Our trip home to New Zealand – Part III

So, Craig’s camera broke on Christmas morning and I never took any photos with mine, but I can tell you how the rest of the day went. Craig’s Mum fed 18 people. We blew bubbles, we blew some more bubbles and Craig, his brothers and his cousin got trashed – they also set a land-speed record for demolishing a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Much to their mothers disgust and their wives chagrin!

So, December 26th, Boxing Day. It was drizzling, so we didn’t play golf :-(   Am I the only one who missed the golf? Instead, Craig’s Dad decided to take his new boat for a spin on Lake Mahinerangi. Afterall, he’d had it for a whole week and hadn’t taken it out yet! Well, Paige was tired and needed a sleep and I’m scared of Lake Mahinerangi, so we stayed at the farm – I read my book, I read Paige her books, Paige slept, Gizzy and I slept. Meanwhile, the rest of the family had FINALLY got the boat started and her are some photos of their miserale rainy trip on the lake where they caught nadda, zip, zilch, nothing!

Did I mention that I was at home with my cuddly niece and nice and dry? Well, I was :-)

The very next day, the sun came out again, so we went down to Waitahuna to ride bikes around the school and play on the playground. We were trying to get Alice to build up some confidence on her “big girl bike”.  Paige came to ride her bike too – but she was a little more interested in the snacks her Mum had packed. Don’t you think this farmer should have had some daughters?

This next photo cracks me up! Alice was having a little trouble adjusting to her new bike – specifically the brakes! She rode into the fence around the tennis courts a couple of times and boy did we laugh. She threw a bit of a tanty – one of the tantrums I even got on video camera – for her 21st! 

So her Mum and Uncle Craig decided that if Alice wouldn’t ride her bike, they would!

The best part of Waitahuna Primary School is that political correctness – or maybe OSH (Occupational Health and Safety) haven’t caught up with them yet. They still have all the original playground equipment that was at the school some 30 years ago when Craig started there. So Ab and I helped Craig re-live his youth by playing on the playground with him……. And then we went home and blew some more bubbles and played on the slip ‘n slide. Ellen (that’s my other sister-in-law who is in none of the photos because she was trimming her hedge while the rest of us were enjoying our Christmas Holiday) had  her family visiting for Christmas and her Dad turned up with a BIG bubble blower. So we blew some big bubbles……..And then by some fluke we figured out that we could take photos through the bubbles and then it was all on……   You would have thought Alice and CRaig were acrobats the way they jumped all over the place to get their faces behind those bubbles!

And when Paige woke up….. slip ‘n slide time! Uncle Craig had to show the girls how it was done though! Sorry I couldn’t figure out how to rotate the video…..

And then the very next day, we were off – up to Central Otago. I took this photo of the girls at the playground in Alexandra while everyone else was shopping.

And if you thought the pictures of the farm were picturesque. This is Lake Hawea. This is where the Homer’s go camping every New Years……. These pictures were taken at about 7.30am from Craig’s Dad’s boat. And no, we still didn’t catch any fish – in fact, the boat is still fish-less……..  That’s Craig’s other brother, Marc……. These photos are of Lake Wanaka, which is just around the corner – Craig and I got married right over there on the other side of the lake…. And then, it was our very last day with the Homer’s……  :-( 

But we had just enough time for an ice cream and to take some more pictures……. This is us hiding out with Paige in the caravan….

And hiding behind the ute from Alice eating ice cream……

And some family pics…….

I find it rather amusing that Marc is wearing the t-shirt advertising everyone’s favourite beer, Brent is wearing a John Deere t-shirt advertising everyone’s favourite tractor and their big brother is wearing an obscure t-shirt from a sci fi programme featuring the evil Cyber men…… LOL Come back tomorrow! I should have pictures from our trip to the Far North, when we flew back up to my family…… There’s more video…….

Our trip home to New Zealand – Part II

We’re REALLY having some computer problems at our place today, so I’m hoping that I won’t be writing this for naught – because I have lost it several times. And yes, I saved! Needless to say, we’re ordering a new MAC this week. Down with PC’s!!!

So, I left you on the 22nd. We went into Dunedin that day with Craig’s Mum. That’s our hometown, but we didn’t even go and see our house – I couldn’t. I’m happy somebody else is paying my mortgage, but I can’t handle the fact that someone else lives in my house. We didn’t even go visiting – because to be honest, we were only there for a few hours while we finished the Christmas shopping and got groceries and well, in the end, we decided we’d rather spend time with our families and at the farm….

So the 23rd – we spent the whole day in a tither, waiting for Brent and Abby to arrive with the girls. They arrived just in time for dinner, so Craig and I drove up to Roxburgh to get fresh fruit (apricots, cherries and strawberries), did some shopping in Lawrence and here’s the part that makes me laugh – had lunch in Lawrence with Craig’s parents. Can anyone believe the resurgence Lawrence is having? Cafe’s and boutique stores everywhere, an art gallery? a wine bar? in Lawrence? And all the locals in their gumboots shopping at the Four Square.

Anyway, here’s the only picture taken that day – it’s Craig’s lunch. And yes, he says it tasted as nice as it looked. Mine was very pretty too, but not as “tall” as Homer’s. And then……..Alice and Paige arrived! Oh and Brent and Abby were with them, but, you know……. I think that the way Darrian, and then Alice, flew out of their parents’ cars when we first saw them, were two of the happiest moments of my life! It was so wonderful to see Alice again – she was just about to turn 2 when we left NZ and it was great to meet Paige. She’s such a little character!

Here’s Paigey…..

And here’s Miss Alice. Oh my goodness, what a talker! And she has a bit of a lisp. So it’s Kywie and Cwaig – so, so cute! You want to know how to excite a 4 year old? Let her put the presents under the Christmas tree! After two Christmases on our own, it was sooooo much fun to spend Christmas with children again. Paige and Dillan didn’t really “get” it, but Immy, Darrian and Alice are were gorgeous!

It was so nice doing normal every day things that we don’t get to do here in America. I never thought I would miss hanging washing on the line as much as I do, but I do! Crazy huh! We live in a city that has a bylaw that doesn’t allow you to have a clothesline in your backyard – crazy! So Craig made sure to capture even the simplest moments with his camera… So, before we knew it it was almost time for Santa to arrive. Just a few finishing touches…… Brent had to top the paddock next to the house so we could play golf on Boxing Day. Topping is literally just cutting the tops of the grass – if you were doing it with a lawnmower, not a tractor, you’d be mowing the lawns….

And…this is the funniest picture of the lot – the girls had a couple of big days, so this is them, just before dinner on Christmas Eve – they were in bed and asleep before 7pm – that Abby has them well trained! And of course, they were exhausted……. And then it was Christmas!!! I was up and showered before the girls were even awake,  you better believe that I was just as exited as they were!

Look at the mess the reindeer left on the front porch. We left their carrots outside because Alice thought Santa might be too tired to take them out to the reindeer. It’s a good thing too, because they are messy!

So, Craig’s camera died on Christmas Day, but not before he managed to snap these last pics…….

This was Alice, waiting to unwrap the Christmas presents. Waiting ever so patiently for everyone to get ready so we could open our gifts!You see, there was this great big whooping present in front of the tree and Alice could read her name on it. I was convinced it was a Tyrannosaurus head, Craig thought it was a small elephant, but Alice was convinced it was a bike. Because that’s what she asked Santa for! That, and a trumpet!Well, Santa came through on the bike….. But not the trumpet! The funny thing was, the very next day I witnessed a phone call between Alice and Mrs Claus, who then put her on to Santa (Paige got a toy cellphone for Christmas). It sees Santa had been out to the Boxing Day sales and had picked up a brand new sleigh, a BIGGER sleigh. Which means next year he will have room on his sleigh for none other than Alice’s trumpet!   And then…..it was all on! Present after present and then sill more presents……..

And then we got to play! Paige didn’t get a bike for Christmas, but her Mother is one smart cookie and Paige’s bike was there, ready for her to ride when Alice hoped on hers:   But Alice didn’t want to be followed around because she had a new, big girl bike now! So, Mum got the bubble blowers out for Paige – each of the girls got one from Santa. And that was just eh start of “Bubble-mania” – boy do I have some bubble photos to share! And then that’s it! These are the last pics that were taken that are in focus. The shutter was probably going from the day before – when we look back a lot of the photographs CRaig took were blurred. I’m not sure whether we could have done anything about it, even if we had realised. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because it’s fixed now – we got the camera back on Friday night. Yay!!! And………I still had my camera! I’ll start off again on another post tomorrow after work……….

Our trip home to New Zealand

***An apology*** To everyone who has waited ever so patiently (ahem!!) for me to update the blog. And I’m gonna tell you all unabashedly that this WILL be a long post – because I have LOTS of pictures of my nieces and nephew to share with you.

We arrived in NZ on December 19th at about 5am and we were at the supermarket buying junk food by about 6.30am. Ha ha! We also bought food for breakfast. But I had eaten my first marshmallows within an hour and a half of getting off the plane. Ha ha!

I won’t embarrass Imogen by posting any of the pictures that we took on the very first day we were in NZ, but I will tell you that my 10 year old niece can pick her nose with her big toe and scratch her ear with it. Needless to say I am VERY proud of her!

Sunday January 20th, 2009

Darrian’s birthday is December 21st, so we went to Warkworth that day to meet my brother and his family and my mother to celebrate Darry’s birthday. And more importantly, we finally got to meet this heartbreaker:

Yup, that’s our Dillan and he was soooooo big!!!! Which had quite a lot to do with the fact that I hadn’t seen a picture of him in over a year (are you reading this Deanna??). He is really such a delight and his Uncle Craig and I are smitten. You know, quite honestly, I could have spent my entire holiday with Dillan, Darrian, Immy, Paige and Alice and seen nobody else and wouldn’t have regretted a moment!

Back to the Birthday girl! Darrian was turning 5! She starts school on Wednesday (NZ time) and she’s not half excited! It must be really hard to turn 5 and then have to wait the entire summer holidays before finally going to school!  Have you ever seen a child so delighted to get underwear for their birthday? Oh my goodness, Littlest Pet Shop Knickers!

Here are lots more pics from that one short lunch – we have 100’s! And we’d have 1000’s from our trip, but out DSLR broke on Christmas Day.

Gotta love those facial expressions from our Imogen! She’s pulling facing in approximately 99.9% of the pictures that we took of her. I’d post the pictures for you all to see, but I’m saving them for her 21st!

And what about the cake?  After Dillan had finished feeding me his leftover Birthday cake from a spoon he proceeded to stick his hands in my mouth so I could eat the cake off them. I expect that the child might have tried this tactic with other people in the past, unsuccessfully. However, he didn’t count on his Aunty Kylie being such a goober!

And after lunch? We chased ducks…………….. And Craig and I ***DID NOT*** let Dillan fall in the river – he was simply dabbling his feet! OK, now I feel like we might finally be getting somewhere. I told you all this would be a long post. We still have 3 more weeks to get through! And you haven’t even seen pictures of my dog yet!

The next day, Monday the 21st (Darrian’s birthday), we flew to Dunedin to spend Christmas with Craig’s family. His Mum and Dad came through to pick us up and within about 30 minutes, they had us eating lollies too (Pineapple Lumps this time). We’ve obviously done A LOT of complaining about American candy in the past two and a half years.  When we got to the farm, we finally got to see Gizmo! I was so excited, but the little bastard didn’t even recognise us. Talk about gutted! The first couple of days with him were pretty rough, but I had him eating out of the palm of my hand by the time we left.

Here he is:

He’d had a bath and a haircut by the time this picture was taken. Craig’s Mum had been waiting for us to arrive so we could groom him. I tried to convince her we should take him through to Dunedin and pay somebody else to groom him (because he’s a pain in the ass when it comes to bathing), but she thought it was unreasonable for me to want to drive 90 minutes just to get my dog a haircut! So, he looks uneven and mottled and he still has a couple of dags we never got, but he’s cute enough that we’ll forget that. And then of course, the very next day, Craig’ Mum announces she’s going to Dunedin! That poor dog! LOL.

When we started counting down the days until we went home to NZ, Craig and I started making a list of all teh foods we wanted to eat while we were home. Being the farm boy he is, Craig wanted MEAT. Tope of the list were Savs. Saveloys (which we called Polonies where I grew up) are a sausage made from mutton (old sheep) that is cured – in case any of you were wondering. Craig likes his with his Mum’s homemade Apricot sauce, but I like mine with some Wattie’s (ketchup) and so, before we’d even been for a tour around the farm, we were eating savs for lunch. And they were mighty fine! I love the way the steam from the Savs has fogged up his glasses in this photo! Apparently the are living up to his expectations. I even have a song he composed, about saveloys, saved on my iPhone. It’s a shame he’s already turned 21, or I could get it out and embarrass him when I duct of the pictures of Imogen with her big toe up her nose! So, no rest for the wicked and all that, we were put straight to work after lunch. Bathing Gizmo was top of the list, but then we had to decorate the Christmas tree and move some sheep! I’m going to come right out and tell you that I enjoyed bathing my dog (my previous complaints aside) and I enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree (I always do), but what I enjoyed the most was the wind in my hair, rounding up sheep and then stare at their rear ends while we moved them into a new paddock! And yes, it was me doing the work, because someone else had his camera in his hands……..  That is not me smiling, that is me telling Craig to pull his finger out of his butt and help! But I might have be smiling when  said it!

Meanwhile, Craig’s Daddy was sowing grass seed…..

And his Uncle Wayne was plowing a field on his farm next door……

And the very next day? Well, we were out moving some sheepies again……. Except, I think these pictures are taken at about 5am. Craig and I were suffering from a little bit of jet lag and were anxious to be in the great outdoors…….

And some freshly shorn sheep……  BTW, absence did not make the heart grow stronger, sheep are still the dumbest animals on the face of the earth! These pics are taken from halfway up the farm – the photo of the sheep was taken looking towards the highest point on the farm and these were taken on our way back down. In the picture below you can see the cattle yards and shearing sheds in the middle of the pic towards the left – the house is hidden behind the hill to the right of that.I think you can definitely tell these pictures were taken very early in the day by the light. And my man. Duke is the golden Labrador on  back of the bike and Fern is the black Lab running alongside. Duke, and Gizzy and me! That’s a Captain Cook Babies rugby jersey (for those of you who care), LOL.

OK, I’m giving up for a little while. I promise I’ll post more of our trip later, but I have laundry to do and this is taking forever and well….I’m bored. But I’ll come back, promise, afterall, we haven’t even met Paige yet and you’re gonna love her, she’s too cute for words!

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

Freakin’ Windows Live let me post to my blog!

Happy Halloween!!!

Well, Halloween started a couple of weeks ago for me….and my labmates….with the planning of our Halloween costume. I shouldn’t really say “labmates”, because in truth, they all just did what Toni (the Post Doc in the lab next door) and I told them to do and they’re from 3 labs – although I’m not sure whether the Serre lab counts as a “lab” because Hadley bailed on our costume to dissect mice and Jim has probably never worn a lab coat in his life…….

We DID have one of the world’s geekiest costumes – it’s a molecular biology joke and I don’t expect too many of you to “get” it. All you really need to know is that yes, it was funny and yes, I was VERY excited about it!!! As were a couple of other members of our “team” – Jim???……well I suspect he was just doing as he was told.

We were PCR! That’s “polymerase chain reaction” to those of you who don’t know – it’s how we amplify DNA (or RNA) to manipulate it (clone it, sequence it, mutate it, I’m running out of ideas…..but you get the picture). People used to say that E.coli was the workhorse of molecular biology. I’m here to tell you PCR is the workhorse of molecular biology!!!! And it is!!!

So, we were real-time PCR and there are 5 components to the reaction – the enzyme, Taq (said tack), dNTPs (which are the nucleotides used to synthesise the PCR product – which is just lots of copies of the DNA/RNA of interest), oligonucleotides or primers (the sequences that determine which bit/gene you are targeting for amplification), the DNA or RNA (RNA would be in the form of cDNA – which makes in double stranded) and because this is real-time, we need a means of “seeing” our PCR product, which is where the enzyme SYBR green comes in (I’m not sure whether it’s technically an enzyme though (????) – it binds to the double-stranded PCR product and fluoresces at a certain wavelength). Technically, you need salt, normally MgCl2, but in most reactions, it’s in a mastermix with the Taq.

So here we are:

From left to right: Phyllis is the Taq (with the picture of the thumb “tack” pinning the DNA down), Toni and Jeannie are double-stranded DNA and their shirtsleeves velcro together (the hydrogen bonds), Debbie is our dNTPs, I’m SYBR green, with my flashing LED lights (my fluorescence) and Jim, who is at least smiling in this picture, is our primers.

Those of you who know the department we work in will get a kick out of knowing that we “embraced the complexity” and Jim’s primers are indeed real-time primers I designed to span the Exon5-6 boundary of none other than our favourite gene…..PTEN. And if you didn’t get that, don’t worry, 1000’s wouldn’t!!!

So, we had a pot-luck lunch at work on Friday and everyone bought a dish to share. I bought jalapeno poppers:

But, the piece-de-resistance in my humble opinion was Phyllis’ Kitty Litter cake………..

And if you’re gagging right now, let me assure you that the kitty litter tray and the scoop had only been lightly used prior to this and the cake was delicious – especially those tootsie roll poops!!!!!

So……on to cuter things. This is Meredith, all dressed up as Thumbelina for trick-or-treating:

You’ll notice that Thumbelina has practical shoes on and not the sandals her mother suggested she wear and oh……about 10 layers of clothes. It was cold!!!!!!!!

And some more cuteness, while Thumbelina and I waited rather impatiently for 6pm and the start of trick-or-treating:

I didn’t go trick-or-treating this year! I hung out eating candy, and giving it out, instead. We counted and guesstimate that I gave out well over 800 pieces of candy last night.

I hope you had a Happy, Spooky, Halloween!!!!!

Off for a Sunday stroll….

Craig and I went for a walk this morning to the local lakes, Shaker Lakes and the nature centre. We took the camera because we were hoping to capture all the fall foliage…..but the trees really haven’t turned that much up there. Maybe we’ll go back next weekend. That’s OK though. We wandered around for nearly two hours, got really muddy (Craig never fell but had mud right up his back) and had a blast taking pictures of each other. Oh……..and Craig was attacked by an albino spider…..pictures to follow.

This is the big lake – we took off in brilliant sunshine, but by the time we had walked to the lake the clouds had rolled in. Oh well….we still had fun.

See the black splotches on the leaves of that tree? All the maple trees in our area have been affected by something, a fungus perhaps (????), that is doing that to the leaves – it looks even worse on a tree with green leaves. There’s something else I want to show you……this shot of Craig doesn’t quite show you it, but this next one does……..

Check out that bald spot!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! He’s decided he has big ears in all these photos too. I’ve honestly never noticed, but once he pointed it out…..they’re huge ;-)

Here’s some of the rest of the shots we took – in no particular order and for no particular reason – I just like them!

I chose this scarf to match the leaves – if only I’d known – I would’ve worn green! Why is it so dang cold and why are they predicting snow if the leaves haven’t all turned?

And we saw lots and lots of chipmunks – which is always VERY exciting for Craig and I. Hey, squirrels are still exciting for us!

And there were other scary creatures:

And there was a troll on the bridge:

And a troll under the bridge:

And then just after this picture was taken – literally seconds later a spider climbed down from the roof of this tunnel right in Craig’s face – the spider was see-through!!! And this is Craig’s reaction:

And not to be outdone by a spider….I went for a little hop into the stream for some photos:

And this cute little boy walks past and says “Mum look! That lady’s swimming”. Now, that was obviously my cue to fall over……sorry folks, not today. But I like these shots – because you can see my reflection in the water….

  Oh well, the fall colour’s weren’t as spectacular as they could have been, but we still had a great time!!! Maybe next weekend we’ll actually photograph some leaves instead of each other!

Have a good one y’all!!!

Ohio Renaissance Festival – Sunday October 4

Wow!! I’m finally updating this blog!!!! Let’s not dwell on that though, let’s get on with the action!!!

Last weekend we went down to Wilmington, Ohio to the Ohio Renaissance Festival with our friends Clark & Sarah and their daughter Meredith and Mike & Steph. I know that there were altogether too many “and’s” in that sentence, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

So, our friends like to dress up to go to these things, but there was NO WAY Craig was dressing up, he wore jeans. But here’s a shot of everyone on our way into the fair…

I assure you that Meredith was all dressed up under that shawl – you’ll have to forgive her though because it was bloody cold!!!

And here’s my husband and “The Other Woman”……you can read all about that here.

OK, so we had never been to a renaissance festival before – it was an absolute blast! I think we’ll definitely go again – and yes, Craig thinks so too! And not just because of the giant turkey legs!!!!

Did you see his scarlet letter pinned to his chest??? That “L” stands for “lecherous cad”. LOL.

No, we’ll be going back because they have pickle on a stick!!!!
And jousting…….all the animals are rescue animals and they really seem to enjoy themselves! And yes, the jousting is real!!!!

And mud wrestling!!!!

Actually, it wasn’t actually technically mud wrestling – it was Beowulf being re-enacted in the mud – that charming fellow is Grendel. Oh my goodness was this show funny! I actually laughed so hard I nearly peed myself – which had nothing to do with the fact that I tried to go the whole day without using a port-a-loo. American’s call them port-a-potty’s………..weird!

There was sword fighting too, but I can’t find any pictures – so Craig mustn’t have taken any! The thing I was most impressed with were the rides – they were only people powered – there were some HUGE guys, who look just like you imagine Thor would look, very “viking like”, if such a description exists, that used man-power to power the rides. Lots of fun!!!

And, there were handcrafts……..and we all know I’m a good sucked for handcrafts and besides that, I like to spend money. This is a nose goblin…

And this particular nose goblin’s name is “Dobby” and he now lives at my house! And I love him. And he’s mine! And “No”, if we ever have children I will not be sharing! And what’s a nose goblin? Well, I have that covered too!

OK, off to scrap some more and then work on my journal club presentation for next week! Have a good one y’all!!!!