Last Leg: MD and DC The last segment of our holiday travels was the East Coast, and we had fun, despite the viral/bacterial harvest....

	First place we went in Maryland was the Double T Diner. Greek food!
	Just Max, chillin'
	We did a day trip up to NY to see Grandpa Vic, and stopped to see Max's other cousins. We had, I'm told, a great visit with Grandpa Vic and my Aunts, but I missed most of it. Blech.
	Back in Maryland, Max and Grandpa Norm built a house. Grandpa provided popsicle sticks, glue and engineering; Max was architect and decorator. It ended up as a small train depot.
	Preparing for my conference appearance: it's been a long time since I had to match ties and shirts.... fortunately, I had access to Dad's collection of ties, as well.
	Max finds my mainland formal wear very amusing.
	Alex, Kim and the cousins came down to Maryland for another visit, mostly while I was at the meeting, but we got to overlap a bit.
	We did DC one day, walking past the White House, going up the Washington Monument, and doing a few turns through the Natural History Museum. Max enjoyed the train rides, too.
	No visit to the Mall is complete without a turn on the carousel! (I remember it being a lot cheaper, though.)
	Woody took the ride, too. It was a very full day, but the weather was great and we had fun.

Finally, here's my versions of the pictures everyone takes:
That was, unfortunately, the last gasp for my camera, whose frame was no match for the gears and levers inside a reclining chair. A replacement has been purchased on eBay and should be here any day now, and then normal shutterbuggery will resume!  ¶ Friday, January 18, 2008 2 comments

  Animals on Tour

	The animal tour starts in Hilo, where we had another mouse. Brazen fellow. Of course, it helps that we're a lot nicer to mice than to rats...
	Doesn't mean we want to live with them, though. Humane trap, overnight in a vase with snacks, then it's off to the woods. Across town, anyway.
	This bird got confused one night and tried to fly through our porch doors. Repeatedly. Took some doing with the broom, but I finally convinced him that open sky was better than roof and rafters. The picture was taken one-handed in the dark.
	This is Daisy, the resident dog at Triple Creek Farm. Max isn't much for big dogs, especially ones that like to jump on people, but by the end of the visit they'd come to an accomodation and Max was very fond of her.
	Among the many things Max had never seen was a proper V of geese.
	We saw this white-tailed deer (two of them, actually) on our walk around the farm with Ryan.
	The Zoo in Independence didn't have a lot of animals -- some of them were wintering elsewhere -- but there were a few braving the cold. And it was cold that day.
	The baby Kinkajou was in a warm building, at least. Along with the snake. The rest of the animals were roughing it, though.
	Though wet and cold, I thought the Emu maintained a quite dignity.
	We didn't get to a zoo in DC, but we did have lunch on the Mall, with the brazen scavengers crowding our table.
	You can shout at them, wave at them, throw things at them... they don't care. They know you have crumbs....

  ¶ Friday, January 18, 2008 0 comments

  Christmas on the Farm We got to spend a lot of time with the Bauer side of the family: everyone came down the same day we did (though we were the only ones who got caught in the blizzard) and stayed for a while. Max got to spend lots of time with his cousins:

	We did some formal pictures the first day, at the end of which we all got hats and the kids got party crackers.
	Though we came in a blizzard, the weather turned quite nice very quickly. One day, the sky was just perfect blue, horizon to horizon.
	Woody and I went for a long walk around the farm with Ryan. There are a lot of thorn trees on the property.
	Ryan and Max spent a lot of time playing. This was a radio-controlled plane thingy.
	We also got to visit with Great-Aunt Mary Jane -- here's Max having a chat with her -- who gave us some lovely quilts and lots of candy to take home.
	Mary Jane always has puppets around: here's Marge and Jack having some fun.
	Of course, everyone wanted to hold Nathan, who's just a couple months old. Everyone looks cute with a baby: Uncles...
	....Grandads...
	.... older cousins...
	....Grams and Aunts...
	In between passing the baby around, there was other fun to be had: Gingerbread Houses! Nobody wanted to eat theirs right away, but we finally got to do some tasty demolition near the end of the visit.
	John was architect and chief engineer.
	In other sticky-sweet news, Grandad put up a bonfire one night, and the cousins all got to have s'mores. Max was having them for what I'm pretty sure is the first time. The reviews were predictably positive.
	The weather was so good that the boys got to spend lots of time outside, and that meant trampoline! Here's Kyle, showing off his moves.
	Here's Max mid-bounce, with an assist from John and Ryan.
	Max even talked Woody and I up there finally.
	After the cousins, aunts and uncles left, we still had some time. this is Max visiting the zoo in Independence. It was a cold, cold day, but that wasn't going to stop Max from seeing everything there was to see and doing everything there was to do. Here he's climbing up a rather slippery castle bridge.
	Here he is coming out of a big metal teepee.
	This is the "Little House on the Prairie": not the actual house, but it is in the actual spot.

  ¶ Friday, January 18, 2008 0 comments

  Latke Tour The Fried Potato Traveling Road Show....

	Hanukkah is here!
	Here are my latkes, made in Hilo. I remembered the pepper this year, but forgot the onion. Still, the texture and crispness came out well.
	Grandad, aka Jim, grating in Kansas. We brought our good graters with us, but kept the quantity down to side-dish levels (only five pounds!)
	Anne helped, too!
	Here's the MD crew, peeling and grating.
	A new generation of Scherer joins the tradition!

  ¶ Thursday, January 17, 2008 0 comments