Happy Easter, 2011 !

Thurday and Friday evenings Karen read and Kris served at church. Saturday we drove up to Madison, WI, to meet my parents for lunch and then we hung out at the zoo for a while. Very nice (and free) zoo. My favorite part of lots of cool views was watching the alligator perfectly motionless in the glass tank. When I took a fun reflection shot of its mouth under the water, I noticed a tiny fish swimming up to the front of its mouth (looks like a cigarette in the pic) and apparently eating food from its teeth. This morning, after candy hunting around the house, Karen read at church and Kris sang in the choir. This afternoon we had a pleasant get-together with the Bosmas. We hope that you had a blessed Easter this year.

...and violets are blue...

Temps have been up and down. Yesterday it was about 38 F for Katie's drizzly noon soccer game (it got cut short due to the lousy weather - it even snowed a little on the way home). Katie's number is 2. The soccer game itself was a hoot. Most of the kids just kicked the ball in whatever direction it happened to be going, and kids from opposing teams had no problem just sitting there and chatting it up. It was so...innocent. Today was warmer, and I got the pic of the violets in our woods. There have also been jack-in-the-pulpits and trilliums coming up. In other news, Kris had another great showing at the PCS Science Fair this year and some of our tadpole eggs have hatched.

Spring pix of the family

Soccer Pictures

Tonight was picture night for Katie's soccer team. Their first game is on Saturday.

In other news, after a long wait, we have finally gotten the contract for a sabbatical. We will be heading to Austin, Texas(yes that is in the United Sates), where I have accepted an eleven-month position at the University of Texas-Austin. I will be doing research in various areas of chemistry in nanotechnology and education. My contract starts August 1; I will probably head out in advance of the rest of my family. We have a lot of preparation work to do - do you know anybody that would like to rent our house next year? We are all nervous about the whole thing, but also know that sabbaticals can be a very positive experience for the whole family. Anyway, we have been wanting to tell you all this for a long time, but the whole thing has been touch and go since - oh - last September - and I wanted to wait until the contract was finally signed on this April 11, 2011.

Another Warm Spring Day

Temps got to 86F today. Kris and Katie played outside and the ice cream truck came by. Flowers are blooming in force and I swatted my first mosquito. The anticipated severe weather at the end of the day was not as bad as feared and just blew over.

A Little Bit of Amish Country

Thunderstorm rolled in about the time I got up at 6 am. It stuck around for a couple hours and actually knocked out my hotel power for a few seconds. I was quite wet by the time I got to the EIU campus. The meetings, like yesterday's, were pretty uneventful. On the way home I stopped by Rockome Garden - it was closed, but from what I could gather it is sort of meant to celebrate/capitalize on Amish heritage and it has some sort of features of rocks cemented into sculptures (some are in the picture under the trees). I have the feeling that I'm about 20-30 years younger than the typical visitors :*) Driving through a small bit of Amish territory was fun - the best sight was one I could not shoot with a camera: a man in full Amish attire (straw hat, beard, etc.) on a (mountain?) bike pulls into a driveway past a trampoline with about five young boys and girls bouncing around in full Amish attire (boys in trousers, dress shirts, and straw hats and girls in long dresses and white bonnets). I told Karen that I felt a little culture shock like I was in China. The rest of the ride home was pretty uneventful. Weather is warming again. Tonight the family visited the nearby woods and got some frog eggs and even caught a couple chorus frogs. We were going to keep them overnight inside but they got quite loud - so now they are doing their singing on the screen porch.

ISAS Meeting

This year's annual meeting of the Illinois State Academy of Sciences was at Eastern Illinois University. It was cloudy this morning - in one area the bottom of the clouds were level with the turbines of the windmills. The sun came out later, there is a pic of one of the older campus buildings looking like a castle - what is it with universities doing that anyway? After the meeting activities I had just enough time to drive to a state park featuring a reconstruction of Abraham Lincoln's father and stepmother's farm after he was grown up. It was closed, but I guess when it is open there are reenactors. After that I drove to another historical site, the cemetary where Lincoln's father and stepmother are buried.

First weekend of April

Friday was April Fools Day, so I made up a fake sabbatical announcement:

"After a long wait, we have finally gotten the contract for a sabbatical. We will be heading to Kigali, Rwanda (yes that is in Africa), where I have accepted a nine-month position at the University of Rwanda. Now I know when you think of Rwanda you think of the horrible things that happened there years ago – but that has mostly diminished. We have a lot of preparation work to do - do you know anybody that would like to rent our house next year? We are all nervous about the whole thing but our recent trip to China has whetted our appetite for international travel (we have a lot of our booster shots already). There will be adjustments to be sure - I will have to adjust to eating lots of banana dishes. Karen was initially not enthusiastic about traveling to some rural areas where the women are required to go topless, but now her attitude is “When in Rome…”. We have been taking a few language classes and Kris has been doing quite well – the teacher claims that tweens are just really good at making clicking noises with their tongues. Kris and Karen were also concerned about the inroads that Al Qaeda has been making in that country, but I told them that if I were to run into Al Qaeda members that that I would tell them just what I think of their horrible activities. Katie is largely oblivious to the whole thing – we think that that a school system that canes people for not being perfectly still might ultimately be good for her. The travel there will take many hours, but , if there are no big strikes or civil unrest, we anticipate arriving there on June 28 (the date of Karen’s Major Birthday). Anyway, we have been wanting to tell you all this , but wanted to wait until the contract was in hand on this April 1, 2011."

The response ranged from total belief to total disbelief.

Friday night and throughout the weekend, Kris and I worked on her science fair project, which involved finding the mass and volumes of bowling balls to find a pattern of which ones floated in water and which ones did not. Katie's soccer practice was 8:30 Saturday morning. It was about 40 F. The fairly-clueless kids are fun to watch. In the afternoon we had a visit from our college friends from Madison (the Kaeders). We hung around together and went swimming at a hotel. Today we had lunch on the east side of the Illinois river. Note the very defensive Canadian goose in one of the pictures - apparently there was a nest nearby. High in the 80s today (we had snow flurries last week). After the Kaeders left I tilled our garden and we planted some seeds. It is fun to see the flowers starting to come out. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be in the 50s.