Easter 2011

We gathered at my mom's for Easter this year. I had to go sans hubby since he is still feverishly preparing for his dental board exam on Tuesday (thank heaven it's almost over). Despite my lack of companion, it was a great visit!

We had a nice dinner at Grill Smith on Friday night and woke Saturday morning for our annual egg hunt! The rest of us hunted either in our PJ's or beach attire. Ashley decided this was the yuppy egg hunt and went for the khaki's and polo--she even asked to borrow my dress and scarf that I wore the evening before...

Dave hides the eggs and he's really good at it. He used to leave some obvious ones out that Greer could find but, now that we're all adults (or nearly adults) we really have to get creative in where we look.

Ashley found three eggs inside this utility canister...

This was Jay's first egg hunt experience. I think he underestimated Dave's hiding prowess.

Ashley gave him some general guidance but, make no mistake about it, they were not working together to find the eggs! Taking a cue from Aunt Bonnie, Mom hid a rubber snake in them-there bushes. Unfortunately for her, none of us noticed it but she giggled every time one of us got near it anyway.

I think Greer was slowed down by her late night the evening before, and that she wasn't wearing any shoes...

Smile, Jay! This is fun!

One or two of the eggs went missing from the utility outlets. Did I mention that the eggs have money in them? There's still a dollar or two out there somewhere...

The most sought after prize is the "big green egg." This big beauty contains the largest money prize. While Jeff or I usually dominate in the finding of the big green egg, Ashley got lucky this year. It was found inside the water softener.

Ashley shakes her fist in triumph and declares egg-hunting victory (even though I found the most eggs).

Following our egg hunt, we loaded up and went out to Fred Howard Park to go sea kayaking. Now, I know that some places in the U.S. had snow for Easter. This seems very tragic to me. To me, sunshine, the ocean and beautiful weather enhance the celebration of the risen Lord.

Here we go! Ashley and Jay heading for the water.

After making our way across the bay (man, that was a paddle--I always seem to pull the same muscle in between my ribs that makes rowing painful. Usually, I have Jeff to make up for my lame paddling but, alas, I was on my own this time), we explored some trails through the mangrove trees.

I kept getting my paddle stuck in the trees and ran a-ground a few times. It was slow going, which was okay until Jay mentioned seeing a very brightly colored snake...

Mom was lucky to get a tandem kayak with Dave. She claims she's an equally diligent paddler but, when she heard that I was paddling in pain, she offered her spot to me, suggesting that I would be pain free as Dave paddled me across the ocean and that maybe she wasn't paddling as hard as she thought she was...

Hi, Greer! Did you put sunscreen on? "No, I can always feel when I'm getting burned and put it on then." Famous last words... She was the color of a tomato when we got home!

Hi, Jay! Jay really demonstrated his paddling skills when we decided to head back. He was starving, and motivated by hunger, he managed to beat me and Ashley to shore by a good 10 minutes or so. He was really ready for a grouper sandwich at Rusty Bellies.

After a few hours in the sun, and my unfortunate susceptibility to skin cancer, it was time to cover all I could. Unfortunately, my hands were left out, and I forgot to put sunscreen on those. Opps!

We attended a lovely sacrament service on Sunday, followed by a low country boil. Then it was time for me to drive back to my sweetheart who had spent the weekend studying in the blue room. Luckily, I returned baring gifts of Easter basket goodies, left-overs, and a lot of love.

A new upstairs neighbor

We've been fortunate in the 5 years that we've owned our condo, we've been without an upstairs neighbor. Until 2 weeks ago...

An older lady and her yappy dog moved in. The lady's is nice but, her dog barks and claws at her front door (which is just outside the window in our 2nd bedroom) constantly when she's not home. We're hoping that the dog adjusts to its new surroundings soon and stops with the yapping. It's definitely not the best sound to wake up to and it's preventing Jeff from being able to study at home.

And, if the dog wasn't enough, 1 week into it, Jeff noticed a suspicious looking spot in the ceiling in our bathroom.

Upon closer inspection, Jeff ascertained that the spot was wet--indicating a leaky pipe above.

Sure enough, the lady's toilet pipe was leaking through our ceiling (yuck!). 

The plumbers came quickly to fix it, but the contractor took down the whole ceiling in that room for a proper repair. Over the course of the week the contractor was able to get the insulation and sheet rock up but, we're still waiting for the tape, plaster, paint, and molding work. Hopefully, he'll make some progress tomorrow and we can move back into our bathroom sometime next week.

While we generally not adverse to neighbors, with the dog and our demolished ceiling, we're not the new lady's biggest fans.

Let the Good News Roll...

When you work in academia, writing grant proposals is a frequent and necessary occurrence. Grants are how we are paid, evaluated for promotion, and actually get us out of our offices to do work with real people (those poor people who work with rats--they never get out!). There's been two bits of good news for our research team over the last couple of weeks:

1. We received the highest score on a big grant we submitted to the National Institutes of Health (the big federal agencies that are the gold-standard for grants) to do an alcohol preventive intervention trial with the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. Now, if only the federal government could get their act together with the budget (I spread my blame equally across democrats and republicans (I'm definitely and Independent), Jeff only blames democrats (he's getting reacquainted with his Republican roots)) we will be doing a fun project in exotic, rural Oklahoma!

2.  I had my first little grant funded! It's a little pilot project funded by UF's Clincial and Translational Science Institute to do a needs assessment in a really high-povery, high-risk community in Jacksonville. This will hopefully be the foundation for a few bigger grants to work with the New Town Success Zone to improve their community and child health outcomes. Some of the stories I hear from them are so sad...

Note: I realize I'm waving my "I'm a geek" flag but, at least I'm not in denial about it. ;-)

A Championship Game

Jeff plays on an intramural softball team with a bunch of guys for his dental school class. This past Thursday, they played the medical students for the grad student league championship! They were all excited to have a shot at the coveted champions t-shirt that they could wear proudly around the gym.

While they lost, they all enjoyed the much needed break from studying for boards. And I think everyone was surprised about how good the med student team was--they must not keep those guys busy enough!