Miser Family Update in pictures

Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Family these days.  The last two weeks have been full of travels for me, so this update will be rich in photographs.

As July turned into August, our book went to press!  And about the same time, I went to the math meetings in Cincinnati, where I got to see an advance copy of my book out in the booth, right next to an advance copy of Bob Bosch's awesome forthcoming book.  I think we did blurbs for one another, which feels a bit like nepotism, but . . . 

My book!  Well, an advance copy, not yet formatted correctly.

But I am not the only one in the family making stuff that delights the person who makes it.  L-daughter writes,

"yesterday I spent the day with my neighbor George who taught me how to make challah bread."  

"It was a lengthy but quite calm process and the finished product was absolutely delicious." 

"It made me think of you and all the bread you made in the bread maker throughout our childhood." 

But my break-maker bread never looked quite this delicious. 

And K-daughter also makes things:  in her case, HVAC things.  Below, you see a picture of an Erv.  (I'm sure you know all about Ervs, of course).

"It was super cool to see our product in NY! Our energy recovery ventilators are
going all over, but a lot of them lately have been shipping to NY!"

Not to be left out of the "scaling tall buildings in a single bound" is N-son, who is learning to do scaffolding stuff.  As an educator, I'm often involved in conversations about "scaffolding learning" (by assigning simpler projects at first and then assigning more complicated work as time goes by), but when we talk about "scaffolding" and "building competencies", we don't usually mean it quite as literally as N-son gets to experience.

In a completely different kind of creative act, I-daughter helped me build this smiley face on a playground set in Oregon.   (This is made of 2" beads that are black on one side and gray on the other).  

The reason that we're in Oregon (because, remember, the math meetings were in Cincinnati) is that as the math meetings were ending I flew out to join my family for our annual vacation in a little town about two hours from Crater Lake.

The waters are very, very blue in this lake, 
and the clouds reflect beautifully in a way that let me think about both nature and
projective geometry at the same time.
My daughter caught me math-ing here.

This is I-daughter in front of the lake.
Did I mention the lake is really, really blue?

On a slightly different adventure, we meandered outside our
guest home for about 5 minutes, during which little burrs attached
themselves to I-daughter's skirt. 
And then we spent an hour removing the burrs.

You can see the burrs more easily on this sock,
although those were much faster and easier to remove!

We also got to do the typical Oregon thing of visiting an Alpaca Ranch (okay, I guess that's not actually so typical, but it was fun), . . .

Alpacas!   They're not very friendly creatures, but
they're herd animals, so they pretend to be friendly.

. . . and I went for a hike with my dad and a sister and a niece that started in the rain and ended in the sun.

We're not frowning; we're squinting in the sun.

J-son has been hanging out with young kids that aren't Alpacas (a young alpaca is actually a "cria", not a "kid", but I needed a transition here).  He's still working very, very hard as a camp counsellor at his sleep-away camp, with 70 non-cria human beings occupying his time.   The next two weeks ought to be a bit easier, as the number of campers is likely to decrease a tad, and as they switch to day-camp only.  He's had to be on the go fairly constantly, pulled in lots of (very exciting) directions. 

I've spent a lot of my career joking with people about trying to be in two places at once, or about an inability to be in two places at once.  Well, we went to a cool science museum that I think has figured out how to solve this problem!

When I've fully perfected this technique, I'll be sure to let you know.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our traveling adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.