Science Discovery Day at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds

 I took Ni'ke and Ya'shar to the fair grounds on Saturday for Science Discovery Day!  What a great fun  family event, and it was FREE!  Below Ni'ke and Ya'shar make their own silly putty out of Borax and Elmer's glue!

 Watching them make liquid nitrogen ice cream

 Delicious!!!

Ya'shar and Ni'ke go head to head in a lego game.  At first they were having fun....

 And then Ni'ke starts to win and Ya'shar isn't having so much fun....

 And now he's full-blown mad about losing

 Ni'ke made a super cool fish print

 Ni'ke checks out the sun spots!

 Future astronaut?!?!  Maybe so!

 The circus is in town!

IAFN Annual Conference, Disneyland Hotel, CA

 Happiest place on earth - the site of the annual forensic nursing conference...  Gotta love the irony.  what I really loved was every single second of this conference - I got so fired up and  came away with what I truly needed, and that is a clear vision and purpose of what I'm going to do with my career for the rest of my life.  Hallelujah!  There's so much to learn about this field, and I was happy as a clam to sit in the front row of every single session, ask tons of questions, be a dork, net work a little, and take it all in!

 My cute little hotel room and  the view from my window.  There were little lights built in to the headboard and it was so cool with the lights off!  Aahhh.... details.

The big hat - going into Downtown Disney around the corner from the hotel.

A big group of us walked into a converted men's room, not quite realizing at first that it had been changed to a women's room!  The mums in the urinal should have been a clue, probably...

Dr. Smock was one of the presenters last weekend.  He is an officer and police sergeant with the police department in Louisville, KY,  a professeor of emergency medicine, and a Medical Examiner.  My new hero, in other words.  I learned more from him in 8 hours than I have in the past year and a half of grad school!  He's talking with Virginia Lynch, the author of a lot of my text books, and the "brain child" of forensic nursing.  They started working together decades ago and have built forensic nursing into what it is today, an established and reputable career.

 Monday we had lunch outside in the court yard - I love meeting new people, the world truly gets smaller every day!

 Monday night, some of us went to the Orange County crime lab.  It was an amazing presentation, but unfortunately there was a miscommunication about the time we were supposed to be out of there, and we didn't get to go into the actual lab like we were supposed to.  Major bummer!

So on Wednesday we were all in our various afternoon sessions, when a woman calmly walked into our conference room and said, "OK I need everyone to calmly pick up their things and walk out of the room through the nearest exit immediately!"  ?!?!?!?  We had no idea what was going on, but we all filed out of the building and down the stairs and onto the grass.  It ended up being a fire drill, and I'm so grateful all was ok, but I felt bad for the presenters who were interrupted.

Rainforest Cafe!  (And all the little critters inside!)

 Had to do a little shopping at the Disney store for my kids who were less than thrilled that I was at Disneyland WITHOUT them...  I kept telling them that it wasn't too fun for me to be there without them either!  There were a few times when I was in near tears.

 A very sweet couple who saw me struggling to take a decent "selfie" in front of Beauty and the Beast for the girls was so kind to take a picture for me.  Yep, that made me cry.

 So I came here and ate some yummy Italian food!!  Best margarita pizza ever! 

Goofy and I, hanging out!

 My pictures seem to be a little out of order, but this is the main conference area in the Grand ballroom where we met for all of our keynote speakers.  Tonier Cain was our speaker on Wednesday, and if you want to see an amazing story, check out her documentary "Healing Neen" on Vimeo or Youtube.

California Adventures at night time!  Good times, but I was ready to get back to the REAL happiest place on earth, with my family!  Thank you, International Association of Forensic Nurses!  See you next year in Phoenix, AZ!!

Wednesday, October 9th - "The Eagle Has Landed!"

 Stefani finally arrived in San Francisco after much anticipation!!  SO looking forward to spending some time with one of my dearest cousins that I grew up with in Missouri - there's just something about reconnecting with people who have known you your whole and know where you came from and share your same values....  We hit the ground running as soon as I scooped her up from the airport!  Had to stop at Vista Point to appreciate the views, and walk around on the bridge.  It truly never gets old.  And let me preface the rest of the mounds of photos to come that the very skilled photographer that is my cousin took most of these pictures!! (She was so kind as to unload them onto my laptop before she left!)  :)

Um, apparently this was a picture from on my phone...  ??  Not sure how it ended up a picture of a picture! We thought it was cool b/c it looked like she was being swallowed by the bridge.

We had lunch in Sausalito at The Trident restaurant on the water.  Fish tacos, yummmm....

Love this shot of the bridge!