Over the River and Through the Woods or Into the Past or Family Trees and Such (long post)

to Grandmother's house we go

 We went down to Iowa and enjoyed Thanksgiving with my entire family. It is the first time we've all been together since we went to Wisconsin Dells in 2011. So we made sure to get a family photo. Becky's youngest Lani and the twins are new in the family photos and Dustin's wife Angela is no longer coming to family events. His son, Josh, came with his fiance and they were with us earlier in the day but were no longer there when we took the photos.

 

The presents you see us opening were a big deal to my Dad. If you notice the gift bags are of a rainbow fabric that is quite obnoxious. My Mom got a massive piece of it from somewhere (probably curb pickings when my Dad was a trash man). There used to be curtains made out of it that hung in the windows of our old passenger van which we named Desert Storm (imagine a tan state van (my Dad and I went to a state auction to get it) with dark brown primer spots covering all the rusty areas with rainbow curtains and you get a good idea of how it looked). It was a family joke for years. Mom said this is almost the last of that material so she decided to make gift bags out of it. Inside the gift bags were bag dispensers for the kitchen and aprons.  Dustin got a picture frame lined with the fabric instead of an apron. 

The Howard family. The family photo above was taken in October when we were in SoCal and is out of order from the rest of the SoCal pictures but this seemed like a good place for it.

Ah SoCal - I am still not done sharing photos from our vacation. We also went to the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. Of course, they would like us to believe that our family tree includes many non-human creatures but we still learned a lot while marveling over the wonder and strangeness of creation. 

 

 

Grey Whale Skull

I very clearly remember when this little mastadon was discovered and National Geographic did a big article on it.

I am getting near the end of the photos from SoCal. One more excursion and then you can see what we did when we returned!! I am sorry but school keeps us crazy busy around here.