Philadelphia, ACRL 2011

I visited Philadelphia for the Association of College and Research Libraries conference last week. Here are some photos:

Food

Philly cheese steak (not that delicious)

Cannoli (100% delicious)

Historic sites

Independence Hall was my favorite of the historic sites we saw on our walking tour

Christ Church -- the oldest active parish in the U.S.

Benjamin Franklin's grave

Carpenter's Hall
Library Hall (with a sight-seeing carriage)
2nd Bank of the United States
Betsy Ross's House
And me at the Liberty Bell

Grad school friends

Several of us who went to University of Illinois together met for dinner while in Philadelphia. We are librarians in: Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Wisconsin, and Illinois.

Spring Break 2011

This year for spring break we took a 3-part trip: 1) to Albuquerque to see part of Mike's family and our new nephews, 2) then to Santa Fe and Taos, and 3) then to Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado.

We met Mike's family in Albuquerque, where his brother and sister-in-law live. Bob and Emily have two of the cutest little baby boys EVER, and we got to spend time with them, along with Mike's parents (who live in Fairbanks, Alaska) and grandparents (who live in St. George, Utah). We had a great time.

Here's Mike's brother, Bob, with both of the boys. Isaac, on the left, was born in February. Dean, on the right, was born in October. Bob and Emily got to adopt Dean soon after he was born, and he got a little brother just a few months later! Dean stares at Isaac like this when he's screaming. Dean seems to find his brother sort of confusing.

Here's Dean modeling the hoodie that Aunt Melissa knitted for him. He is the happiest baby! He smiles at everyone and everything. I find him irresistible.

And here's Dean modeling a soccer uniform from his Aunt Rachel in England
Isaac, I'm sorry I don't have more pictures of you. Your big brother is just more photogenic right now, but I'm sure you'll catch up soon!

Part two of our trip included a visit to Pecos National Historical Park, just outside of Santa Fe. (Note: This park has nothing to do with Pecos Bill.) The Park preserves several layers of history: the Pecos Pueblo, Spanish mission, and sites of a Civil War battle. Who knew that there was a Civil War battle in New Mexico? The ruins of the pueblo and the Spanish mission are fascinating. Around 2,000 American Indians lived in the pueblo, in apartment-like homes. It was a self-contained town. The first church that the Spanish conquistadors built on the site was burned down by the Indians, but the church was rebuilt.

Pueblo and church ruins
Landscape around the ruins: cacti, pinon, and the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the distance
Ladder to an intact kiva -- a sacred ceremonial space in the pueblo
Ruins of a kiva
Mike standing in the church. Notice the beams sticking out of the adobe.

After Pecos, we spent some time in Taos. We really wanted to go to the Taos Pueblo, which is a living and lived-in pueblo, unlike the ruins of Pecos, but the Pueblo was closed to visitors for the day. We dropped by the public library, spent some time in a bookstore (yes, we're book nerds), and then went to the Mabel Dodge Luhan house. Mabel Dodge ran a kind of salon for artists and thinkers. Friends who stayed at her home include D.H. Lawrence, Georgia O'Keefe, Ansel Adams, and Carl Jung. It's an interesting place with a great counter-cultural history. Mike wanted to visit the house because of a book he studied in grad school, Utopian Vistas.

The Mabel Dodge Luhan house
Mountains outside Taos
And the Taos Public Library

We spent the last part of our trip in southern Colorado. We visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, which is a national park I had not heard of before. It's sort of unreal -- a huge sand basin at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains (left by an ancient lake) has created the tallest sand dunes in North America.

The long view, approaching the dunes
We did a little bit of climbing in the dunes -- walking in sand like that is hard work!

Here's a Boy Scout troop climbing up into the dunes -- I thought it was a nice photo to get some perspective on how huge this pile of sand really is.
And in case you thought this landscape looked desolate and empty, here are some deer we saw on the way in to the park.

2010: The Year in Review

The past year was a great one for us. As we've reflected on 2010, we came up with a few highlights:

We took some awesome trips: Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills, and the Badlands; Alaska; Yellowstone National Park; St. George for Thanksgiving; and Cache Valley for all kinds of family fun.

Our families grew: Justin & Annie got married, and we have two new nephews -- Dean in Albuquerque, NM and Gavin in England.

The wedding
Dean
Gavin

Melissa had lots of opportunities for professional development: ALA Midwinter in Boston, ALA Annual in Washington D.C., Immersion in Vermont, Library Assessment Conference in Baltimore, Wyoming Library Association presentations, two articles (article 1 and article 2) published and another accepted. She is loving the job at UW after a year and a half.

Mike has developed professionally, too: continuing to take Master's of Public Administration (MPA) classes, and getting a great new job in Student Success Services as an advisor for at-risk students.

Other good stuff: we have made great friends, spent time hiking and camping, read lots of good books and watched some good movies, and became addicted to a few TV shows (Buffy, Angel, and Bones).

We have big plans and high hopes for 2011, and we wish all of our readers a very happy New Year!

Christmas 2010

Christmas tree at the Bowles home

We had a wonderful trip to Idaho to visit the Bowles family over Christmas. We had some great quality time with the brothers and sisters-in-law (we love you guys!), and of course with Mom and Dad, too. Mom and Mike and I went snowshoeing on Christmas day, up in Strawberry Canyon, and it was just gorgeous. Of course we also played lots of board games and card games during the week of vacation. The new ones were Bananagrams and Scrabble Slam -- both very fun in my opinion, because I'm good at word games -- and the old ones were Rummikub, Salad, and Outburst. Good times! (Except for when I lost at Salad by about 400 points and had a tizzy fit. New Year's resolution: be a better sport)

We have a tradition in the Bowles family of having our grandparents over on Christmas Eve for dinner and a program of Christmas music. Rob and Sarah sang a beautiful arrangement of "Away in a Manger," Justin and Annie played some piano duets (congratulations to Annie, who taught Justin to play), and Mike and I prepared a Music & the Spoken Word arrangement of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." There were other musical performances as well, including the traditional performance of "Sleigh Ride" as a piano duet by Mom and me. Here are a few select photos from the evening:

Grandma Hansen, Grandma & Grandpa Bowles, Dad playing his traditional role of running the video camera

Justin & Anna Lee, "Silent Night"Mike doing the spoken word portion of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" (Mike really can sing, but it's not really something he's comfortable doing for an audience. Thus the spoken word.)
Dad and Mom serving the cheesecake on Christmas Eve

We also opened a few presents on Christmas eve, which included these awesome aprons made by Mom. In case you can't see, they're all university-themed. Justin and Annie have "Vandals" aprons, Rob and Sarah have "Aggies," and Mike and I have "Cowboys." So cute!

Mom and Dad hosted the big Hansen family party this year on December 27th. The extended family keeps on growing exponentially. There were about 50 people at the party this year, all fed and entertained in the Bowles home. It was quite a feat, and I had a great time seeing all my cousins.

In addition to spending time with family, we went to a gathering of some of my high school friends. I was on the Academic Decathlon team in 1999-2000 and our little team defeated all the other schools in Idaho (some much larger than ours) and we went to the National Academic Decathlon competition in San Antonio, Texas. It was a great experience and an awesome team, and a few of us from the team were able to gather at our coach's home before Christmas to catch up. It was great to see everyone, reminisce about our "glory days," and catch up on what's happened in the last 10 years.

Other fun activities over Christmas break: catching up with old friends at Mom and Dad's church, talking to my brother Nick (a Mormon missionary in Seattle) on Christmas day, seeing True Grit with the whole family (I liked it a lot -- even more than I expected to), going to the Logan temple with some members of the family, lunch at Cafe Sabor (yums!), more snowshoeing near Maple Creek after a big snowstorm.

The snowstorm hit on Wednesday, when we had planned to leave for Laramie. We stayed at
Mom and Dad's that night, and Mike ended up on a tractor moving snow around on the dairy.
We thought we had a window to get back to Laramie on Thursday, but we ended up getting stuck at Little America when I-80 was closed for about 100 miles between Rock Springs and Rawlins. We were glad to get back to Laramie the next day and ring in the New Year with friends.

P.S. I also read all three Hunger Games books during Christmas break (over the course of 4 days). The series was a fascinating look at the nature of televised war, a voyeuristic society, governmental control, and it's a great coming-of-age story to boot. Highly recommended, especially for anyone interested in dystopian YA lit.

58 Books in 2010

I'm a list-maker, and since 2007 I've kept a list of the books I've read. This helps me remember what I've read, what I want to read, and allows me to pull up a title when people ask for book recommendations. Some of my reads were for my book groups, some were free galleys I picked up at library conferences, some are not necessarily great literature (I read the entire Sookie Stackhouse series, for example.) I read 58 books in 2010, and thought I'd share my favorites here. If you have read and want to discuss any of the books below, if you want information on any of them, or if you'd like a personalized recommendation, leave a comment. (These are listed in the order in which I read them.)

1. Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath
2. Shaffer, Mary Ann and Annie Barrows The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
3. Atwood, Margaret Oryx and Crake
4. Strout, Elizabeth Olive Kitteridge
5. Grossman, Lev The Magicians
6. Smith, Dodie I Capture the Castle
7. Walters, Barbara Audition
8. Jackson, Shirley We Have Always Lived in the Castle
9. Barry, Sebastian The Secret Scripture
10. Mantel, Hilary Wolf Hall
11. Stead, Rebecca When You Reach Me
12. French, Tana In the Woods
13. Palfrey, John and Urs Gasser Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
14. Benjamin, Melanie Alice I Have Been
15. Stockett, Kathryn The Help
16. Udall, Brady The Lonely Polygamist
17. Bender, Amy The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake
18. Thackeray, William Makepeace Vanity Fair
19. McCann, Colum Let the Great World Spin
20. Nicholls, David One Day
21. Byatt, A.S. The Children's Book
22. Eliot, George Middlemarch
23. Collins, Suzanne Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay
    
24. Kingsolver, Barbara Lacuna

So there you have it: a mix of old and new, YA lit and regular lit, mostly novels with a few nonfiction books mixed in. I finally read some stuff that I'd been meaning to read for years (Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, and The Grapes of Wrath -- not one of those disappointed), a series that was recommended by everyone from my mom to a friend in Seattle to YA librarians everywhere (The Hunger Games -- WOW!), some highly acclaimed novels (Let the Great World Spin, The Lonely Polygamist) and some critically panned (Lacuna). All in all, it was a very good year for reading.

Happy New Year, and I wish us all good reading in 2011!

Holidays!

Happy holidays! I thought I'd give you an update on our holiday season so far. First, Thanksgiving in St. George: we had a great time hanging out with the Broughs (Mike's mom's family) and enjoying the warm, sunny St. George weather. We also did a little Black Friday shopping -- a first for me! Here are some fun family photos from St. George:

A bunch of Mike's cousins -- cute, huh?
Cousins, again
And some of the "grown-ups."
(We stayed with Kim & Brian, on the left. They were awesome hosts!)

And here we are, getting ready to enjoy the meal.

We're enjoying the Christmas season in Laramie so far, too. The courthouse downtown has a charming light show. The lights on and around the building are synced to Christmas music playing on a radio station. It's magical!

When you use one pound of butter in one weekend, you know it must be Christmas. Last weekend I prepared plates of goodies to take to a few friends and neighbors.

Pumpkin cookies, lime sugar cookies, and pecan fudge. Yum!

Autumn

My parents visited last weekend, and we had such a good time. One of our activities was a trip to the Shambhala Mountain Center in Northern Colorado. It's a Buddhist retreat -- in Colorado. Quite unexpected.

Here's the Buddha statue inside the Great Stupa
Mom with a cast of the Buddha's head
Ceiling of the Great Stupa
Mom and Dad in the hills of Colorado. (Dad's making some kind of weird face.)

Earlier this fall I went to Baltimore for the Association of Research Libraries Assessment Conference. It was a really awesome conference, with librarians from the U.S., U.K, and Australia sharing assessment ideas and results. Baltimore is a pretty nice city. Besides attending the conference I got to go to an art museum, visit Edgar Allen Poe’s grave, eat a lot of fresh seafood, spend some time at the beautiful Inner Harbor, and have dinner with a good friend from library school who lives in Baltimore. Here are some photos:

Inner Harbor

Peabody Institute
At the Walters Art Museum
Faidley's Crab Cake -- BEST CRAB CAKE EVER
Downtown Baltimore -- I love visiting urban places, but I also love coming home to Laramie.

We've enjoyed produce all summer and fall from Grant Family Farms in Northern Colorado. We bought a share from the farm and they deliver to Laramie once a week. Here's one of the more beautiful things I've made with the local vegetables:

Leek quiche with tomatoes