Halloween Burgers

Instead of stuffing ourselves with candy on Halloween, we stuffed ourselves with great burgers from Ike's in downtown Minneapolis!

Pumpkins!

The girls had a pumpkin carving/scary move watching/ pizza eating party on Saturday night. It was a fantastic- and cheap- Saturday! Here are some pics... lots of pics...

Cheers- pumpkins look better with drinks!

The preparation:

Roasting the seeds is one of the best parts!

Loreto's Pumpkin:

Isabel's pumpkin:

Alessia's pumpkin:

My pumpkin:

Nancy's pumpkin:

Group pic:


Scary!!!

I hope you all enjoy Halloween your own way! As most people know, I hate to dress up but pumpkins are a totally different story! Happy Halloween!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I wanted to thank you all for all of the b-day thoughts, calls, cards and gifts- it had been a hard week and it was so wonderful to feel loved. Here are some pics of birthday cake at the lab, all of the cards and flowers that came to me at work- everyone was jealous! Plus, Alessia took me out for dinner at Outback and to see "The Duchess" Friday night.

Bowling and Breakfast

As several of you already know, the Lange Lab has a bowling team for the annual Fisher Sci. sponsored bowling tournament on October 30. Now "some people" in the lab consider this a very competitive event and felt that we needed practice/try-outs so we went bowling Monday night. Here are some pics!

Group Pic:

Christy's Ridiculously Large Soda: Cheerleading Nancy and Todd
Nancy in Action
Nate in Action- no face shots of Nate- even in the goup pic- take a look :)
This past weekend Nancy and I took Alessia out for an "American Breakfast". Alessia is a visiting PhD student from Italy and she arrived in Mpls just about a month after I did and we have become good friends. She gets a huge kick out of things we think are "normal" and it makes us all stop and think about how good things are. Here is a pick of our breakfast (IHOP of course). On the way home we saw a pumpkin stand- now, Alessia LOVES decorations and is especially excited for Halloween as they don't celebrate it in Italy. Given this, we stopped at the stand so she could see all the kinds of pumpkins, Indian corn and scarecrows. Have I mentioned that I LOVE the fall?

The Bog Blog

A friend, Alessia, and I went to visit the bog in the middle of Minneapolis! It is called the Quaking Bog and it was fantastic! We got a bit lost in the park and wondered around for a bit but it was totally worth it.
Here's Alessia and me:

And here are some pics of lots of the fungi and cat tails in the bog:

I also got some great pics of the leaves changing colors:

Fun Packed Weekend

I had quite the full weekend... On Saturday I went to Minnehaha Falls Park to see the waterfall and "hike" down to the Mississippi. It was a really nice park in the middle of the city. There were times you would swear you were in a big state park (aside from the sound of traffic and the band playing at the shelters on top of the cliff).

There was also a farm stand on the way so I stopped to get some apples, cucumbers, zucchini and melons- I'm really loving the farm stands and farmers markets- I will miss them in the winter. Then Sat evening some friends and I met for dinner in downtown Minneapolis. It was great to have a night out in civilization!

PS. The weather is staying cold and hopefully the leaves will change soon!!!!

Autumn

No pics just yet but SOON there will be pics of leaves changing color!!!! I'm so excited I can barely contain myself! FALL IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!! The heat broke earlier this week and it is fall for sure. The sky is deep blue, the air smells crisp and fresh and the summer flowers have gone to seed. This is my first autumn in 7 (count them 7) years and I'm going to enjoy it. I've worn a coat two mornings in a row, my morning coffee doesn't make me hot and sweaty, there are winter squash at the farmers market and I have turned the AC off and opened the windows!
Hurray for 4 seasons!