Thanksgiving in Alabama!

So yes, we're really behind with our posts. The month of December just flew by! We'll start about where we left off, and post the December pics next.

We decided to take the week of Thanksgiving off and drive to Alabama for the holidays to visit. Many of Greg's family on the Boy side live there (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins) and we haven't made it there for Thanksgiving in 5 or 6 years. It turned out to be cheaper to drive than fly, so we left early the Saturday before Thanksgiving and stopped about 12 hours later in Roanoke, VA. The next day we hit the road again, but with a shorter day's drive- about 8 hours.

We saw some beautiful country along the way!

When we started out that morning from Roanoke, the fog was so thick!

Kinda CREEPY!

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For those of you out there who are fans of the TV show The Office, we drove through Scranton, PA both ways and sought out The Office paraphernalia. We didn't find much of anything but the main city sign below. Nothing from pics in the introductory song or anything!

Pretty sure Dwight was a volunteer Lackawanna County Sheriff's Deputy (for the first couple of seasons anyway).

Pretty building but didn't have anything to do with the show.

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We stopped the second day in a small town in Tennessee to visit Greg's Papa's graveside (his great grandfather) and leave some flowers for Christmas.

Greg's Uncle Kenneth (his grandpa's brother)

Aunt Collene.

An overview of the cemetery.

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We finally made it to Decatur, Alabama!

What a pretty tree! We felt like we traveled backward in time. When we left Burlington there were no leaves left on the trees and the Fall was long gone. As we traveled further and further South, the leaves were back on some of the trees and still colorful!

Grandpa and Grandma Boy's house.

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One of the nights we went on a Christmas Light Walk. This is Sydney (Greg's Aunt Leslie's daughter) in the car on the way.

It was "Bring your dog" night, so you had to watch your step.

There were a some really cool ones but most of them were in motion so couldn't really be capture in a picture.

This is Rebecca (also Aunt Leslie's daughter).

Rebecca, Grandpa, Sydney

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We went to a few high school basketball games while we were in town. Greg's Uncle Brad's daughter McKenzie plays for JV Girls

Uncle Brad and other daughter Ginny at the game.

This is how Sydney passed the time at the game. Do you think the cheerleaders were her motivation?? Pretty sure the cheerleaders weren't even dancing at the time. Next to her is her mother, Leslie.

After the JV game, we switched gyms to watch the Varsity girl's game. Greg's Uncle Brad coaches this team and as you can see, the game got pretty intense at times! So many bad calls, but they almost won!

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We made it one of the days to the NASA Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL

At the base of the shuttle.

It was still hot!!! j/k

Trying to see how many thousands of us we would need to exert enough power to launch a shuttle.

Greg got like 30,000 and Tyra 50,000.

It took me right off my feet!

Here's what the astronauts return in.

Greg's got the controls!

These are exact replica's of the hands of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. They used them to form the molds for their gloves. They had to fit perfect.

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It's time to eat!!!!! And we did!

Happily eating!

(clockwise starting at 12:00: Grandpa, Aunt Wanda, Aunt Leslie, Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Sarah, Greg, Grandma)

Leslie, where are you?

Jeff and Grandma Sheila. Jeff surprised everyone by driving down from Atlanta to spend Thanksgiving with all of us. (Jeff is Greg's grandpa's nephew)

Joey crashed after the 3rd piece of cake. Joey got his tonsils out 4-5 days before Thanksgiving. Poor kid! At least he got as much cake as he could eat!

(Joey is Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Sarah's boy)


Mackenzie's ready for dessert!

And so is Rebecca! (her father Uncle Chris behind)

Grandma Sheila did a beautiful job decorating her whole house for Christmas in time for Thanksgiving. It was a first, we hear, and I'm sure such a relief to have finished. It looked beautiful! It felt like Thanksgiving and Christmas together, almost, which was nice for us since it was just the two of us and the cats at Christmas.

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We hit the road again the Saturday after Thanksgiving for a long, long drive. Traffic was a lot worse coming back, but still pretty country.

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.