Wedding After-glow

We are still basking in the afterglow of the wonderful wedding weekend. We had such fun sharing it with our wonderful family and friends. We had Ed's sister take some pictures with our camera, so I am including a few of those. In a few weeks we will have the disc from the photographer.

We are enjoying this mild weather. We spent yesterday with good friends at their annual lobster and clam bake. (If you were at the wedding, our clam bake crowd was the table of people from Naperville that we also do Bible study and New Year's Eve with. We have become good, loyal friends through the years.) They have a great patio/back yard and we just soaked up the day. Good thing that I didn't have to fit into that aqua MOB dress last night after that feast!

Great to see Theresa and Bill in KC! Now if she would just blog.......hint, hint.

Hope you all had half as much fun as we did. Thanks for the miles traveled and effort made.

Love,

Janice

Go Buffs! (from Niki)

For as long as I’ve known Matt, he's been a Colorado Buffalos football fan. (I know, I know. Stop throwing things!) Well, now he has turned me into a fan and since Florida State was coming to Boulder for the first time ever last week, we decided to make a vacation out of it.

The morning before the game we decided you can’t be that close to the mountains and not be outdoorsy. We heard beautiful things about Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park so we wanted to go hiking. Somehow we were under the assumption that hiking=walking. Not so in Colorado. The bus dropped us off at the start of one of the trails and people begin to pile out. As we look around, we see that these are some serious hikers. They have professional walking sticks, backpacks that match their outfits, and multiple water bottles. Matt and I have jeans and a digital camera.


The incline and altitude were pretty intense, but we managed to take our time and stop for plenty of pictures along the way. The weather was perfect and the scenery was incredible. Matt read all the warning signs about mountain lions (apparently if they attack you, you’re supposed to fight back!) and was a bit disappointed that boring elk were all the wildlife we managed to see.

The football game was also very exciting. We got there in plenty of time to walk around the beautiful campus and partake in some of the tailgating festivities. Folsom field is much smaller than Memorial Stadium so I was able to wonder around before the game and get up close to Ralphie the buffalo. (The photo below is from the brass one out front). It’s insane how huge a real buffalo is! The "Ralphie handlers" were one of my favorite parts. They have bright yellow cowboy shirts and tight Wrangler jeans, but they also wear $150 running shoes. No cowboy boots when you're running next to a giant animal sprinting at full speed. The score was close for the whole game so everyone around us was rowdy and fun. Florida State ended up winning, but we figured they would.

We’ve barely had time to unpack our suitcases before we head down to Kansas City this weekend for Elissa’s wedding. Very very exciting, and we look forward to seeing everyone there.

Niki

Another update from Joan....

Hello all!!

It's been 3 weeks since I finished my necropsy rotation. We saw a lot more than just green pigs! We had a really wide variety of animals come and some were not so pleasant! We had horses, cattle (both dairy and beef), goats, llamas, alpacas, dogs, cats and several exotic animals. I don't have any pictures, but believe me, there were a lot of bad sights and smells! Each person on the rotation had to do a presentation on a case and I chose "hardware disease." For those of you not familiar with "hardware disease," it happens when cattle swallow a metal object and it lodges in their reticulum (one of the four stomachs, close to the diaphragm.) The metal, a nail or wire usually, punctures the reticulum and can go through the liver, diaphragm, lungs, and sometimes even into the heart. I'm sure Grandpa Bull remembers these!

Immediately after my necropsy rotation, I left for Atlanta, GA for 6 weeks with the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). I stopped in Nashville and visited a friend of mine who lives there. We went out and saw the lights of "NashVegas" as the locals call it. It is a fun town and I would highly recommend visiting if you have the chance.

In Atlanta, I've been staying with Jeff and Cindy Peterson (Cindy is Mom's cousin from the other side of the family.) It's been great to get to know them since I don't remember ever meeting them! I even got to go to a Brave's game with their son, Brandon, and his girlfriend! Atlanta also had a German Bierfest that I went to. I tried to speak the few words of German that I remembered from high school!

For the first 3 weeks at the CDC, I basically just did office work. I got to see what it would be like to live in the corporate world filled with cubicles and ringing phones. The information I worked with concerned Cryptospordium (an enteric disease that causes diarrhea.) It's been increasing in many states and we were trying to figure out why. As luck would have it, Colorado called the CDC for help with their increasing cases of Crypto and I was sent with a team to Denver. We are currently working on questionnaires to try to determine why more people are being infected.

That's all for now...I am hoping to make it back to Nebraska for the Iowa State and Kansas State football games and see some of you!!

Joan