Red Feather Lakes

Mike took Sara & I up to an area northwest of Ft. Collins called Red Feather Lakes for a little getaway. It was super duper pleasant up there -- big rolly hills, mountain views, pretty little lakes. I took the obligatory flower & lake pictures. And yes I have bangs now, but I swear they usually look better.

Sara had a great time trying to eat rocks and pointing at the lakes & river, being amazed by the sight of a bunny, and crawling all over the cabin & screeching & flapping like a maniac. She rolled with the punches pretty well (i.e. she slept & ate, more or less) especially considering last week I started back to work, and she was fairly out of sorts by Friday. Lots of change, first week was a little scary. Lots of change for her mom too, my nice little company got bought by a bigger advertising company, which was not in my plans. We'll see how all that pans out. In the meantime, Sara had an easier day today with the nanny. We got lots of happy screeching & bouncing & dancing & fast crawling when we got home today, and not so much of the trying to scratch our eyes out.



more pics >.

Happy birthday Jenny!

birds overtake house / cute Guatemalan

Bird pictures are overtaking the house & we couldn't be happier about it. These are from a folio of Audubon prints that my dad was carrying around forever. They finally found a home.





This cute Guatemalan is also overtaking the house. Right now she is super happy because she thinks the dog is funny. The dog isn't doing anything in particular, just walking around whining, but Sara is cracking up & slapping the table. I think she feels like a big girl because I put her in a booster seat at the table instead of in her high chair for the first time She seems delighted & proud.

a few post-birthday pics and HELLO NEPHEW

At long, long, long last, our new nephew, son of my sister Laura and brother-in-law Sean, has decided to make an appearance. Yay! 8 lbs 3 oz. Mom & sonny boy are doing just fine. Probable name: Benjamin Russell, but in my experience once you leak a probable name it usually sticks.

So...Welcome little Ben!

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And a few random pics:

Showing off mad walking skillz. Just let go already baby! You can do it!





We were trying to get a good waving the American flag photo...this is the best we could muster.



Hanging out in the back yard. I guess we need to break down and cut that hair one of these days.





Master of her sippy cup:



Yes, we still have the Frankies & they are doing just fine. The kitty is fat & ornery still. The dog is less ornery but getting fatter from eating all of Sara's leftover food out of her chair. Here they are enjoying the lawn. They like to sit in the backyard with us.







Sara enjoying a few of her (many) birthday gifts. She loves them all.

Party Day

We finally got around to having Sara's Welcome/Happy Citizenship/First Birthday Party. Thank you everyone who was able to join us! It was really fun to have everyone here.

Our house has never seen such an impressive tornado of children! Wow. Lots of nice, cute kiddos. But thank goodness we now have some fun stuff to play with or it could have gotten ugly.

Alas, yesterday was the first time our little Guatemalan princess has been a bit under the weather since she came to the U, S of A. This picture about sums up her mood.



She wouldn't even eat her awesome cake that Jen made, or strawberries, so you know she wasn't feeling too hot.





So while we can't exactly say Sara had a a great time, the rest of us enjoyed ourselves. I did anyway.

Just to make sure we provided plenty of hazardous activities and sugar, we had the world's smallest pinata, filled with the world's stalest candy. It was pretty slow going getting that pinata busted open, since most of these kids are under four. Luckily we had Julian, aka the Stapleton Slugger, around to save us. Special thanks to Emma for collecting all of the lollipops from the yard.











Later we had a rousing game of duck duck goose, unfettered by the actual rules of that game.





And if you're reading this and own any of the following, let us know: sunglasses (Amanda?), baby bjorn (David & Lisa?), baby key toy (James? David & Lisa?), cool square plate (Jen?), package of wipes.

I'm back from Costa Rica

I returned from Costa Rica on Sunday night to a tired, crabby baby who couldn't quite figure out what was going on and a wife who was relieved to have some help around the house. I will remind you, kind readers, that the trip was scheduled before the baby was born. Okay ... I have some latent guilt about ditching my family to go bird watching in a tropical paradise, but I'm sure I'll recover.

It was very hard to be away from my brand new family and I missed Sara and Beth very much. I was sad to miss Sara's birthday, but the students cheered me up by singing happy birthday to Sara on a bus ride.

I went to Costa Rica as a co-instructor for a field biology course my department offers. Sixteen students, my colleage Diana Tomback, and I travelled to Costa Rica for a whirlwind 12 day tour. The students were great and it turned out to be a hectic, tiring, and wonderful trip. We saw over 75 species of birds, sloths, 3 species of monkeys, a bunch of reptiles (including crocodiles), and plants. We also saw army ants swarming, leaf-cutter ants carrying leaves, and acacia/ant interactions. Our guides, Inti and Hurben were fantastic. They led nature hikes, identified plants and animals and generally kept us on schedule.

Here is a brief overview of the trip and a few pictures:

Night 1: We stayed at Don Francisco's lodge after arriving at the airport in San Jose. The lodge is run by a Costa Rican family.

Days 2-3: We loaded students on the bus (our driver "Rollo" is on top of the bus loading our bags) and we travelled to the Talamanca mountain range to Cerro De la Muerte, "The Hill of Death".

We stayed for two nights at La Vuelta Lodge in the cool, rainy cloud forest spending time hiking and bird watching. I saw some great birds but did not see the one species I really wanted to see: The resplendent quetzal. The lodge is run by a family originally from Michigan. The parents moved to Costa Rica after the birth of their first son. They are pacifists and decided to move to a country without an army (Costa Rica abolished its army 50 years ago) so that their son would never be drafted. The family squated in a house that was an hour walk through the forest to the nearest road. The kids were home schooled and are now outstanding naturalists who run the lodge and are in the process of restoring a farm back to native forest.

We visisted a coffee co-op and an organic coffee plantation run by an amazing man named Arturo who is growing organic, shade-grown coffee. If you want good coffee, you should order it hear to support his work:http://www.co-store.com/tortugacoffee. Currenlty, Costa Rican farmers earn about 10 cents on the dollar (after coffee is sold in the U.S. or Europe) and this project is an attempt to allow the organic farmers to earn more money. They need you money more than Starbucks does.

This is what a sustainable coffee planation should look like:

Days 4 -7: After a hike, we travelled to the Caribbean coast to visit Estacion de las Tortugas . Students performed research projects and we patrolled the beach every night to remove turtle eggs from their nests in order to raise them in a protected hatchery. On unprotected beaches, about 100% of turtle eggs are poached. The students found a turtle on the first night and named it Sara!

Students looking at the protected turtle hatchery (Sara the Turtle's eggs are buried inside and protected by a guard from poaching):

We patrolled this beach for egg-laying turtles each night. I saw one turtle laying eggs:

After the turtle station we spent a few days at Fortuna, near Arenal Volcano National Park; a hurricane blew in and we got very, very wet:

We spent the last few days at Punta Leona on the Pacific coast:

After the trip and seeing all of those plants and animals, this is still my favorite animal, the fruit-eating, vegetable-loving, babbling monkey:

Day 12: Almost There

Oh good gosh, and praise the lord, Mike gets back tonight. To celebrate, our little gal slept terribly, and woke up early & crabby. Very crabby. She has been crying about every little thing.

At least she is taking a nap now.

Well wish us luck in the land of crabby toddlers! Last day on our own! Just have to make it til about 7 tonight. I hope Mike realizes his shift starts as soon as we pick him up from the airport, tired or not.

Oh no, sounds like the nap is over.