Natalie comes to work!

On the first day of spring break in March, I brought Natalie into work with me for the day. She'd been asking to for a while, and I thought this would be a good time to make it happen. I spoke with our office manager the week before, and she came up with a list of tasks for Natalie to work on all day. She was so excited to join me, even having the two of us wear similar outfits to the office:

 She started off the day spending pretty much the entire morning at Yvonne's desk, helping to sort through business cards and marketing leaflets. She took this task VERY seriously, and most definitely did not want my input so I let her be!

After lunch, she and Julie (our operations assistant) helped Yvonne to sort through a bunch of our paper files.

 

She then helped to label some of the folders, and was VERY excited to get to write on the labels!

 She then sat at Julie's desk for a bit and helped her to type out address labels. It was slow going, as Natalie's still working on typing, but Julie was very patient with her!

 At the end of the day, Yvonne presented Natalie with a certificate for being "marketing assistant of the month". Natalie was very proud to have earned this - it's still hanging on our fridge a month later!

 She had a really great day at the office, and earned herself $5 for working for the day (a lot cheaper than if I paid for her to go to daycare!). I plan on repeating this over the summer - I know we have a lot more tasks she can help with.

Henry was a bit jealous that Natalie was able to spend the day there, so I promised him some time at the office as well; in fact, he got to do that just last week (pics to come soon). But they were too cute when we all got home together, which let me get this shot of them in the evening. Love these kids!

Managing Time

I've been thinking lately about the idea of "managing time". We all only have so much time in the day, particularly when it comes to things that are done during our "free" time (free time? What's that?). Everyone is incredibly busy; what I'm describing here is probably no different from many of you. For me, between work, travel (which has been a LOT since the end of February), kids, helping to keep the household running, trying to exercise, doing a few photo shoots here and there, cross stitching (which is currently how I am preferring to spend my evening time), and the myriad other things to do, unfortunately blogging has moved lower in my list of priorities.

I absolutely love this blog; it's fantastic to be able to go back, see random photos of the kids, remind myself of the things we have done - I couldn't ask for a better history of our family from the past 8.5 years. But that doesn't change the fact that it does take time to keep up. Time to write each posts, upload the photos, put them in the correct order - often, after a day of staring at a computer screen (or traveling around at customer sites), I simply don't have the energy to do it. I just can't stare at a screen anymore.

I've noticed because of this, my rate of posting in 2016 is FAR less than it ever has been. I'm on track to maybe hit 100 posts this year (and that's only if I pick up the pace a lot - it's more likely I'd be somewhere from 80-90), which would potentially be my lowest year ever. I guess that's not a big deal, right? I'm probably the only person who cares. Although I know that my family members do read the new posts!

I keep oscillating between these two things. I really DO want to have all of our events, etc posted here; like I said, I love being able to go back and look at everything. But I also want to not be tied to a computer any longer than I need to be, and if I'm going to write, am I better served working on some other writing projects I have started (but haven't finished), which would probably get me a lot farther in the long run? I just don't know.

I do know that I've been crazy busy with travel, and that definitely interferes with my posting. I always think I will post while in my hotel at night, but I'm pretty much always too exhausted to do so. This month will be less travel (I'm actually at home all of next week, woohoo!), and so I'm hoping to play a little catch up. I've got a couple of OLD posts to get up (including one from 2015), and I'd like to try to get caught up through March if possible. So I think in writing all of this out I am going to set that as a goal for myself, and try to blog each day for the next 9 days. Let's see if I can stick to it!

I like to include a photo with each post, if I can, as I think just reading is boring for people. I wanted to show this note that I received at work recently; while I have been traveling a lot, things like this completely make it worth it. This note was from some students in the Commerce School who I helped out with a project. This was so sweet to receive, and is one of the reasons why I love doing what I do.

Society for Neuroscience 2015: Chicago!

Typically, I head off to the Society for Neuroscience conference in November of each year. However, sometimes they do move it a bit earlier to October, as was the case this year. So, about a month ago, my colleagues and I headed off to Chicago for 5 days of work, eating, work, work, more eating, and more work. Here I am with Shannon and Brooke on the plane, about to take off.

Arrival in Chicago was easy, and on a truly lovely day. It turned out that my colleagues who had gotten there to set up the booth a couple of days earlier were basically done, so we had the rest of the day to all meet up and then explore the city. Here was the view from my hotel room - not bad!

The first couple of nights there, I took my camera with us as we walked around. Coming back from dinner we went through Millenium Park at sunset; here are a couple of my favorite photos:

 

But, we were definitely there to work! Here was a photo I instagrammed of our booth on the first day. Look at all of our lovely green and white! The white carpet that my boss ordered for us this year really made us pop, in contrast to a lot of the other booths which had the standard grey or black carpet.

I also tried to get some "artsy" shots of our booth.

 

And...group photo!

I also took a couple of selfies in my various Noldus shirts. I actually like these polos - they're sport polos, so they're comfortable, and the purple in particular is a pretty nice color, I think!

 

After all of our long days working in the booth, eating lots, and wandering around the city

...it was finally time to take down the booth after the conference ended on Wednesday. In total, it took us just under 4 hours to break everything down, get it all put away, and finally leave, giving us about a 13 hour last day.

 

Definitely a long day, but we manage to find our fun :) Gonny (below with me) is one of my Dutch colleagues who I so rarely get to see - she and I roomed together and had a blast! I am looking forward to seeing her again when I go to our Dutch office in March 2016.

 

I went to British Columbia!

Back in early June, I had the opportunity to spend 5 beautiful days, in Victoria, British Columbia (Canada). I went for a conference (International Behavioral Neuroscience Society), as we were one of the vendors. I've been to this conference almost every year I've been with Noldus - last year was just a quick one day in Vegas, and a couple of years before that was a lovely time in Colorado (which it doesn't look like I blogged about here, at least not that I can find). Every 3 years this conference goes over to Europe (next year it's in Budapest), so I won't get to go, but that's ok - it would take a lot to top how awesome my time in Victoria was!

Everyone who I told I was going there mentioned how beautiful the city is. They were not wrong. Getting there is a bit of an adventure - it's an island, and so the only real options are to fly into Seattle or Vancouver, and from there take the ferry. I decided to make it into an adventure, and fly into Seattle (which was cheaper than Vancouver!), which then led to a 2.5 hour car ride to the coast, and a 90 minute ferry ride into Victoria. However, I didn't really care when the scenery on the ferry ride looked like this:

 Despite the overcast day, and the cold wind,

the ferry ride was really nice; I spent most of it walking around the boat taking photos. Even coming into the harbor, tucked behind the glass (we couldn't be out on deck), was really pretty.

 After checking into my amazing hotel...

 it was time to go take a walk around the area! It turns out that the sun sets very late up there, and so I was able to go on a nice walk to see the harbor area until pretty late that first night. I put on my sneakers, grabbed my phone, and headed out!

 The hotel was just down the street from the capital/government building. I love how it was list up at night!

 As I walked around the harbor, I was able to see lights for the buildings all around me...

 including the Fairmont Empress, where I was staying! So beautiful on the water.

 I was actually there for work, I promise. On my first full day I set up our booth at the conference center, which was attached to the hotel.

We had a nice space (I was able to take this whole side of the room), and on the whole it was a really nice time. I like this conference as I know lots of people, so it's nice to catch up with them for a couple of days.

 I talked to a lot of people, and on day 3 of the conference I hosted a symposium that I submitted to the conference organizing committee. Here's my friend Jill giving her talk (she graciously agreed to be a part of it!)

The area wasn't just overcast, as it was on day 1 - in fact, most of the time it was brilliantly beautiful.

 So, what else did I do? A ton of walking around - in the middle of each day I had a few hours free between exhibition times. On the second day, I took a walk (over 3 miles) over to a beach I'd been told about, and then back around the harbor. It was also a  bit overcast that day, but still amazingly beautiful. I have a ton more photos from this, and will probably just stick them in another post, either here or on my photography blog!

Two other awesome things that I did: First, my colleague was at the conference with his girlfriend (who also spoke in my symposium!); on the last day there, after I'd packed up my booth, the 3 of us went whale watching! That will definitely be a post in and of itself, but in the meantime here are the 3 of us dressed in our safety/warm weather gear (it was f-ing cold out there!).

 

And, on the total opposite end of the temperature spectrum, I drove about 30 minutes away to the Butchart Gardens, which I had been told were a must-see. This is DEFINITELY going to be its own post, as I took tons of photos. It was a lot warmer that day, and stunningly beautiful to walk around in. This is just with my phone - wait til you see what I took with my camera!

So yeah - there are at least 3 or 4 more posts coming from this trip (whale watching, gardens, Victoria at night, and the beach)...it was such a beautiful place to visit, and I'm so glad that I had the chance to go there. Definitely need to try to go back with Evan at some point!

Cleveland area, May 2015

This was the second work trip that I took in May....a lot better than than the previous one, if only because I didn't get food poisoning! This time I traveled with Jason, and he and I always find fun things to do, even when we're in the middle of nowhere. Our main visit was in Solon, OH, which despite being not too far from Cleveland, still kind of qualifies as the middle of nowhere. However, before we hit that town, we did spend a day/night in Kent, OH visiting the university there. After our appointments, we found this great bar where we could sit right next to a lake and enjoy our dinner and drinks. 

There was a storm rolling by towards Cleveland, and luckily it missed us! But it made for a lovely sky at sunset.

On our drive back to our hotel, we had to hit Mike's Place. Jason was very interested because there was what appeared to be an X-wing out front...

and on closer inspection, yep, there was! The place has been around for about 25 years, and is owned by this super eclectic guy named Mike. He's a huge Star Wars fan, so he built this X-wing himself out of junk yard parts, basically. The place is filled with knick knacks and crazy stuff everywhere, and the menu is hilarious...as well as HUGE! This wasn't even the whole thing. Every line there is a different food you can order. Nuts!

The next night we hit Solon. Turns out Solon is...well, there's not a lot to do. As we faced the prospect of having to eat at a chain restaurant (noooo!!), we saw a sign for something called "Chagrin Falls". Intrigued, Google Maps let us see that it was a town about 4 miles away that did have a falls. We thought it was worth checking out...and it turned out we were right! This town looks like something out of a movie - white picket fences, beautiful little houses, an adorable downtown....Hollywood should be shooting movies here.

We parked downtown and walked towards the falls, which could be heard over everything. Although relatively small, they roar quite loudly and were really pretty to watch!

I used the slo-mo video feature to take this one.

We then walked to a nearby restaurant to have a pretty tasty dinner, and then headed back downtown to get some ice cream and check out this guy. He had a homemade telescope set up, connected to a video monitor. Apparently he comes out here as often as he can, and instructs people on what can be seen. It was so cool! With just his 8mm telescope lens we were able to very clearly see landmarks on the moon, and even the rings of Jupiter. Jason and I were fascinated!

We had our visit in Solon, and then headed to the Cleveland Zoo for our final visit. Our potential client asked if we could talk while we walk around the zoo - absolutely! Turns out the Cleveland Zoo is quite large, and had a lot of nice (if older) animal enclosures. I was so happy to see that they had red pandas!

Look at that little face!!

Also koalas (cute, of course, but not quite as cute as the red  pandas to me!)

I didn't know that rhinos would play with toys...turns out they will!

The final place we came to was the newly renovated elephant area. It was really nice!

Traveling with Jason is always fun, and it was great that in addition to some really nice client visits we got to see so many nice parts of the Cleveland area.