Christmas Surprise

No harm done!

Park City

Desperately wanting to escape the awful inversion in the Salt Lake Valley, we headed to Park City for a family outing:

We took Grace to an off-leash dog park and then went for a hike.

Other than having a runny nose from the cold Aven did well and enjoyed the ride.

Aven experiencing snow for the first time.

A happy Grace dog shaking after burrowing her head into the snow.

Happy Christmas

From Ian, Cara, Aven, and Grace

Christmas Cactus.

In 2005 the year we bought our house, one of Cara's friends gave her a Christmas gift. a plant called a Christmas Cactus, or Zygocactus truncatus. It's a plant that blooms only when the it gets cold, i.e. in the winter i.e. around Christmas. The plant was flowering when we got it in 2005, but there was no flower in 2006. We doubted that we would ever see it flower again, since flower shops routinely use hormones to make flowers bloom in the store which sometimes ruins the plant for any future flower's. So we were very excited when we saw our first flower in 2007. I didn't get around to taking a photo until the flower was on it's way to the grave so it's a bit droopy, but this was our holiday flower in 2007.

And in 2008 we were greeted with another flower.

Finally the end of my story, this year we have had one blossom already and another 2 that might bloom here soon. Here's my photos from this year.

Stone Cold Santa Killer

You better watch out, you better not cry, Gracie Dog is coming to town . . . on a toy killing rampage!

Color Wheel, An Artistic Interpretation

My 7th grade classes have been learning to mix colors. The end result of their color mixing experimentation is supposed to be an accurate color wheel similar to the one below (some of the colors look dark because the pictures were taken with the camera in my Mac).

I explained complimentary colors and in exactly what order the colors should be assembled.

Apparently my lesson and the multiple examples hanging on the board were lost in translation in this case: