The Reef

We've had a salt-water tank for almost 3 years now - it was Taylor's birthday present when she turned 2, since she LOVED Nemo. It has been "fish only" until the last couple of weeks. We finally made the investment to convert it to a reef (a major investment!). So far we have added live rock, one small coral, and a bubble anemone. I'm hoping that the percula clowns (Nemo and Marlin) will come to love the new anemone - it will take them some time to make friends I guess. Watching this guy is amazing... we put him in the sand, but he started climbing the rocks last night and seemed to settle in a "nook" between two of them. This morning, however, he seemed to be moving through one of the rocks (it has a big hole in the middle), so I'm not sure where he'll be when we get home today. Here are some pictures that I took last night. They are very "blue" because the actinic lights were on when I took them. (The light fixture has 3 blue/actinic lights and 3 white/day lights... the actinics come on first to simulate dawn, then the whites for daytime, then the actinics again for dusk - dawn and dusk allow the corals to experience their natural growth cycles)

(removed pic due to broken link…)

Bring on the warm weather!

I love the winter, really I do - always been preferable to blazing hot summers, but THIS year has skewed my thoughts. I'm ready for some warm weather to kill all of these bugs that keep finding their way into our home. Taylor is finishing a round of antibiotics from ear infection #2, which was probably a mixed blessing b/c it kept her from getting the strep that made its way through her class at preschool.

I got sinus infection #2 a few weeks ago and went to my ENT - same sinus as in January, but I didn't want to go on a systemic antibiotic for fear of C-Diff again... We came up with a different plan of attack - sinus rinsing with antibiotic solution. Admittedly not fun, but SO much better than having to worry about c-diff and it cleared it up! Wahoo! I'm thankful to Dr. Ryan for being creative and letting me try that first - she is wonderful.

Work for me has been very busy - I never get to come up for air (so it seems) and I still haven't loaded pictures from Hannah's birthday. I'm taking my laptop home this weekend (on-call next week, YIKES!), so I'll try to get to it at some point. Brad's work is steady - I know that they keep him busy, but he doesn't complain, so I know he loves his job... Just for the record, I'm not complaining - I LOVE MY JOB (seriously, I'd NEVER find anything else that even comes close), I just feel much more "needed" these days. ;-)

Hope you all are doing well and I'll get some pics up on picasa soon. We're heading to the beach next weekend for St. Patrick's Day - N Myrtle (OD) has a great parade and street fair that the kids love. We found out last night that my nephew is coming too, so I'm sure Taylor will be talking about it all week - they are the same age and it is a constant party when they are together! They'll both end up exhausted after next weekend...