Eurobaby goes to la piscine et la plage

For all you naked baby lovers:

NOTE: I had to edit this page because apparently Photobucket did not approve of naked baby pictures. Apparently they violated their decency standards. Okay... So bazaar... What prudes. Dave (10/24/08)

These are the only ones that were deemed appropriate by the Photonazi's:

La piscine un:



La piscine trois:



Hee hee, someday he'll hate me for this!

Life on the Pond

Normally we view life on our little pond through the living room windows. Early this spring we got see river otters romping, we watched a momma and poppa goose build up a nest and hatch three goslings, we've seen the goings on of muskrats (apparently they really do like love) and herons, beavers, and osprey are daily visitors. Rarely does the pond come to us. However, this changed on Monday when some mallards decided it would be fun to hang out in the yard with us.

I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Sitting by the sandbox:


Run ducks, the boy is after you:


Jamie observes the ducks, Quack, Quack:


Go ducks go! (Jamie throws the ball at the ducks)

Camping and the Kinetic Sculpture Race 2008

This past weekend was the Kinetic Sculpture Race in Baltimore. Robena, Phil, and Twyla came up for the weekend. Rather than try to cram everyone into our tiny house we decided that we would reserve campsites at nearby Patapsco Valley St. Park.

Yeti sighting:


Hanging out at the playground:


Jamie was about the happiest we have ever seen him. He loved playing in the leaves (and unfortunately the road). We brought a playpen with us so he could be near the fire but not too close. He loved it. He went to bed with no fuss each night and when he woke up and looked out of the tent and realized he was still camping he had the biggest smile you could imagine. We will be camping as much as possible this summer, I believe!

Saturday morning we hopped in the truck and took a quick drive over to Baltimore for the Race. Christine and I decided the best way to see the race was to actually ride the race course with all the sculptures so we loaded Jamie in the trailer and took off. The course is about 15 miles long winding from Federal Hill, past the inner Harbor, and Fells Point, over to the Camden waterfront, then up to Patterson Park and back with several stops along the way. It's probably not a ride you would do on a normal day, but with roads closed and traffic somewhat controlled, it's a pretty nice way to explore downtown Baltimore.

Traffic Jam KSR 2008.


Robena and Family drove and met us at various rendezvous points along the way.

Twyla was vying for the Miss Congeniality award:


Jamie posing as a Kinetinaut:


You see strange things at Kinetic Sculpture Races:


Overall the Race wasn't as smoothly run as past races we've attended. We ended up waiting over an hour for our police escort for the final leg of the race. Then we quickly out ran the escort and ended up having to wait through all the lights which was really unfortunate. The last leg is almost entirely downhill and you can really get rolling and is normally a lot of fun. What normally would have taken 15 - 20 minutes to ride took almost an hour.

We finally made it back to the campsite around 6 pm. We left around 9:30 am so it was a long day. We cooked a big ol' pot of chili and put Jamie and Twyla to bed. The rest of us hung out eating our fill of S'mores by the campfire.

More pictures of the race from pedalpushersonline.com (Look for Jamie sightings in the last link, he was hamming it up for the photographer)
http://pedalpushersonline.com/galleries/ksr_opener_web/
http://pedalpushersonline.com/galleries/ksr_water_web/
http://pedalpushersonline.com/galleries/ksr_finale_web/

New Orleans

I took a quick trip down to the big easy back in April to give a presentation at the annual American Chemical Society meeting. When I wasn't at the conference, I spent the rest of the time wandering aimlessly through the French Quarter checking out the sights and sounds. It's a pretty crazy place.

This little 30 second movie is pretty typical of what you find when walking down any street in the quarter.



My general impression is that the street musicians in New Orleans are a cut above the rest. In any other city, these kids would be packing a club to capacity. Here they are just one more band in the crowd.

Jamie's getting old enough to enjoy little trinkets from my trips so I hooked him up with some Mardi Gras beads. As you can see, he loves them!