HACH Big Picture contest

Forgot to add this! If you haven't seen our submission yet, please check it out, it is worth seeing! I am in the skit with my coworkers, and my ferrets also played a small role. Just go to hach.com/bigpicture. Click on VOTE. They are currently voting for a fan favorite. You don't have to vote for us since we already won the grand prize, but you can view our submission on this page. We are the last one on the list, Cranberry Township Brush Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. You can search for us on YouTube too.

Hollywood Walk of Fame

I didn't have time to see all the stars on the Walk of Fame, or to go into any of the shops along the street (although I am sure they would have been way too expensive for me). However, I can say I was on the Walk of Fame, and I did see many stars, and also the Chinese Theater where stars had written in the cement and placed their shoe or hand prints. There were street performers too. I also saw the Hollywood sign in the distance on the way there, but I could not get a picture.

Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica

I was able to see the Pacific Ocean! It was very hazy, so you could not see far in any direction. I picked up some seashells on the beach. The pier was not very long, so I walked up that too. It was not a nice day for the beach, and I didn't have time to hang out there anyway, so I didn't stay here long. There were some people swimming though.

La Brea Tar Pits

Everyone thought I was crazy to want to see the tar pits, but I think they are an amazing natural wonder and as far as I know, exist no where else. I read about the amazing amount of fossils they have excavated from the tar pits, birds of prey, wolves, saber tooth cats, mammoths, camels, horses, and many others. They have a small museum there where you can see some of the fossils that were dug out of the tar.

Trip to California!

The place I work for, Cranberry Township, won the HACH Big Picture contest. We submitted a video, and told HACH how we could use their products to see the Big Picture at the wastewater treatment plant. We won the municipal grand prize of 50,000 dollars, and a trip to Los Angeles, CA for the award presentation at the WEFTEC conference! My supervisor and myself were able to go on the trip. I attended an awesome microbiology workshop, walked all around the three huge vendor halls talking with different vendors, saw some of the operator's challenge competition, and went out to dinners with our engineers and vendors. A VERY busy few days. I did not have very much time for sight-seeing and was only able to go to three places. Here are some pictures from my trip!

Wake Boarding

Here is a video of J wake boarding. Took us a while to figure it out, but J and Scott both did well. The bay was really choppy, but they had a great time.

Last Day

Janelle and Sam (Jason's other sister and her boyfriend) came down the last two days we were on vacation. We went to dinner with them at Big Pecker's and then met up with Jen and Scott at the White Marlin Tournament. We saw a lot of big boats, but no fish were being weighted when we were there.

Dogfish Head

We went to the Dogfish head Distillery with Jen for dinner. We missed the tour, but it was still fun!

On the Boardwalk

We went to the boardwalk for one night. It was fun looking at all the stores, and the huge blue marlin. We also went in a small museum.

Relaxing on the beach

The weather was great and the ocean was cold and salty. only problem we had was one day of bad wind when our umbrellas came out and flew down the beach. We caught them with no one getting hurt.

More Beach

We found a dead horseshoe crab too. Ate a half bushel of crabs, and got great donuts from the Fractured Prune, and gourmet cupcakes from Yummy!

Beach Vacation

We headed out to Ocean City, MD in August for vacation. Jason's sister, Jennifer, and her boyfriend, Scott, were nice enough to let us stay with them. We had an awesome time on Scott's boat, did some wakeboarding and played with jellyfish in the bay. We also spent most days at the beach.

Deer

We have had two deer in our yard this year. (that we have seen. I am sure they come by often to eat my plants when we aren't looking) These ones were after the mulberries though, so that was okay. They aren't afraid of us, and J got really close to this one. We tried to get it to eat peanuts from his hand. I named her Mildred.

Floating on the River

Now that we live in Conway, we don't have many weekends home to float down the river. We were able to go twice this year. Here are pictures me, J, Becca and Brad, Janelle, Becky and Julia. There were other people there too, but I didn't get pictures of everyone. Julia was so funny. Every time Bert's raft got stuck on a rock it made a loud noise and she would yell at him for farting. We also caught a big crayfish.