Britni at el sur

Rainbow in Tucson

Mid-Missouri from the air

Our flight from Heathrow to Dallas today went right over Jefferson city - you could even see it from the window!
I always wondered where those planes were going.

David at ye olde Cheshire cheese

We sat in seats that were apparently favorites of Samuel Johnston and Charles Dickens.

Roman hot springs in Bath

We took a little day trip out of London today to go visit Bath. It was a very interesting city-roman ruins combined with Jane Austen sights.

The other side of the silent sentinel

Actually it's just st Paul

St Suplice organ tuning

This is the church down the block from our hotel. It was also used in the da Vinci code.

The Eiffel tour - beautiful at night

Assyrian temple in the lourve

Monet orangerie

A Sentinel at St. Sulpice

There is a large church at the southern end of our block. We were walking to dinner last night past it and saw this through the stained glass.

Sacre Cour

Just a quick camera shot from our first day in Paris. Very easy to get around and the food so far, even at just the neighborhood cafes has been outstanding.

Brain art?

From an art gallery in our neighborhood in Paris.

Seine at night

Proper glass display..

I've been collecting these hanging glass balls for a while now - ever since my trip to Germany in 2000.  The collection has been added to by friends, family, and even getting to make a couple myself at the Third Degree glass studio in St. Louis.  We've had the idea of hanging them in the skylight in the family room for a while, but David has been stuck firing out how to do it.  After much trial and error (but no broken glass) we finally have them hung.  I think they look pretty nice there - and as a bonus no one has to dodge them when they walk through the room.  And I still have room for a few more around the edges..

perils of living in Arizona

David's working from home today, and this is what he found on our kitchen
floor. He's kind of cute though..

Toolbox rehabilitation

A retiring faculty member was cleaning out his office on Friday, and was getting rid of an old Craftsman toolbox.  David had been wanting one, so I took it for him.  It was in good shape - the drawers were nice and red.

There were definitely some rust spots, however, so David made this the project for the weekend. 

As we looked over it further we noticed something strange - stickers that said property of University of Washington, Department of Physiology and Biophysics (where I went to grad school). We found out that this particular toolbox had been given to the retiring faculty member when another faculty member from UW shut down his lab... in the late 1970's. So as far as we can tell the toolbox is likely at least 50 years old, and works perfectly well with only a little rust. And the weird part - the design hasn't changed since then. We went to get a few accessories from Sears to fit in the toolbox, and everything is exactly the same size as it was 50 years ago! I guess Sears has been making a profit off that original design...

 David went with a bold color choice - John Deere yellow (that's really what it is called - they sell it at Lowes). 

After it dried overnight it looked pretty good - ready for garage organization.

It was a great recyling project!

Karl and Britni visit (much delayed)

 We've been a little behind posting pictures to the blog.  Here are some from when Karl and Britni visited over Memorial Day.  Very pretty out here as you can see - this is Sabino Canyon where we went hiking. 

We also drove up Mt. Lemmon - It was 30 degrees cooler up on the top of the mountain.  It had some great overlooks too!

More Sabino Canyon, with Karl and Britni.

Eggers parents visit Tucson

Downtown Tucson

Tonoho Chul Park

Prickly Pears at the Saguaro national park.

Tucson Courthouse

 Blooming cacti.

Mom and Dad Eggers recently visited us here in Tucson. Here are some nice pictures that Don took while we were here.

Ft lauderdale

Wildlife

This isn't actually our house - this picture was sent by David's boss.  However, we have a bobcat who likes to frequent our yard too (and use it as a litter box).  We just haven't been able to get a picture of him yet.  Ours seems a little more skittish.  :)  Cute aren't they?

Sabino Canyon

Sabino Canyon in a national forest park that is about 1/2 mile from our house.  We went up this afternoon to check out some of the hiking trails and wildflowers.

We've had about 3x as much rain as normal this winter in Tucson, so all of the creeks in Sabino canyon are actually flowing with water:

We also managed to spot some interesting wildlife on our hike.  Cardinals were everywhere.

Also the desert types of squirels - no bushy tails, and they live underground and don't climb trees.  This little guy was completely unafraid of us - he was posing for pictures.

Spring in Arizona

Spring is defnintely here in Tucson - it is in the mid-70s on most days now.  We have new plantings out in our earth boxes:

We've planted two tomato plants (on the right) and 6 different types of peppers (on the left).  David also made a stand for the earth boxes.  Hopefully this will prevent our problems of last year when the wind blew the boxes over and the plants all died.

We also have some new animal friends around the house:

 

The rabbit babies are living under the huge prickly pear in our front yard.

We've also gotten the hammock put up - very comfortable on a spring afternoon.

Balloon!

For the past few weeks I've been joined on my way to work by hot air balloons.  Today I finally saw why - apparently they are using a vacant lot near our house (during Christmas it was a Christmas tree lot) as a landing pad.  It's a fun way to start the day.  :)

Our new friends

David received a birdfeeder for Christmas, to put outside our office windows.  It took the birds a while, but finally this weekend they seem to have discovered the loot.  Normally there were 3 or 4 birds on the feeder, but I kept scaring them away when I tried to take a picture.

Rivers in Tucson!!

As you may have heard on the news the west has had quite a bit of rain over the past few days.  So much so that something has happened that David and I had been told about, but never quite believed.  The "rivers" around Tucson - which are normally dry washes are flowing with water.  Check out the video from the wash behind David's work.

Pantano wash