Meet me at the Fair

This weekend Dana, Matt, Deanna, Shannon and I went to the Pima County Fair. It seems strange to have a county fair in the Spring, and I was skeptical, but this fair had all of the key ingredients:
There were lots of FFA and 4H kids with their animals. They had goats, horses, cows, chickens, turkeys, pigs, peacocks, and even a row of pigeons (gross).There were also tractors!Most importantly, there were corn dogs, funnel cake, fried zucchini, and popcorn.

...aaaand (stop reading here Mom and Dad)

we rode rides!I put my life in the hands of drunk hobos.and it was awesome

Hotlanta

Guess who has pictures of her trip to Atlanta?

What I didn't let on in my last post is that the entire trip was planned, booked, financed and organized by one member of the family. Naturally, we had to do as he commanded.
Here we all are at Chuck E. Cheese trying to appease his insatiable appetite for pizza and animatronics. After this picture was taken, we were ordered to immediately begin shelling out Chuck E. coins to earn him tickets. He redeems the tickets for tiny plastic instruments of destruction and world domination. And gum.

Resistance is useless. Last month, his mommy tried to take away one of his trains and he unleashed hell on the city. Look, you can see some of the buildings he tried to bring down.

Here are Dad, Jennie, and Katie doing his bidding. He made them cut up tiny pieces of cheese and fruit to serve with wine to entertain a group of "dignitaries". Being three, he's too young to use the knives or purchase the wine himself.
It worked out well though. The wine and cheese were very well received and "the boss" actually got to spend most of the party napping. The next day he was kind enough to teach his daddy and me how to play golf.

I sure do hope he lets me come back to Atlanta soon.

I missed you!

Dear Marmalade,
It's been a really really long time since I last wrote to you. There has been so much going on in my life, that really, it's been hard to find a time to sit down and write about any of it. I know, it seems like if I have time to write about the minutiae of cake baking, hummingbirds, and the exploits of Orbit and Georgie, I would surely get around to writing about major educational milestones, trips to Georgia, family parties, and the return to Tucson and impending summer. But I haven't. You know why? Mostly because I don't have pictures of any of that.
The milestones were passed. The trip to the dirrrrty south was awesome. It was family-filled and utterly sleep deprived. Like, no sleep. All drinking. Wine drinking. There are wonderful pictures of the party (hint hint) that I would love to post (nudge nudge) if people would email them my way.
I also got to visit with the brilliant Liam and the adorable Ezra. I now know the difference between an Allosaurus and a T.Rex. Toes are a very important distinction, you know. Liam is the best fisherman, golfer, racer, paleontologist, and sportscaster I've ever met. I am a very proud auntie.
Up next for this week: planning a going away party for the B-H family (noooo!), working on school nonsense, baking April's cake (strawberry? lemon cream?), and catching up on missing sleep.
So, my lovely Marmalade, I promise to write more often and to not neglect you like that again.
Love,
Lizzie

Georgie's big day

I'm not sure who is being trained here, the cat or us.

Happy Birthday Karen!

It's my sister's birthday!!! Here's some cake for her. I can't wait to see her and everyone else next week!

Softball

It's that time of year again. Time when the anthropology department gets together for its annual ass-kicking. We have an intermural softball team called the Chaco Meridian. Our first year we won every single game in our division, so we moved up to the next division. Ever since, we have lost every single game. And they weren't close. I have some blurry pictures of our game on Saturday. Here's the team going over the roster...
And this is looking down the third base line at R. at bat. He had two hits in two at-bats. Unfortunately, he only got two at-bats because the game was so lousy. I mean, it was really fun, we just stink at softball. We lost 27-11. That's right. They scored 27 runs. These are little-league scores. We lost in the fifth inning because of the mercy rule. I am confident that in 4 more innings we could've turned the thing around.
It's possible we need more practice.
I forgot to mention that the team we played only had eight players (two of which were injured in the 3rd inning). We were a full team and only managed to score our 11 runs after their players started to get exhausted from being at bat so much. Ha ha! At least we made them sprint! 90 feet at a time.
Our next game is Thursday. This is the one. This is the game where the Chaco Meridian proves to the world that we belong in the intermediate division. Cross your fingers for us, and I'll let you know on Friday how we did.

What's my age again?

I am afflicted with injuries and diseases usually associated with the under 10 crowd. All week I've had monster bruises on both legs from falling down the stairs at the SAAs (twice). I was wearing new and fancy shoes and the stairs were outside in the slippery rain. If it weren't for R. and Nikki, I'd probably still be lying in a pile at the base of the stairs. The bruises are wayyy darker than they appear in these shots. The left knee is dark blue on one whole side, and my right shin is scraped and has a nasty yellow bruise. Pretty right? The worst part is that I also beat the crap out of my brand new conference shoes in the fall(s). The whole top of the right one is scuffed and pitted. I wore them for approximately 6 hours total.
To top it all off, this morning I woke up with the second most embarrassing kid disease ever (after head lice of course):
Pink Eye!!

When I woke up, my right eye was glued shut. G.ross. double gross. I looked in the mirror though and everything seemed clear and alright, so I went to work as normal. During the day people kept mentioning that my eye looked red, so I got worried and went to the doctor. Not before I shared a microscope with everyone in the lab (I'm so so sorry, Ashley!) and shook a lot of hands at a morning conference. Go me. I'm typhoid Mary. Pink eye Mary. Pink eye Mary who has to wear her glasses for at least 5 days. And has to change her pillow case.
I keep threatening to give R. butterfly kisses., but he won't come near me and says I'm disgusting. I don't think that's very husband-y behavior do you? Aren't I supposed to get cake or something?
Mom, sorry for the break from looking on the bright side, it must be my right eye that does all that. She's temporarily seeing pink.

doo dee doo

Just sitting around. Waiting for the big news from Georgia....

Vancouver to Seattle

It sounds funny, but one of my favorite parts of the trip to Vancouver was the ride home. We took the train to Seattle to hang out with R's awesome uncle for the day. The train was so fun. Here we are in the lounge car where there were swivel chairs and little tables you could hang out in. We drank tea and ate m&m's while we watched Puget Sound go by.
The view was beautiful.
At the end of the line in Seattle we got off at King Street Station. The building was really cool on the outside, but look at how ugly it is inside. I just hate suspended ceilings.
But look! If you peek along the edges of the ceiling you can see all the way up to the original 45' ceiling which is much more beautiful. Look at the molding. Turns out, they're restoring this cool building to the way it looked in 1905 when it was built. I don't understand what was going on in the urban renewal projects in the mid-sixties, but they made a mess of this cool place. Why would you cover up this ceiling with Styrofoam? They also covered up the marble walls with formica. Seriously. Well, I guess fashion has come back full circle because now it is popular to restore historic places back to their old glory.
Here is one of the lobbies already restored. Pretty, no? It was designed by the same architecture firm that did Grand Central in New York city. It may be gaudy, but it really feels grand. It makes you feel like your train ride is going to be something special. So what do you think? Are clean lines and basic, efficient design better, or is ornate, intricate, and overt design more your style? Is less more? Is less less?
At least in this building, I know what my vote is.
There are a lot of buildings in Tucson that underwent major changes in the urban renewal projects and some that were built at that time to replace older structures. Maybe I'll go around and take some more pictures so we can vote on which we like better.

More about how I love Canada

We took a very long walk all around the city and then ended up in Stanley Park. We'd heard a lot about the park and it really did live up to expectations. It was like a little magical forest where you can't see or hear the city anymore. Just gorgeous. Totem poles and trees and lakes and paths and flowers and everything you'd want in the middle of March. Except coffee.
Here are Nikki and I walking down one of the paths through the cedar trees.

This is a whale (me thinks) outside of the aquarium in the park. It was raining so I think he was happy to be wet. I've never known a whale that likes dry weather.

These are the people who live in the aquarium. I mean the seals that live in the aquarium. Seals are people too...


They're sugar seals and they kept swimming back and forth on their backs. They looked like they were having a good time. This view is from a path in the park that leads to a glass wall where you can see the seals and the beluga whales without going into the aquarium itself which was a little expensive. There were otters inside which was definitely a temptation (I heart otters), but we had sushi to get to. Also pizza and brownies. And then Canadian beer.


This is the view back to the city from the park. Wow, huh? The tide was out so you can see a lot of the shoreline. The walk back around to the convention center was very long, it would have been really tempting in hot weather to swim across instead. Then again, this is a shipping channel so that would be gross. And dangerous. Ok, bad idea.

So we walked back the normal (read: long) way and warmed up in the hotel's hot tub. The hot tub was outside (!) and on the eighth floor. Such a weird experience, being outside in the freezing cold, and wearing nothing but a bathing suit. Very fun.
Then, we walked down to Chinatown in search of dinner. If you go to Vancouver, I highly recommend not walking to Chinatown at night. Or maybe ever. We ended up having sushi in Gastown instead. Gastown was really fun and we hung out there a lot.
Ok, back to work. One last Canada installment tomorrow...