Thursday, December 10, 2009

Yes, we're running a bit behind on the blogging...but here are some pictures from the second day of our Thanksgiving road-trip, when we left the ocean and headed over the hills and into the highland plains!

Carrizo Plains National Monument -- it was pretty deserted at this time of year!

Did you see the bird?

Coyote!

Antelope!

Pretty flowers, I forget what the sign said they were...


Native American rock art -- apparently some of the most important remaining examples (though it was hard to take pictures...this one is breaking apart but you can at least see some of the patterns and colors)

'Twas a very flat landscape -- it seemed to stretch on forever!

The San Andreas fault!!

Don't worry Mom, we saved Laura from falling in :)


Sunset on the plains....where the deer and the antelope play, yodel yodel yodel....
Overall, a very fun trip and cool experience! The whole trip felt a bit like we were stepping between those diaramas we made in 7th grade! We'll post the desert pics soon :)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Here are some photos from England. We stayed in the town of Harrogate. It's actually a really nice spa town...they have an old Roman Bath House that you can go to for spa treatments, (that would be fun to do on my next trip, although probably not with PK). We were surprised at how green the grass still was in the UK...



Saturday we took the train to York. Here's the view walking into the city from the train station...

England has had a lot of rain these past few weeks and the roads and houses along the river were all flooded...
York is home to the National Railroad Museum. It's the largest railroad museum in the world and it's free. Poppop would love it here, you could easily spend several days looking at everything. I took some photos, but it was kind of dark inside, so most of them didn't really turn out.
The other two big attractions in York were Clifford's Tower...

And the York Minster, the second largest Church of England cathedral (after Westminster Abbey)

PK and I climbed the 250 steps to the top for a great view, but it was getting dark, so my photos aren't the best...this photo was taken halfway up...
I'll probably upload all of my photos to Picasa if you want to take a look. :-)

Sunday, December 6, 2009

I'm back from my big trip to Europe! PK and I had a good time in Belgium and the UK. All of our meetings went really well, and it was nice to be able to do a little sight-seeing while we were there too.

Here are some photos from our afternoon in Brussels, Belgium...


The Grand Place is the heart of Brussels, and it's said to be one of the most beautiful medieval squares in all of Europe. It really was beautiful. This first photo is their town hall and the other two are some of the other ornate buildings surrounding the square.


This is a weird statue of a little boy peeing. It's really famous and they change his outfit at different times of the year. Supposedly this outfit was special for some holiday that they were celebrating the week that we were there...

The waffles were amazing! I wish I could have brought some back for everyone to try...


This is the Belgium Royal Palace...


Here is the main cathedral in the city, St Michaels...

And the best part of Belgium...the chocolate!! Yumm! Don't worry, everyone will get to try some for Christmas... ;)

Friday, November 27, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving! Day 1 of our roadtrip took us down the coast through Monterey and Big Sur. We saw lots of pretty coastline...



and stopped at a beach with elephant seals!















...and a drunk curlew!Hope you're all having a great holiday...we'll post more pictures soon!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I can't wait until we're all together for Christmas!! I thought I'd post a few more photos of our floor project. Jason and Ariel finished everything this week except for the trim work, but that should be done by the time I get back from Europe next weekend...



We still have a lot of cleaning up to do...all of Ariel's tools are still here and there is saw dust everywhere, but here's how the floors look now: