Say Hi...

...to Cameron Asher Peet! Tim & Allison sent us some pictures of the little guy, and he is ADORABLE! The official stats are that he was born September 18th at 1:53AM, weighing 6 pounds 8 ounces, and was 19 1/4 inches long. The call by Tim is that he did have spiky hair as well...:)
We spoke with them and they said the whole family is doing great, which everyone knew they would. Cameron was a little jaundiced and instead of getting the blanket to break down the bilirubin, they got a belt with fiber optic cables which break it down. Tim said the green belt reminded him of the Green Lantern...:) Classic Tim...
Can't wait to meet him! Here are some of our favorite pictures from them:

Cat Toy

We are figuring out that cats don't quite play the same way dogs do. Toquinho has some rolled up foil balls he knocks around, but usually plays by himself. We went to the great Mart of Kirksville (Wal-Mart) and bought a jingley-ball-on-a-fishing-pole toy to see if he liked it.
So far he won't leave it alone, but it also gives us a way to play with the cat, even if he is just stalking and hunting a jingle ball.
Toquinho is getting better at tolerating the dogs. He doesn't swat them in the face whenever he sees them anymore, and will actually walk past Lucy without incident! Baby steps... I think Lucy is more curious than Toquinho. She follows him everywhere, then just lays down and stares at him. Not in the hunting/stalking stare, but more of a blank look stare (Like Michelle's Dog Gabby).
Here is a short video of Toquinho hunting his toy:

I normally just swing the toy along the ground and Toquinho will chase it all around me, but that game isn't very "camera friendly"...:)

Congratulations, Tim & Allison!

We received a text message this morning that Tim & Allison welcomed Cameron Asher Peet early this morning. We are very excited for them and look forward to meeting the newest Peet!

Our New Addition!

You may have noticed the Syring Stick Family at the top of our blog has a new character...Toquinho! Linus & Lucy are still getting used to him, but they are getting better at tolerating each other every day!
We learned in July that Josh, Debora, & Thomas were moving to Germany, and even then we had talked about possibly getting a cat, but we didn't want a kitten to train. Turns out, Josh & Debora were not taking their two cats (Toquinho & Catita) to Germany with them. When we went to visit them last weekend we noticed a flyer Debora had made for the cats, offering them to a good home. Well, we REALLY like Toquinho, his look, attitude, and he's great with Thomas! Catita is pretty standoffish, and lately had been using their house as a bathroom. We asked Debora if we could take Toquinho when they went to Germany, but we weren't really sold on Catita. Luckily Debora was OK with us taking Toquinho in. It turns out we weren't the only one... Holly called during supper and said Toquinho could come with her, but we had already put our hat in the ring...sorry Holly! Debora said they tried to call a shelter in Ottumwa for Catita, but they were not taking any cats. We said we could take Catita to the shelter here, which has a great cat section (like a store).
Turns out, since Josh & Debora were heading to Germany & Brazil, respectively, they said we could take them that night, and they hooked us up with EVERYTHING the cats had! We absolutely loaded our RAV4 down with kitty stuff! Debora was really sad to see Toquinho go, but she knew he was going to a good home, it made it (a little) easier. Like she said, before Thomas, Toquinho was her kid, kind of like us with Linus & Lucy, with Baby Syring on the way...:)
We got home, and to make sure they cats got used to the place (especially Toquinho) we left them in the garage. We went out the next day and couldn't find them. Turns out (as you'll see in the pictures) they were huddled under the hood of the RAV4 keeping warm. It was pretty cute. We let Toquinho inside, but let Catita roam outside for a day until the shelter opened. When Mara took her in there were people there looking for cats, and actually took a liking to Catita. They had to keep her for 5 days to make sure no one claimed her, but by now, she probably is happy at home with that family.
Toquinho has been getting used to Linus & Lucy, and vice-versa, but they are really starting to tolerate one another now. Soon we'll have Linus & Toquinho napping together & hopefully ganging up on Lucy to bring her down a peg...:)
Also just for fun we dressed Linus & Lucy up in some of the clothes Grandma Debbie sent. Of course, Lucy only fit in the bib, and Linus wore the girl clothes rather than the boy...:) Grandma sent both just in case, since she didn't know the sex before hand.
Enjoy the pictures!

It's A...

Mara had her 20 Week ultrasound to check out the organs, bones, and of course, the sex of the baby.  We were going to make everyone view the videos and pictures, then vote, but we were too excited!  IT'S A BOAT (burn on Kaylee...)...I MEAN BOY!

The video below shows the heart rate, frontal view, arms, face & arms, hands & face, spine, face & hands, beating heart (very cool!), face (including the lens of the eye), and ending with a profile view.

We also had several still images.  The cooler ones are first.  Of course, the boy shot (not shy), then the color one is the vein & artery of the umbilical cord.  Most of the rest are labeled, ENJOY!

We Didn't Die!

Anyone following particle physics? No?  Well let me catch you up on how we all almost died.

First of all we didn't almost die.  The newest ($8 Billion) particle accelerator was just switch on for it's first test run yesterday.  The Large Haldron Collider (LHC or CERN by the French acronym) sent it's first beam of protons around the 27 KM (16.7 Mile) magnetic loop that lies beneath the France/Swiss border.  It's job will be to discern some of the most pressing questions in particle physics such as what antimatter is, and try to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson, also called the "God Particle" (a subatomic particle thought to exist but never seen...yet).  It's exciting to be around when new particles are discovered and postulated, as well as to see some of Newton's & Einstein's theorems put to the test in a way that was never possible before.  It puts FermiLab (In Batavia, IL, USA) to shame which used to be the biggest particle accelerator at 6.4 KM (4 Miles).

Since this is the most powerful beam of energy ever produced (7 TeV = 7 Billion = 7,000,000,000 Volts!) some people (uninformed) thought this would be the "End of Days" cataclysmic end by creation of a black hole that would engulf the Earth.  All the energy this planet has wouldn't be enough to create a black hole.  Our sun barely has that much.

Anyway, it's a cool project the Europeans have and hopefully it will provide some exciting research in the years to come.

Here are a couple of cool images:

1.) The magnetic tunnel that propels the proton beams around the 27 KM path:

2.) Results of smashing protons together.  The little circles & lines are paths of specific subatomic elementary particles in whats called a Bubble Chamber:

3.) A list of elementary subatomic particles for your future reference:

Enough Nerd For Today...:)

RMNP Panoramas

I've been messing around with some panorama software that will "stitch" photos together, so I made some nice panoramas with our RMNP photos. Click on the photos for the full image. Just FYI, they are larger files, anywhere from 1-6 MB, so they may take a few minutes to load on a slower connection. I did have to cut the resolution down since Blogger has a 8 MB limit on photos, but if you ever want a full copy of one of these we can send one to you. We may have to put one of these over the baby's crib. It's either these or our Metabolic Pathways poster...:)
Hope you like them!

Black Lake (Can You Find Mara?)


Cub Lake From Lake Side & Above




Rocky Mountain Scenery








Mike & His Tall Tree

Labor Day Getaway

Since we never really got to take a nice vacation this summer we decided to take some time over our 4 day Labor Day break. With me in the lab all summer, we couldn't take advantage of Mara's time off for more than just short weekend trips. Mara came up with the idea of visiting our friend Steph in Fort Collins, CO and getting in some hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. We decided to drive through Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to reach Colorado, then come back through Kansas. Here is our map of the nearly 28 hours we spent in the car. But as you'll see from our photos...it was worth every minute!!!

Our trip out was very uneventful. We left after Mara's last final (Pathology) on Friday around 10am. We swung by Lincoln, NE to see Tim & Allison for two reasons. First, they are moving to Des Moines for Tim's promotion to Top Dog at Grainger in Des Moines, and second, because Allison is due in like 3 minutes so we wanted to see how she was doing. They were both really excited for Baby Beaker/Timmy Pizza and the move. It was a really good idea to break up the trip too since we still had ~8.5 hours left until Steph's. Mara did get to witness the pain of driving across Nebraska for the first time, and I was reminded about how boring that state really is. It's still not the most boring...we'll get to that in a minute.
We stopped in Wyoming about 10:30pm CST, 11:30 MT, and checked out the stars. They were some of the most amazing stars we have ever seen! The Milky Way was very prominent and impressive. We wish we had a camera that could capture it, but you should see it for yourself.
We arrived under the cover of darkness in Fort Collins, which sucked because we couldn't even see the damn mountains! After all that driving we had to wait a whole night to see them...:(
We got up bright and early to head out to the park. Steph, unfortunatly, had to work the whole weekend we were there, but that's the life of a retail manager during a holiday weekend. We'll plan better next time Steph, we promise! Steph helped us map out a trail to take us to Black Lake (one of her favorite views in the park). All in all it was about a 10.8 mile hike from 8200-10,630 feet, so we were sure to take it slow. Let me preface that with the fact that we already spoke to our physician and he said the altitude & hiking was in no way endagering the baby. Just to be safe Mara had a heart rate monitor on just so we could keep track of it, and slowed down when we needed to. That wasn't a hard thing to do because the views were so amazing! We hiked to Alberta Falls, Mills Lake, Jewel Lake, and Black Lake over the course of about 6 hours. The weather was absolutly beautiful! Mara did take a litte spill coming down from Black Lake, but only suffered some scratches on her knees, elbows, arms, knuckles, and a bruised ego...:)
After our hike Steph took us on a tour of "Fort Fun" as she calls it. We ate at a restaurant called Fish (guess what they serve). It was spectacular. The menu actually said for our steamed mussles & scampi "more butter than you want to know about"...:) Needless to say we slept very well that night. Here are some pictures from the first day:

The second day was a shorter hike (only 6.8 for Mara, and 7.8 for me, more on that in a second). We started from the Cub Lake Trailhead and checked out Cub Lake, The Pool, and Fern Falls. About 2 miles in Mara took yet another spill on the mountain, but this time twisted her ankle pretty good. She was a trooper and finished the hike. From where she fell to Fern Falls was about a 1000 foot gain in elevation, so it was like doing the stairclimber for 3 hours. Fun! When we got back to the Fern Lake Trailhead Mara noticed her ankle was swelling up to about the size of an apple...shit. With our car still a mile away I jogged back to get it. The high altitude and the fact that we had just hiked so much made it a tough jog, but the scenery was so nice to look at, and the adrenaline from Mara's ankle was pushing me along. She looked at her ankle and decided that it would be best to get it looked at and make sure it wasn't broken or torn ligiments. We got to check out the Estes Park ER for about an hour while they took an X-Ray to determine that it was just a bad sprain and some ice and a brace for a couple of days should take care of it. The ER did check the baby's heart beat and everything was just fine, which we assumed already. The Doctor did suggest no more hiking for a few days, but that wasn't a problem since we still had a 12 hour drive ahead of us tomorrow.
We got back to Steph's and made Stir Fry and Pot Stickers for Steph since she was such a great host for us! We filled up on Mara's amazing Pot Stickers first, so Steph has a lot of Stir Fry to take to work the next few days...:) We had some corn starch & water left over from making the Pot Stickers so we introduced Steph the our favorite Non-Newtonian Fluid, OOBLECK! We capped the night off with some ice cream and wine for Steph & I, and a relaxing tub followed by ice cream for Mara. Here are some pictures from our second hike:

Monday morning Steph headed to work @ 5:30 and Mara and I slept in until 7 then picked up Steph's apartment that we had destroyed from cooking and hiking gear we had borrowed from her. Around 9 we met Steph for breakfast at McCoy's Morning Glory and had some AWESOME french toast and quiche. We couldn't get this kind of food in Kirksville if we tried! After saying goodbye to Steph we were on the road. We decided to drive down through Denver and across Kansas so we didn't take the same way home that we came. Bad idea. Let me get to the point...Kansas blows. We were on I-70 for 710 freakin' miles, ~500 of it was on the straightest stretch of road in this world. We could see for probably 30 miles in each direction for about 400 miles of Kansas. At least we're good at keeping each other company! We rolled in to Kirksville around 12:30 on Tuesday morning and crashed until about 10 this morning.
We are still a little sore from so much time in the car, but it was worth every minute! Hope you enjoy the pictures!
Here is a little video of some of the wildlife we saw and (illegally) fed. Apparently Toasted Seseame Sticks & Yogurt Covered Pretzels are like crack to little forest critters:

I've also been messing around with Google Earth and drawing maps & such so here is an overlay of our hiking trials in Google Maps:

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