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). 

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

Well, December is certainly the month for Christmas fun!

City Hall decorated for the holidays and with the Continental Market in front.

Belfast is pretty similar to what I've experienced in the U.S. in terms of the pre-Christmas buildup. The opener of the season is a little earlier in Belfast than the U.S. because there is no Thanksgiving and Santa lives in a 'Grotto' that the kids visit and mail their letters to. But, just as in the States, there is lots of shopping! Interestingly, much of it appears to be in the City Centre rather than suburban malls (we, of course, love this idea). The City has a 'Continental Market' on the City Hall grounds that is quite fun - concerts, a carousel, gifts, food and drink (including mulled wine and beer tents). 

Watson's favorite food at the Continental Market
Bavarian mini-pancakes with chocolate sauce and whipped cream toppings

Watson on the Continental Market's carousel

There were gobs of people wandering around the City Centre shops and malls - here's a map showing you what the City Centre looks like: http://goo.gl/maps/03uRu. The markers are showing City Hall, a couple of malls in City Centre, and St George's Market which is the large farmer's market that is open on weekends. That whole area is full of pedestrians, especially on the weekends building up to Christmas. 

Most people seem to have at least one Christmas tree in their house, in fact, some have more than one, like Grace's family. It seems that fewer people decorate their yards, but the city and businesses decorate the outside with lights like those in the U.S. do. It sounds like there are even more Christmas parties to attend here than in the States - many people have an event every Friday and Saturday night in late November and throughout December. And, workplaces have big Christmas shin-digs. We didn't attend the QUB GAP party because it was the night before we flew to the U.S. But, we did go to our neighbor's holiday gathering that evening for an hour - Jane and Alan hosted (kids Nora 3.5 and Robbie 1) with games for the kids and mulled wine for the adults. Watson also made a Christmas scene at Jumping Clay, and we celebrated with Bob and Kath the weekend before we left - they had us overnight, we helped decorate their tree, and then Jubin and I went for our first date since July! We had dinner at the Balloo House (http://www.ballooinns.com/balloo-house/about), which was lovely. 

Some wrestling at Bob and Kath's... 

Fun decorating the Christmas tree!

Belfast schools are closed for approximately the same amount of time and during the same dates as in the U.S. Watson's school had a Christmas play, a traditional nativity play. Most of his class was part of the chorus. Here are some pix from that:

Watson's favorite teacher - Mrs Butler

 

And, of course, Watson wrote his Christmas letter to Santa, just as he would have in the U.S. We gave it to Jerry, our neighbor across the street who works in City Centre and he put it in the special mailbox to the North Pole at the City Hall. Then, a few or so later, Watson got his reply!

In case you cannot read that, he asked for  a water gun (he and the neighborhood girls love to have
water fights), some Jumping Clay (kind of like Play Doh but way better), and a yoga ball. 

About 2 weeks before Christmas, Watson got a gift from Mum and Dad - the very 1st weekend we lived in Belfast, Watson noticed that there was a Build A Bear Workshop in the Victoria Mall in City Centre and has been asking to build a bear ever since. So, Jubin said "for Christmas" and I took him there on a Dec weekday afternoon after school (have heard there are LONG lines on weekends) for fun. Here is a picture of him with his bear, Rose. She plays Rudolph and has Christmas clothing. For all of our parent friends reading this blog...be glad that there isn't a Build A Bear in Lansing!