Family Mellmann

Trinity Baptist hosted its annual Silent and Live Auction with barbecue and a fun fair for the kids, followed by the announcement of all the run-a-thon winners. When all the auctions were over, everyone lined up to anti-up for their wins. Patrick came in second for the most money raised in the 4th-6th grade.

Tonight is Katherine's Night Sky Museum night. Each kid worked on a project about the sun, stars, planets, or moon. Some did models demonstrating how the Earth rotates around the sun AND around it's own access, others researched characteristics of their chosen celestial body, and some wrote about constellations. Katherine wrote about Leo, the Lion, and built a board showing the major starts (in tinfoil) that make up the Lion.

The first bike ride of the season. We call it our Ethan Allen Loop; around Ethan Allen Homestead, a stop at the Ethan Allen Park, and a hike up to the Ethan Allen Tower.

This is Patrick's third catch of the day and his largest catch ever (more than three pounds). She's full of eggs so he put her back in the lake. Let the fishing season begin!

We arrived home on Wednesday, having caught an earlier flight from Newark to Burlington than originally scheduled. Rather than sitting in the airport for an eight hour layover, we paid to bump out flight up to an earlier departure. With this bump, we weren't sure if our two checked bags would make it. We were surprised when the first bag came around on the luggage conveyor. However, only one bag showed up. For two days Jörg monitored luggage-track websites and kept contact with our local airport. This wasn't just any old suitcase; it carries most of our souvenirs, all of Jörg's dive gear, and the usual collection of dirty laundry. The key items being souvenirs; those special items collected over the course of our travels, most of which we can't just run to the store and replace, or shop on the Internet do. After finally accepting that these items were probably gone forever, and resigning ourselves to having to replace dive gear and clothes, the ca...

...begins with coffee. We're back at the Labuan Bajo airport to begin our long travels home. Peter and Suzanne purchased gifts for friends/family, and now the guys are buying Flores coffee, which is apparently very good.

A traditional Indonesian breakfast. Today is our last day on land (and with Internet). In about an hour we will be collected by the dive boat to begin our live aboard scuba adventure.

Today we watched the sun rise and fall over the islands surrounding Flores, Komodo, and Rinca from the deck of our boat. We left at 05:30 for a four hour boat ride to the island of Komodo where we observed many dragons during our ninety minute hike. Once we (we have been travelling in a group of six couples, all the men work for Mentor Graphics) were back on the boat we suited up for a snorkel at Pink Beach. And yes, it does have pink sand, but the lighting has to just right to capture it in pictures. However, when you stand on the beach it's easy to see the broken bits of red and pink coral that tint the sand. After a little lunch and a cruise around several islands, we were at Rinca to observe more Komodos on another ninety minute hike. As we ended our hike we were pleased to spot wild monkeys moving through the low lands. Until I can process all of pictures, here's one of the sunset as we cruised back to Flores (where our hotel is).