Grand Canyon & Flagstaff

Nora dressed up as a butterfly for the Halloween party we attended at her school. Fun!

Halloween is also Nevada Day, and a holiday with no school or work! We took advantage of the long weekend and went to the Grand Canyon and to Flagstaff to visit my friend Wendy.

It was a four-hour drive in the car

It felt great to get out of the car and walk around!

The weather was beautiful, and the Canyon is really Grand.

We had dinner (and dessert) at the Bright Angel Lodge on Halloween night.

Nora enjoyed breakfast the next morning at our hotel in her pumpkin PJs.

We rented bikes and biked along the Rim Trail for an hour or so. It was a bit cloudy and chilly, but still beautiful.

We saw an elk close up.

Nora got very cozy with this mountain lion.

We hiked Red Mountain, between the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff, with Wendy and Lian.

Then we saw snow fall in Flagstaff! 

European Conference on Information Literacy: Dubrovnik, Croatia

In October I traveled to Dubrovnik to give a workshop at ECIL, and I was amazed at the beauty of the place. There are mountains, and the Adriatic Sea, and farms and vineyards, and this fascinating ancient walled city. It was amazing. I spent time with fantastic librarians from many different places and really enjoyed the conference.

Day 1: My co-presenter Cass and I spent the day in our swimsuits, recovering from jet lag.

Scenes from a bike tour: Six librarians from Nevada, California, Wyoming and Dubai go for a 10-mile bike ride through the countryside.

Tour of the city: Cass and I had a half-day tour in and around Dubrovnik. I loved the view of the walled city from the top of Srdj (Snow) mountain.

Sunsets from the President, the beachfront hotel, were spectacular.

 And the city was so dramatic at night. What a beautiful place!

Swimming lessons

We did a four-week parent and child swim class with Nora at the UNLV Student Wellness & Recreation Center and it was an adventure for all. Three out of the four weeks, Nora seemed to have no fun at all. One week, when she was swimming with her daddy, she had a really good time. (Most of the pictures below are from the happiest day at swim lessons.) She liked talking about "fwimming yassons" (we love the way she says it) and has been pretending that her baby dolls are going to swimming lessons and "kicking their legs." That was the skill Nora was most successful at learning. We still have some work to do on blowing bubbles and paddling arms.

Swimming with Mommy vs. Swimming with Daddy

Nora really likes floating on her back

There's some good leg kicking

Three days, three hikes, two national parks and one national monument

We took advantage of the opportunity provided by Labor Day weekend to get out of the heat of Las Vegas and visit some amazing places in Southern Utah. Our first stop was meeting Grandma & Grandpa Brough in St. George for lunch. Nora loves them so much, and calls them both "Buff" (that's how she says Brough).

Then we continued to Cedar Breaks National Monument and took a 2-mile hike around the rim. It was windy and 64 degrees, compared to 104 in Las Vegas that day.

Nora absolutely loves riding in the backpack. She talks non-stop to her daddy as they go.  

We stayed two nights in a ski lodge in Brian Head, which is not far from Cedar Breaks, and about a 90-minute drive from Bryce Canyon. The lodge was great, and had an indoor swimming pool that Nora is still talking about.

We spent most of Sunday at Bryce Canyon National Park. It's characterized by red rock and hoodoos, tall skinny spires of rock. We hiked about 5 miles around the rim of the canyon.

Giving Daddy a hug.

At Sunset Point

Nora looks pretty tired, but Mike is the one who should be tired after carrying around this 26-pound toddler all day. (I had the comparatively easy job of carrying our water, lunch, sunscreen, and camera.)

On Monday we left Brian Head and drove to Kolob Canyon, a branch of Zion National Park that's between Cedar City and St. George. We hiked a couple of miles and it was just a gorgeous day.

There are several more national parks in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California that are all fairly close by. We're planning our next long weekend already. Will it be the Grand Canyon? Yosemite? Or Death Valley? So many options.

Ireland

Limerick

Celebrating at Nancy Blake's pub after a successful workshop

Limerick is not that big of a city, but somehow Cass and I managed to get lost over and over again. Even with plenty of landmarks like this church.

This Pop-Up Museum used a historic Georgian building to illustrate a slice of Limerick's history through the building itself. It was an interesting concept, one that we thought would work really well in our own towns, with their wild West history and buildings. 

Hunt Museum

Celtic Cross at St. Mary's Cathedral

St. Mary's Cathedral, built 1168

King John's Castle (the King John of Robin Hood)

Tea break in Killarney

We took a day-long bus tour of the Ring of Kerry. It was beautiful.

Thatched roof!

Remember that movie, Far and Away, with Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise? It was filmed here!

County Kerry

The photos above are from a trip I took in August, to my first international library conference: the IFLA Information Literacy Satellite meeting, in Limerick, Ireland. A colleague from University of Wyoming, Cass Kvenild, and I gave a workshop on Classroom Assessment Techniques for Librarians. The conference itself was great. I especially enjoyed keynotes from Nancy Fried Foster of Ithaka S+R and Conor Galvin of University College Dublin. I was very interested to hear from other librarian presenters about library initiatives and higher education issues from an international perspective. The best part of the conference was chatting with and learning from librarians from all over. (And the food. The food was really good -- at more than one meal I had both mashed and roasted potatoes on my plate at the same time. Delicious.)