Denver Botanic Gardens

I heard that the Denver Botanic Gardens had a new kids garden so Elizabeth, Andrew and I decided to check it out.  Elizabeth just loved it.  Andrew and I let Elizabeth "choose her own adventure" through the gardens and we just followed behind her, Andrew in his stroller and mommy with her camera.  Although Elizabeth doesn't really like getting her picture taken lately, I did manage to "trick" her into a couple of pictures.

It was wonderful to follow Elizabeth through the gardens and see them from her perspective.  She notices things that I would never notice and definitely traversed the gardens in a pattern I would not have chosen but it was fun to see her sense of direction and what seemed interesting to her.

I think that Elizabeth looks just like Avery in this picture.  Her adorable outfit is from the A&M collection.  Elizabeth would wear this skirt every day if we let her!  

Goose Creek Hike

Last Friday we went on a hike at Goose Creek.  We were actually there last year over the 4th of July weekend when I was pregnant with Andrew.  

 The trail head is in what is known as the Hayman fire burn area where a few years back a fire consumed hundreds of square miles of forest. Within about 10 minutes from the parking lot the trail works its way into a nice lush river valley that was spared by the fire.  Elizabeth did a great job hiking the entire way in.  

Jan and Elizabeth caught all kinds of brook trout.  The are little fish but are fun to catch.

By the end of the day (well really by about 45 minutes into the day) Andrew and Elizabeth were a mess.  If you could gauge how much fun kids have by the dirtiness of their clothes, you can see that Andrew and Elizabeth had a blast.  Elizabeth climbed on rocks until she was exhausted and had to ride in the daddy piggy back on the way back to the car.

Andrew 9 months old

It's hard to believe that my little boy is 9 months old already!  He is such a joy in our lives and continues to amaze us every day.  This month he learned how to wave.  Unlike Elizabeth who waved backwards for the first year of her life, Andrew seems to have the forward wave down already.  I think one of the greatest things about Andrew is his contagious laugh.  He and Elizabeth share so many "inside jokes or moments" together.  They are always making each other giggle about something (this evening it was the splashing wash cloths in the bath tub) and will keep going and going for the longest time!

Andrew can stand on his own pretty well for about 5-8 seconds and loves it when you hold his hands and walk with him.  It won't be long before he is walking on his own.  But for now, he is the zippiest crawler I've ever seen.  This kid is Buzz Lightyear in the house.  

Andrew got to meet his Great Grandpa Jan for the first time at Casey and Jennifer's wedding.  I love this picture as Andrew has his Great Grandpa's kind and gentle eyes.

Casey and Jennifer's Wedding

Its hard to believe my little bro is now a happily married man.  The past week was a whirlwind of family and old friends that I hadn't seen in a long time as well as more than my fair share of great food and of course plenty of drama to keep us all on our toes.

It was a wonderful wedding!  Nice job Casey and Jennifer!  We certainly had a great time and it was an honor to be a part of this momentous occasion.

Kate and I have been dabbling in photography for a while now and since this was my brothers wedding I just had to jump in and try to get some good shots.  Fortunately they did the smart thing and hired a pro but I still had some fun with these shots.  I have a new respect for wedding photographers - the rooms are dark, using a flash is very difficult to do well, and if you mess it up... i don't even want to think about what that might look like.

Elizabeth's favorite things

Elizabeth has such an amazing imagination.  She has imaginary friends like friendly alligators that come with her on errands and she loves to imagine that she is a butterfly, fluttering around the house.  Some of her favorite activities right now are head bands, band aids and playing catch with daddy.  I know, you are wondering how head bands and band aids can be activities but to a 3.25 year old, they really can.  I've mentioned head bands before; Elizabeth always has a different head band on and makes sure that everyone else has a head band as well.  If I take mine off, she notices immediately and asks me why I took my head band off, if I need a new head band and where is my head band.  I never knew head bands could be so interesting.
     Elizabeth is a very compassionate little girl and always looking out for Jan and I when we get "owies." If we have a scratch, Elizabeth is there with the box of band aids.  And don't worry, she will be sure to change our band aids 3-4 times a day if we let her.  She brings band aids to school for her teachers and friends, to the doctors office to give to the nurse and pediatrician and to church to give to the priest.  When we go to the park, she tries takes her band aids with her just in case she gets an owie but we say enough at that point.  Elizabeth is always prepared.  Another Elizabeth favorite is drawing/writing with a pen.  She is very interested in letters and learning how to write her name.  She tries really hard and I'm sure she will have it down in no time.  And of course George.  I think she loves George even more now as he reminds her of her brother.  Andrew is so very curious and always getting into something or some kind of mischief.  Silly Andrew, Elizabeth will say.  You are just so silly.

Eleven Mile Canyon with the Whole Family

We set out to head up to a nice little river about an hour from our house but due to a  summer festival going on literally in the middle of the road,  the road was closed and the detour would have taken hours.  So we made lemonade.  We kept on going to one of our favorite rivers on the front range, Eleven Mile Canyon of the South Platte River.

We set up camp in the catch and release section on what is usually a great little fishing hole with a nice quiet, slow moving pool only for whatever reason the flows were way up and the water was really moving.  That was ok with us as we had fun coloring and of course looking for bugs.  Elizabeth had a collection of bugs that I've never seen in my life.  She will be very good at determining what to use for flies someday!  

The entire day we could not keep Elizabeth out of the water even though to us it was frigid cold.  She loved it.  

Andrew was as happy as a clam fishing with Daddy.  He sat in the back pack, would fuss a little bit when he wanted a bottle and Jan would just fish over where I was standing so I could feed him a bottle and then they were back out fishing again.  

As usual, Elizabeth was thrilled with the catch of the day!  

We could not resist including this picture of our day camp.  Elizabeth is not very efficient nor effective at going potty in the woods.  Therefore, the potty comes with us when we go on family outings!  When I was taking this picture, Elizabeth kept asking, mommy, what are you taking a picture of?  Oh, just the woods, Elizabeth!

Vacuum Tube Headphone Amplifier

So what does an engineer do to stay up on their electrical engineering and earn a little respect with his coworkers?  Take on a little electrical engineering project of course.  So what project could I take on that I could show off at work on my desk that looks cool and has a practical application?  The most interesting thing that I found was a vacuum tube headphone amplifier - basically something that takes the output from your CD player or iPOD and makes it louder.  Yes, both such devices already have a circuit in them to power your headphones however they usually aren't of the best quality and generally only work well with cheaper headphones that don't sound all that great to begin with.  This thing should make a huge difference.

So after quite a bit of research I settled on the SOHA II headphone amp which utilizes a vacuum tube input stage and solid state output stage.   All of the info including schematics and building instructions can be found here at http://www.cavalliaudio.com/ and PC boards can be purchased from http://www.glassjaraudio.com.

This is a pretty clever little design utilizing inexpensive and easy to find 12au7 preamp tubes, the schematic is shown below (this is the schematic for one channel).  The beauty of this design is that these tubes only require 60-90 volts to run properly as opposed most tubes requiring 200+ volts to work so it is much safer for a first time builder such as myself.

Here is the power supply schematic as well:

While the schematic looks pretty complex at first look it is really quite an elegant design making use of relatively inexpensive parts and is a rather robust design allowing for easy tube swapping.

Once I did all of my homework I ordered up most of the parts including the circuit boards from http://www.glassjaraudio.com and purchased in the rest from Mouser, Digikey, and some scraps I was able to scrounge up at work.

Step 1:  Design the Amplifier Housing

I started out with plans to use a commercially available metal enclosure but I decided something a little more unique would be more interesting.  So I sketched up a little design:

Then a quick CAD model - Google Sketch is very cool!

Step 2: Build up the Circuit Board

From a box of parts to the nearly completed board

Step 3:  Build the case and and put it all together

The corners and top piece are Bocote while the main body of the amp is Zebrawood

I put LEDs under the tubes to get them to glow

Listening Impressions:

Now that I have had this for a while I find this amp is quite incredible, its almost like switching to a high def TV from std def.  The bass has a lot more punch, the midrange/vocals are amazingly smooth and the highs shimmer and are exceptionally clean.  Another  observation is that the music takes on an almost 3D quality. With such clarity your ear can roam to single out individual instruments in a way that I had never experienced before.  Bottom line - I love this little amp!

I'm thinking maybe this coming winter I may just have to try another one of these!