The Chocolate Mouse

So one of the purposes of my trip up north was to talk to Stacy's class at Tufts about what being a resource manager actually means. It was actually really fun and makes me think I may like teaching college way more than I know I would not like teaching high school. Anyway, Stacy being the sweet person she is not only paid for my rental car (therefore assisting me in bartering with the state to send me here) but also gave me gas money AND a cute little box of chocolates as a thank you! I opened up said chocolates today as a congratulations to myself for existing (I mean, it's chocolate, you don't REALLY need a good reason!) and was happy to find an assortment of cutie chocolate tastes. Amidst the tasty little gnoche covered in cocoa powder and this interesting ginger one that was really good there sat a little chocolate mouse complete with tail. He was so cute it was difficult for me to finally eat him, but eat him I did and he was DELICIOUS!

Conference Check-in

So, I've been in New England this week, attending the Estuarine Research Federation conference in balmy Providence, RI :) Actually, it's quite a relief as far as weather is concerned since I do love sleeping under lots of warm covers. It's just been a bit of a shock to the system to need gloves in the morning! I finally found time to sit down and check e-mail which then led me to check Rachel's blog, which then made me feel totally inadequate since she has actually stuck to her post a day resolution of the month, while I have a measly one post for November. Thus, my little hello from the Ocean State. I did my presentation this morning, and spoke to my friend Stacy's class at Tufts last night, which puts the stress level of my week back down on the zero scale. Both went extremely well, and I am in fact learning quite a bit - although it's been a while since I've been at a big scientific conference so the brain cells are starting to tire! AND there is this chocolate shop on the 2nd floor of the convention center which you have to walk by every time to change from one set of rooms to the other! So mean of them! So, I guess it's time to get back on my game - I felt I deserved a break after an intense evening and morning combo, but to the grind stone I return. Seeing as how I decided to post this instead of go to the 3:00 talk I've missed 'Circulation in a semi-enclosed bay driven by sea level variations and wind'. Instead I'm off to learn about 'Building Consensus in a Non-Regulatory Approach'... if you laugh at me for choosing this option imagine my glee when I could go there instead of 'Tracking the uptake and fate of benthic microalgal carbon and nitrogen: a dual isotopic approach'. Bring on the caffeine!

Welcome November

So to celebrate the arrival of November I will post 4 last pictures from October I just got that I find especially fun. The first is of the fall leaves in West Virginia, taken by a coworker in the reserve system.
And the second is a glorious addition to baby lobster Ellie's costume. Oh and if you'd like Ad's entertaining take on this behavior check here.

And the last two are of, my other little munchkin, Emily's Halloween costume. She seems genuinely thrilled to be wearing it :)

Now bring on the Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie!

Halloween Crazies

Last night Jason and Holly had us over to their house for a Halloween party of sorts. We decided ahead of time that Ellie was the only human that was to be dressed up since none of us really wanted to spend energy deciding on a costume (yes we are lazy, what can we say?). Joe, Julia and Nick however made us laugh showing up in semi-costumes - well worth it I'd say!


We decided that instead of having poor Holly cook for all of us (who could have done everything because she is supermom, but we decided to give her a break), we would make pizzas. We split up bringing the ingredients and it turned out superbly delicious! We had a barbque chicken and red onion; pepperoni and peppers with fresh oregano; pesto, roasted red peppers and mushrooms; and spinach, feta and tomato. We decided it was best if there were not three dogs wandering about while we cooked, so they were confined to the outside for the beginning of the evening. Kaylinn was very unhappy about this set up and decided to bark at the door for the better part of her seclusion. Ellie, however, decided just to sleep through the whole thing.



While the pizzas were cooking, Holly and Jason prepped Ellie for the big event of the evening. Jason did an amazingly good job of not letting any clues slip as to what her costume was going to be, so we were so excited to see Little Ellie the Lobster!


We finished off the evening with caramel apples, pumpkin ice cream and a viewing of our scary movie of choice: The Shining (which I had actually never seen until last night). It was great fun!

Sweet Little Girl

So yesterday was Emily's baptism. She was so cute in her white dress, and actually quite in a good mood for the service. She sat quietly in Andrea's arms while the pastor talked and then was actually also sitting quietly in the pastor's arms...that is until the actual baptizing event. She wasn't so happy once she got water dumped on her head, which how can you blame her really? Apparently it was Reformation Sunday, during which the Presbyterian Church celebrates their roots in Scotland by having a bag piper play. The majority of the music though was not with the piper until the last song when we sang Amazing Grace with the bag pipe. It was beautiful!

After the service we went over to Jack's parents house to have lunch. Jack's friend and Emily's godfather Thomas and his family where there. Ava is Jack's goddaughter so we decided that Ava and Emily were godcousins, although I'm not sure that this is an actual relationship :) Ava was cracking us up with her stories. We definitely realized why you don't say anything around a 3 year old that you don't want told to anyone who feels like listening! She was hilarious!

We went home to play with the pupster and then headed back to Andrea and Jack's for dinner . The boys decided to make a fire in the back and the girls stayed inside with the baby and made fondue. While I'm a fan of fires, I think that chocolate fondue wins the contest :) At this point Emily decided that the day has been far too long and she was not in the mood for company so she was a bit cranky until the majority of the guest left. Then I guess she decided it was quite enough again to be social. So she hung out with me on the bouncy ball in her cute little Halloween sleeper :)It was a fun little day. And I'll tell you those baby hormones are awfully strong - after a day of babies screaming and kids running around I was still sure I was in the mood for one of my own :)

W is for Wedding

This is really rather belated, but I realized that I never actually posted this on my blog and instead kept sending people to Rachel's blog to get the link. So now, my wedding present from Rachel is officially one of my links as well as right HERE!

Wild and Wonderful

Anyone who has gone to more than a few conferences know that the one thing about them is that they don't always look at the location based on the time of year they are holding the meeting. Take for instance a conference I went to in December in Vancouver, or August in Miami. Flip those two dates and you've got some good weather, but otherwise those of us who are temperature regulating challenged have some issues. Well, the conference I was at last week got it right - West Virginia in October! The trees were beautiful and even though it rained the better portion of the week the temperature was perfect.

I also like conferences in the mid-Atlantic because that means I get to go home either before or after the meeting. This time I went home the Thursday before and got to stay at home for 4 days! I went shoe shopping and got manicures with my mom, went rock climbing at an indoor rock gym with my dad, helped my grandmother finish planting her garden, visited my friend Melanie who recently moved up near my parents, and had a glass of wine with my aunt who I haven't gotten to visit in the past 3 or 4 times I've been home! It was a fun filled weekend.

On Sunday my mom and Nikole drove me down to my conference, and we decided on the way to stop by and visit Harpers Ferry since my mom and Nikole had never been there, and although I have a vauge recollection of it from a middle school field trip, I don't remember much. It was beautiful!

the fall trees and the Potomac River

The meeting was at the National Conservation Training Center, which is a beautiful little training center out in the middle of nowhere. Mom and Nikole stayed Sunday night and Monday morning my mom and I got up to take a walk around the training center trails before they left and I headed to meetings. We took a walk down to the river, which was all covered with fog where could hear the bald eagles across the river. And of course I forgot my camera because it was the only morning walk I got to take not in the rain!

an aerial of the training center I stole off the internet :)

the lodge I stayed in

a picture I took when I got back to my room one day - we decided there were no predators in a 100 mile radius based on how many deer we saw :)

The meeting was great, although my brain was about dead by the end of it. It rained on and off the rest of the week, but the training center had umbrellas that anyone could use at each of the buildings so you could just grab an umbrella to walk to your next meeting spot - quite ingenious! Although I had fun, I was happy to head home. We landed in Charleston at midnight Friday night, where Sandor and Kaylinn were waiting to take me home (Miss Kaylinn was not very happy about my absence and decided to eat 2 pairs of my shoes in protest). The next morning we got up and took the crazed girl to the beach to run off some energy, which we think she greatly appreciated :)

Never a Boring Moment

Life has seemed a little dull this week, especially after reading Rachel's story about Gabriel and George. But, I guess fun comes with the 2 year old territory :) So I was going to write about how boring my week has been until I realized I am WAY over exaggerating. Granted I have no cute Gabriel to keep me entertained, but I have had quite a few entertaining moments in the past few weeks. Since not all of them were captured on the blog I figured I would highlight a few...

Kaylinn and Dudley playing on the beach during a walk up near Brandy's house

one of the fish we were getting ready to tag on my weekend fish tagging trip to Myrtle Beach. the camera was waterproof even though it didn't look like it so it took me a moment before I could convince myself to stick the whole thing underwater!

Emily Daniels being as cute as can be. I stayed at Andrea's house for a day a few weekends ago to help her with Emily while Jack was out of town

Sandor and I at Micah's 2nd birthday party being backyardigans (which I didn't even know existed until I got there)

but most of the entertainment has been due to these three crazy animals, who I somehow convinced to actually sit still all in the same room for enough time to get this picture

It's Finally Fall!

Ahh, I have been waiting for October in Charleston! It is the most glorious of all weather...well I guess April in Charleston is also pretty nice. But I think that since the winter is not all that bad down here it's not as refreshing to have warmer weather as cooler weather is refreshing after the summer. I thought that October was going to pass me by un-wonderful until last week, when it finally started cooling down at night and as of Thursday we have yet to turn our air conditioning on in the house. So, needless to say Saturday morning we took advantage of the beautiful temperature and lack of bugs and went ahead and left the porch door open while we hung our in the living room. The animals were very intruiged in this new region of their home, specifically the kitten which has not yet explored this little area of her world.

Kaylinn as always was pretty much just obsessed with wherever the kitten was

this was Leia stalking the dog, we can't really blame all the mayhem on Kaylinn, Leia initiates a good deal of it

Mishu, preferred to ignore them both and bask in the sun

The next day to continue our celebration of fall we headed to Daniel Island for an Oktoberfest celebration! The weather was gorgeous! There was a German band playing, tons of brats (although we were sad that they ran out of sauerkraut by the time we were ready to wait in the 30 minute line for them) and a variety of German beer to boot.

Jason and Joe ready to break out the plethora of German beers

Ellie enjoying the sun

our musical enjoyment for the day

A New View

I have a new office at work! It was kinda a pain moving everything - which is what I have been spending the better part of my week doing. There is less space in my new desk, which necessitated moving what was in my desk to my filing cabinent, which necessitated organizing my filing cabinet, which made more things need to move into the storage cabinet, which again necessitated more organizing of the storage cabinet...you get the point. But for my new view I think you'll agree it was well worth it :)

during the moving process

my old office all empty and sad

my new office! it's a little dark because of the sun from the back

new much larger view of the harbor!

this office is also a LOT bigger - I have a whole wing for files, books and storage

there is also a 'relaxation wing' - Maia and I on the couch after a week well spent