Jackson Hole

We went to Jackson Hole with John, Janet, Matt, Melissa, Sam, Grant, Jen, Hudson, Alicia and AJ. We had a great time and Kate was so good for the long drive. The weather was not very cooperative however and rained most of the time we were there. We went hiking one day and were blessed with some good weather. The other days we spent our time in town shopping and looking around. I haven't been able to find the cool old-fashioned saloon pictures we had done but I'm sure they're in a box i just haven't been through yet. That's so sad I haven't been through all the boxes yet. I'll post them when I locate them. We also spent a lot of time just hanging out in the very cool house and playing games.

Kate wearing mommy's gloves against the chilly weather.

Jon celebrated his birthday with his favorite - Marie Callendar's blueberry cream pie brought by Matt and Melissa. Kate didn't mind.

We did some extra work for Alicia that used large envelopes. They had stickers on them with which Alicia promptly decorated Kate.

This is the boat ride to the hike. It was COLD!!!

Getting ready to pack the kiddo up the hill...

On the boat again. I'm just envious of John's gear.

Shhhh! I'm not sure why we're being quiet...

That is one tough chick!

At the boat dock.

AJ

It was BEAUTIFUL. Note the tiny little people on the bottom left :)

At Hidden Falls

Matt and Sam, Grant and Hudson

Alicia shooting the scene

I just like the contrast, shapes, and pseudo-creepy beauty of this shot.

Changing Sam's diaper. Nicest changing table ever.

Jenny Lake

Tight-roping?

Kate befriending the locals

John and Janet

There was a nice place to just sit and enjoy the view of Jenny Lake so we did so for quite awhile.

Matt, Melissa, and Sam

The Tetons

The Tetons have a very jagged shape. It was sort of neat to see that something as basic as "a mountain" doesn't necessarily invoke the images we know.

We passed this lone tree in the middle of a grassy plain on the way to the hike and I pulled the car over (much to the chagrin of the inhabitants) to shoot it. I LOVE this tree, the way it bends with the weight of years of wind, how it sits by itself, the sloping mountain in the background.

The tree again. My obsession.

This is another shot taken after I pulled the car over (again) mostly because I was overwhelmed that those impressive mountains I had been awed by earlier where dwarfed by the magnificence of the light and clouds.

I just thought it was funny that Kate ran outside in her diaper to see what was going on. That's my kid. :)

Hudson. I think this might be paper he's playing with but I can't remember.

We were staying at a nice place in Grand Teton Village and there were some horses coralled at the bottom of the village. They were beautiful horses and I'd never seen any like them before. They were HUGE horses. I wish I knew what kind they were. Kate wanted badly to see them but was scared to death to go close.

Jen and Hudson. Hudson appears to be hungry. And surprised.

Kate loves her Grandma!

I never did get a good picture with Kate by the huge fake buffalo. She was TERRIFIED of it, even though I showed her it wouldn't move and she could pet it. Ah well. Maybe next time. Kate is funny about her headbands. If she is happy she likes wearing them but the minute she gets stressed or scared or impatient, off comes the headband. This buffalo is in downtown Jackson Hole.

No comment is worthy of this picture.

June. And it's a long one.

So June actually took me a good deal longer to get ready to post, simply due to the volume of pictures. We went on a trip to Jackson Hole with Jon's family and afterwards headed to Yellowstone for a day. Had a great time, but as you can imagine, I took way too many pictures so going through them takes awhile. Ah well. So three major events of June: AJ's graduation, yellowstone/jackson, and the zoo. I'll post Jackson/Yellowstone separately.

The Zoo then. Each month seems to have a plethora of zoo visits and, cameraholic that I am, I cannot leave behind a moment unshot. :D Kate loves the zoo (actually I do too) and as it is so close it seems a shame not to go often. Kate's cousins came with her this month too.

Grant and Meghan by the tiger habitat

This is kind of funny. My camera was low on battery but I didn't notice until after this shot. Kim is trying to get her kids arranged and everyone looking at me for a smile but my camera died right after this one. So you'll just have to imagine the smiles.Grant's favorite thing on earth - maps.

Train ticket!On the train

Zoo visit #2 This is also funny. The bears have this big plastic black tube in their habitat. One of the bears put it on their head and started playing with the other bear who wanted the big black tube. At one point both bears had their heads in the tube. I couldn't stop giggling. I felt like a 6-year-old. It was great.

AJ's graduation from Brighton: I cannot believe that people with hearts/souls/brains would make anyone where this dreadful BRIGHT orange for one of the most important moments of life. Now I really don't have anything against orange, but this was a wicked shade of orange. Mixing it with blue doesn't help. It's like they're trying to say, "see look at how pretty blue is, then look at this horrible horrible orange in comparison." Obviously I was concentrating on what I should have been. Really, congrats AJ, that's a big achievement. The ceremony was, ahem, unique. It was at the E center and the students had a little beach ball going around and they seemed jubilant but not disrespectful but in the middle of the program the principal got up and told them off for being so. I didn't get it. Anyway, here's a few pics from that event.

Baby Hudson

The Big Moment

The Fam

quintessence of what?

So I've been asked many many times (sometimes not so nicely) what on earth does quintessence of snerrskinism mean. I usually just dodge the question because it is one of those things that is a cumulation of many emotions, thoughts, realizations associated with one event and its aftermath.

Here is the event. My maiden name is Skene and I have a friend named Melinda Snarr. Actually that's her maiden name but it is central to our story. We had a group for a school dance in high school and we were meeting a couple other couples at Applebee's (I think it was applebees, not sure though). We asked the hostess if our party was there yet and she said, "Are you snerr'n'skin?" We keeled over with supressed laughter. Anyway it became an inside joke and when I went on a study abroad to Cambridge, England, I didn't have email. Mindy decided to sign up for me because she was afraid (rightly) that i'd never sign up myself. With lack of ideas for username, or maybe just a moment of boldness, she used snerrskin as my username, adding quite tactfully that I could change it to whatever I wanted so long as I kept an email address with which to communicate while I was away. I just thought it was so funny that she signed me up and that she used that name that I couldn't in all good conscience change it.

So the reflections that have followed that event at the restaurant are many and most of them not at all deep, but it has often impressed me that people hear what they want, repeat things how they have altered them in their heads, and thus their version of reality imposing upon other people. So life is really just a lot of different realities clashing, bumping, melding, and imposing themselves on other realities. Reality, therefore, is not so simple as saying the word "reality" and expecting it to fit everyone. Reality is what you see, how you process it, how you impose your reality on other people, how they impose theirs upon you, and how you thus process and alter your own. Just a big cycle of illusion.

In twenty words or less: reality is subjective to personal perception therefore life is a quick succession of random perspectives/illusions strung together. was that less than twenty words?