One Wild Week

 The past week has been an absolute blur! Last Wednesday, Jennifer and I headed to DC for a conference. The conference itself was terrible, but we could walk to the zoo and had lunch with the pandas:

 This guy actually say in his lunch:

 I always love traveling with Jennifer, and although the conference was a bust we got a lot of department work finished!

When I got home, we finally had Issa's friend birthday party! She wanted to take them to AR Workshop in Durham for some painting fun:

 I was so impressed with the process, and we made very cute banners:

I absolutely loved hanging out with these girls!

Sunday, we girls had our first ballet of the season:

 And when we got home Issa and I decorated for Halloween:

 Every year we decorate on October 1, but I was going to be at a conference, so we decided to cheat a couple of days.

Monday morning I left for another conference--this one I co-chaired. When I went to unpack, I found the horrible Halloween rat:

This hiding of the rat is the one family tradition I would rather forget, but the rest of my crew will not hear of it.

Unfortunately, I got some version of the flu Tuesday night. Hell is being sick in a hotel room. I couldn't finish the conference and had to come home yesterday morning. Thankfully Brad took amazing care of me, and I'm definitely on the mend today! I even just ate some chicken soup!

This has been a week of ups and downs, and I'm looking forward to a quiet weekend to get back on my feet.