Christmas Pictures

Here's us in Virginia! One at home and one at Great Falls on the Potomac. The river was running very high (and muddy) because of the 2 feet of snow that had just melted overnight. It was a cool park. I'm still deciding about this haircut, hmmm..

QUAKES!

I don't know if anyone even reads this blog any more since the canoe is done but...

I'm skipping writing a Christmas post because we didn't bring a camera with us to Virginia. Maybe if my parents send some I'll go back and do it. We had fun with the Fritzes and Sixes, saw a lot of parks and museums. It was cold. :)

In the meantime, there was a 4.1 earthquake on Thursday and aftershocks afterwards that both Scott and I felt at work.

details from the USGS

Luckily I didn't have students in my classroom for either of the two bigger ones. I think this is pretty exciting since I didn't grow up out here. These ones were nothing though compared to the one we had in October two years ago, which was also apparently pretty minor - but I'm convinced I really would NOT want to experience a big earthquake. The little ones are scary and strange enough!

Pasta Night

What to do with all this free time over Christmas break? Bust out Christmas gifts of yore. The dough only has to go through the rollers 11 times. Please pay no attention to the watermelons we STILL have lying around from this summer. I've just been waiting for the right moment to haul them out to the compost pile. Or maybe they're still edible!?!?!?

When I grow up, I want to have a pull-out cutting board in my kitchen like this one. It's really handy. Do you dig the retro tilework in our kitchen?


Fresh and tasty noodles ready to boil! Only two ingredients! It's fun to make a little mess once in a while. It's worth it.

Phew!

Finally made it to the end of the semester so now I can enjoy Christmas shopping and hanging out with friends. I do have a few more finals to grade but I think I can knock them off in one day.

We've been drinking various holiday brews at get-togethers with friends and eating cookies, getting fun cards with pictures and lettters, and making lots of trips to the post office. The only thing we're missing is snow, which I hear we'll get plenty of when we get to D.C. on Thursday. Instead we still have to water our plants out on the patio as the drought and warm weather persist. The natives only know icicles of the plastic and electrified variety. The neighbors don't rake snow, but fallen palm fronds from their roofs. California, ha ha ha!

Merry Christmas!

(These pictures are from our Memorial Day 2008 backpacking trip in King's Canyon N.P.)

Thanksgiving '09

This year we rented a cottage in gold country in the northern Sierra. The resort we stayed at was in Downieville on the Yuba River. It's a really cute historic gold mining town: with a population of 325, it's the county seat of Sierra County. We passed on the opportunity to pan for gold in the river right outside our cottage since the water was so cold. But the guy running the resort had all the gear (pans, a sluice box, and even a now-banned dredger) and said that guests collect flakes of gold on a regular basis.


We considered bringing the canoe here to Bullard's Bar Reservoir on the way up, but it's a good thing we didn't. The water was very low which makes for ugly scenery.

But there was fool's gold everywhere!!!

This Steller's Jay visited us each morning. I don't know if he was scared or just showing off, but he kept puffing up his feathers for us. These birds are pests from the crow family and are always scrounging around for food at campsites and picnic areas.

We went for a hike, partly on the Pacific Crest Trail and otherwise just relaxed. We saw lots of bear tracks and mistletoe as we followed along the Yuba River. There was snow on the trail but nothing major.

Views from our hike.

Crossing route 49 on the PCT between Sierra City and Sierraville. Everything's very Sierra-ish here.

Sorry, I'm taking over the canoe blog.

Since Scott is on to less crafty adventures lately, and we haven't taken the canoe out in a while, here is a picture of my new project - a Dresden Plate quilt.

Of course this part is fun - making the quilt top. We'll see what happens to the pace once it's time to applique all these plates onto the background. Then there's the quilting...groan. I'm planning for this to be smaller than twin size but bigger than the batik mat.

Happy Halloween!!!