The Birds – Malheur

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.

So, What do You do Again?

My current title is Science Outreach Administrator.  The title is in no way helpful to explain what I do.  What I do is rather hard to explain because it covers a lot of areas, and each area needs its own explanation to really understand what I do.  I, in no particular order:

• 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.

Will You…

be our …

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

Happy Halloween!

For Free!

A very sweet woman named Courtney took these professional photos for us – FOR FREE.  I can’t believe we are so blessed.  She is a very talented photographer, and she wants to do this as a ministry for adoptive families.  I hope you all enjoy the pictures as much as we have.  Jared couldn’t make it so it’s just me and the munchkin.  If you would, please pray for Courtney and her husband – they are adopting from Ethiopia and are waiting.

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

Unexpected Joys

A child’s wonder borders on magical.  I always knew when we added a child into our family that Christmas would regain some of its sparkle, I just didn’t know the rest of life would.  I am absorbed watching my daughter take in life.  A trip to the beach for the first time in her life may have been more exciting to me than it was to her.  What JOY!

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!

The Many Faces II

Hangin’ With the Cousins

Yep, That’s a Hot Mitt in the Oven

This is your brain on exhaustion.  And yes, the oven is on.

Swiss Cheese Sunita

One of the special moments in every parent’s life is their child’s first vaccinations… what a HORRID event.   And even though you realize it’s for the best, you still HATE IT (as does your baby).  Today was Sunita’s first vaccinations with us as her parents, although it wasn’t her first vaccinations ever.

This is after our now poked and prodded girl only has cry eyes instead of sobbing mess eyes.  Her snack helped mellow her out a bit.

One of the distinctive *joys* of adopting is being able to re-vaccinate your child.  There is no guarantee an adopted child (especially internationally) has been given the right kind of vaccinations, the right way, in the right amount of time.  So we pretty much get to redo them, and she had 5 new ones today (in the legs).

But to make sure she doesn’t get more then she needs (along with testing for nutritional needs and some other tests), Sunita also got to have blood drawn today – I wanted to bawl after that was done.  We weren’t done yet; she still had to have a TB (I think) test because she is coming from India (another poke in the arm opposite of the blood draw).  The cherry on top was this was all happening when her regularly scheduled nap was airing.  Lucky for me, Jared was able to come along.  I really am not looking forward to doing all that again, EVER.

Alas, if her blood shows that she doesn’t have the antibodies for any vaccines then she will need up to three more, before a month passes.  Blech!

Sunita did like the band aids though, until we pulled them off. =(

On the brighter side, she has slept the last two nights clear through without making a peep.  I still wake up, just expecting it.  The first night I actually wondered if she died and had to go check on her several times to assure myself she really was just sleeping peacefully.  She also went to sleep tonight like an angel.  God is good, all the time – but especially when he comforts her sleep =D