Super Cupcake!!

I'm falling behind again - aren't I? I'll have to do another couple of catch-up-super posts pretty soon here. I have hiking pictures, and caving pictures and just cool stuff to report, but its pretty late and should totally be in bed already - so for now I'll leave you with a tantalizing treat! A Super Cupcake!



I bought this great cake pan a while back from William Sonoma and finally had a chance to use it for a joint birthday/anniversary on Thursday for the folks at BakerWoodard. The recipe included with it made a fantastic pound-cake type yellow cake. I decorated it with 1 - 1/2 cans of vanilla frosting - some of it tinted and some oversized sprinkles (thanks Laura!) Oh and - it tasted as good as it looked!

Sondra's Birthday Cave

I have to laugh at our reminder note because if we had lost it and someone else had found it I'm sure they would have thought something kinky was going down in room 155.

Dave has been systematically combing karst areas in Huntsville for features and possible new caves every time comes into town from Atlanta to research at the NSS Office. Last weekend Dave invited Paul and I out for a little jaunt on Huntsville Mtn. He had found a few karst features while he was by himself that he thought were worth investigating later. So this time he brought some back up - Paul and I!

Paul pulling out some gear.

Dave gave me the honor of descending one particular karsty feature first - and as it turns out - its looking like it will just qualify. Dave read instruments & pulled tape, Paul helped with tape and I sketched the new little cave.

Dave in the entrance.

Me, sketching away....

Dave pulling tape.

Then we had to think of a name. Dropped Pencil Cave was a possibility - because I dropped a pencil and then Scorpion Cave was another because while I was sitting propped up on a ledge, a scorpion came out and decided to tell me I was disturbing him. I apologized and quickly got out of his way. I didn't even know there were scorpions in Alabama!!! (They are smaller and less poisonous - but just as spooky looking as their western cousins) And then I thought gee, I wonder if my Mom would like a cave named after her - since we found it on her November 11th birthday? So we landed on "Sondra's Birthday Cave" will be coming to an ACS near you!

Some pretty fall leaves during our ridgewalk.

A fantastic old cedar patiently rearranging rocks.

Mamasita

Happy Birthday Mom!!!
I love you!!

Pappasito

A gal at a veggie stand told my folks and I once that people with Halloween birthdays are called "Booger Babies." My father is a
Booger Baby.

Happy Birthday Dad! I love you!

And Happy Halloween to everyone too!

It's Halloween, one of the oldest holidays in the Western European tradition, invented by the Celts, who believed Halloween was the day of the year when spirits, ghosts, faeries, and goblins walked the earth. The tradition of dressing up and getting candy probably started with the Celts as well. Historians believe that they dressed up as ghost and goblins to scare away the spirits, and they would put food and wine on their doorstep for the spirits of family members who had come back to visit the home.

Pope Gregory III turned Halloween into a Christian holiday in the eighth century, and people were encouraged to dress up as saints and give food to the poor. But when Irish Catholics brought the Celtic traditions to the United States, Halloween became a holiday for them to let off steam by pulling pranks, hoisting wagons onto barn roofs, releasing cows from their pastures, and committing all kinds of mischief involving outhouses. Treats evolved as a way to bribe the vandals and protect homes.

It wasn't until the early 20th century that Halloween became a holiday for children. In 1920, the Ladies' Home Journal made the first known reference to children going door to door for candy, and by the 1950s it was a universal practice in this country. By the end of the 20th century, 92 percent of America's children were trick-or-treating. Tonight, about 70 percent of American households will open their doors and offer candy to children, and Halloween parties are becoming increasingly popular among adults. It's the one day a year that people can freely dress as the opposite gender, as criminals, superheroes, celebrities, animals, or even inanimate objects. But retailers report that the most popular costumes remain some variation on witches, ghosts, and devils.

Credit for Halloween info - Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac

The Chatanooga Choo-Choo (Part2)

Finally getting to post the photos from Paul's belated birthday trip many weeks ago. Tommy, Paul Michelle and I all went to the Train Museum and the Aquarium up in Chattanooga. We all had a blast!

Paul got all excited because he got "real coal dust in his hair!" from riding in a restored Pullman car. Steam engines are pretty darn cool.

This is the engine we took a little ride on.

When we stopped to turn around the conductor showed us the huge warehouse where they are restoring the trains. This was on one of the trains in the warehouse - I just thought this was funny - but humping is actually pushing the car instead of pulling.

The view of the tracks from the back of the car as we were going back.

Michelle, Tommy and Paul on one the engines the museum has on display in the train yard.

One of the fantastically beautiful pitcher plants at the Chatanooga aquarium. They were huge! These things could have swallowed an armadillo if it had wanted to!

Obviously these two butterflies never visited the train museum...

Paul Michelle and Tommy enjoying the view.

Seadragons. A relation to seahorses. Perhaps the coolest creature to roam the sea (other than the gelatinous orange creature of Sanibel). Seadragons , Jedi masters of camouflage, imitate their favorite kelp bed. The Chattanooga Aquarium has some others that are this fantastic dark purple and their "leaves" are shaped more like little paddles.

Camera in Hand

“Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.” - Walker Evans (American Photographer 1903-1975)

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” - Aaron Siskind

“When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.” - Annie Leibovitz

Happy Birthday Nathan, oh taker of pictures, and subject of few. Exciting plans await in '08!

The ruins of Bell Tavern, KY - 2007

The Chatanooga Choo-Choo

Michelle, Tommy and I took Paul on a belated birthday train ride last weekend up in Chattanooga. None of us had been to the train museum up there - or had a ride on a train pulled by a real steam locomotive. We sat in a restored 1920's Pullman car with the windows down for our little train ride. Paul actually got coal in his hair - and was quite excited about it too. He said he was never going to wash it again. I have some fun photos to post from the whole trip - on the train and at the completed Chattanooga Aquarium (they added an ocean building fairly recently) - but for now I'm beat and there's a grotto caving trip tomorrow to Roaring River - so the single photo will have to tide you over.

A Very Happy (early) Day!

Happy Birthday Paul!

I love you!
(I'm pretty sure he likes his new toys for his GPS!)

Playing Catch-up #1

My birthday frivolities extended for almost a month this year - the last celebration of which occurred last Thursday believe it of not - with a cake at work.

Paul organized a little pre-B-Day get together at Miako with a few friends before he and I left for his nieces wedding in St. Louis. Here Tommy and Nathan can be seen modeling the latest chopstick orifice trends.

Paul and I, deciding the latest trends were way too classy for us decided to eat with our chopsticks, (boring - I know) and then put them down and take this cute picture.

Paul's niece's wedding was in St. Louis on the 30th of June, followed by a family reunion the next day. Enjoyed visiting with all of Paul's family very much, and then meeting members of his very-well-extended family at the reunion on Sunday.

Hmmm... Could they be brothers?

Hmmmm.... Think they could all be cousins?

Just a smattering of the family reunion on July 1st...

The very same day we drove back in my folks came to celebrate my birthday and spend the 4th of July with us! No fireworks for us this year on the 4th - bright colors came in the form of ink on paper. My Mom and I worked on her personal stationary while my Dad carved a fantastic linoleum cut to run a limited edition print later on that evening.


Of course there was a visit to Soul Burger (BEST burgers in Huntsville!) while they were here too

Playing Catch-up #2

I apparently maxed out how many photos you could stick in one post so the story is continued here....

We also made the trip to see the Rosenbaum's House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

This is my B-day card tree. Previously bought and used for Christmas cards, it was so pretty Paul and I decided to leave it up year-round, and then when some birthday cards arrived I figured it could hold a bit of birthday cheer!

The garden is overrun with tomatoes at the moment. And Paul and I had a plethora of pretty green, purple and yellow beans last week. The corn is almost ready to harvest and cucumbers are still sprouting out all over the vines. This is my first time that I can remember successfully growing carrots though - not to mention cool little round ones!

The HCRU Tyrolean was the 14th, which was, as always, awesome! DeSoto was a bit on the low-flow side, but you still heard enough of a bubbling roar to know its a good sized waterfall. Got to do some swimming down in the splash pool and then climbed out the high side (100 or so feet). Paul got a couple photos of swimming out to the rope and then climbing. Man what a beautiful view when you climb it, you're well away from the wall and you've got plenty of time to look around if you frog.


Phew. I think I'm caught up now.