The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

In case anyone doesn't know where the road not taken lies, it is in the middle of Texas. Specifically, it's the road that lies between the Carlsbad Caverns and I-20. 5 hours of nothingness. Just heat and bugs. I think I claimed that Georgia was the bug capital of the world, but I forgot about Texas. Getting gas along this untraveled road, I was attacked by a whole slew of nasty bugs along with the insufferable heat...oh, and it was like 1 am. So why would I subject myself and my family to such torment? Simple: we went to the Grand Canyon and the Carlsbad Caverns on the way out to Georgia (yeah, I know that this blog should probably have come before the last one, but I'm a little scatterbrained. That's the way I roll).
Here are some highlights from the trip across the country.

Tommy, Silje, and Emma hanging out in the shade at the Glen Canyon Dam.
















Tommy and Emma looking cute!
















Here is Tommy exploring the area.





































On to the Grand Canyon, where Liam wanted to get into the action.
















Tommy liked exploring at the Grand Canyon as well. Here is is hanging out with Silje and just being stinkin' cute.







From the Grand Canyon we moved on to the Carlsbad Caverns. Liam, Silje, and Emma are awed by the grandeur of the caves (and maybe somewhat spooked by something).








All in it was a great trip. We had a blast, made some memories, and survived Texas.

Peachtree Living

Paul here. This is my first post ever!

As implied by the title of the post, I am coming to you from the land of peach trees (and streets, neighborhoods, and cities named "peachtree"). The Ellison family has just gone southern. We have officially moved to the ATL (though I will NEVER convert to being a Braves fan).

For those of you who don't know (and that's probably everyone who reads the blog to keep up with our comings and goings), I have taken a job with Altea Therapeutics in Atlanta, GA and we have moved to Lilburn, a suburb about 45 minutes North East of downtown.

Some impressions of Atlanta:

Atlanta is HUGE...but not really

Coming from Salt Lake City, Utah (metro population of 1.1 million people), Atlanta (metro population of 5.3 million people) seemed like it would be quite overwelming. However with multiple freeways averaging 5 or 6 lanes and most people apparently traveling in the opposite direction as my commute, it doesn't feel any more crowded on the freeway than in Utah (other than the 1 mile road to the freeway that can take 30mins if I leave when the coke worldwide headquarters employees get off work).

There is no such thing as a "mature tree" in Utah.

The trees in our backyard here are about 50ft tall. And there are much taller trees all around. I look out the upper windows in our 2-story living room and still see trees going up and up. It's amazing.

Utah is quite green...in a brown sort of way.

This is something that I recalled when I first moved back to Utah from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Here, freeways are lined by 50ft tall trees (and taller). Vines and bushes hang onto the freeway in sections. Everything is green. It helps that Atlanta gets more annual rainfall than Seattle does.

Atlanta must be the bug capital of the world. Seriously.

In the 4 weeks that we have been in Atlanta I have seen my first ever scorpion (in our bedroom), my first ever praying mantis (on my garbage can), the longest and densest trail of ants ever, fire flies (which I have seen in Washington DC at Lizzie's place), beetles are everywhere, spiders too. Tommy shrieks a lot when he finds HUGE spiders (they are about 1mm in diameter).

We are happy to be living among the peach trees.