You've Read About Me in the Papers...

Carter and his friend Thomas were featured in the Lawrence Journal-World's "Friends and Neighbors" daily photo gallery on January 28, 2008. The picture, from our trip to the Carpathian mountains in Ukraine, is on the LJWorld website. The caption incorrectly refers to us as Thomas' parents, too. We are happy to have Thomas credited to the Herrons, though we are sure that his parents, Phil and Jani, want to keep him!

The Eagles Have Landed

Lawrence is a traditional pit stop on the migratory path of bald eagles, and several area organizations sponsor an "Eagle Day" event to raise awareness of environmental issues. Eagle Day is especially aimed at children, so we decided to take a look. Carter saw many of his animal friends from the nature center, made an eagle hat, got to sit in a model eagle's nest, and wandered about to see "more real animals." He pet a snake, and took a close look at owls and other adorable, feathered killing machines. Unfortunately, Eagle Day featured no live eagles, but rather tours to go eagle spotting.

Settling In

We have spent the last few weeks establishing a new post-L'viv routine. Erik has set up his attic office space, spending full days working on his book manuscript away from most distractions. Emerging for lunch or fresh tea, Erik has many opportunities to see Lea and Carter during the day as well. Exploration of potential pre-schools and attending science, dance, and gymnastics classes and library story time fill out Lea and Carter's daily schedule.

We have family time during evenings and weekends. On Saturday, we decided to re-visit a hands-on museum in the Kansas City area that we discovered last year. Carter enjoyed it even more this time as the displays are a bit more friendly to the nearly 3 and up (and a bit more challenging for those 2 and under). We visited the planets, saw underwater scenes made from Legos, learned about health and hospitals, pretended to go grocery shopping, and explored some physics with the help of ramps and golf balls. The image on the left shows Carter fighting with the high-powered air system to insert pom-pons into tubes. He particularly enjoyed changing the air flow, much to the chagrin of other kids who found their scarves and pom-pons stranded in suddenly pressure-less areas of the pretzel-shaped tube wall. He also enjoyed the Lego submarine (on the right) complete with a toilet, microwave oven, coffepot, fridge, and hamburger made entirely of Legos. After a couple hours of fun, we returned home. Below you can see Carter practicing his driving - thankfully that is over a decade away!

Happy New Year!

After visiting with the Bistaks over Christmas, we traveled to Michigan to see the Herron side of the family, returning on New Year's Eve. In the photo above, you can see several generations - Thomas and Yvonne, their four children (Kristin, Erik, Jordan, and Brett), spouses/significant others, and six grandchildren.

We wish everyone a safe, healthy, and joyous 2008!