Family Days at LLNL

The same weekend we had Paige's blessing, they were also doing family days at Lawrence Livermore National Lab where Ryan works.  Since Ryan works in a classified area, we had never gotten to go and see where he works, but once about every few years they put away all the classified stuff and let people come and see the lab.  Lucas was so excited to see where his daddy works!  It was still considered a classified area, even though it was open to the public, so we weren't allowed to take any pictures while we were there.  They did have a few spots where they took pictures for you, though.

Here's the whole group in front of "Fat Man".

An air launch cruise missle (AGM-86B).

 A Mk21 Reentry Vehicle

We got to tour the building with all the supercomputers.  And we got to see Sequoia which is currently the world's fastest supercomputer.  It was actually pretty cool.

About halfway through the day we went back to the house to drop Lucas off for a nap.  My mom was watching the babies, so we decided adding one more couldn't hurt.  Then we went to see the National Ignition Facility (NIF).  This was probably the coolest part of the lab.  Here we are with Niffy, the NIF mascot. A mammoth is the mascot because during NIF contruction, mammoth bones were found during excavation.

And here we are down inside a big Fusion chamber getting pummeled by lasers... or standing in front of a big poster of what it's supposed to look like inside.

Apparently part of the next Star Trek movie was filmed inside NIF.  I can't wait to watch it and see if I recognize anything.

All in all we had a good time.  It was exciting finally getting to see where Ryan works, and getting to spend some time with family too.