Birthday and Wine Trip

My Birthday fell on the 2009 Wine Trip this year! It is really a great time to have a birthday, because 17 of our friends get together to rent a log cabin in the hill country and then taste wines! We also got lucky enough to stay in one of the Master bedroom/bathroom suites so couldn't complain ;)

Unfortunately - our camera battery ran out on the first day and I forgot my charger... so until we get pictures from other friends, here is a picture of my birthday pie!



I was also super excited about my birthday - because I got 150 packets of my most favorite tea - Pomegranate Oolong, come on over for a cup! And I got an Opera DVD, Vera Bradley Umbrella, and some fantastic face cream that I'm super excited about... I know sounds like I'm getting old - hugh? Only 27!

The Riley Family visits Houston

Paul's good friend Sean from high school was back from Iraq a couple weeks, and came down from Fort Hood with his family to see NASA.

Overall we had a ton of fun. Their two kids are almost 2 and almost 4 (my favorite ages), so we got to play a lot. I broke out Candy Land and our secret stash of plato. We also got to do a great tour of Space Center Houston, Mission Control, and we also went down to the Aquarium in Galveston and ate dinner at the Rain forest Cafe.

Only issue, is that we had torrential rains on Saturday (7 inches in 1 hour), and we ended up driving their mini van through some water at JSC and stalling out. With the kids in the car we were pretty worried, so we had some security guards come and "rescue" us. They ended up driving us to the security building (110) and letting us hang out until Greg came and got us. Apparently the water got in through the tailpipe of the car... but also the engine got water in it and is now useless! What a nightmare. The overall lesson, don't drive through water... it's dangerous and can kill your car! Right now, Sean and Sheila are borrowing one of our cars until their insurance is figured out. Hopefully, it will all work out.

Here are some pictures of the kids at NASA!

An Easter Egg Hunt

I spent Easter Sunday with my Mom, Oma, and my brother! We threw an Easter egg hunt for his girlfriend Lynda's kids, Doug and Wolfgang. They are so much fun to hang out with and Wolfgang (the younger one) even told me I was his favorite girl!

Here are some pictures from the day!

Easter with Grandpa and Grandma

My week with Tyler

This last week I spent helping my sister with her new born son Tyler. It was so great to be around during his first week! They really have the sweetest baby ever, he barely cries (only when they take his pants off ;) and he gives great looks too! Here are some of the highlights from my stay.

My first 5K!

While Paul was studying, I took up running and ran my first 5K at the Yuri's night race! Overall, I came in 28 out of 60 female runners and 13 out of 24 females in my age group. I was excited... and you can tell - Kristin and I came in cheering ourselves along ;)

Back to having a life...

Ever wondered if an electron in the ground state of an atom were knocked out of its orbital, what the wavelength of the resulting x-ray would be? I started to miss learning this stuff, so I'm planning to take some classes in the fall at Rice or UHCL, and start working toward a masters in physics. I had to take the General GRE and the Physics GRE subject test, and it was kind of fun to get back into studying mode. The subject test is notoriously fiendish, so I ducked out of the social scene for the last couple months and tried to cram a large volume of books into the significantly smaller volume of my brain. I finally took it yesterday, 100 questions in 170 minutes, we'll see in six weeks how it went. After the test Christina and I went straight to a free wine tasting event in town with some friends and it was the perfect spring day to unwind. Now it's time to get back to the other stuff I've been procrastinating on, and Christina's glad to have me back too...