the next Lindsey Stirling

Here is Heidi sporting the Lindsey Stirling look after sleeping with pigtails in her hair.

I found a blog post that had several different ideas for fixing toddler girls' hair, so I've been experimenting with a few of them. I haven't been taking pictures of most of them, but here are a couple:

Side French braid--first time I have braided her hair. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to repeat this hairstyle because I can't get her to sit still long enough.

Topsy-tail in front, with that hair split and added to two pigtails

Morgan Creek Trail

One Saturday in April we decided to go walk on the Morgan Creek Trail. We didn't get to see the entire thing because the children got tired, which means they kept getting distracted and doing naughty things like ignoring us. Next time we will take the double stroller. Other than that we had a really nice time and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Kevin kept running ahead and Heidi kept lagging behind (trying to pick up and carry anything and everything on the pavement that looked slightly interesting).

This is the sad face that Heidi is really good at making. Imagine her making this face while rubbing her eyes and whimpering softly, and just try to resist the urge to give her candy.

nice pictures by Ryan

While the wisteria was blooming, Ryan took the opportunity to take some pictures of the flowers and the kids. He got several nice ones.

(He was also testing the camera to see if the pictures would have a dot in the middle. Early one morning, Kevin decided to take underwater pictures of imaginary fishes in real water. Fortunately, the water in the camera dried up and it seems to still be taking nice pictures despite the dot in the middle of the lens.)

Anyway, here are the pictures, in no particular order.

Heidi taking care of her big brother

I'm just copying this from Ryan's Facebook post because I couldn't have put it better.

"Prepare your limbic systems because this Facebook post may just bring a tear to your eye.

"A few weeks ago Kevin was having a particularly hard day. He was over stimulated all day, didn't have much sleep the night before and was too agitated to take a nap. Thus at about dinner time before he could get to the table he laid down on the floor and fell asleep. Heidi was somewhat concerned and got out of her seat to see if Kevin was OK. She went over to him and sat down next to him and asked, "Are you OK?" 

"We told her that he was tired and fell asleep. So she got up and went and got one of her own blankets and spread it over Kevin. Noticing that his feet were still uncovered she went and got one of his blankets and put it over his feet. Then she laid down next to him to keep him company.

"Heidi sure does love her older brother and he loves her."

research project update

So here is a little update about my Strontium research project. Below you can see a map of the area I've been studying and then a table with Strontium concentrations,⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios, and elevation.

The story behind this is that a graduate student here at UNC did a Master's Thesis where she took a core of the peat (soil with a high concentration of plant matter) and studied its chemistry. One of the things she found was that the peat had a high ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio. ⁸⁷Sr is the daughter isotope of ⁸⁷Rb, which means that over time ⁸⁷Sr increases because ⁸⁷Rb is decaying. So older rocks will have high ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios, and younger rocks will have low ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios. The interesting thing is that the place where she sampled is close to the East coast, and the rocks and sediment there should be young. You would expect them to have ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios similar to modern sea water (0.70918) or else the groundwater (0.708104-0.709006). Instead she found that the peat had values of 0.71361± 0.00047. My project, which I started last fall, has been to explore why that value is so high.

Last fall I collected the first ten water samples in the table. What I found was that the water from the center (GL, CF-L, and HC) had the highest values (greater than 0.710). The samples from the east side (BC, TR-Y, and NR) had values similar to sea water. The samples from the west side (TR-P, WO-M, WO-L, and WO-H) had values similar to the local groundwater. At the time I concluded that there was something happening at the center of the Croatan National Forest that was causing the values to be high there, and I expected that there would be a radial pattern where values decreased gradually as you move out from the center of the forest towards the Neuse River, the Trent River, and the White Oak River. Since the forest is on a plateau, I also wondered if ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios would be related to elevation. So this semester I collected thirteen more samples, because I needed more data to be able to test my hypothesis. My focus was to get more samples from inside the forest, and also more samples in the area between the forest and the major rivers.

My results were not what I expected. Initially when I got the data back and compared it to my map, I was afraid I had done something wrong and contaminated my samples. But then I used Google Maps to figure out where the water was flowing, it made a lot more sense.

The place that worried me the most was the area in the north (samples CL-1, AR, NF1, and NF2). CL-1 was so close to the Neuse River that I was sure it would have a similar ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio. Since the Neuse River has a higher concentration of Sr than the other rivers in the region, even a little bit of mixing would make that creek have the same ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio as the Neuse River. Instead, CL-1 had a ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio of 0.710241, higher than the Neuse River's ratio, which is 0.709172. I know that doesn't look like much of a difference, but it's fairly significant. So CL-1 had values similar to samples closer to the center of the forest. The same was the case for AR, NF1, and NF2. Then I looked at Google Maps and realized that all of these samples are on the same creek, Brice Creek, and the creek actually meanders quite a bit before it joins the Trent River, which then joins the Neuse River. So at the location of CL-1, even though geographically it is close to the Neuse River, the water there actually doesn't reach the Neuse River until after going west and then north, and meandering a lot. If you follow Brice Creek from CL-1 to the Trent River, the ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratio decreases as more mixing takes place between Brice Creek and the Trent River. So the values of those samples actually do make sense.

As I looked at all of the other samples it seemed clear that this is mainly a story of mixing. If the water is mixing pretty directly with the Neuse, Trent, or White Oak rivers, the ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios will be lower, but if there is more meandering or the location is farther from those rivers, then the ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr tends to be higher.

I also plotted all of the samples on a topographic map, and there was no correlation between elevation and ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios.

This doesn't really tell what is causing the ratios to be high in the area, but it changes how we view what's going on. The next thing I want to do is test the Strontium in rainwater in the area to see if storms from inland are bringing in ⁸⁷Sr and raising the ⁸⁷Sr/ ⁸⁶Sr ratios. I also want to study the soil in the area. While I was talking to one professor here, he said that it's possible the geologic map of UNC isn't accurate and that the rock in the area is older than was thought.

Hopefully this was interesting to some people and not too hard to follow. It makes sense to me because I've spent so much time staring at the numbers, but maybe it won't make as much sense to other people who aren't so familiar with it.

Mother's Day Interview attempt 2013

I had the bright idea of copying Jared and Kristi and doing a Mother's Day interview with Kevin. The only problem is that for some reason Kevin gets really nervous when it seems like he's being quizzed, so he wouldn't really answer. Here's what we got:

How old is your mom?
*Gets plastic baby spoons and throws them all over living room floor*

What makes Mom happy?
mmmMMMmmmMMMMmmmMMMpfft

What is your mom's favorite food?
Berries.

We tried asking more questions, but he had a nervous breakdown. Oh, well. Maybe we'll try again next year.

Kevin's first time "singing" with the Primary in Sacrament Meeting

Today the Primary children sang in Sacrament Meeting for Mother's Day. I didn't know what to expect out of Kevin since this would be his first time singing in Sacrament Meeting. I wasn't sure if he would refuse to go up, or cry once he was up there, or just go nuts and run around.

The regular Primary pianist was out of town visiting her children, so she asked me to substitute for her. So when I went up Kevin followed me, but instead of standing with the other kids he just sat in the soft seat by the piano. I didn't fight it because at least he was up there and sitting still. So once all the kids were in place I played the introduction and they started singing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kevin get up, and it looked like he was going to go stand with the other kids. Instead he went up the stairs and stood in the the little area at the top where they store flowers and chairs and music stands. Then he came back down and walked between the piano and the first row of seats until he was on the other side of the stand. I'm not sure what he was doing, but it involved pushing buttons on the organ (thankfully he didn't press any keys). And then at some point he lost interest and began running back and forth in the rows of choir seats. All this time I was playing the piano and, obviously, powerless to stop him without stopping the song. I had to restrain myself from laughing the entire time.

But wait, it didn't stop there. There was one more speaker and then the closing song. The organist sat down expecting the setting she had put in before going to sit down with the congregation, so when she started playing and got a nice bombastic sound (thanks to Kevin pushing buttons during the Primary songs), she was pretty startled and had to stop and fix the setting.

We will probably be having a serious talk with Kevin before Father's Day about how to sing reverently with the Primary. At any rate, I think it's a funny story.