Guyana Stills.

Maybe you loved watching Guyana right before your eyes, and now you want still photography of some of the action you beheld.

Perfect!

 Paul bought one of these carved coconut shells home for me that this fellow made.

 Remember old-man in the video chopping that coconut? He handed it right to Paul to drink up!

AHHHHHHHH!!!

 Did you spot this clump of brown in the video and wonder what it was? Army ants. BILLLIONS of them protecting their larva and hanging onto each other to form this giant clump. WEIRD! It's called a bivouac and wiki has more info if you'd like it.

I, on the other hand, prefer the MONKEYS!

And of course, my adventurer...





Doesn't Guyana look nice? More than 80% of it is still covered by forest - which obviously provides for lots of biodiversity. I'm so glad Paul got to go and maybe someday we can go back together.

PS - Apparently Guyanese are obsessed with the song "We Found Love in a Hopeless Place". They played it so much that Paul thought it was a Guyanese song... until he got back and realized it was by our very own Rhianna. :)

Pink Spring Blossoms

My camera roll is chuck full of pretty blossom photos - I had to share a few. Magnolias and Cherry Blossoms seem to be my favorite. Can you tell my favorite color is pink?

I usually claim Summer as my favorite season, but this early spring has been quite a treat, both for coaching lacrosse and evening walks with Paul.

PS- Sorry for the brief absence from the blog - the truth is I have been trying to blog but had run out of photo storage. Five bucks to Google solved the problem!

Paul's adventures in Guyana

As a late birthday present, I put together a video for Paul of his adventures in Guyana.

I'm so glad he has these cool opportunities to travel the world, and I can't wait for more chances to go with him.

This trip, he got a new camera so he could capture some video - to me, it makes it feel so much more real and I can get a better feel for his experience there.

So, hey! Want to see what Guyana is like?

Check her out here:

Paul's research trip to Guyana, January 2012

A Shippy Weekend.

Shippensburg, PA is a charming little town in the South Central PA - the best part about it? It's our closest source of family! We spent a weekend in Ship recently, and I snapped a few pictures of our adventures there.

 We visited the Goates! And... the goats.

Enjoyed the dark blue hills.

 Covered bridge!

A trip to BB's, "Bents, Bumps & Bunch of Bargins". 

Seriously! Hair/skin products for dollars! 

Homemade Honey.

 Buggie parking - it's an Minnonite run store.

 Home-made pretzels out front were prime.

 The evening there were Just Dance competitions...

 And a Reuben being defeated at bedtime (funniest part is that he was totally acting - I took this picture and showed it to him and it made him laugh really hard at how sad he was pretending to be.)

A bit of accordion time...

 After church the next day - we went bug catching. Reuben was all ready for the adventure, but he fell asleep on the car ride there and totally missed the whole event. Next time?

We were looking for aquatic insect larva - a specific mayfly species Paul needed.

Marian was ready to go - but got a little bored, so she took over iPhone camera duties...

And apparently while she was playing a game, she got herself locked out of the phone - and not only tried a bunch of different passwords, but happened to take this screen shot when she was trying to get it unlocked, hahahahaha.

Paul was the hero of the day, and carried us across the stream so we didn't have to get wet.

Then he provided Marian a nice little perch on which to read.

I enjoyed some good snuggle time with Reu while Marian played with my hair. Being an aunt is really the best.

And the next days, I stepped my aunt duties up a notch, and took Marian and Audrey to the mall - their favorite spot? Claire's of course!

Then Paul took us three girls on a lunch date to Shippensburg hottest spot - The Treat!

While we were waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for our meals - an old man came up to us and asked where we were from - because we must not be from around there if we were taking pictures of the sign. He loved talking about how he used to live in New Jersey but had to escape because they would bring in police helicopters every time he had a BBQ in his backyard and yaddayaddayadda the government is his worst enemy or something? It was weird.

 But we had a great old time. Best news, the Goates family is coming to NJ this weekend! Hooray!