Trip to Sequoia

When the Guillaudeu parents came to visit we decided to visit the giant sequoias. The trip through the 100 degree heat in a non-air conditioned car was pretty brutal, but totally worth it. The trees were utterly amazing. I was there and I almost can't believe how big they are!

Steve is thrilled about the General Sherman Tree
Largest living tree - by volume

The senate grouping of giant sequoias
and a very tiny Aimee

Fallen Sequoia's Roots
and a Steve for scale

Laying in the paved "footprint"
of the General Sherman Tree

Beautiful spiderweb photo by Steve
Yes, it is covered in pollen

View from the top of Morro Rock

Super Honda goes under the tree

Crescent Meadow

Grizzly Falls

Apartment hunted!

We found an apartment in Midland a week ago. We're getting a 2-bedroom place on the upper level of a four-unit building. It's a really nice apartment, much larger than what we have now for less money! It's got a cathedral ceiling in the living room, a large balcony and glass window doors, a decent kitchen, washer/dryer hookups, a garage and driveway, and the complex has a pool and hot tub. We're not moving in right away, unfortunately, because it isn't open until July 11. We're going to be in temporary housing until then.

After looking for the apartment, we spent some time hanging out around town. In particular, we spent a nice afternoon at Dow Gardens looking at the tulips and other plants in bloom. It's a beautiful garden. It is going to be strange for us moving somewhere with seasons. I doubt as many things bloom in January there as in Berkeley, but we'll manage. We do miss playing in snow. Thankfully, the apartment complex takes care of the driveway and streets, so we can just play in it and not have to push it around.

Don't forget we have a link to our photos on our home page at the top right, and we've added a link to Scott and Sarah's new blog, where you can see their new puppy Lola.

Skydiving celebration!

We wanted to celebrate finishing my degree, and what better way than by jumping out of a plane? Both of us have wanted to go skydiving for a long time. We didn't come up with the idea, however, without some help. Jason came over to watch Point Break with us one night. When the skydiving scene came on, he jokingly asked if we wanted to go. We had been planning on celebrating by having dinner at The French Laundry (if we could have ever gotten reservations), but realized this was a much more memorable idea.

We had eight people lined up to go, but four bailed at the last minute for various reasons. Thankfully, Tripp and Mike were still able to join us. We all had a great time.

We went to the Parachute Center at the Lodi Municipal Airport. It's an interesting operation they have running. Everything seemed to move really quickly and smoothly. Maybe they'd take more time with people during the week, but it was Mother's Day, and it was crowded. We got shuttled through putting on the gear, watching the training video, and getting on the plane really quickly once our turn came up. The plane ride didn't take long, but long enough to cast some occasional doubts. For example, we leveled off at 8000 feet to let a couple of people jump out, and then we continued climbing to 13,000. Seeing those two disappear made us realize just how easy it is to fall out of a plane.

When we got to 13,000, Aimee was first. She didn't really have time for second thoughts because the plane had 8 tandems jumping. They just crouched, waddled to the door, and tumbled out! One couple went before Steve had his chance, again with no second thoughts. It actually took a couple seconds of free fall to realize what was going on.

The free fall was tons of fun, unlike anything we've done before. The air rushed by so fast that our faces were flapping around. There's really nothing to compare it to.
Once the parachute deployed, we relaxed some, but that part wasn't as fun as the free fall. We got to make some turns and spirals, which did wonders for Aimee's stomach, and before we knew it we were on the ground.

We've got more photos posted, so if you're interested, check them out. We had a great time, plan on doing it again, and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to celebrate a special occasion or Saturday!

Gratuitous Cat Pictures

There's something funny about this laundry...

Perfectly executed synchronized carpet swim

Mom's visit to Berkeley

My mom recently came to visit and we had an awesome time. We had lots of fun walking around Berkeley in the spring smelling and taking pictures of the amazing variety of flowers currently blooming.

I'm trying to take lots of sunny pictures of flowers and such during my last month in Berkeley. I figure I'll use them to help me through the upcoming long Michigan winters.



We also walked around San Francisco and stopped buy Coit Tower and Pier 39 where we saw the sea lions

San Francisco

Coit Tower

Land Fish

We did more flower sniffing at the Berkeley botanical gardens.

We went down to Castle Rock State Park near Scott and Sarah for a nice hike last weekend. It was a gorgeous day. The park was full of pretty flowers, great views, and an ominous buzz of some large bee hive not far in the distance.

As an aside, my bread baking project is going slowly, but well. The newest addition was some delicious challah, shown here getting mysteriously picked at. Why has the baking slowed? Because I was finishing up the final touches to my dissertation, which is now completely finished and submitted! We now have free time until moving to Michigan, along with a long list of things in California we are going to see, so keep checking in to see the upcoming adventures.

Cow painting

A while ago my dad brought me back this awesome T-shirt from Spain. It had the cutest little circle cow on it and I always thought it would be great to make it into a painting (I did look online first and see if I could just buy one from the artist). So, while my mom was in town I took advantage of her artistic know-how and the two of us painted this uber cute replica. Of equal importance, Steve agreed to the hanging of the purple cow in our home!

Beginning the process of penciling in the cow. It's amazing how hard it can be to exactly recreate a blob.

Starting with the light purple. Moon shaped horns and horn shaped moon (horny moon?)

Almost done!

Painting the edges for the perfect finish!