Penn State Chics Dig Nerds

This past Memorial Day weekend was a lot of fun.  It was very busy with a yard sale, wedding activities, graduation, soccer games, a parade, and a picnic.  Despite the sometimes hectic feel, it was great.  The wedding was at the Penn State Arboretum. I had never been part of a Penn State wedding before, so that was exciting. Brady was in the wedding.  He obviously enjoyed it, too.  He did tell me on the way to the wedding reception that "this was a really long day."  But, he was still having fun.  And, he was so handsome! Uncle Todd and Kristin took Brady and Natalee to State College earlier than everyone else.  Brady and Todd had to be there for pictures.  As I heard the story, Todd and Kristin took them to Starbucks and allowed them to get a warmed up chocolate chip cookie.... and then thought about the fact that Brady had on his white wedding shirt!  They both enjoyed this time with Todd and Kristin. Before the wedding, Brady ...

Today, we went biking on the Lower Trail.  We started at Water Street and rode to Mt Etna Furnace and back (10 miles?).  That's the first time that we were able to do that whole distance with the children.   In an independent study, we discovered that Brady's new bike is by far easier to ride than Natalee's Walmart bike.  The rider of the Walmart bike always lagged behind and complained of hardness.  I guess there is a reason that bikes cost more sometimes!  I think we'll have to find Natalee an alternative. It was a rather chilly bike ride at 58 degrees and drizzling rain.  I'm not sure what happened to today's forecast of 71 and sunny. Last night we were fortunate to be offered tickets from a friend to the Altoona Curve baseball game. In contrast to today, the weather was perfect for an evening ball game. We were right behind the visitor's dugout, which was awesome.  This is the first time the children have made it through an entire...

This past weekend, we were supposed to go to New Jersey with my family and head into New York for the day.  We were planning to spend Friday in Harrisburg at the state capitol before going to New Jersey.  However, the wind and rain changed our plans.  What do you do when it is 50 degree and rainy Saturday?  We decided to go reschedule our capitol tour for Saturday. There were two very obvious things that we noticed on our tour. 1. Pennsylvania was really prosperous back in 1906 with oil, coal, steel, and manufacturing.  The marble, granite, mahogany, paintings, and other furnishings were obviously the best.  (Compare that to today when our next budget has a gap of $3 BILLION.  Yikes.) 2.  Religion played a huge part in the influence of government in 1906.  Religious quotes, scripture, and paintings are all through the capital building.  There is no doubt that religion formed the basis of government and thought. The view in the rot...

This is my final blog post about our trips through Grand Canyon-Bryce Canyon-Zion National Park.  By all that we did it is hard to believe this spans only 4 days.  No wonder we came home so tired!  (Of course, the red eye flight didn't help that either.) On our final morning at Zion, we hiked to the Emerald Pools.  We hiked to the Upper Emerald Pools via the Kayenta Trail. I read that the Virgin River carries 30 dump truck loads of silt away every day.  The children were amazed as we walked right past some mule deer and the deer didn't even care that we were there.  The size of the rock mountains are amazing.  These are the cliffs by the Upper Emerald Pool.  This is the Upper Emerald Pool.  As you can see, it is not very emerald at this time of the year.  There isn't enough algae. This picture makes me laugh because it looks like Brady is trying to decide if he can make it up that really large boulder.  Bra...

After leaving snowy Bryce Canyon, we stopped just inside the Zion entrance station at a road pull off.  It was not an official trail, but their were sandy paths that lead up to these huge smooth, rocky mountains. I should have taken a picture of it from the road.  We hiked a ways up it until it got really steep. It was warmer with plenty of sun. This looked like the perfect spot to rest.  The slick rock appears like it has paths that go across it.  Since we were just at Bryce Canyon, the kids thought that this rock formation looked like a hoodoo. I found a paintbrush sticking out from the rocks.   After we walked back to the car, I asked them if they wanted to take the shuttle bus in to the Riverside Trail.  They all agreed knowing that it meant a very late dinner.  They were obviously enjoying themselves and realized that our time here was getting short.  You are not allowed to drive in the main area of Zion....