Greetings,
all! Below is the traditional year in review. We thought it would be relatively
slow but the old calendar seemed to have filled in by about January 5th…
We again
traveled to California & Nevada in March to collect trilobites for John’s
continuing research. ReBecca & our co-worker Zeb found complete Glossopleura’s! It was also Ruby’s first camping trip, &
she did great out in the middle of the desert! In April we took a quick trip
out to Arkansas & Oklahoma to visit friends & family. ReBecca had a
great time catching up with her friends! At the end of that month we all
traveled to Kemmerer, WY, where John & ReBecca presented at the 9th
Conference on Fossil Resources & attended the 4th Fossil Preparation &
Collections Symposium.
May was a
busy month! We traveled west to
attend our good friends Josh & Aubrey’s wedding in Tahoe. We also visited
Yosemite National Park, where we met up with John’s father for the day. Upon
our return the museum opened its new temporary exhibit for the summer, a large
robotic T. rex. The exhibit was very successful & Ruby & the Tyrannosaurus
made the front page of the local newspaper. A few weeks later John was reunited
with his family again for his nephew Dave’s graduation from high school. The
next day John, his sister Chris, his dad, & Dave all ran in the Bolder
Boulder, a 10K race. We then all enjoyed a post-race lunch at the Boulder
Teahouse for ReBecca’s birthday & were joined by John’s grade-school friend
Will, who now lives in the area, & ReBecca’s friend Laura.
In July
we took a family trip to Glacier National Park in Montana. We spent the first
part of the week with John’s family (his father, family friend Joanne, &
sister Chris’ family) & the second part of the week with ReBecca’s family
(her parents, her Uncle Jon, Aunt Terry & cousins Matt & Samm, along
with her children). We hiked up to Avalanche Lake on July 4, survived a
fireworks war in Hungry Horse, played dueling paddleboards on Lake McDonald,
visited Polebridge, took a Red Bus tour, hung out by the river, & generally
relaxed a lot outside our cabin. We really enjoyed our rare summer vacation
away from work!
In
October we celebrated Ruby’s 1st birthday! We had a good time &
find it very hard to believe that a whole year has already passed! Russ &
Chris came out to visit the next week & we took a nice drive up Grand Mesa.
At the end of October we took a quick trip over to Denver to see Jimmy Buffett
in concert!
We
attended the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting the first week
of November in Las Vegas. We had a great
time visiting with our friends & learning some new things. After Vegas we
took a quick trip to California. John has really wanted to introduce Ruby to
the ocean. It went well until she was so excited when running after a wave that
she took a big face plant in the sand. She recovered quickly & was back
enjoying the beach again the next day. We took a quick trip up to San Francisco
& the UC Berkeley fossil collections. We also took a trip down to the
Monterey Bay Aquarium. Ruby really enjoyed the sea turtle & the tide pool
where she could touch star fish. We also enjoyed a great dinner out with Tim,
Kelly, Dave and Linda!
For
Thanksgiving this year we once again traveled to New Mexico to see ReBecca’s
family. Ruby’s great-grandparents were there, along with her grandparents, two
great aunts, and an aunt and uncle. It was nice to get to spend time with
family and let Ruby get spoiled a little more. We also got to spend a day in
old town Santa Fe.
ReBecca
spent much of the year staying home with Ruby and working at the museum when
she could. We have been continuing our inventory of the museum collections, and
that has been moving along. She and John co-authored a paper on dinosaur skin
fossils from our Jurassic quarry, a paper that came out in May. She joined a
local MOM’s Club chapter and took a parenting class where she and Ruby met many
new friends. The classes were the highlight of their weeks, where they would
get to interact with other babies and moms. We also took a few trips over to
Denver this summer to visit with friends and take in a few Rockies Baseball
games. In September ReBecca took a trip to visit one of her best friends and
college roommate, Liz, in Portland, Oregon. She had a great time visiting her
last western state, and was able to relax and have some fun. She walked all
over Portland, and visited the coast and Mt. St. Helens while on her trip. In
October she was busy planning Ruby’s birthday party, while also organizing the
museums second annual National Fossil Day. She was very happy to have one of
her best friends from high school, Christie, and her family out for a visit in
October as well. The fall has been occupied with working 2 days a week and
spending the rest of the week with Ruby, visiting with various friends,
canning, crafting and sewing.
Some of
Ruby’s favorite things are her dog and cats, clapping, waving, swimming and
playing in the water, swinging in the sunshine, ‘read’ her books, being outside
and hiking with her mom and dad. She seems to enjoy all the traveling we have
done and has been on several of our fossil collecting trips. She is good at
sharing and is sweet to her new friends, giving them hugs and kisses. She has
recently discovered stuffed animals and pretending to cook. Ruby learned to
crawl in May and was walking all over the house by the beginning of September.
John
attempted to climb 14,036-foot Mount Sherman in the mountains of central
Colorado in March, with colleagues from work. They made it to 13,000 feet but
were turned around by wind and poor conditioning for the winter conditions up
there. John was disappointed by having to turn around for the first time on a
14er but they plan to try again, maybe this summer. In June, John spent ten
days at a paleontology conference and field trip across Arizona and Nevada, one
that he had helped organize on the Cambrian stratigraphy and paleontology of
the Great Basin. It was a very informative meeting and trip and a chance to
meet many new colleagues from all over the world. Most of the summer was busy
with digging out in our quarry in western Colorado, and watching the uncovering
of a dinosaur femur fully 6.5 feet long. In late summer, John also got to lead
a museum trip down to the Circle Cliffs in Utah, a trip during which they found
several nice trackways of ancient horseshoe crabs. The highlight of each day
for him, however, was coming home to Ruby’s smile and goofy antics.
We also
worked on a garden in the back yard this summer. Corn, potatoes, peppers,
tomatoes, an artichoke and 1 pumpkin were our harvest. The potatoes were huge –
a success for our first time growing them. ReBecca ended up winning the Battle
of the Squash Bugs and was rewarded with one nice pumpkin (which we carved
down at ReBecca’s parents’ place down in New Mexico at Thanksgiving). We even
grew enough tomatoes for John to make two nice batches of salsa, and enough
peppers to get us through the winter. We also joined a Community Farm this
year. ReBecca and Ruby really enjoyed the trip out to pick up our produce every
other week. We occasionally would spend an hour or so picking more. It was nice
to know where our food came from and to give Ruby a good connection to how we
get our food and get her started off eating well.
All of
the cats are doing well and are still enjoying their backyard, where they spent
much of the spring and summer. Tikka the dog enjoyed going trilobite camping
with us in the spring. All four of our fish (Tank, Flavio, Chip and Chip) are
enjoying a brand new (and very bright) tank light.
We hope
that 2011 was a great year for you. Have a very wonderful New Year!
John,
ReBecca, Ruby, Kelty, Duma, Grizz, Tikka, Tank, Flavio, Chip and Chip
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