Weekend in Buffalo

This fall I spent a bit of time in Buffalo, NY for work and one of the weeks Mark was able to fly up and spend the weekend. It was the absolute perfect weekend for seeing fall colors and going siteseeing. We were quite lucky to have been there on that weekend!

On Saturday we went to Niagara Falls, about a half an hour away from Buffalo. You can see the falls from both the American and Canadians sides, but we went to the Canadian side since I think you get a better view.


You can actually see the mist from the falls before you can ever seen the actual falls.

Here's a picture of Niagara Falls with the people walking alongside the river and falls.


One of the things you can do is take a boat ride up by the Niagara Falls. The water was quite cold, as well as the air itself (Mark bought a windbreaker and we both got hats for the weekend!). One of these summer days maybe I'll venture up there :)


This is actually a picture at the top of Niagara Falls. Without seeing what is past, you don't have an idea what lies ahead. That's a lot of water going over the edge too!


Because of the mist, there is pretty much always a rainbow if the sun is up. Makes for pretty pictures...


This is the waterfall on the American side. So we are standing in Canada looking over at New York.



Here's us :) Here you can see both the Niagara Falls and the American Falls.



Then, on Sunday, we went down to Letchworth State Park that was referred to me by one of the guys working at the company I was visiting. Excellent reference by the way!!

This was the first of four beautiful waterfalls along the river running through this park. If you look up to the right you will see someone standing on that hill. Yes, that valley was pretty darn deep!




This was the second of the waterfalls. If you look on the left hand side of the picture you can actually see some people standing on the other side looking at the waterfall. It was BIG!


And here we are where those people in the previous picture are standing...now looking at the waterfall. Wow. This thing was big! And georgeous! And loud.




Walking along the trail up to the third waterfall there was a huge overhanging rock. There's Mark standing on it....pondering......


And here I am at the waterfall :)



And here we are walking up to the last waterfall.


Us :~)


After we got through walking through and seeing the waterfalls, we drove through the rest of the park. This park was quite large! The river that has the waterfalls winds a long long way through New York and through this park and one of the roads winds along the river. With all the color in the trees it was absolutely beautiful!


The end of a long but very enjoyable day!!

Garden Time

So since I've started on Facebook, I've gotten lazy and not posted here. But not everyone is on that, I was recently reminded, and besides, I can talk more on this one. So, I'm going to try once again to update this site. So, here's an update of what's been going on. Since it has been a while, I may do this in a couple of posts...we'll see how long I can last :)

This past spring, I promised myself that if I could keep up with watering and weeding of my existing garden, my gift to myself would be permission to build an improved garden. I love to garden but I've always been bad about not watering and letting stuff die. Well, everything in the garden lived through the summer, and thrived, so I designed a new garden layout and went to it. This design works a lot better -- it will be easier to plant and harvest and weed. So I'm excited.

Here's a picture showing the original garden and the outline of the new garden. We started back in September. I got to harvest my first sweet potatoes while digging up the original garden...yum!


I did the design, but Mark was nice enough to provide quite a bit of help. He cut all the wood as I asked him to and made some real purty gates. And he told me one day as we were working....."I'm actually having fun!" Cool babe!


And here, several months later, the garden is finally complete. We finished over Christmas break. Plenty of time to plan for the spring garden. I'm looking forward to it :)


Of course, I had to plant *something* so I have lettuce, swiss chard, radishes and some other cool crops planted.

Summer Garden

It is the absolutely most fantastic July day you could ask for!! It is mid-80's and the sun is out, a very small breeze, and I just have to sit outside and enjoy the evening. It would almost be sinful not to. Because I'm sure tomorrow it will be 105 outside and then I'd be sorry that I didn't.

I'm so excited about my garden this year! Mainly, that I'm still taking the time to water and weed and such, to actually keep it alive in this gruelling hot weather we've been having. It's definitely my best try so far. I planted most stuff pretty late, so I'm just now getting to see the fruits of some of my labor. But my beans put on their first flowers this week, as did my cucumbers and squash. Actually, I didn't plant the squash....it volunteered itself in the compost bin, but it was so healthy looking in there that I had to plant it in the garden! So, I'm going on an assumption really that it's a squash since I didn't actually plant it myself.

Also, I stepped out this year and am trying potted plants for some of my herbs and veggies. I have a hot pepper and bell pepper plant along with a cherry tomato and some basil plants. I started out putting the basil in pots so that I didn't get basil trees in the garden this year. Of course, there are still a few volunteers in the garden that I just couldn't bear to get rid of after they came up and looked so nice, but I'm trying to keep them trimmed back very good so they don't take over. My potted plants are still alive, which is saying an awful lot since those would go first before the garden plants. Anyway, all in all, I'm very happy with the garden so far :) Here are a few pics.....

The hot, hot, hot! jalepeno plant. These peppers make my throat hurt just cutting them open! But, they're still good.

The cucumber plant. As of this morning, there are several blooms on the plant. It won't be long til cucumbers. Of course, there's also my volunteer marigolds. They volunteered themselves wonderfully from last year. Enough to make a decent marigold border around my garden.

My bush beans, gone climbing. I'm pretty sure, by the looks of these plants, the package was labeled wrong. Now there is one plant, of course in the center of one of these wire cages, that happened to be a bush bean plant. I just hope I can find the beans once they starting putting on!

The whole garden (minus the herb garden). Ain't it perty?

Oh, and one bonus. Mark and I went blueberry picking a couple of weekends ago. I always like to make a desert to bring in to work to all those hungry engineers when I get done with the picking. And this year, we went early enough in the season that I was able to pick some blackberries too. So I made a blueberry-blackberry crumble. Yummy!!

Dinner flight and Flowers

OK, so Mark has informed me that I haven't posted in a while. And yes, he's correct. So, this will be just randomness.....whatever I have pictures of or comes to mind. For the posting, of course.

So, we took a flight a few weeks ago for dinner to Oklahoma. I didn't take too many pictures but I got a couple of cool ones....

This first one is of the Red River. It separates Oklahoma and Texas. I'm pretty sure the clay gives it its' red appearance, but I thought it looked particularly red this evening.

This next one was just some random river on the way but I liked the color of all the land plots with the river and blue skies and airplane...

Flying along, we passed a farmer plowing up the land. I really just thought it was way cool the lines along with the red and green contrast.

So, we went and ate dinner and then left to go out to the airplane to fly home. There were these two kids who just thought it was cool that we flew for dinner and wanted to go flying with us so bad. Here, they took off running towards the airplane. They stopped way short of the plane....they weren't being dangerous, but the family (mom, dad and the two brothers) came out to watch us take off. Kinda cool :)

Cool sunset picture. Mark liked the reflection on the underside of the wing. I was in love with the colors.

Finally home. This is downtown Fort Worth, right before landing. I was actually surprised I was able to get such a clear picture with the slightly bumpy ride and darkness all around. Yep, I'm patting myself on the back :)

OK, on to other fun stuff. ..... I saw this little guy outside, so obviously I had to take a picture. He didn't want to sit still though. He didn't like the idea of me looking at him, so he was gone pretty quick.

Then of course there are flowers. These are the first flowers of the summer. The sunflowers. God definitely has a wonderful imagination when it comes to nature!!

This little praying mantis....he just crawled all over this flower. He posed nicely for me!! (Unlike the lizard from earlier)....

That is all for now. Sorry, no pictures of us this time. Next time!

Welcome Spring!

Winter is fun because we get to go skiing and I like to snuggle under warm blankets and beside a good fire. But, being from the south, I'm glad when the frosts are done and the warm air rolls in. Each year, our front yard tree is one of the first to welcome spring in with its' burst of white flowers. This was by far the lovelist and prettiest showing of our tree. I thoroughly enjoyed it for the week of first flower to last flower!

Then last weekend, we took a trip to Mark's mothers house in Arkansas. They had a horrible ice storm this winter and so many of their trees in the whole area were basically cut in half. But everything is starting to bloom up there now too. Of course, I had to take pictures :)

The field beside their house, filled with small purple flowers....of course, I had to lay in the field of flowers and just take it in!


The kitties, just strolling on a lovely weekend.....

Then, the kitties playing in the flowers. The funny thing about this last picture is that I was taking a picture of the black kittie roaming in the right-hand side of the picture. However, I couldn't believe it when I opened this picture on my computer the first time. If you look on the left, there is a leaping kitty flying through the sky! He's a little above center of the picture and nearly all the way left, right next to the tree. (Click on the picture and it will get bigger if you want to see the kitty easier). I could not have taken that picture if I had tried!


The yard with cool shadows from the sun....

Oh, there were so many birds out all day long when we were there....I was absolutely lovin' it!! Here's a redbird hanging out in the tree.

Then, Keith's geese. They used to be in the garden, but they were downright destructive and mean so Keith made them their own little pen in the front of the yard. Now I know the meaning of a mean goose! You can't tell from this picture, but they are making quite some racket for me. Of course, the gray one is just interested in what was on the other side of the fence.

Keith's caution sign. They definitely let you know when someone is driving up the driveway! Oh yeah, and then occasionally, they just quack to hear themselves quack I suppose.

Keith has built a firepit in the backyard and loves a good fire when they have company. It was pretty chilly the first night, and Keith had prepared a huge bonfire.....so we enjoyed the fire! Here's Mark and his Mama chattin' by the fireside.....

Of course, I love the challenge of taking good pictures and the fire had a lot of color to it this time. Here's one of many, showing the deep blue flames at the bottom. It was a good, hot fire!

Then on the last day before we left, Mark's mother was telling us about a new bike trail going through Fayetteville. We had brought our bikes and wanted to go for a ride, so we drove into town with the bikes and set out on an hour bikeride. It was a very nice trail...I'm jealous! It winds through many of the neighborhoods and you can just get on and off in your neighborhood and then ride through the town via the bike trails. The trail goes all along a river through town. Here's a picture showing one of the several small waterfalls along the way.

Then of course, finally a geeky picture of us on the bikeride. Helmets on for safety!

Our Annual Ski Vacation

Our ski vacation this year took us to Breckenridge. And actually it was designed partly around the fact that Mark was DYING to go back to the vertical wind tunnel (to relive the skydiving years). So we went with a few of our old skydiving buddies to ski and to play in the tunnel. Here we all are outside of one of the ski resorts. (Mark, Angela, Paul, Greg)

Then of course, here we are playing in the snow!

Mark with his requisite thumbs up....

A couple of awesome scenery pics...

I just thought the icicles on the underside of the snow falling off the house just looked really cool.

Then a few sunset pictures from the drive home....most excellent. Sun sets behind the mountain with awesome cloud cover as a backdrop.

I just liked this picture of us and thought I'd share.

Here's us just hanging out at the end of the day. Mark sharing pictures on the computer and me, I decided that since we were skiing I wanted to knit a ski hat :D

And here is the fruit of my knitting....Now to end with, a picture of us with the awesome mountains in the background...how awesome!

Flying Out for Dinner

We had fun last night, I got some good flight experience, and I wanted to share… I normally fly on Friday’s and 1) since Angela didn’t have a soccer game this Friday, 2) her Birthday is this weekend, and 3) she likes flying places, I thought flying her out for a nice dinner some place we had never been would be nice. So where’d we go?? Well, I found this little Bed & Breakfast called Carson House in Pittsburg, TX. They’re also open as a restaurant to the general public. How’d I find it? I usually pick an airport to fly to and then look for places to go around it. It happened to come up in the search. Turns out it was really nice!

Our destination airport was Mount Pleasant Regional. If you draw a line from Meacham airport (where we fly out of) to Mount Pleasant, it goes right over the top of DFW airport. This is considered “Class B” airspace, and requires a special clearance to enter. We could do it, but for the trip over I just decided to fly around it to the South.


The trip over to Mount Pleasant was as expected… We actually saw a ground speed of 145kts (167mph!) and the flight took us barely over an hour.

I had arranged earlier in the day to get one of the airport courtesy cars for the evening. I had talked to Butch at the airport a couple of times setting this up and he’s a super nice guy. The airport was basically closed for the evening but he arranged to have a car available for us (thanks Butch!)

We drove South from the airport, and eventually found the Carson House. We had a very nice dinner, the people were extremely nice, and Angela told me all about her experience with the kids at the Good News Club earlier in the day. As all good things normally do, dinner came to an end way to early. Angela & I headed back to the airport. We left some money for the gas we used, gave the plane a quick once over, and then loaded up for home.

After taking off we turned due West, this time planning on going around the Northern part of the ‘class B’ airspace at DFW. We new we’d be fighting a bit of a headwind so we settled in for a longer flight this time.

The plane we fly has some really fancy-dancy equipment in it that calculates the winds you’re flying in (quick lesson… the airplane flies a certain speed through the air. In our case ~135mph. If the wind is not blowing at all we would be moving over the ground at that exact same speed. If the wind is 10mph in the same direction the plane is flying, then the plane is moving across the ground at 145mph. If the wind is 10mph in the opposite direction, the plane is moving at only 125mph across the ground. Make sense…) Anyway, it became apparent the winds at altitude were a little stronger than originally forecasted. We saw the winds coming at us were 34kts (39mph)… ugh! We tried different altitudes, but it didn’t matter. And unfortunately 34kts would be the best we’d see for the remainder of the flight! The farther we went, the stronger the winds got.

The winds eventually peaked out at 53kts (61mph), yikes! There’s no way around it… the only way to get home is to keep going the direction we’re going, but we’re only moving across the ground at a “measly” 78mph. Heck, we could almost be driving that fast.

The controllers seemed to have a relatively light workload during our flight and actually cleared us to fly right through the middle of the class B airspace. He told us to fly right over the top of DFW airport at about 3,400ft. Once we FINALLY got there (seemed to take FOR-EV-ERrrrrrrrr) we were both checking out all the big jets parked at the terminal gates, and the enormous size of the runways. Angela & I have both flown into and out of that airport numerous times but never right over the top of it… in a Cessna! Sweeeeet… We had plenty of time to enjoy it too since we were going so SLOW!

Once back at Meacham the approach to landing was pretty bumpy, and we touched down almost an hour and 45 minutes after we took off… ugh! This is the first flight I actually felt the need to do some quick fuel calculations just in case. We had plenty of fuel when we took off, but you really don’t expect to have a 60mph headwind for the majority of the trip! Turns out we were more than fine, but I was definitely thinking about it.

So, all is well, we both had a wonderful time, and we both experienced some new things. Can’t beat that!