It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

This is my first Christmas away from my family.  And that's saying something, because I'm almost 40 and have been married for 5.5 years now.  I'm going to really miss being with them this year, but have also been enjoying having Christmas at our home for the first time ever.  Jeff has done an amazing job decorating.  Here is a sample...

We cut our own tree (a Monterey Pine) at a local tree farm.  

Jeff collected and decorated this dead Mission Manzanita twig today.  Ain't it festive?  :)

Jeff's mom made the ceramic snowmen back in the day.  Pretty dang cute!

More greenery collected today

The tree is the advent tree from my childhood.  We light a candle each night and sing a song.

Our wreath made out of native vegetation.  

Greenery Gathering

Today we had a brief break in the multitude of illnesses that Quinn has been bringing home from school that allowed us to get outside to collect some greenery with which to decorate the house.  We headed east up into the hills to Sycamore Canyon.  A lovely and secluded spot!  And it's a good thing we went when we did, because not 2 hours after these photos the fever returned!  

There were many rocks to be thrown!

Santa Jeff even gathered some dead twigs

A true Quinny masterpiece.  "It's a man!"  Can you see the eyes?

Glad we managed to get out for a little while this morning!

Belated Thanksgiving Post

We had a great time in Cincinnati for Thanksgiving.  We got to see the family, including Biggy and Don, meet baby June, catch up with some friends from high school, see some great museums, and eat some yummy food.  Then we got sick.  Below are just a few photos from our trip.  We have finally all recovered.  :)

Family Pic in Eden Park

Sweetest niece ever!

Biggy teaching Q some Chopin

Riverfront rock toss

Baby and Beer

Enjoying some bluegrass

Union Terminal

And the best part about October 31 this year....June!

Welcome to our new niece, June Houston, who was born the morning of Halloween in Cincinnati!  We are so excited for Colleen and Andy and can't wait to meet sweet baby June in a few weeks!  Ain't she the cutest??!!!

Week of Halloween

Halloween is no longer just a day...I swear it lasts for weeks and weeks leading up to October 31.  For us it started with a trip to the pumpkin patch a few weeks ago where we stocked up on overpriced, but lovely pumpkins.  

Last weekend was the annual Boo parade in our neighborhood.  We wandered down and parked ourselves on the corner with all of our neighbors and cheered for the marching monsters.  Pretty sure the highlight of the parade was when our neighbor, Jeremy, surprised us all by suddenly appearing in the parade in a leisure suit with an afro on a kids vespa.  :)

Other events included the fall festival at Grant Elementary school with cousin Kyan...

Many days of dress up....

Superfriends...

A halloween parade at school...(someone decided to wear his costume from last year)...

And finally, the actual day arrives.  

Jeff LOVES Halloween and always does an amazing job preparing our house for the holiday.  This year we had a gallows in our front yard, tiki torches, multiple skeletons, hanging heads, smoke machines, and lots of Jack-o-lanters.  Unfortunately we didn't have very many trick-or-treaters, but we did at least have neighbors and friends over for some drinks to enjoy the festivities.

And Emily made these AMAZING bloody glass cupcakes!  

Wunderkind

This has been a crazy busy month so far.  Gotta say that 3 is a bit of a challenging age.  Quinn is very opinionated and likes to complain LOUDLY when things don't go exactly according to plan.  But that said, he's also a lot more fun, communicative and has very sweet moments.  He's not the most confident child, so we've been encouraging him to try things on his own more and more.  He recently mastered riding his bike with no training wheels and is currently enrolled in swimming lessons.  He's far from the greatest swimmer, but we celebrate every little victory.  He's starting to really enjoy it and you can see the pride on his face when he does something new!  I love it!

Recent trip to the Dino Museum (Natural History Museum) with Towhee the bunny

Another thing Quinn has been really interested in lately is letter and words.  We got him a little magnetic board with letters and he'll spend up to an hour sitting and playing with them, writing all of our names.  

Last week he was playing by himself and he came out very excited telling us that he'd spelled his name all by himself.  This is what we found.  

But this week he tried again and got it right!  And when I tried to turn the Q right-side-up he quickly turned it back on its side and exclaimed that's how he wanted it. 

 We'll end with a couple of very flattering shots and a video of the swimmer in action.

Birds birds and more birds!

This year instead of being stuck in the office 100% of the time from September on, the USGS crew has continued to get in weekly trips out into the field.  We're conducting a genetic study on two really cool species:  The Coastal Cactus Wren and the California Gnatcatcher.  

Taking a genetic sample from one of these birds involves: 1. Finding the birds; 2. Catching them in a mist net (very thin net that is virtually invisible to the birds); and 3. Pulling either a growing body feather or extracting a drop of blood from a trimmed toenail.  In the photos below you see Scarlett Howell taking a pin feather from a Cactus Wren and me trying to find a pin feather on a Gnatcatcher.

Both of these species are year-round residents of southern California and reside on arid hillsides in coastal sage scrub or cactus sage scrub (for the cactus wrens).  The Cactus Wren is a species of special concern in California, because the coastal subspecies is isolated and declining in numbers.  The California Gnatcatcher is a federally endangered species with a range that is restricted to southern California.  With all of the development happening in this part of the state there is growing concern that the remaining populations of both species may become genetically isolated from one another, which could impair their ability to adapt to changing conditions, etc.

Anyway, my whole point here was that it's nice to get out of the office a little bit each week!  And aren't those cute little guys?  

OK, so this one might not be so cute, but it was the first scorpion I've seen here.  This female was carrying her larval young on her back, but was fighting to protect them from the predatory ants that were attempting to eat them.  A pretty cool sight, albeit a little bit sad for the mama.