Christmas Week

Our week before Christmas is going well. I have been off all week and it’s really nice getting a chance to wind down before the weekend. Earlier in the week I did some final shopping, took Isabel to the doctors, went to Anja’s class party, played racquetball for the first time in ages and even managed to get out for a couple of runs (the weather has been crazy warm for December).

Lynne has also been in full gear with present buying and wrapping in addition to some baking and sweet/truffle/fudge making. It’s now quite a tradition for her. Brooke too has been busy doing holiday activities with the kids. Yesterday they decorated cookies which is always a big hit.

Ebert Prize Winner

We're all terribly proud of Lynne today. Most of you know that she works in the Department of Industrial & Physical Pharmacy at Purdue University and her passion is her research. The fruit of any good research program is publishing the results of that research in the scientific literature. This year Lynne and her group reached a major milestone in terms of publications, she published her 100^th paper. This is a big deal; many research professors will work a lifetime to achieve this, if at all.

It got even better yesterday when she was informed that she was awarded the 2012 Ebert Prize. The Ebert Prize is presented annually by the American Academy of Pharmaceutical Research and Science to the authors of an article published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences which describes particularly new, original, and novel findings that have a high probability of significantly impacting the pharmaceutical sciences.

It was for this paper:

A Classification System to Assess the Crystallization Tendency of Organic Molecules from Undercooled Melts. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. 99(9):3787-3806. 

Well done love, we’re all very proud of you.

Purdue Tree and Gingerbread House

We made our annual trip to the Purdue Memorial Union on Sunday afternoon to see their huge Christmas tree and Gingerbread house. The kids love doing this because they can go into the house but mostly because they cannot help but nibble at it. It is completely made of cookies, icing and sweets and to them it’s simply irresistible. 

The funniest yesterday was when Isabel emerged from the house with icing on her chin. We asked her if she had eaten any and her face froze and eyes widened. She said, “I didn’t eat any, I just tried it”….I wish I had the video camera on that.

Connor 2nd Birthday Party

We had a great 2^nd birthday party for Connor yesterday. Thanks to all who came and made it a special day for Connor and our family. We had a house full of friends as usual and since everybody knows each other quite well at this point, it was an extremely relaxing afternoon.

Thanks are due to my Mum for Connor’s little outfit (sorry the tie and cap did not last long), to Brooke for the great cake (he loves Elmo) and to Randy and Lorraine for watching the kids whilst we prepared for the party.

There are a couple of pictures below and as always, if you feel an urgent need to scroll and/or download more, click here. Thank you once again everybody for all the presents, your help throughout the day and for coming of course. 

Happy Birthday Connor

Our little trooper turned two years old today. Happy birthday son. Unfortunately we did not get to see a lot of him today since it was a workday but we'll have a little party for him on Saturday and we’ll celebrate in style.

He did get presents from his sisters though, we had ice-cream and we sang him happy birthday. He just about understood the concept of a birthday; he very much understood the idea of getting a present containing something exciting that needed unwrapping.

Extended Birthday Celebrations

It’s Monday morning and I’m reflecting on my rather unexpected extended birthday weekend. It all got off to a great start on Friday morning with cards and gifts from the kids and Lynne but it was most memorable because of the shower of affection from the girls, they are so cute. The day continued to get better, helped by the fact that I was on vacation, when I managed to get a great 9 mile run in. It was a warm sunny clear blue-sky day, incredible for December.  Then I joined Anja at School to make their Gingerbread Houses.

I thought that was pretty much it but Lynne told me at lunch that she had arranged for both of us to head to Chicago for the weekend, wow, that was cream on top. Randy and Lorraine had graciously agreed to watch the kids for the weekend whilst we headed for a relaxing weekend with Kay in Chicago. Friday evening we had Thai food and joined Dave and Emily and their friends. Saturday we had Italian food, toured around Chicago and visited The Art Institute. Sunday we went for a long walk along the lakeshore and went to Chinatown for lunch.

We had a fantastic weekend; thanks as always are due to many. Thank You.

Birthday

By the time you read this, it will be my birthday. Yip, another year older. Going to be celebrating it by taking the day off from work and going in to volunteer at Anja’s class. They’re making Gingerbread houses tomorrow so that should be fun. Anja is all excited that I’m coming in to help, I’m just very happy that she ‘s excited about that. I’ll be taking some pictures.

I don’t have many photos of me that I like to post here but this week I was at one of those “Corporate End of Year, All Day, Off-Site Meetings”. One of those days where you spend all day with your work colleagues “getting to know them and thinking about strategic plans for the following year”. Anyhow, it was actually much better than it sounds, I enjoyed it and it ended early enough. At the end we had an open bar (probably the best part of the day) and they had games including a caricature artist. Shown below is how he saw me!!