#1 receiving travel approval

#2 being able to travel so soon and beating the October shut down

#3 little boys and little girls

#4 a wonderful husband who handles so much of our family business

#5 a sweet boy i have the pleasure of baby-sitting

#6 so many friends and family to celebrate with

#7 a good night’s sleep

#8 friends offering to lend a hand, wherever they can

#9 for popcorn and m&ms

#10 fresh corn on the cob

Snipes are for real.  This is a Common Snipe.  Snipe hunting is still more accurate as a joke though – these suckers are usually tough to find.

Momma Great Horned Owl

You can kind of see the fuzzy grey babies in this shot.

Ruddy Duck and mate. The bright blue of its beak is not photoshopped, just naturally weird.

I don’t know that I’ll ever see enough California Quail to stop liking them.  They remind me of little gentlemen and I love how they group and run with their babies.

Do you see it?  We scared it out of its hidey hole here and it flew across Diamond Crater to land…

…here.  I’ll give you a hint, its another Great Horned Owl.  They are often found here.

Now do you see it?

The American Coot.  I loathe these.  Any birder would understand.  Stupid water chicken.

Beautiful Cinnamon Teal and mate.

Western Meadowlark.  Novel to us now that I live in Western Oregon.  In Idaho and Eastern Oregon they are everywhere.  I miss hearing their song here.

Do you see what I see?

Now?  That is a burrowing owl on the left end of the log.

Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus, AKA, Yellow-Headed Blackbird.  Again they are everywhere there but nowhere here, so I’m smitten with them.

We did some great birding in Malheur but didn’t get as many good shots as we would have liked.  I was so glad Hubby got to experience the same trip I’ve been on before.  It is a treat to go with others who know so much about an area; it makes it much more interesting and much easier to bird.

• supervise college students (this semester there are 13 students I’m supervising) who teach younger kids (from six-year-olds up through high schoolers)
• travel and do presentations with our portable planetarium
• host (mostly middle and high school) groups and do presentations in our cadaver lab (this year so far I have hosted over 630 high school students)
• educate educators on how to more effectively teach science and loan equipment to help them along the journey
• and a whole host of other things.

This post falls into the “other things” category.  Tuesday, the culmination of many hours of work paid off.  I certainly couldn’t have done it without the help of many, many people.  There were five departments involved, around 150 people attended, and a few hundred dollars spent to make the Science Open House a success.  The open house is a “show and tell” event for George Fox families put on by all the science departments (physics, engineering, math, biology, and chemistry – we even snuck in a little earth science).  Here are some images from the night.

There was the cute and fuzzy…

…and the creepy crawly.  This is our campus chaplain’s hand.  Way to go!!

There were many willing volunteers, albeit crazy.

And “science” food.  I know you want some of that.

Ice cream a la liquid nitrogen.

A very popular demo of ferro-fluid and microwaves.  If you haven’t seen the ferro-fluid, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Fancy machines, big boy toys really.  Big and small boys liked stretching the rod (in the middle) until it broke (that’s steel, folks).

Professors were animated and excited.

Heart rates were measured and changed using a flip table.

Chemisty was in the air.

Pyromaniacs were encouraged.

Volcanoes were set off.

I was a giant dork.

The finale light show really took my breath away.

And the laser light show was excellent.  I kept expecting cell phone swaying since everyone was singing along with Fireflies, by Owl City.

I couldn’t have asked for a better night, or for better help.  So many people made this night great.  For example, as I was checking to be sure everyone was finishing up, the students who had been serving food all evening had started cleaning up and were DOING THE DISHES ALREADY.  Although I was beat, I was also unbelievably blessed.

Sunita’s college friends, “Sessh and Britie”, are getting married this summer (congrats!!).  They kindly asked the munchkin to steal the show.  =D

This is my favorite.  I love the face and the sweetness with the monkey.  Cutie.

Some concern at first.

Oh, sand.

And dogs.

And water.

And my forever family.

She was WET and SANDY!

No fear now.

None at ALL!

And kites.

And footprints.

And a new change of clothes.

And ICE CREAM!