Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Baked kale chips are OMG delicious

Take kale, rip it into bite-sized pieces and remove all stems (annoying, but worth it)

Mix the kale leaves with a little olive oil in a bowl to lightly coat the kale

Add salt and pepper, mix

Spread leaves out on a cookie sheet and bake at 330 for about 10 minutes. After 7 minutes or so you'll want to start checking them - they should be crispy but not burnt. If they're still kind of limp then put them back in.

So addictive and delicious, if you like crunchy/salty snacks!!

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Dinosaur Park! aka Jim's Birthday Adventure

Everyone needs adventures, lest they grow old and stale.

A late birthday adventure (well, he knew about it *on* his birthday, but didn't know what the adventure was) took place at Dinosaur Park in Maryland last weekend. It's an old brick factory that is now an industrial park where they've set aside some land for research because there be DINOSAURS!

It's still really new and they're figuring out how to best manage the site, but totally awesome and worth visiting if you have any interest in the wonderful world of dinosaurs!

You can actually explore for your own fossils here, but before you begin, they do a short orientation to let you know what you're looking for. Here's Jim, with a dinosaur bone IN HIS HAND (!)

Jim happily overlooking the fossil bed...


And ecstatically finding 110 million year old plants! (Which were everywhere. As common as dirt).

Here's Stephanie in her best dinosaur bone searching pose (note the closed eyes)...

But she's still the one who found the fossil that they kept to send to the Smithsonian! Behold the imprint of a long pine cone (apparently this is rare).



Still, though, it was a great day, it's an awesome place to visit, and was lots of fun!





Buddies


Come in all shapes and species....

Always take the time to smell the roses!





I spent a lovely week visiting friends in Boston and Hartford last week - oh man, I wish we lived closer.

It was a looong day in Washington DC...


These were the students from Jim's adaptive management course - it was a van full of sleep for a while there!

Haha

Jim's terrified of snakes, so it totally makes sense that he'd be the one who'd have the snake fall on his head when he went into the laundry room this afternoon. I guess it was sitting on top of the door...

:-D

Canoeing on the Shenandoah

...is amazing...

Our friend D from grad school came down for the weekend a few weeks ago, and we had the brilliant and wonderful idea of going canoeing on the river. The Downriver Canoe Company dropped us off about 8 miles upstream, and the river was high and fast enough that we barely had to row at all. There are some small rapids and a "ledge" that's reallllllly fun to go down and we canoe past the state park, which means that there are some absolutely stunning views. It was such a perfect, relaxing, fun day to play in the water.







Come visit!

New house?

We put in an offer on a house today! It's a short sale, so wish us luck- while our real estate agent seems to be pretty positive about it, we've been doing some reading and are a little more doubtful...

But the house is pretty sweet. It's an all brick foursquare, with gorgeous craftsman features and moldings, and it's been beautifully maintained. It's on a nice lot in a great neighborhood - hopefully it'll all work out.

I'd put up pics, but don't want to jinx ourselves...

Anyway, while we wait to hear back about this house, we're going to be doing much more fun stuff and blogging about it, since our time won't be spent doing house searches. We've got a quite a bit of stuff already....