory from visiting Crater Lake as a kid. He distinctly remembers driving slowly to church on a busy road right by the water. There was an island in the middle of the lake with a cabin on it, with a large sunday newspaper on the front doorstep. Daddy was particularly intrigued by the thought that somebody actually had to go out on a boat in the middle of a lake every morning just to deliver a newspaper to one little cabin. This left quite an impression on Daddy, and he was excited to go back and tell the kids: "and they even deliver the newspaper every morning to the island!"

So when we got there, we drove up on an empty street to the lake. Except the lake was actually a 1000-foot shear talus slope below the road. And there is no way there ever was a cabin on the island. So one of Daddy's most distinct early memories turns out to have been a dream. He doesn't know at this point if he's ever actually been there. Whoops!

Littler really wanted to stand on the retaining wall [retains tourists from falling down aformentioned slope into aformentioned lake]. Little, bless her heart, was desperately worried that Littler would fall down. So she started crying and shrieking "no, no [Littler]! Don't jump! Don't jump into the lake! NO, [LITTLER]!!" It was cute, pathetic, annoying, and sweet all wrapped into one. When given a chance, she would run over to Littler, tackle her, and press her into the pavement to keep her from getting near the wall. That was hard to explain to the passing folks.

Daddy had this great idea to neutralize the strong mid-day shadows to get a family portrait. He got out a big reflector and reflected the sun right back into everybody's eyes. This is when he realized that the sun is pretty bright. So:

Littler is cute; the lake is beautiful:

Little, beside herself and bawling, had to be restrained by Mommy just to get those two pictures. We hope you like them.

Basically all Little could talk about [when Littler wasn't climbing on walls] was snow. She wanted to play in snow [she even insisted on wearing her special "snow suit" all day--actually pajamas, which explains the funky outfit]. So we hunted out a patch of crusty, dirty, thin slush for her to play in. She built a "super super super BIG snowman!"

Littler, being Littler, just monstered the snow:

Little declares that her snowman is big enough:

Honestly, it's hard to overstate how much fun this Tucson/Palo Alto-raised little person had in that little pathetic patch of "snow."

Daddy moved in to help with the snowman; Mommy was being too sissy with the cold snow.

He helped for about 35 seconds before his hands were too cold.

Another of Little's dreams was to make a snow angel. It didn't bother her one bit that her body failed entirely to depress the snow one bit.

Then we drove to Bend and stayed at a hotel to prepare for Mommy's half-marathon the next morning. She'll post on her blog about that [incredible feat of supermommy].

After the half-marathon, we drove to a place that Mommy and Daddy had been planning on visiting since their early courtship: Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area south of Boise, Idaho. The highest density of breeding raptors anywhere in North America! A Peregrine Fund breeding center with live Harpy Eagles! Free camping! What's not to like?

We arrived at the area after sunset:

Daddy stayed up late into the night taking pictures. Then he woke up super early to get some pictures at sunrise:

When the little ones and Mommy woke up, Daddy grabbed Little and they went on a walk together while Littler and Mommy explored around the camp.

Little with the snake river reflecting the sunrise glow from a cliff face:

Little just wanted to play with dirt. So for 45 minutes or so, she baked dirt into various remarkable delicacies:

Littler was excited to see Daddy and Little again. That was the true sunrise of the morning:

Little taught her how to bake with dirt:

We explored along the river for some time. We saw several prairie falcons, always a thrill. We found a marmot:

Lots of lizards:

Then we went to the Peregrine Fund breeding center. It was amazing! We got to see live California condors, a Harpy eagle [!!], aplomado falcons [!!], and more. Completely astounding. The highlight was a live raptor demonstration where a worker brought in a Swainson's hawk [an old Chester family favorite, as luck might have it]. Littler immediately started screech/gurgle-ing "buh-duh!" which, of course, means "bird." She was extremely animated, as she tends to be. One might almost say monster-like. The hawk flew to a perch within a few feet of us and Littler went CRAZY "BUH-DUH!! BUH-DUH!!!" while squirming and reaching out to get to the hawk. The handler didn't happen to speak Little-ese and thus mistook this for fear, so he told the hawk to fly to the other end of the room. Bad idea. Littler started bawling and screaming "BUH-DUUUUH" in a universal tongue which, being translated, means something like "IFYOUDONTBRINGTHATBIRDBACKTOMETHISINSTANTIWILLPERSONALLYMONSTERTHISBUILDINGINTOTHEGROUND!!!"

We had to take Littler out of the room, she was scaring the hawk. It's hard being Littler; she just loves animals that much.

Little, being Little, mostly liked getting to dress up as a raptor:

So then we drove to Utah. That's the next megapicture post. Stay tuned!

She rides!

We took Little's training wheels off today and look what happened:

I have to admit, I'm more than a little proud to have a 3-year-old bike rider! She's awesome!

The Fruits of Our Labor

Our garden has had some trying times for the last year or so. We gopher proofed the garden, but accidentally made a hole in the hardware cloth that happened to be exactly where the gopher tunnel was (either that or gophers are really good at finding holes in wire to make their tunnels through...I'm not sure which). That meant that we still had a gopher problem, so we searched for weeks in our garden trying to find where he'd gotten in and finally found it! After spending months with our garden in a state of limbo this year, we finally managed to make it gopher proof AND gopher free! Unfortunately, we only had one plant survive this ordeal, but it gave us three lovely little melons. Here are the fruits of our labor:







For scale: