You have to stay involved

Scene-Sam & I are in the kitchen getting things ready for the next day. Ben & Maggie are watching TV, it is 8 pm & almost bed time.
Me: Ben get rid of Garfield, it's terrible
Ben: What's wrong with Garfield, it's great.
Me: His voice is terrible, he puts his friends down all the time & he is mean. Not what you need to be watching
Ben changed the channel
Me (to Sam): Seriously, Ben has to be the only child that can find a cartoon worse than Garfield, listen to those terrible voices
Me: Oh, it's Johnny Test
Sam: No it's not, it's Phineas and Ferb.
Me: Oh, yes it is. I'm impressed you knew that. It's amazing how you can pick up without really noticing
Sam: Well, you have to stay involved in your kids lives you know
Me: Have we really come to this?

Ted Drewes

One of the good things about living in St Louis is being able to get ice cream at Ted Drewes. Luckily, it's far enough away from where we live that we don't go there very often. I'm sure I'm eating 1000 calories every time I go there, but every single one of them is delicious!!! Ben is a big fan, Maggie really doesn't care about ice cream that much but gives it a try every time. They sat in the back of Sam's car while they ate it. They look like it's pretty good, don't they?

This was about all that Maggie ate of it. I brought it home & put it in the freezer, I will probably eat it later!!!

Incredible growth rate

Our weather has been perfect for plant growing-warm and wet. The plants had doubled in size in the five days that I was gone.
We planted these on the side of the house, they can pretty much standing anything (and it's incredibly hot here), but need to be somewhere that you can contain them. We brought them from our old house where they had completely taken over the garden. We needed to put something in that would look good and stand up to a harsh environment & they seem to be doing really well These bluebells are from Mum's garden, I love them but they really struggle in the St Louis weather

My lilac bush is doing really well this year and smells wonderful, especially in the evenings

This is probably the best time of the year for the plants, so I am enjoying it while it lasts

When it's just too far to go around

Maggie asked me if she could go & play on the neighbours swing set. I told her it was OK and she said "I'll just climb over the fence"

Kite flying

Jan & Julie bought Ben a kite for his birthday. It was perfect kite flying weather and Ben wanted me to help him fly it. Even though we got it up pretty high a couple of times, Ben did the best when I went in the house to get something. I came out and the kite was flying way over our house, I guess that Mum was actually a detriment in this instance!!!!

The most amazing thing is that we managed to get it down without it getting tangled in anything!!!!

Downtown Disney

While we were in Anaheim, we walked to downtown Disney for dinner one night. I had the benefit of going through a huge Disney store without the kids. I could enjoy looking at everything without hearing "can I have this?" a hundred times!!!! In the midst of all the happy, glitzy, girly Disney stuff, I found some things from The Nightmare Before Christmas that I couldn't resist. It looked funny to see all that black surrounded by pinks, lilacs and pale blues!!!
The store was really cool & I know the kids would have loved it

Posters at EB 2010

We were in Anaheim last week at Experimental Biology 2010. I have avoided going to Anaheim for almost 20 years as I really don't like meetings there. I realized that my dislike is because there is nothing to do there but go to the meeting!!! I think I spent more time at this meeting than I have in many years. The plus side was that I went to some excellent talks. The poster sessions weren't as successful as a lot of the speakers weren't around to interact with. There were a lot less exhibitors than in past years, but even though I thought there wasn't as much swag for the kids, Ben declared it the best haul ever!!!!
We had 4 poster presentations at the meeting. My graduate student, Janhavi, had two. One on Sunday & one on Monday. This is the poster that she used at SLU's research day the week before. She came second and won $250. I'm wondering why the mentor doesn't get a prize???!!!!

Stephanie is in Pharm/Phys at SLU. She's not looking impressed. I'm sure it's with me taking pictures rather than her poster!!!

Dhanam & Janhavi shared a room at the meeting, so we spent a lot of time with her. She also had a poster on Sunday....

This is Janhavi's poster on Monday