Our winter holiday in FL - Part 1

Kendra's parents miss the boys SOOOO much! When they heard that Kendra had to be in FL the first week of Jan for work, they decided we all had to come visit them in FL for the holidays. Since we are away this year anyway, Kendra's parents have rented a house and a golf cart in The Villages, FL for the months of Dec-Mar. We arrived late Saturday Dec 21 and stayed for just over 2 weeks. The weather was very variable - typical for FL in Dec - some days it was sunny and 80 degrees F and other days it rained and was 50 degrees F.

Notice the decals on the front of the rental?
That's what happens when you befriend strangers everywhere you go!

For those of you who have not yet heard of The Villages, it is a retirement community in central FL that boasts almost 100,000 residents over the age of 50, something like 40 golf courses, and many pools and recreation centers. There are 3 "Village" centers each with its own theme and daily activities -- Sumter Landing (central, New England style), Spanish Springs (north, obviously Spanish style), Brownwood (south, Country Western style). Here's a map of the area: http://goo.gl/maps/L1p2O that has a marker for The Villages and another for where we stayed. The house that Kendra's parents are renting backs up to one of the many Village golf courses and when the weather was warm enough, we would sit out on the lanai to relax and take in the views and fresh air. Here are a couple of pix from there:

We saw quite a few Sandhill Cranes on the golf course.

What a nice place to relax...

One of its features that The Villages is known for is its residents' use of golf carts. There are golf cart paths and lanes throughout the development so that residents can drive their golf cart everywhere (yep, to get groceries or go to the doctor as well), which the boys LOVED. We used our 4-seater golf cart to go out and about day and night. In fact, the 2nd day we were there, Kendra and her Mom took it to Publix and barely made it home, there were SO many groceries in it! Unfortunately, our golf cart was a bit on the slow side...but, at least the battery lasted a long time (one night Kendra's parent's golf cart ran out of juice!). Here are some pictures of us either in or from the cart:

On Christmas Eve, we took the carts out for a light tour to see the holiday decorations.

Following Kendra's parents around The Villages...

One day, we went to Sumter Landing for a bit - no...Watson is not driving!

This is what the streets look like - there are normal parking spots,
some taken by one car and others by 2 golf carts.

During our time at The Villages, we cooked lots of yummy food, some of which we had never made before, like a Crown Roast of Pork (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/crown-roast-of-pork-recipe.html) and peanut butter pie. Yum! Watson and Jubin went to see Frozen, Jubin and I had a couple hours of alone-time at Sumter Landing, we all went together to all 3 of the Village centers, we visited with Kendra's Uncle Andy and his wife Terry (they own a home there), and we went to the pool about 4 times (whenever it was warm enough to swim), where we also played shuffle board and bocce ball. Jubin and I also got to run together 4 times, which we really enjoyed - we haven't been able to do that together for a LONG time!

Brownwood Village Center

Walking on the Sumter Landing boardwalk.

Dad at the pool napping...too bad he was sick for most of our visit!

While we were in FL, MI experienced a terrible ice storm followed by arctic cold and lots of snow. Some of our friends were without power for over a week! Luckily, our house in Lansing didn't lose power and our neighbors were able to give us periodic updates (the family renting our house was also in FL for the holiday break). The weather in MI certainly made us appreciate the relative warmth in FL, even when it was only in the 40's!

Kendra's seminar at Queen's GAP

I was invited to give a talk as part of the Queen's School of Geography, Archaeology, and Paleoecology Seminar Series at Queen's at the end of January (http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/gap/). As the name implies, this School, and its seminar series, is pretty diverse. My seminar was part of the Environmental Change cluster - I think this cluster includes people from all three disciplines in the School title. I have met some of the people in this cluster during the past 6 months, but certainly not all of them, and haven't really interacted with any of them very much. Certainly there are not any limnologists in the School (well, maybe my postdoc office mate would consider herself one?), but there might be some landscape ecologists in the cluster. Anyway, before the talk, there were sandwiches, cookies, and tea/coffee for everyone. What a lovely tradition! Unfortunately, I was busy getting set up for my talk, so I didn't get a chance to really speak informally with anyone before my talk. Here's the flyer they posted around the School:

My talk, titled "Increasing understanding of environmental change: Quantifying multi-scaled relationships between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems" was in the Elmwood Building, next door to the building my office is in. It was well-attended and I think well-received by the mixture of students and staff who attended. I had a lot of interesting questions after the talk and I am looking forward to interacting with people from this cluster for the next 6 months.

Special thanks to Dr. Paula Reimer for sponsoring me (getting me the seminar invitation 
and introducing me before my talk).

Castle Espie - NOT a castle, but a very cool place!

In December, the day after our "date night" at Bob and Kath's, we went to Castle Espie. In the land of castles, this is NOT a castle! Instead, it is a wonderful wetland centre: http://www.wwt.org.uk/wetland-centres/castle-espie/ out on the coast, between Bob and Kath's house and our house (map - you can zoom in and out: http://goo.gl/maps/wyGRx). This really neat place has SO many species of duck that live there and you can feed them. Some of these species are really rare even.

And, there is a very cool walk around the property to vantage points to see lots of birds in nature along the coast and in wetlands. There are also some neat early human structures with educational materials, a lime kiln, and a playground. The day we were there, they were having a scavenger-type hunt for the kids that Watson really enjoyed.

Unfortunately, when we got out to about as far away from the Visitor's Centre as possible, it started down pouring...and, didn't stop! So, we didn't get to see about half of the outdoor attractions, including the playground. Next time...we will definitely be back to this little gem. Luckily, inside they have a really great indoor playroom with soft structures, a really nice gift shop, and a great cafe. And, that weekend they had a whole series of crafts for kids to do. Watson made all of the crafts, we ate dinner, and the boys played in the indoor gym for a long time while it rained outside. What a great place!

Watson at school

Watson's school has finally updated their webpage and now has a page dedicated to each classroom. I don't know how often they will update the page, or whether we will still be able to see the pictures there 1 year from now. So, I copied the text and the pix of Watson here on Jan 25, 2014. This way we will have them for  the long-term. But, here's the link to the original:
http://www.botanicprimaryschool.com/year-2/
Please let me know if you notice any new posts!

Watson is featured quite a few times on the page -- it is nice to see some of what he's up to while at school!

WELCOME TO YEAR 2!

Welcome to Term 2! Primary 2 will be very busy this term - we are looking at Winter & Living Things between now and Easter. We have already had N.I. Water in to visit us and complete an experiment to clean dirty water. This term in Year 2 our topic is toys!  We are learning all about toys from the past and toys from today.  Miss Morrison brought in her mum's old doll house for us to play with during play time.  We have also been playing in the toy shop where Miss Morrison was doing some Christmas shopping!  We have  been painting pictures of our favourite toys during I.C.T.  During numeracy we are learning to sort objects different ways and how to record the information.  Soon we will be learning to tell the time. During term 1, we learned all about ourselves through our topic All about me! We were counting to 20 and adding and subtracting two numbers.  We learnt about shape and money.  During literacy we  learned to write instructions (see some examples of our work below) and wrote about our weekend's and trip to the museum.  During play, we enjoyed painting pictures of ourselves, creating houses and buildings from lego and other construction toys.  We made lots of things at the creative table, and in the role play corner we had a house, a Doctor's surgery where Mr Bell came to visit, and then a cafe where we learned about healthy eating.

Ready for our Nativity play

We made a sentence in the sand

Digging in the sand with trucks

We are so clever in P2

Kendra's annual limnology workshop

During early January, I spent a week in Florida with my CSI-Limnology colleagues. For those of you who don't know about CSI-Limnology (www.csilimnology.org), we are an interdisciplinary team of researchers who have compiled lake and landscape data for thousands of the northeastern-most 17 U.S. states in order to better understand how lakes are responding to changes in land use and climate. We have named our database LAGOS (LAke GeOSpatial) and the lake data look something like:

Our fearless leader is my previous adviser and long-time friend, Pat Soranno. She is the lead-PI on our NSF MacroSystems Biology grant that funds these workshops each year. Our team includes researchers from across central and eastern U.S. (and even one who person who lives in the UK), so every year we meet somewhere for a week to work together. This year, we met at the Archbold Biological Station (http://www.archbold-station.org/) in Venus, FL. Convenient, right? Right! As soon as Mom and Dad heard that I had to be in FL in early Jan for work, they started planning for us all to come to The Villages to see them for the holidays. Anyway, here are some pix of us working and exploring.

Lake Annie on the Archbold Biological Station property. The Director, Dr. Hilary Swain,
took our group there one evening to tell us about the Station and this really unique FL lake. 

Most of CSI-Limnology

Hilary was very cool...she told us all about the history of the station and was quite entertaining. 

Loving the break from our conference room (below)!

We are working on a variety of publications that use data from LAGOS, and we spent a lot of the week conducting data analysis and interpreting results for these publications.

We also had fun getting to know everyone, including our new team members. Below are a couple of pictures from our mid-week half-day excursion kayaking on Fisheating Creek, which flows into Lake Okeechobee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisheating_Creek). We saw SO many spiders, snakes, and vultures!

Wait...what? Where did the Creek go? Ha! Wrong turn... Just a short portage.

Chris and Pang-Ning

Me and my grad student, Nick, surrounded by a bed of exotic, nuisance water hyacinth

Not sure if you can see it, but there is a water moccasin in the hole in the tree.
They were everywhere! Staring out at us from these holes!

We had a very productive and fun week in FL! I'm already looking forward to our next workshop, although I have to admit that I am growing weary of work-related travel. I miss my family when I go away! And, what is it that makes me think I will sleep and exercise more when away from them? NEVER happens!

Here are a few other random pix that I like from our week in FL.

Poor Kath was sick the whole week...

There was a nice balcony we could sit on, until the mosquitoes came out! Beautiful sunsets from there (below).