The Power of Waders
As many of you know, I had the pleasure of doing my student teaching at Memorial High School. (Go Spartans!) Part of this experience was taking the students on a field trip to the Henry Vilas Zoo, as well as to Lake Wingra. The purpose of this trip was to do a little field research on the ecology of Lake Wingra. However, as with most field trips, it was mostly just hilarious…
We got to the zoo before it opened. Ahem… I mean… We thought it would be incredibly valuable to perform ‘team building’ exercises. Right away in the morning. Yup. That’s how that went. Above you see the biggest game of ‘the human knot’ that you have perhaps ever ever seen. This is just a small snippet of it. It didn’t take them long to get out of it though.
Perhaps the funniest of our team building games was this one above. This is one we called “The wounded biology student”. Basically, the kids were in teams of about 30, and the goal was to get all of the students across the line to safety. Not many were lost in transit… but not gonna lie, a few of the students were dropped.
The zoo opened! Aw, pretty birdy.
Guess what is so interesting here. Just guess. You got it, those adorable, fluffy squishable critters called prairie dogs. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that not only girls like these. See these young men’s faces? That’s true interest and delight. Yeah prairie dogs. Rock on.
So this is the actual science that we did on the field trip. I won’t bore you with the details. Just know that we did indeed collect data on this trip. Although I can’t say that most of the students found this to be the highlight of the trip..
It was also very important to collect some critters to take back to lab to evaluate there. For this we had the students put on waders and jump right on into that mucky water. It was awesome. I think that they thought so too. I mean, how often do you get to put on waders?
Ah, a moment of rest.
And here’s our most valuable scientific find of the day. I mean, seriously?!?!?? How did this happen?!?!? I didn’t know that fish could die because they got their heads stuck on another fish. I promise, I was there when the kids found this gem. There were no special effects or props used in the making of this picture. Yikes. Looks like a painful way to go.
Amanda is a pretty neat lady
So my dearest darling Amanda got married last weekend. Below you will find a few photos taken from her bachelorette party, and a few of the wedding. Probably one of the first things that you’ll notice is that there are no pictures of the bride. Mostly since I was in the bridal party – turns out it’s awkward to lug around a big ole camera when you’re supposed to be focused on wedding stuff. However, I was able to take on of JJs head, so that’s in there. Luckily Arobs sister in law took a bunch of awesome pictures of all of us – check ’em out on fbook if you like!
This is how we started out Amanda’s super epic bachelorette party weekend. Brunch at Bluephies. Man, they really know how to do bloody mary’s right at that place. Just look at that cheese! Huh, maybe I just wanted cheese. Or maybe cheese just sounds really good right about now!
One of Momma Stalder’s very famous cakes! This one was chocolate with raspberry filling. Numnumnum. Isn’t it gorgeous?! (Say yes)
By looking at this, you may imagine that it might say something like “Amanda and Joe”… That’s what it did say. Until someone Iknow took a little munch munch of the letters. After that it said Omanda. Almost the same. Eventually Joe was all the way gone too. It’s ok, the weekend was all about Arob anyways.
I did manage to fit Joe into this thing a little bit though. See that giant rock? Yup, well he’s the one who bought it for her. Rumor has it he even picked the darn thing out too! GOOD JOB JOE!
Fast forward. It’s wedding morning. We had no electricity at our hotel (why didn’t all that rain happen in WI? I feel like we’re going to catch on fire any day now), but were clean and showered thanks to our wonderful Ohio hosts. These little mimosa gems were awaiting us upon our arrival! Delicious.
As promised, here is the picture of JJ’s head. We had a few minutes, so JJ and I enjoyed ourselves a little photo shoot. What do you think she’s looking at out there? We can only guess. I would ask her, but I imagine that she has probably already forgotten by now, and I didn’t think to ask at the time. Sad panda. Whatever it was, it seems rather profound.
Wedding Cake!!!!!! Although that probably is rather obvious…
Aw, so pretty!
Congratulations Amanda and Joe. I had an absolutely fabulous time at your wedding, thank you for inviting me to be a part of it!
photofinishes 