In May we traveled to Seattle where Walt attended the Medical Physics conference and we stayed with Aunt Rebecca, Uncle Chad and Cousin Riley. We also visited our relatives near Seattle including crazy Aunts Betty and Nancy, Uncle Doyle and cousins Judy and Jack and others. Also present was the newest addition to the O'Dell clan who was only three days old.

This is Walt with Maya, Aunt Rebecca and Cousin Riley on our hike through the woods south of Seattle

For Thanksgiving we traveled to Park City, UT to visit Aunt Wendy, Uncle Chris, and cousins Colter, Abigail and Bowen. All the girls had colds and there was not enough snow for skiing but it was nice for everyone to finally meet their nieces.

Maya did very well on all these travels even though she was not always feeling well. Coming back to Rochester we had to make an alternate landing in Buffalo where we then took a fast and loud taxi ride back to Rochester.
Travels

Back home the O'Dell's had their first real reunion in memory at Cousin Bob's house. Long-lost Aunt's and Uncles came from Washington, Texas, Mohawk, Ontario, Webster, Penfield, Union Hill and Williamson.

Maya's first Birthday party was also well attended, including all her Crazy Aunts.

Maya did pretty well with her first cake, getting less than half of it on Auntie Jaimee.

To be certain that no one missed it, Maya's birthday announcement was put up on the jumbo-tron at the Rhino's soccer game. The Rhino's got a new stadium and we had season tickets right behind (about 10 feet) the goal.
Family
Events

With Leslie's parents visiting we got to go on our annual fall tractor ride through the Williamson apple orchards with the Fishers and Sailes. I made a record 7 apple crisps this year! We got a freezer for the house so we'll see if the Apple Crisps remain that way into March.

With about 8 varieties to choose from, its better to taste each one of them before figuring which one to take home.

Not all of them made it home though.
Apples

Our biggest house project was putting in a bay window in the front of the house which was much harder than originally thought. Rolf and Leslie's dad, Jim, spent much time figuring out how to put in a new window header and roof structure for it. I redid the wall insulation and wiring while Leslie repainted the entire room.

The next biggest task was remodeling the downstairs bath with a new shower/bath, sink, window, wiring, recessed ceiling lights and fan, and with cousin Bob's help we put in a tiled floor. Possessed by something, Walt took the occasion to redo the entire drainage plumbing and venting for the house -- yanking out 60-year old cast iron drain pipes. We all were happy that we were without any functioning toilets for less than 48 hours

Leslie took some efforts to expand the garden so we had a wider than usual variety this summer. A free load of fresh cow manure from our church pastor did not hurt either. For the garage, Walt added an electrical sub-panel and fixed the one remaining uninsulated wall.
Housework

I had less time this year to play in the yard, but it was a good year for pretty pictures. This is the 'Barn' with the crabapple trees in full bloom. The "Dem Duck" windmill that Leslie's dad made took some abuse from heavy winds but we got it put back together.

This is Maya and her daddy enjoying a sunset (see the next picture) while out on our dock.

This is Maya enjoying a different pretty sunset with an unusually calm lake to go with it (see next picture).

Yes, this is from our house and yes you should be kicking yourself for not coming to visit :) . Maybe you will this year then?

The bass were less plentiful and we did not get out to catch them as often as we would have liked, but what bass were caught were rather large. This is a 21" monster that Mike caught with worms from our canoe. On several occasions we also spotted salmon hanging out in the shallows in front of our place. We even had a group of wild turkeys run through our yard a couple times in the spring.
Yard Scenes

Leslie's summer softball team won the league championship in a very exciting come-from-way-behind finish that most of the local family witnessed. Her women's volleyball team also won their spring league. Walt continues to play over-30 men's soccer in the summer and his intramural indoor soccer team shockingly won the league championship this fall. We both played for our church softball team this summer and indoor intramural volleyball in the fall.

Walt had 3 occasions this year where a driver failed to yield and crashed into his car. A red light mishap caused more damage than the Mazda was worth, so with the insurance money (and a loan and Norm's $1K in credits) we got our first ever NEW car: this is Chevy HHR. It is supposed to look like a 1939 Chevy suburban. It gets 30 mpg, has room like a minivan but looks better. As for the Subaru, after repeated intermittent random overheating eposides over the last 3 years, we finally broke down and took the cylinder heads off to verify that the head gaskets were blown. With a couple weekends of work and Grandpa O'Dell's expert help we got the engine out and the new gaskets put in.

Our annual pumpkin carving party was topped off with a highly competitive ping-pong tournament where my lab ringers were pitted against my nephews. Needless to say(?) the winning trophy remains at our house.

Leslie's parents came out for their annual visit, just in time to watch Maya take her first steps and several other notable advancements in the life of a 1-year old. Maya and her parents really enjoyed her extra playmates/in-house-babysitters. Among the usual assortment of projects, Grandpa Jim made her this Xylobox, complete with dovetail joints and mallets.
Work & Play
We hope you all had a good year in what was Year 1 of the new Mayan calendar and we hope that year 2 turns out also to be peaceful. Each ornament on the tree can be clicked to bring up a picture and a story to go with it, so please try them all. It will help to make your browser winder as big as possible.
I'll start by saying that Leslie is still a full-time mommy, and enjoying the opportunity to daily be with and raise Maya. Maya takes a 'gymnastics class' once a week and Leslie and she often go swimming at Auntie Janey's house. Walt's work this past year has been overly filled with the writing of research grants (12 to be exact). In the summer he managed to get an NIH RO1 grant and established research collaborations with Varian and Kodak to keep his lab moving forward. We are hopeful that the 2 remaining applications for the year will be funded and he won't have to have his students organize a fundraising carwash each month of 2007.
We did not travel much in 2006 but we'll start 2007 with a research conference in San Diego in February (17-24). We've rented the Big Kahuna house in Mission Beach and hope to see all you southern CA people sometime that week. For 3 days both before and after we'll be up in Santa Clara so we hope to see all you northern CA people at that time.
If the big grant comes through then Walt may be in Berlin for the ISMRM conference in May.
Merry Christmas
from Walter, Leslie & Maya