simple wonders

i love stepping onto my patio in the mornings to water my all of my little plants and to witness the simple wonders of new life; it never ceases to amaze me. i love starting out the day being reminded of Who has His hand in everything--even the small things.

Plasmodium falciparum

What you see here in these pictures are Malaria and mosquitoes on sugar cookies. Yes, I said MALARIA and, yes, I said SUGAR COOKIES. Malaria... as in the terrible, deadly disease one can contract after being bitten by a mosquito (Anopheles spp.) infected with the parasite Plasmodium falciparum...

Last week, I made these cookies and brought them into my Molecular Genetics class last Wednesday for our lunch-buffet. My professor, Dr. Cooper, for this class was my Parasitology professor last fall and just so happens to be a Malaria expert. Also, we had a guest speaker from Notre Dame, who's a friend/colleague of Dr. Cooper and, again, just so happens to be a Malaria expert. He's one of the leading researchers of Plasmodium falciparum, its genetics and specifically how its genetics affects its drug resistance (Dr. Mike Ferdig). Kind of a big deal being that the primary drug used for malaria decades ago has become resistant and there hasn't been a drug as cheap and effective.

While these gentlemen are very familiar with malaria, mosquitoes, and the havoc they can wreak...they were certainly not prepared to see malaria, mosquites, and cookies and experience wreaking havoc on those cookies! It was a great surprise, a fun addition to our Malaria discussion, as well as a perfect way to start winding down the semester! I'm hoping that if my brain didn't cut it for a good grade this semester...that these cookies will help me out.

You'll notice my rendition of the Anopheles species mosquito and an assortment of parasite red blood cell stages: ring stages, both young and mature trophozoites, and schizonts.

As always, I most certainly had amazing assistance and am quite pleased with this project that has brought together my love for cookies and biology. <3

BABY BASIL!!!!!

I'm so very excited to announce to you we have BABIES!!!! Lots of basil plant babies that are working so hard to peep out of the soil to greet the sun and soon flavor our dinners! I haven't posted on all the plants I've planted and seeds I've sown recently, but I planted basil and cilantro seeds about 10 days ago (Sunday the 11th) and I noticed these little green specs (seen in the above picture)popping out on Day 7 (4/28)! This was a lot faster than the seed packet indicated their germination period was (20 days!). After 10 days, the seedlings are coming up strong and I even noticed a few baby cilantro working his way up this morning when I watered all my plants! Hurray!

Elephants in Ghent

Last Monday evening, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus arrived in Norfolk and paraded their elephants through the neighborhood from the train tracks where they arrived to the Norfolk Scope for the circus this week! Can you SEE the enthusiasm? :P (well...at least from one of us!)

Since Robert & I have lived in Downtown, we've always managed to miss the elephant walk. Luckily, this year we both read pilotonline.com and caught word that they were coming our way! :) We (I) was not going to miss it this year.

After our Monday afternoon run/jogs (you guess who runs and who jogs) ;) and a quick dinner, we walked the route through Ghent that the elephants were supposed march from the train tracks to Scope. Low and behold, we finally saw their big trunks turn the corner of Colley Ave. onto Olney. We watched the workers calmly lead the elephants down the road....all the while PETA protesters were walking and waving their signs (quietly, which was surprising to me!). Robert & I ended up walking home alongside the elephants toward Scope where the elephants set up shop for the week.

It definitely wasn't SUPER exciting...but it was still fun to see the 6 elephants sway as they marched and grasp the tails of their friend in front of them. :)

Shamrock Marathon 2010

On March 21, 2010, Robert completed his 2nd marathon! After months of training (since about November), he was well-trained, physically fit, mentally prepared and all-in-all ready to go. This year, Robert's little brother, Bryan, who's a senior at UVA, also decided to take on the challenge of running the 26.2 miles down at the ocean front.

At 8am, the gun went off and the boys began to run. I was fortunate enough to pal-around with my father-in-law, Bob, for the morning to hop in the car together, chase after the boys, cheer them on at several mile markers, take pictures, and cheer even louder, and pass grapes and bananas to fuel the men. We were able to catch the boys at the 3, 5, 8, 11, 16, and 19 mile markers. It's always so interesting to see the many different size, shapes, ages, and gaits of all the participants in a marathon...which is quite guilt-laden and inspiring all at the same time. :)

The majority of the training the boys did was during our very cold, wet/snowy winter. I remember Sunday afternoons when Robert would strap on his running shoes and drive down to Sea Shore State Park to run 18 miles in 35 degree temperatures with ice puddles all throughout the trails. It certainly made me nervous, but I had faith. Bryan did most of his training in Charlottesville, which received feet of snow at a time and has several large hills to begin with. With all that hardcore training, I knew these boys could do it. Unfortunately, race-day was a very, very warm day in comparison to the climate the guys trained in, which made it a million times more difficult than perceived.

All throughout the first 16 miles the boys seemed strong and energetic. They'd smile and wave and keep on truckin'. Come mile 19, things made a turn for the worse... At this point, both Robert and Bryan had walked a little bit, had several cups of water at the stops more than normal, stopped to stretch, and grimaced. I was able to pass off some grapes to Robert at mile 19 (full of water, carbs, and sugar to keep him going!) and Bryan wouldn't take his banana. They both were beginning to cramp up at this point in time. Robert's calves were giving him a pretty big problem, but he persevered. The heat really did a number to the both of them--the water loss with all the sweat must have caused a major electrolyte imbalance which did not make their muscles happy. :(

Bob and I drove around to the 23 mile marker and waited and waited for the boys. Minutes passed, which seemed like eternity, and still...no sight of the boys. We then received a phone call from Bryan telling us he couldn't make it any further--this made me fear the worst for Robert. A few minutes later, Robert jogged to us, chugged some Gatorade, and pressed on. :) Bob & I had to wait around for Bryan to get dropped off at the mile marker we were at for quite some time. Unfortunately, the emergency cart took a really long time and caused us to miss Robert crossing the finish line. Poor Bryan couldn't move and just laid in the back of the car while Bob and I went to go find Robert at the finish-line tent. When we finally found Robert, I apologized to him for missing him cross the finish line, but he assured me "it was nothing to see...really, it was not pretty."

Even though it was a tough run for the boys, I'm so proud of my Robert for running and finishing the whole 26.2 miles this year! He may not have hit his time goal, but simply finishing is exciting enough for me. :) Not sure if he's up for another marathon...only time will tell. I imagine he will---he has his personal record to beat as well as the Gurnee family record to obliterate. Maybe next year?

Spring Evening in Downtown

This past Saturday, my school friends (Brian, Amanda, Kim and her friend Chris) and Robert and I took the Paddlewheel Ferry across the Elizabeth River from downtown Norfolk to downtown Portsmouth to finally celebrate Robert's birthday together. We planned on going out all together back in March, when Robert's real birthday is, but travel, spring break, colds, baby showers, and flat out tiredness got in the way of that plan. :) (March never seemed like such a busy month until this past year!) We went to one of Robert's favorite restaurants: The Bier Garden. I never really thought I'd enjoy German food, but this cute little restaurant has the most delicious pretzyls and pretzyl rolls! :) It was a perfect spring evenening to enjoy the ferry ride and dinner outside on the patio!

Catsup, Ketchup, CATCH-UP!!!

It's been a long time since I've blogged last and I figured I should just fast forward us all to the approximate present. My last post was early in the year...during the ginormous snow storm of 2010 and I have had very little time to sit down and organize pictures and think and write and update you....all 2 of you (who probably know what's happened and what's going on in our lives, anyways). ;)

Well, since the snow storm, not TOO much has happened, but here are a few things/highlights of the past 3 months. (Click on the headings to see the pictures that coincide with the subject. There are too many to just post a few on the blog.) :)


25th Birthdays
Holy moly. This year's age was a little hard to swallow. I remember giving James, my oldest brother, the hardest time about how old he was when he turned 25...well...now I realize this age is not that old and it's not such a terrible place to be in life. :) It's also nice that I'm not the only one in my house that's soooo old. While I may be an "older" woman, I'm only 3 weeks older than Robert - it's ncie to know he's deteriorating at about the same rate I am. :)

I spent my birthday day with my mom and our friend Donna at a fancy tea room in Chesapeake. It's a place we'd never been to for tea (something we like to do every once in a while) and it turned out to be one of the nicest, higher quality tea rooms we've been to. It was called With Flair Tea Room and was so nice!

My birthday evening, Robert surprised me with a fancy dinner at Vintage Kitchen which is a really nice restaurant at the bottom of Dominion Tower in Downtown. We love supporting local, smaller restaurants and especially those that try to serve locally grown produce and such--Vintage Kitchen was one of those. It was a great birthday date and everything we had was so delicious.

The day after my birthday, my mom & Donna threw a tea for the childrens music workers at church.... after we all enjoyed their tasty tea sandwiches and goodies, those crazy ladies surprised me with an amazing Chocolate Almond Cake. After the tea (and yummmmy cake), Robert & I went to an ODU basketball game with a bunch of friends from school and a few friends from church. Aftewards we headed to one of our favorite pizza places (Cogan's Pizza) to continue my birthday celebration. It was a great time scarfing down some good pizza (we LOVE their Margherita pizza!) and enjoying the evening with friends.


Baby Showers & Girly Fun
I attended 3 baby showers in 3 weeks in the month of March! One was for a friend from church (Mary), another in honor of my bestest bud (Amy), and another one for a friend of mine (Mandy) who I went to elementary and middle school with!

After Mary's shower, all of us girls (several who attended the shower) piled into my car and headed to church for a ladies dinner. We all shared a table and were were responsible for decorating it according to whatever theme we wanted. All of us girls are in the "Young Married" Sunday School class and so we decided to go with a Wedding theme! We decorated the table with a white table cloth, my china, pictures of all of us girls with our husbands on our wedding days, bows on the backs of our chairs, and a REAL wedding cake! I had quite a bit of help from my mom and our dear friend Donna making, designing and decorating the cake--it was a lot of fun and quite a challenge, but so worth it to try it out and experiment! All of us girls enjoyed the time to chat and enjoy each others company...all while our husbands hung out together and did manly things like eat steak and watch sports. :)

Catherine & I worked together to throw Amy her baby shower in March and had so much fun doing so! It was just great to help someone so special to us celebrate and prepare for her first baby, Carter. :) My mom & I baked and decorated a cake that matched the cups, plates, and napkins Catherine chose for the shower--I think it turned out too cute, if I do say so myself. Also, Catherine thought of a really neat idea for a decoration; we chose a bible verse to go with each of the letters of the Carter's name and hung each letter up, with its corresponding verse, on a clothes line. It turned out the craft project didn't only serve as a decoration for the shower, but Amy & Dave were able to use it as a decoration over Carter's crib--that made the work well-worth it and that much more special.


Puppy!!!
My parents decided to get a puppy early in the year--that has been a major highlight of the past few months! :) (i love puppies) I was able to go with mom & dad out to Chesapeake to pick out their puppy with them in February. I absolutely LOVE puppies (have i mentioned that i love puppies?) and just adore little Labrador puppies. I couldn't have been more excited the day we met all 14 puppies that we had to choose from! We found a swee,t little, light-colored, energetic, female puppy that day. Mom & dad picked her up in the middle of March when she was about 7-8 weeks old. It has been so much fun for Robert & I to go and play with little Josie and watch her grow in this past month. :) She is definitely wild and puppy-like, but she's so smart at such a young age and such a good doggie, too. :) i. love. puppies.


ODU CAA Champs
So, the first day of my spring break was the day the ODU men's basketball team was playing William & Mary for the CAA Championships title. One of Robert's cousin's, Emily, absolutely LOVES ODU bball. Another one of his cousins, Evie, and I drove up with Emily to get free student tickets and watch ODU take their first CAA title since 2005! I'm not normally a fanatic about sports, much less basketball, but it was definitely a fun time to hang out and see a major game like that. (I still can't believe we got our faces painted for the game...) ;)


College Girlfriends
At the conclusion of my spring break, I drove up to meet some of my best friends (Robyn & Julia) in Fredericksburg where we went to college. It was so sweet just to be able to pick up where we left off, visit our favorite restaurant (Sammy T's), coffee shop (Hyperion), icecream shop (Lee's), and college campus. This was my first visit to Mary Washington since I graduated in May of 2007!!! I still can't believe I hadn't been up to visit the campus or walk around before then. Mary Washington's campus is still as lovely as I remember. I never realized before how much I missed the open green fields, the shady trees on the main campus walk, the coordinating brick buildings and their massive white columns, and the overall refined feel that there is on that campus. It was a great feeling to be back to that place with some of my best friends with whom I had some of my best memories with!


Carter David
Amy & Dave's little Carter David Watson was born on March 31, 2010. One of the sweetest moments yet was Easter weekend when Robert & I were able to meet Carter. It was such a neat moment to see my bestest friend hold her own baby! For as long as we've known each other, shared so many memories together, talked about the future (boys, husbands, and family) and about growing up as old ladies together, this moment was priceless. Robert & I took some Easter cookies over to the Watsons and gave Carter his very first sugar cookie. ;)


Well, I think that basically catches you all up to life at the moment. Perhaps I'll be more on top of things now that the semester's about to end and (hopefully) life will slow down a bit. :)