Colorful Fall 2009!!

Many have requested and their finally here......Fall Foliage Pics!

One of the things we love the most about Vermont is how beautiful it is here in the fall! Of course the fall is virtually over here now, but for about 1 or 1.5 months there are so many different shades of colors everywhere. It's like living in a box of crayons, kinda. It's difficult to really do it justice in the form of pics because it all depends on the weather that day, the time of day and where the sun is. Some of the trees that are really pretty have traffic signs next to them or telephone lines running through the branches, etc. Many of the trees are not just one color, either. They'll be red on the tips, then orange, then a little yellow and still green in the middle of the tree. Or many of them are half and half depending on where they get most of the sun. Half of the tree will be bright orange and the other half green as can be.

The following pic was taken at the beginning of the fall season from the top of the building Greg works from. The university campus is right in the middle between the building Greg works at and the main hospital buildings that Tyra works at. It's a really beautiful campus. The main hospital is comprised of many big buildings you can see some of them in the pic. They're the big buildings in the back to the left of the pic behind the tall bell tower.

The picture below is the building that Greg works at. Even the ivy gets color!

We went on a small drive, as we try to do every year, to see the foliage. The hills/mountains have so many colors. There are some Evergreens mixed in here and there, and some trees have already lost their leaves.

This is a road really close to our house that leads to the beach where you can have a picnic or there are baseball fields and an enclosed ice rink for year-long ice skating/hockey.

Phillips Training in Seattle - Sept. 09

A week or so after our trip home in September, I was one of two in the ultrasound department selected to attend extra training on the Philips IU22 ultrasound machine. We have 2 in the department and that entitles 2 to get trained on the in's and out's of the machine. So Philips flew me and a co-worker to Washington state for a 2 day training seminar. They provided everything from the hotel room, to transportation ,to meals. It was a quick trip and a little hard to get used to the 3 hour time difference but we ate a ton and learned a ton and had a good time. We were pretty dead the first day with the jet-lag, but after the 1st day's class, we went with 4 or 5 others on a quick bus ride to Seattle.

Views of the city from the car ride from airport to hotel.
Two large stadiums.

A large market. Unfortunately, we arrived after most things were closed and put away. We were able to see some of it and could image how it would be in the main hustle and bustle.

Small fruit stand.

When someone buys a fish they toss the fish over the ice to the other workers so they could package it up.

Huge fish!

I wasn't able to get a great pic of the space needle, this was the best one. When I did get a good view, I was in the car and kept getting other cars in the way or a tree would come into view just as I pushed the button. It was a little frustrating. So this was taken from the city side so I could only see the top. It's not as big as I thought it would be, with all the huge buildings around it.

Pretty a dusk.

For you Twilight lovers out there!

If I had a rental car I might have driven up to Forks for some pics. I'm sure they get that a lot.

We watched the sunset. So pretty!

It was a nice quick trip and we learned so much. We couldn't wait to get back and try out all the cool things we learned.

The Ultrasound Department recently bought 10 new GE E9 machines so ten of us will be going to a similar training session on those new machines over the next year. I'm on the list to get to go, so I'll post some pics when that happens. It will be in Milwaukee. Never been there before, so hopefully I can find something fun to do or see while I'm there.