Ryan & Samantha » Photos

Shh… nobody move!

Samantha Corcoran — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:02:00 +0000

I happened to look out the window this afternoon and saw what I thought was a grasshopper on one of the flowers. Grasshoppers have been turning my plant leaves into Swiss cheese, so I went outside to go squish it. Instead what I found was a praying mantis! I’m no National Geographic photographer, but I was able to get close enough to snap a few shots before it disappeared into the foliage. Although, after reading up on mantises I’m glad I didn’t get too close; they are predators, they will bite (no venom, thankfully), and while they eat mostly insects some of the larger mantises have been said to eat prey such as lizards, snakes, or rodents!

Click on the photo to enlarge–pretty cool!

State Fair!

Samantha Corcoran — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:48:00 +0000

Instead of taking one big vacation this summer (like we did last year), Ryan and I are trying out the “staycation” and taking short visits to local sites. Last weekend we drove 40 minutes up to Hutchinson to the Kansas State Fair grounds for the annual fair.

Earlier in the week our region had heavy rainstorms (we had around 5 inches at our own “Lake Rushwood“). That didn’t help the parking situation; we slipped and slid through several areas that look like the sloppy mess below.

We started out in the sheep shed watching a shearing demonstration. The sheep was so docile and adorable as it sat there quietly leaning back against the shearer.

We made a quick stop by the bunny cages…

…and a flying pig cake made by a friend at church.

We didn’t ride any rides because we were headed to the feature event of the evening (and our real purpose for going to the fair):

Huey Lewis and the News!! Ryan has waited to see them in concert since he was 9 years old! Huey didn’t disappoint; they played a great mix of old and new songs and the audience sang along faithfully. What a fun concert!

Lake Rushwood

Ryan Corcoran — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:05:00 +0000

After raining most of the evening and almost the entire night, we awoke to see this sight in our backyard this morning. Our sump pump is still working virtually non-stop around the clock, emptying the basin about every 30 seconds. So far, no water in the basement!

I didn’t take this picture until a couple hours after we woke up. The water level has already receded some (though not much). Here’s another picture that shows off the original water depth:

I feel bad for Samantha, who, on her first day back from her 2-week work trip, decided to put down 20 bags of mulch over our newly prepped flower beds in the backyard. Almost all of that mulch is now floating away!

“The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD is enthroned as King forever.” – Psalms 29:10

Nature Hike & Geocaching

Ryan Corcoran — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:44:00 +0000

Samantha and I went on a very short/easy nature walk today and combined it with an old hobby of ours – Geocaching! Geocaching is a “sport”, or game, where people hide stuff out in the “wild” and list the GPS coordinates on the official geocaching website. Then, people hunt for the caches using their own GPS equipment, take an item from the cache, add another item to the cache, sign the log book, and [hopefully] pick up trash out of nature on the way. We started geocaching way back in 2001 when I was using a Magellan GPS plug-in for my Handspring (now Palm) handheld. That equipment became outdated long ago and we never replaced it with any other GPS device. Since we recently got iPhones (that have built-in GPS), we decided to get back in the game!

There’s a great nature reserve within a mile of our house, and there are several caches hidden within. We took advantage of the absolutely gorgeous weather today to take a short walk (2-2.5 hours) and hunt down a couple of caches.

We’ve included some of our favorite pictures from the walk. We saw a family of deer just as we were beginning our hike, but couldn’t get the camera out in time. There were lots of birds out today, but we didn’t really get to see much other wildlife other than the deer.

We found it!

From "E" to "F" for < $30!

Ryan Corcoran — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:45:00 +0000

I went to fill up last night on my way home from church, and was greeted with regular unleaded gas that was less than $2 a gallon!

I’ve been saying for a while now that as soon as gas hit $1.99/gallon, we’d throw a party, so be expecting your invitation in the mail soon…

Ireland & NYC Photo Albums posted!

Ryan Corcoran — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 01:48:00 +0000

We’ve finally posted our photos from our trip to Ireland, Scotland, & NYC. You can view them at our photos page. If you’d like, you can also go back and read our posts about the trip (and other trips) by viewing all posts with the “Vacation” label.

Feel free to leave your comments about the photos in the comments area of this post.

Enjoy!

Hello Kitty

Samantha Corcoran — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:10:00 +0000

We came home today to find a kitten lounging under our front porch! It was clearly lost and all alone. I brought out a dish of water (it reached 100 degrees F today!) and tried to coax it to come out and drink but it was pretty unsure of me. After a while it ventured out, stuck its paw in the water, shook the water off, and ran back under the porch. Ryan came out and for a long time we tried to feed it some turkey, but that was just as successful as the water.

Just when the kitten was warming up to us, we heard a loud meow from the sidewalk – the kitten’s mother! She came right over and found her baby, and proceeded to eat the turkey we had laid out for the kitten. The two of them hung out in our front yard the rest of the evening.

Baby bunnies!

Samantha Corcoran — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:00:00 +0000

We were working in the backyard a few days ago and came across a funny looking patch of weeds. It was loose and slightly furry. We pulled it back and found baby bunnies! Apparently the shade under our deck is prime bunny real estate; there were five bunnies in all. We were able to pet one before it and its siblings ran farther under the deck for cover.

As much as I love bunnies, we might have a problem when we plant the rest of the backyard landscape this fall…

A wee visit with friends

Samantha Corcoran — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:55:00 +0000

We had a fantastic visit with Tristan & Leslie! The Blocks are missionary helpers in Stirling, Scotland, and have just finished one year out of a two-year commitment. We flew from Dublin to Glasgow, Scotland, on Saturday morning and stayed with them until Sunday evening.

They showed us around Stirling and took us to the William Wallace monument, the shopping center with the 18th century dungeon underneath, and their first two flats (apartments). They introduced us to a proper tea time, complete with Earl Grey tea and tasty biscuits (cookies). We had a great time catching up and learning more about their mission work in Stirling.

On Sunday we went with them to bible class and worship. I got to help Leslie teach the children and Ryan went with Tristan to the Searcher’s class. We loved meeting the church members, whose pictures we had seen on Tristan & Leslie’s blog. After worship and tea, we went to lunch with everyone at a very cozy cafe and had soup and sandwiches (it was so warm in contrast to the cool and rainy day!).

We hope they were encouraged by our visit, because we sure were! We are so proud of our friends and the work they are doing. We can’t wait to see them again when they come back to the States for furlough in a few months!

Ravens are very clever

Samantha Corcoran — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Most people see ravens (crows) as a nuisance, but today we observed another way that they have learned to thrive in the human environment: dumpster diving. After we left the Cliffs of Moher we went back to the car and noticed several crows around a trash can. As we passed them a piece of trash flew past us in the wind. We didn’t really pay attention until it happened again, and we realized that the crow was sifting through the trash and dropping the good stuff down to his buddies and discarding the wrappers!

This reminded me of a video I watched awhile back about a crow vending machine. Crows use cars to crack nuts, they can use tools, and can even use human fishing gear. What if we could train crows to actually pick up trash to receive a snack? Think how clean our cities would be!