A few outside shots

We are spending some time in Holland this week. We have gone out into the snow a couple times. My parents got some snowshoes recently, and Brian and I tried them out. They took a little getting used to, but they were a lot of fun. My mom also got some gaters, which are apparently used to keep your legs dry when you go snowshoeing in deep snow. I had never heard of them before, but David was more familiar.

Dad and Mom, showing off the gaters:

Brian and I took the snowshoes all the way to the lake, which was very beautiful. We got there at dusk, so we had to hurry back to make it to the car before it got too dark.
Brian at Lake Michigan:

Han at Lake Michigan:

Dad on skis (left) and Brian on snowshoes (right):

More visit and mini-Christmas

Dave and Amy have headed back to South Carolina now. We really enjoyed spending time with them over the last week. Here are a few more pictures from their visit.

We played a couple different games together:


We met with Tammy and Jim for lunch:

We had a mini-Christmas, giving some gifts to each other, on Saturday afternoon.

Karen with 2010 ornament:

Rick with specialty foods:

Dave and Amy with matching mugs:

Karen and Brian:

Brian, hiding from the camera:

Wildlights

The Columbus Zoo has a special program every December called Wildlights. They cover the zoo with (energy-efficient LED) Christmas lights and extend the zoo hours into the evening to allow people to enjoy the light displays. The lights always look fantastic, but it is always chilly. We went to Wildlights this evening, and it was frigid. To make the temperatures more bareable, the zoo sells hot chocolate and has several of the indoor displays open, so you can sip a hot drink and/or got inside a building to thaw out a bit.

First, some of the beautiful light displays:
See the hippo?

Moose!

The polar bears were outside, but there is a nice display indoors about polar bears and global warming/climate change. We warmed up in this building, and took a few silly pictures too.

Making a friend?

Dave & Amy pet the bear; Brian and I observe but do not offer our hands to the wild animals.

Another popular indoor display is the manatee tank. Today I saw 2 manatees. The smaller one had some boat motor damage on its side. The stuff floating on the top of the water is lettuce.

Dave & Amy:

Rick, Dave, and Brian, posing in the manatee building:

Han with a tall toy soldier:

Dave & Amy visit

This week, Dave and Amy have been visiting from South Carolina. It has been great! We started the visit by having some Christmas cake. (Okay, so the visit was really just a good excuse to make a cake, but I did color the cake to make it more Christmasy.) I wanted to try out a new chocolate frosting recipe, which is delicious.

We met Grandma Sites and cousin Amy for lunch on Thursday at Der Dutchmann (an Amish family-style restaurant). L to R: Han, Rick, Gma, Karen, Brian, Amy, Dave

Here is a pic with only Grandma, Dave, and Amy.

Amy and Dave stopped by our place briefly to meet the ferrets. Chewbacca especially liked Amy.

So far, the visit has been a fun one. We are all happy Dave and Amy could get some time off to come see us.

Happy Holidays

Today we had our first real snow. It looks lovely. In the past couple weeks, we've decorated the house for Christmas. The lights on our tree make crazy patterns on the floor and walls. We put the tree in the living room by the large window, with the other plants.
Sinterklaas ornament:

Rain last night transitioned into snow, which led to some decent-sized icicles.

Brian brushing snow off the car:

Our outside lights, covered in snow:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Woods Hole trip

Last week, I drove to Woods Hole, MA, to work on my dissertation samples. I got a lot done, and it was a beautiful area to visit, so overall I'd rank the trip a success. Here are a few pictures from the week.

Visiting some college friends in Boston:

Woods Hole (on Cape Cod) is a truly beautiful area. Unfortunately, since it is about as far east as you can go, the sun set super early. This is at 4pm. The sun is just setting behind me.

Here is the door of the lab I worked in. I thought this was a kind of pretty, artistic shot. I was the first person who arrived on Friday morning, so I spent a short time wandering outside and enjoying the scenery.

This is the view from the lab. You see that water out there? Yeah, that's the ocean. I felt like this view was totally wasted on several of the people working in this lab, who didn't care where they were. Of course, there were some who enjoyed it too.

I spent many many hours setting up and running samples through silica gel to seperate out impurities. Here I am about to add the first silica gel with my left hand and manning the solvent with my right hand.

The rest of these are from the little bit of sightseeing I did in Woods Hole and the surrounding areas. The first three are from a small natural harbor close to where I was staying. These pictures were taken around 7:30 am (the sun had been up for several hours). I found several of the boats interesting & the whole area beautiful in the bright morning light.

This is the Gaines house, where I was staying. Jennifer was an incredibly gracious hostess, especially considering that we did not know each other at all before I arrived. (This is the house one of David's labmates grew up in.) The "road" this house was located on was really just a very narrow dirt path. Luckily, my GPS was up to the task!

Here is the lighthouse at Woods Hole. I came across it while exploring my first day. It was about 5 pm by this time, so my camera was having a hard time in the dim light. It did make the light more visible though. While standing next to the lighthouse, I watched a large cruiseliner and a coastguard helicopter go by.

Battle of the Marching Bands

Recently, we went to watch Brian's cousin marching in a band competition. It was a chilly fall evening, but it was pretty interesting to see the bands playing and marching around the field in various formations.


I think Evan is the second from the right in this picture.

Back row: Tammy, Gma, Jim

Front row: Brian, Vicki, Rick

Happy Halloween!

Preparing to hand out candy:
Eating dinner is a little tricky with so much paint:

Our pumpkins (Brian carved the ghoul, I carved the stack of jack-o-lanterns):

The carving process:

Earlier this month at the Pumpkin Show in Circleville (this is where I got the pumpkins we carved):