Planes in the Desert

The Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucscon is ranked as the number three air museum in the country, but it who knows what goes into ranking things like this. If you based it on the number of planes Pima is easily number one. They had planes all over the place. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting one. By the way Ian loved this place!

A lot the planes were outside, but there were hangars that had many restored aircraft as well.

The black bird, mach 2.5 baby!

The super guppy. It looks like a plane with a cyst. Used for transporting big things obviously (like parts of Saturn V)


Elsa trying her hand at flying.

Ecopod

I vaguely remembered the experiment that took place in 1991 where 8 people lived isolated from the world inside Biosphere 2 for two years, trying to see what was required to sustain people if we ever were to colonize another planet. From a technical and engineering standpoint, Biosphere 2 is amazing, and from a scientific standpoint, it makes you realize how difficult it will be to sustain life another plant. Well worth the visit and highly recommended!





The basement to Biosphere 2, I had no idea that the desert had a basement.

Saguaro National Park and Camelback Mountain

We did a couple hikes, one in Phoenix and one in Tucson. Camelback Mountain in Phoenix started out promising, but it got pretty steep and dangerous so we had to turn back. Ian was ready to scale some rocks, but Elsa needed a couple years before attempting it.





While we were down in Tucson, we visited the Saguaro National Park. We did a couple short hikes on relatively flat terrain. We didn't see any mountain lions, but the kids and George were on constant look-out.

We All Live for the Sun

Seattle schools had their winter break last week, so it was the perfect time to head south for some much needed sun. Georgette's cousin Jose and his wife Celi are living in Phoenix with their two kids Melaina and Jose who are Ian and Elsa's ages respectively. The kids made fast friends and were soon playing games, marching around self made obstacle courses and swimming in the pool. We had a great time and owe Jose and Celi big time for putting us up and putting up with us.

Elsa getting ready to dive in.

Georgette was at the pool every chance she could get, with kids in tow of course.

The hot tub, even the desert gets cold some times.

Waiting for the Days to Become Longer

When the days are short, you end up doing some nutty things, just ask Ian and Elsa...





For school, Ian had to create a float representing his heritage. There are Lebanese, Scottish, German and Ukrainian flags along with a little something from each of those countries. See if you spot them.

Christmas in Seattle

Alley Ride

This is Ian sledding down the alley behind our house. He catches air at the very end, it's pretty sweet!

December = Snow

This past December we saw more snow in Seattle than we've ever seen while living here. Ian had an entire week of school canceled and was outside playing in it from dawn to dusk. It was fun while it lasted. By the second week of it, snow fatigue did begin to set in and the novelty of it began to wear off.






Ian with our neighbor Claire in our back yard starting a snowman.

November 2008

This blog has been neglected lately. Better this blog being neglected than the kids, right? These are from back in November. For some reason the kids went through this phase were they would hang out in these plastic bins. I can only explain it as a lack of light and too much rain.



Carkeek Park down at the beach.

When we were at Carkeek a train went by carrying airplane fuselages.