HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

At work today, I dressed up as a CUDA instrument. These are the instruments that I work on every day and so it made sense to dress up as one! The experiment runs in a pouch that is put inside of the CUDA instrument and one of the guys who makes the pouches for us dressed up as a pouch - so we were quite a team! We entered the contest, but the judges weren't very good because we didn't win. :D Here are also a couple of other co-workers who decided to get with the festivities. I LOVE HALLOWEEN!

Halloween Party

The Annual Halloween party is my favorite every year and this year was no exception. In fact, I think this has been the best one yet! We started out with a little pre-party and we had a pea in the pod come and visit us. How precious is Jo and Steve's little Bailie!?



















I also went much more out this year in terms of making the scary goodies for the party. Goodies included apple mouths, eyeballs, witches fingers, healthy (so much so it was scary!) muffins, and punch in a cauldron with dry ice - fun!

The costumes seem to get better and better every year too! Scott was dressed up as Steve Perry from Journey and I was an 80's groupie, in particular a Steve Perry follower. There was some guitar here playing, dancing, chatting and fun all night long. I'll let you vote for your favorite in the posts. At the party, the winner was a tie between Steve Perry (Scott) and the Ob/Gyn Dr. McCreep (Murphy). We had another little one join us later on (look how big and cute Houston is getting - big enough so that I can babysit soon! :D) I know there are a lot of pictures here, but I had to showcase just about everyone. There were about 40 people who came, so there's a lot to show!

Joshua Tree

I had never been to Joshua Tree and decided I've lived here for far too long without visiting this famous park. It was just Scott and I who went and the trip ended up being very short because both of us were a bit sick, but it was really fun to see the park! I love all of the Joshua Trees everywhere - it looks like they're waving to you everywhere you go. They have so much energy and character and all are so different - what a world. We hiked into 49 Palms, an oasis in the middle of the desert. It's totally crazy to see all of the green palms in the middle of complete brown desert - super cool. While hiking around, you can occasionally catch a bit of color as well, like in some cacti. We didn't expect it to get very cold because the weather channel predicted lows of 51, but it was definitely around 40 or below while we tried to sleep - quite nippy! We had planned to do some climbing on the second day, but our sickness got to us and we had to be happy with watching others climbing. You can see people on top of one of the rocks in this post if you look carefully.

Visit with the Becks

You may remember the Becks from the wedding post back in June. Well, they made it out to San Diego (Before the fires) and we had a great visit with them! Friends visits always reminds you to go tour around the beautiful city that you live in and that you should take advantage of more often! Thanks, guys! Now to share with the rest of you - aren't I incredibly lucky to be living in paradise!?